The encyclopedia of philosophy thus excludes (1) mere assemblages of information, such as philology; and (2) pseudosciences that have mere arbitrariness as their basis, such as for example heraldry. Sciences of this type are thoroughly positive. (3) Other sciences are also called positive, however, that have a rational basis and beginning. This part belongs to philosophy; whereas the positive side remains peculiar to the sciences themselves.
Such sciences are those, for example, that exist for themselves outside of philosophy in general. (1) Their beginning, though very true, ultimately gives way to contingency, when they have to bring their universal truth into contact with empirical facts and the phenomena of experience. In this field of contingency and instability it is not the concept but only the ground that can be validated. The study of law, for example, or the system of direct or indirect taxation, ultimately require exact decisions that lie outside the determinacy in and for itself of the concept. Thus a certain latitude of determination is left open, so that for one reason something can be said in one way but for another reason it can be said in another, and neither is capable of definite certainty. Similarly, when it is separated into details the idea of nature dissolves into contingencies, and natural history, geography, and medicine stumble over descriptions of reality in terms of kinds and differences, which are not determined by reason but rather by chance and by games. Even history belongs under this category, insofar as the idea is its essence, whose manifestation, however, lies in contingency and the field of arbitrary decisions. (2) These sciences are also positive in that they do not recognize their concepts as finite, nor do they see how these concepts and their entire realm undergo a transition into a higher sphere, but they see them as valid in any case. Together with this finitude of form, as with the finitude of content, goes the (3) ground of cognition, partly since the sciences are based on rationalizations, but partly, however, since the feeling, faith, and authority of others, or inner and outer intuition in general, are taken as the ground of cognition. This group includes religion, but also the type of philosophy that attempts to base itself on anthropology, facts of consciousness, inner intuition or outer experience,—as well as natural history, and so on. (4) It may happen, however, that "empirical" or "nonconceptual" are epithets pertinent only to the form of scientific exposition, while sensory intuition arranges mere phenomena according to the inner sequence of the concept. In such a case it may also happen that through the contrasts between the assembled phenomena and their variety, the external, contingent circumstances of their conditions suspend themselves, and generality can then emerge into view.—A sensory form of experimental physics, history, and so on, would present in this way the rational science of nature, and of human events and deeds, in an external picture mirroring the concept.
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