our human science depends exclusively on our representations and concept-formations
It is also of interest that the Lockean scepticism in respect to the rational ideal of science, and its limitation of the scope of the new sciences (which are supposed to retain their validity), leads to a new sort of agnosticism. It is not that the possibility of science is completely denied, as in ancient scepticism, although again unknowable things-in-themselves are assumed. But our human science depends exclusively on our representations and concept-formations; by means of these we may, of course, make inferences extending to what is transcendent; but in principle we cannot obtain actual representations of the things-in-themselves, representations which adequately express the proper essence of these things. We have adequate representations and knowledge only of what is in our own soul.
Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology
