This is first of all a character belonging to that which presences itself. But how the objectness of what presences is brought to appearance and how what presences becomes an object for a setting-before, a representing [Vor-stellen], can show itself to us only if we ask: What is the real in relation to theory, and thus in a certain respect also in and through theory? We now ask, in other words: In the statement "Science is the theory of the real," what does the word "theory" mean? The word "theory" stems from the Greek verb theorein. The noun belonging to it is theoria. Peculiar to these words is a lofty and mysterious meaning. The verb theorein grew out of the coalescing of two root words, thea and horao. Thea (cf. theater) is the outward look, the aspect, in which something shows itself, the outward appearance in which it offers itself. Plato names this aspect in which what presences shows what it is, eidos. To have seen this aspect, eidenai, is to know [wissen]. The second root word in theorein, horao, means: to look at something attentively, to look it over, to view it closely. Thus it follows that theorein is thean horan, to look attentively on the outward appearance wherein what presences becomes visible and, through such sight—seeing—to linger with it.

Bound up with the supremacy accorded theoria within Greek bios is the fact that the Greeks, who in a unique way thought out of their language, i.e., received from it their human existence, were also able to hear something else in the word theoria. When differently stressed, the two root words theá and oraó can read theá and ora. Thea is goddess. It is as a goddess that Aletheia, the unconcealment from out of which and in which that which presences, presences, appears to the early thinker Parmenides. We translate aletheia by the Latin word veritas and by our German word Wahrheit [truth].

The Greek word ora signifies the respect we have, the honor and esteem we bestow. If now we think the word theoria in the context of the meanings of the words just cited, then theoria is the reverent paying heed to the unconcealment of what presences. Theory in the old, and that means the early but by no means the obsolete, sense is the beholding that watches over truth. Our old high German word wara (whence wahr, wahren, and Wahrheit) goes back to the same stem as the Greek horao, ora, wora.

The essence of theory as thought by the Greeks, which is ambiguous and from every perspective high and lofty, remains buried when today we speak of the theory of relativity in physics, of the theory of evolution in biology, of the cyclical theory in history, of the natural rights theory in jurisprudence. Nonetheless, within "theory," understood in the modern way, there yet steals the shadow of the early theoria. The former lives out of the latter, and indeed not only in the outwardly identifiable sense of historical dependency. What is taking place here will become clearer when now we ask this question: In distinction from the early theoria, what is "the theory" that is named in the statement "Modern science is the theory of the real"?

We shall answer with the necessary brevity, since we shall choose an ostensibly superficial way. Let us take careful note how the Greek words theorein and theoria are translated into the Latin and the German languages. Deliberately we say "words" [die Worte] and not "terms" [die Wörter], in order to emphasize that, each time, in the coming to presence and holding-sway of language, it is a destining that decides.

The Romans translate theorein by contemplari, theoria by contemplatio. This translation, which issues from the spirit of the Roman language, that is, from Roman existence, makes that which is essential in what the Greek words say vanish at a stroke. For contemplari means: to partition something off into a separate sector and enclose it therein. Templum is the Greek temenos, which has its origin in an entirely different experience from that out of which theorein originates. Temnein means: to cut, to divide. The uncuttable is the amteton, a-tomon, atom.

The Latin templum means originally a sector carved out in the heavens and on the earth, the cardinal point, the region of the heavens marked out by the path of the sun. It is within this region that diviners make their observations in order to determine the future from the flight, cries, and eating habits of birds. (See Ernout-Meillet, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine (3), 1951, p. 1202: contemplari dictum est a templo, i.e., loco qui ab omni parte aspici, vel ex quo omnis pars videri potest, quem antiqui templum nominabant)