 In Windelband’s view, a reconsideration of the Kantian project is not only necessary because of its inherent tensions; broader developments in nineteenth-century culture and science also necessitate an adaptation of the critical method to changed historical circumstances. One important factor is the professionalization of the historical disciplines that had been underway since the early nineteenth century (1907: 12). One of Windelband’s central and best known philosophical contributions concerns the question what distinguishes the “historical sciences”, that is, those disciplines that study the human-historical and cultural world, from the natural sciences. Windelband’s answer to this question is in line with his formal-teleological conception of philosophy: by explicating the autonomous presuppositions of historical method, critical philosophy safeguards the historical sciences against methodological holism, namely the view that there is only one scientific method, and that this is the method of physics and natural science.