  As for the natural sciences, Rickert contends that Kant already provided a satisfactory definition of their logical structure. In the Prolegomena Kant stated: “Nature is the existence of things, insofar as [sofern] that existence is determined according to universal laws” (Kant 2002, 89; Rickert 1962, 5). Following Kant, Rickert defines the natural sciences as generalizing (Rickert 1986, 34; Rickert 1962, 46), that is, they form their concepts by way of moving away from the individual, unrepeatable occurrences encountered in experience. As Windelband already saw, the natural sciences view individual occurrences as mere examples of general laws. In this way, individuality “fixes the limits of natural scientific concept formation” (Rickert 1986, 40) and calls forth its logical complement: “individualizing concept-formation” (Rickert 1986, 62) as the method defining the historical sciences. The logical distinction between the sciences, then, has to be between the generalizing natural sciences and the individualizing historical sciences. In other words, while the natural sciences build their concepts by way of disregarding what is individual, the historical sciences build their concepts in order to grasp precisely what is individual.