Cassirer's effort to establish a methodological foundation for the humanities led him to conclude that general epistemology, in its traditional form, is insufficient to distinctly differentiate the various fundamental forms of understanding the world. Instead of the purely rational cognition, which has always held primacy in modern philosophy, there emerges a plurality of symbolic forms, each expressing a specific spontaneity of the human spirit. "The critique of reason," as stated in the "Philosophy of Symbolic Forms," "thus becomes a critique of culture." In the five studies "On the Logic of Cultural Sciences," published in 1942 during his exile in Gothenburg, Cassirer undertakes a more precise theoretical determination of the field of the humanities. For him, the expression is the starting point of all cultural understanding.