 Hence the Marburgers consider it of the utmost significance that their heroes—especially Galileo, Leibniz, and Kant—explicitly link their conceptions of science back to Plato. As Cohen and Natorp select and interpret their idealistic predecessors, they see illustrated in them the crucial immanent role of historical reflection in science, by which it ascends to transcendental self-reflection upon its methodological foundation (cf. Cohen 1902: 450). As Cohen puts it, “history is … a sign [Wahrzeichen] of the inner life and growth of all problems of scientific reason as they emerge out of the root of their methodology” (Cohen 1916: 310); and that root is, historically, Plato: “Idealism is the Idealism of the Platonic Idea” (Cohen 1916:  305).[40]  For Cohen and Natorp, “Plato” signifies the organizing principle of science as a historically unfolding, living enterprise. To stop reading Plato is to subtract science from its rational core, and deprive it—not of its method, which it will always have qua science—but of self-transparency of its own pure foundation and legitimacy.