56 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL 
and sociology on the one hand and social philosophy on 
the other.! 
Science results from a definite mental attitude toward 
the world, from specific needs and demands. What these 
needs and demands are for each particular science is a sub- 
ject of special investigation. Again, scientific knowledge, 
because it is based on immediate relations between the 
subject and the external world, must of necessity be limited 
in scope. For that reason every exact science which aims 
at immediate comprehension of experience becomes flanked 
by two fields of inquiry of a philosophic nature. In those 
fields the thought form changes from the exact scientific 
to the philosophical. Each science is thus embraced by two 
philosophic regions, an epistemology and a metaphysics. 
The one is interested in the science as function, as mental 
process; the other is interested in its content. The first is 
interested in the elementary concepts and the basic as- 
sumptions and presuppositions of the particular investiga- 
tion. It deals with problems which cannot be settled with- 
in the science, since they refer to the foundation on which 
the actual investigation rests. In the second region the 
particular investigation is brought to completion and re- 
lated to questions and concepts which have no place within 
the field of immediate experience and scientific knowledge. 
The science of sociology and the other social sciences are 
therefore flanked in a similar manner by two regions of 
philosophic thought. The first investigates the presup- 
positions of these inquiries, and the second carries them to 
completion.? 
The epistemology of sociology or of any other social 
sotence is the inauirv into the basic presuppositions of the 
1 For the difference between science and philosophy, see General Introdue- 
Hon. 
2 Soz., Dp. 25-26; Phil. des Geldes, p. v.