“In the area of the thought sciences, the conflict between thought and being* *remains latent, for thought is concerned only with itself. It is different in the sciences of being. Here the "other" is the problem.
The conflict between thought and being pervades even the empirical cognition. The tension between thought and being sustains the entire system. But the "other” that resists the unity of thought is the multiplicity of individuals. Thought desires unity; it creates the universal, the comprehensive, the systematic framework. But being confronts thought as the particular, the incomprehensible, the individual, that which cannot be dissolved in the infinity of thought.”
The basic relationships between, thought and being suggest three types of conceptual formulation.
1. Law: “In the first basic relationship, thought attempts to confine being completely within its universal forms and thus to extinguish diversity and individuality. We use the concept law for this relationship between thought and being. The "propositions" of the sciences of thought are analogous to the "laws" of the empirical sciences. They are similar because both disregard the individual; they are different because the thought sciences do not even refer to the individual. They provide pure forms that are infinitely remote from every individual reality while the empirical sciences attempt to grasp individual reality. Physical laws annihilate the individuality of things in order to control them. Law is therefore that goal of knowledge in which the individual is subsumed under the universal.”
2. Sequence: “On the other side there is a concept that refers to the fact that the individual is inserted into a context, not in order to abolish this individual but in order to represent it. We will call this context a "sequence" context. We place the temporal context within a sequence. In laws time is only a dimension of space. Time has no power to create the new. But time is essentially a category of the new, of development, of history. it is therefore the form of the individual, existential element.”
3. Gestalt: “We had assumed in the sphere of law that, being is not completely fulfilled by thought determinations, and that in the sciences, being is completely and individually fulfilled by these determinations. Both assumptions are abstractions. Both "law" and "sequence" presuppose "gestalt". The latter concept contains the other two. For every gestalt is both an individual and a universal. The peculiar nature of the gestalt rests on this duality.”