Taketani applied Hegel 's theory of dialectics, with the triad Phenomenon, Substance, and Essence. Having worked with Yukawa as he developed his discovery of the meson, he used this as an example of a new substance. With his fellow peer and collaborator Shoichi Sakata, Taketani developed a Marxist philosophy of science known as the three-stages theory. According to the theory, science starts from a Phenomenal Stage where its role is to describe our experience. Next, science then asks what sort of substance may make up the objects of experience, and also what is the structure they may have, which he calls the Substantial Stage. However, he then argues the question of an essence of both substance and phenomenon emerges as the Essential Stage, which syntheses of the previous two stages. The process is then reiterated with a similar cycle repeated at a higher level.