Abstract

The aim of this article is to show how a certain way in contemporary epistemology, the ontic structuralism, descends properly by Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy. Although there are certain differences between these two ways of thinking, it cannot be denied that, in modern structuralism’s opinion too, Cassirer’s inquiring methodology has an ascendant above today structuralism. By unhinging Aristotle’s substance concept, Cassirer is on to show how a substantivalist philosophy, such as English Empiricism, is useless in fully understanding the results of the scientific conquests since Scientific Revolution. Because of its incapability to speak the substance language, modern science uses functional terms, that Cassirer considers in a double way: on the first hand, mathematics is based on functions; on the other, in his Critic of pure reason, Kant explicitly sustained that transcendental subject is the unifying function of perceptive data.