Making Sense, Making Science

1Cassirer and Symbolic Forms

This chapter aims to discuss how Cassirer’s reflection on the internal diversification of meaning accounts for the inner transformation process of science. In order to do so, it will be necessary to place Cassirer’s approach in the Kantian tradition before showing how and why he moves away from it. The relevance of his point of view today will be shown by means of an example.

1.1. Unity and diversity of modes of objectification

1.1.1 Modes of objectification in the transcendental tradition

Cassirer is generally credited with having succeeded in legitimizing the idea of an intrinsic variation in modes of objectification, which he called “symbolic forms” – his main contribution to the Kantian tradition he claimed to be part of. Because of him, this tradition would thus have passed from a univocal idea of objectification as realized in scientific knowledge to a plurality of these modes in which science would no longer play the leading role but only a part, being on an equal footing with other modes. One then generally presents things by exhibiting, in a very empirical way, several lists of these modes that Cassirer gave on occasion: to the first three well-known modes of language, mythical thought and scientific knowledge as they appear in the three volumes of his Philosophy of Symbolic Forms would have been added later on as well as various others.

However, a quick glance at Kant’s work shows, without even going into detail, that this representation ...