“Cassirer employs his remarkable gift of lucidity to explain the major ideas and intellectual issues that emerged in the course of nineteenth century scientific and historical thinking. The translators have done an excellent job in reproducing his clarity in English. There is no better place for an intelligent reader to find out, with a minimum of technical language, what was really happening during the great intellectual movement between the age of Newton and our own.“
—New York Times
Table of Contents
Preface by Charles W. Hendel
Introduction
PART I: EXACT SCIENCE
1. The Problem of Space and the Development of Non-Euclidean Geometry
2. Experience and Thought in the Construction of Geometry
3. Order and Measurement in Geometry
4. The Concept of Number and Its Logical Foundation
5. The Goal and Methods of Theoretical Physics
PART II: THE IDEAL OF KNOWLEDGE AND ITS TRANSFORMATIONS IN BIOLOGY
6. The Problem of Classifying and Systematizing Natural Forms
7. The Idea of Metamorphosis and Idealistic Morphology: Goethe
8. Developmental History as a Problem and a Maxim
9. Darwinism as a Dogma and as a Principle of Knowledge
10. Developmental Mechanics and the Problem of Cause in Biology
11. The Argument over Vitalism and the Autonomy of Living Organisms
PART III: FUNDAMENTAL FORMS AND TENDENCIES OF HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE
12. The Rise of Historicism: Herder
13. Romanticism and the Beginnings of the Critical Science of History. The Theory of Historical Ideas: Niebuhr, Ranke, Humboldt
14. Positivism and Its Ideal of Historical Knowledge: Taine
15. Political and Constitutional Theory as Foundations for Historiography: Mommsen
16. Political History and the History of Civilization: Burckhardt
17. The Theory of Psychological Types in History: Lamprecht
18. Influence of the History of Religion on the Ideal of Historical Knowledge: Strauss, Renan, Fustel de Coulanges
Simon Gros 
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