1.1 Scope

More than fifty years have passed since the influential scholar William J. Richardson remarked, “On the longest day he ever lived, Heidegger could never be called a philosopher of science” (Reference Richardson1968, p. 511). This remark speaks to how many used to view the notion of “Heidegger’s philosophy of science” with suspicion. Perhaps Heidegger offers some insights about science, the thinking went, but his scattered remarks show him to be only vaguely interested, and at any rate, well out of date on the subject.Footnote ²

Commentators like Joseph Kockelmans, Joseph Rouse, Trish Glazebrook, Adam Beck, and Jeff Kochan have shifted this picture substantially. It’s no longer controversial to claim that Heidegger’s philosophy of science is crucial to his overall project or that he offers the philosopher of science a worthy perspective. My work owes a debt to each of them.

Nevertheless, it’s worth pausing to note another sense in which Richardson’s remark is defensible after all: Heidegger doesn’t approach science (or indeed, any other topic) in the manner characteristic of most contemporary academic philosophers.Footnote ³ Even in his most direct, sustained commentaries on science, a reader will find that Heidegger’s chief concerns are not the specialized problems that dominate recent academic literature in philosophy of science (e.g., scientific realism or the logical structure of scientific explanations, let alone more granular issues, such as time measurement in climate science). Heidegger occasionally argues for or suggests a position on these kinds of problems; nevertheless, he generally discusses science with his central, abiding concerns in mind: the question of being (i.e., of what being “is” as opposed to what beings are), the history of metaphysics, and the difficult position of a modern intellectual age that sits at the apex of a tradition characterized by what he calls Seinsvergessenheit (“forgetfulness of being” – i.e., a tendency to avoid the question of being in favor of inquiry into beings). Science, for Heidegger, is the institution that embodies modernity’s answers to the questions of what knowledge is and of what is true. Investigating science thus promises to reveal how we conceive of being or knowledge, and how those conceptions sit within our broader intellectual history.

This peculiar feature of Heidegger’s discussions of science poses at least two challenges with regard to the scope of the present essay. First, my discussion must consider not only Heidegger’s specific claims about science, but also the connections between those claims and his broader concerns. Second, in the short space of this essay, I cannot offer a comprehensive account of Heidegger’s philosophy of science. Instead, I will limit my focus to a core set of issues surrounding Heidegger’s concept of science – i.e., his view of what science as such and in general is, as well as how that view relates to his accounts of human existence, modernity, and the history of metaphysics.

To treat those issues, I must devote significant space to Heidegger’s discussions of physics, because physicalism (which I define in a somewhat unusually broad sense – roughly, as the privileging of physics’ concepts, methods, and results in science and metaphysicsFootnote ⁴) figures prominently in his critiques of SCS and the history of Western metaphysics. Heidegger thinks physicalism has prevented us from understanding not only the source of science’s epistemic virtue but also science’s promise for human flourishing, which his preferred ACS foregrounds. But Heidegger’s critique of physicalism, I argue, plays a central role within his early critique of the history of Western metaphysics, a role which most scholars have overlooked. Moreover, I argue that the later Heidegger comes to believe that the emergence of quantum physics reflects a profound shift in the aims of science that only leaves SCS more entrenched and poses serious challenges for human flourishing. Indeed, Heidegger believes that the classical-quantum shift in physics depends on, and is symptomatic of, the emergence of the set of commitments in late modernity that characterize what he calls the “age of technology.”

Nevertheless, many key aspects of Heidegger’s views on science and physics unfortunately fall outside the scope of the present essay. A (by no means exhaustive) list of such topics includes:

• Heidegger’s specific views on biology, cognitive science, academic history, and so onFootnote ⁵

• Heidegger’s views on science in his very early (1912–1923) writings

• How Heidegger’s views fit within many recent debates in philosophy of science – e.g., the role of theories vs. models in science, scientific realism, or the autonomy of science (though Sections 5–6 touch on the two latter topics)

• How Heidegger’s philosophy of science relates to critical approaches like feminism or post-colonialism or to the views of his post-Kantian predecessors or later Continental thinkers – e.g., I don’t treat how Heidegger intervenes in post-Kantian debates about the distinction between the Naturwissenschaften and Geisteswissenschaften (though see note 16)

• Why the early Heidegger conceives of ontology as an independent science, and why he comes to change his mind

• Heidegger’s discussions of the concept of phusis

One final clarification is in order. Heidegger often uses “science” as a shorthand to refer to what he calls positive science (e.g., SZ 10) – i.e., the kind of domain-specific inquiry that presupposes foundational ontological assumptions that inform various specialized issues (e.g., the “three-body problem” only arises on the basis of Newtonian gravity and mechanics) – which he distinguishes from philosophy, or reflection on foundational ontological assumptions themselves. The implication is that Heidegger often classifies those generally referred to as groundbreaking “scientists” (e.g., Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg) as “philosophers.”Footnote ⁶ Critics like Crease (Reference Crease and Glazebrook2012) claim that Heidegger thus effectively denigrates science as (to adopt a Kuhnian idiom) “mop-up work.” And this criticism is seemingly invited by remarks such as his infamous slogan “science does not think” (WCT 8). But as Thomson (Reference Thomson2005, pp. 104–14) demonstrates, this slogan is just a provocative formulation of the very distinction at issue here, which Heidegger always maintains, between positive research informed by ontological assumptions and ontological reflection itself.Footnote ⁷ Crucially, however, Heidegger also thinks that positive science and philosophy are structurally related – e.g., he writes that “[i]n crisis, scientific research assumes a philosophical cast” (HCT 3), and suggests that ontological disclosure is science’s “essential task” (P 95). Heidegger thinks positive science is premised on a unique kind of “forgetting of being” (it makes its characteristic progress when and insofar as it is informed by a suite of ontological commitments). But it is also premised on – and, at least until late modernity, structurally occasions – a “recollection” of being (i.e., renewed ontological reflection). He thus immediately follows his remark that “science does not think” with “science always and in its own fashion has to do with thinking” (WCT 8).

The upshot for this essay is as follows. I will use “science” (and “scientist”) in a sense broader than that of Heidegger’s “positive science,” because Heidegger himself believes that what he calls “philosophy” is in fact a crucial, structural aspect of mature scientific research. Thus, a consideration of Heidegger’s concept of science cannot afford to exclude this aspect from the analysis. Nevertheless, I will aim to clarify the substantive point Heidegger means this distinction to track, especially when discussing Heidegger on science’s biphasic (crisis/revolution—consolidation) cycle in Section 4.

1.2 Heidegger and Twentieth-Century Philosophy of Science

Heidegger bears an ambiguous relationship to contemporary philosophers of science. He criticizes the methodological approach to science that was popular for much of the early twentieth century. Methodological philosophers of science like Karl Popper or Imre Lakatos ask about the method that science ideally follows; this method is supposed to explain what differentiates (and perhaps elevates) science from other kinds of inquiry. But Heidegger thinks there is no common scientific method. Nevertheless, there are some interesting parallels. Heidegger thinks science is distinguished by a characteristic ethic, which both guides scientific practice and undergirds its epistemic virtue: science is a project dedicated to opening up access to reality, and to doing so in a unique way. And like Popper and Lakatos, Heidegger thinks science’s epistemic virtue lies in its dynamism rather than its (dubiously alleged) progressive convergence on a final, true theory.

Meanwhile, commentators often note parallels between Heidegger’s approach and two significant developments in twentieth-century philosophy of science: the turns toward history (see, e.g., Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend) and practice (see, e.g., Helen Longino and Bruno Latour).Footnote ⁸ On the former, science is understood as a set of dynamic historical institutions. And a thorough historical analysis of science (including our currently cherished theories) casts doubt on triumphalist fantasies of continuous progress toward a conclusively true set of theories. Meanwhile, practice-centered thinkers tend to believe that analyzing actual scientific practices in detail, which also involves considering the institutions within which scientists work, promises to be more informative than the rational reconstruction of scientific theories or abstract consideration of scientific method that dominates much of twentieth-century philosophy of science.

In several striking respects, Heidegger anticipates these two developments. He conceives of science as a dynamic project punctuated by cyclical crises and revolutions. He thus foregrounds science’s historical development, which largely occurs, he thinks, via ruptures and re-consolidations in its conceptual foundations. And his “existential” approach to science – i.e., his concept of science as a pursuit rather than as a set of theoretical results – shifts and broadens his account of what renders it epistemically salient. Moreover, his approach issues in social and (eventually) institutional analyses of scientific research.

Partially as a result of both “turns,” contemporary philosophy of science is much more empirical, granular, and reticent to expound on science as such than it used to be. No doubt, much of this specialization is simply the result of academic incentives. But it also reflects the view that science isn’t (and ought not be) so unified as many once thought it was (or hoped it would become). Here, too, Heidegger proves prescient: he advocates for the different fields of science to be more or less autonomous and argues against the imperialism of assumptions from physics. His arguments thus occasionally anticipate those of John Dupré, perhaps the foremost champion of the disunity-of-science thesis.Footnote ⁹

But these similarities belie profound differences. Heidegger sees and extols a robust unity among the sciences. Their object domains and methods differ radically, but they all embrace, he thinks, the characteristic “ethic” to which I referred earlier. Heidegger is thus squarely interested in science as such. Although he occasionally offers an excursus on scientific history, practice, or institutions, he remains comfortable in the philosopher’s armchair.Footnote ¹⁰ He spends much of his time reflecting on science’s relationship to the history of philosophy and, as I’ll discuss in a moment, the possibilities it offers, or fails to offer, for human flourishing.

Heidegger’s idiosyncratic approach to science comes into focus when we recognize that it is consciously heir to Aristotle’s analysis of the life of contemplation (the bios theoretikos) in Nicomachean Ethics.Footnote ¹¹ For Aristotle, theoretical activity is assessed as a unique human pursuit with a special relationship to human flourishing (eudaimonia). He thus approaches the bios theoretikos on the basis of his systematic account of human existence. The bios theoretikos is supremely fulfilling because it exercises our lofty discursive (rational) nature, it is chosen for its own sake (unlike politics or war), and it approximates the sustained, leisurely activity that characterizes divine life.Footnote ¹² Heidegger’s “existential” approach to science thus is in fact ethical in the Aristotelian sense: it is informed by a detailed ontological analysis of human existence that uncovers the possibility for a certain kind of flourishing (what Heidegger calls “authenticity” (Eigentlichkeit) in SZ), which we attain in moments of disclosedness.Footnote ¹³ But Heidegger departs from Aristotle’s concept of the theoretical life as static. When properly pursued, science, for Heidegger, is dynamic, and it cyclically achieves authenticity-engendering ontological disclosures. But just as surely, the clarity and fulfillment conferred by such disclosures fade. Hence, disclosures must be repeated again and again. And Heidegger eventually worries that modern science seeks to evade such disclosures altogether.

To get a better grip on Heidegger’s approach, let’s briefly turn to Max Weber’s address “Science as a Vocation,” which profoundly influenced the young Heidegger.Footnote ¹⁴ Weber observes that academic research has become, rather than a spiritual calling, an occupation much like any other – characterized by rank careerism, littered with arbitrary advantages, and so on. And it poses serious challenges to the individual hoping to gain fulfillment by it. Science is constantly in motion, developing without the prospect of concluding. Thus, any “knowledge” gained is provisional, doomed to become obsolete within a matter of years (at most). Furthermore, research becomes increasingly specialized and recondite, such that we have simultaneously sapped the world of its mystery, rendered it alien to our daily experience, and given up hope of achieving a unified, comprehensive understanding of it (hence, we have “disenchanted” it). Finally, we have lost faith that modern science (as opposed to its ancient, medieval, or early modern counterparts) will offer ethical, political, or spiritual truth.Footnote ¹⁵ So what is the researcher to do? Weber exhorts us to reconcile ourselves to what science has become, in all its grim, mundane aspects, and to embrace the sobriety it both affords and demands.

For Heidegger, Weber foregrounds the right phenomena (the transformation of science from a rich ethical life to a mundane occupation) and asks the right question (what is this pursuit’s ethical or “spiritual” significance?). But Heidegger’s response sharply diverges. A proper account of human existence, he thinks, will allow us to recover a sense of science’s unique ethical potential.

1.3 Translations, Science, and Wissenschaft

In general, I quote from extant translations and follow conventions for Anglophone Heidegger scholarship, but I take the liberty of revising translations on occasion. When I do so, I generally place the corresponding word or phrase in German in square brackets, especially on occasions when the departure has important implications or might arouse controversy.

One issue bears further comment. “Science” conjures images of microscopes and lab coats; and though we dub economics, sociology, anthropology (and so on) “social sciences,” the term is most at home with the natural sciences. Rarely would we call history or mathematics “sciences,” and fields like philosophy and literature are classed as “humanities” rather than sciences. But each of these counts as a Wissenschaft. So in what sense does Heidegger’s analysis of Wissenschaft count as a philosophy of science?

Heidegger observes that Newtonian physics was generally recognized as a (perhaps even the) paradigmatic case of Wissenschaft in post-Kantian German philosophy – so paradigmatic that the Geisteswissenschaften (the humanities) look deficient by comparison.Footnote ¹⁶ Although it has a wider extension and a broader sense, Heidegger’s “Wissenschaft,” like our “science,” refers to epistemically privileged, institutionalized research, for which physics is often seen as the exemplary case. Hence, I generally translate “Wissenschaft” as “science,” and I think Heidegger’s philosophy of Wissenschaft is indeed a philosophy of science.

1.4 Breakdown of Main Sections

Section 2 discusses some key concepts that inform the early Heidegger’s concept of science, on which subsequent sections will draw: time and Dasein, truth, and authenticity. I also briefly outline several problems with a dominant reading of the early Heidegger’s philosophy of science centered on the concept of presence-at-hand.

Section 3 examines Heidegger’s critique of physicalism. I detail Heidegger’s basic objections: physicalism collapses ontological distinctions, threatens the autonomy of other fields, and distorts our understanding of science by promoting SCS. I then consider his genealogical analysis of physicalism: it depends, Heidegger argues, on a dogmatic commitment to ancient Greek metaphysics, which privileges entities characterized by complete, constant presence.

Section 4 unpacks how Heidegger promotes ACS via his “existential” approach that relates science to his concepts of truth and authenticity. Science, for Heidegger, is the pursuit of truth, but in a unique sense: it is the commitment to opening up access to reality projectivally, thematically, and objectively, and to renewing that access cyclically when crises emerge. I discuss why Heidegger thinks scientific crises demand fresh ontological disclosures that, in turn, demand researchers who achieve authenticity.

Section 5 takes up Heidegger’s later discussions of science, which, despite their growing pessimism, are premised on the same core commitments as his earlier discussions. Heidegger worries that SCS is gaining currency over ACS not only in the philosophy of science, but in scientific practice as well. After briefly analyzing Heidegger’s slogan “science is the theory of the actual,” I spend the rest of the section discussing Heidegger’s critique of how the “industry” (Betrieb) of science incentivizes scientists to avoid ontological inquiry. The result, Heidegger fears, is that science proper will dissolve and become, de facto, a species of engineering.

Section 6 unpacks Heidegger’s dialogue with Werner Heisenberg on the significance of quantum physics for science, metaphysics, and intellectual history more broadly. Heisenberg thinks quantum physics undermines the objective study of nature that motivated classical physics, and that in doing so, it betokens a new, anxiety-inducing historical epoch. I argue that Heidegger positively appropriates Heisenberg’s claims: the classical-quantum shift betokens a shift in the “history of being” from the early modern age to the age of technology. But these joint revolutionary developments, he believes, further entrench SCS over ACS. I close by considering Heidegger’s concerns about the ethical implications of quantum physics and the age of technology.

2.1 Time and Dasein

Heidegger presents a notoriously forbidding analysis of temporality in SZ §§61–83. My discussion here sidesteps this important but thorny analysis.Footnote ¹⁷ Instead, key for me is Heidegger’s (comparatively straightforward) guiding insight about the relationship between ontological and temporal concepts. Even this simple insight is crucial for understanding what Heidegger thinks is distinctive about human existence and the lacunae in the Western philosophical tradition.

Different kinds of things bear different relationships to time, and these temporal distinctions have taken on ontological significance in the philosophical tradition. For instance, Plato, Aristotle, and countless theologians think ontologically superior things (forms, the heavenly bodies, God) are distinguished by their eternal stability, as opposed to inferior things, which are subject to change and time’s passage.Footnote ¹⁸ Similarly, mathematical things (numbers, theorems, and so on) are thought to be, as Heidegger puts it, distinctively “extratemporal” (HCT 5).Footnote ¹⁹

Heidegger enters into a critical dialogue with the tradition: he too articulates ontological distinctions with the help of temporal concepts, but he also means to question how the tradition has privileged certain temporal concepts – and with them, certain kinds of things – over others. (Section 3 examines this claim at length.)

At this point, we must discuss Heidegger’s concept of Dasein (literally, “being-there,” or, as Dahlstrom argues, “being-here”Footnote ²⁰), which refers to the class of entities traditionally conceived as “rational” or “minded,” of which humans are the paradigmatic and perhaps indeed the only members. Note that humanity and Dasein are not co-extensive (e.g., humans in vegetative states are not instances of Dasein; human physiological events per se aren’t events of Dasein). I sometimes use “humanity,” “human existence,” (etc.) interchangeably with “Dasein,” but readers should bear in mind this caveat.

Heidegger offers his own definition of this class. “Understanding of being is itself a definite characteristic of Dasein’s being. Dasein is ontically distinctive in that it is ontological” (SZ 12). In other words, Dasein refers to beings who are capable of ontology. Let me elaborate. The spatial resonance of da (here, there) indicates that for us – unlike for nonhuman animals, minerals, and vegetables – other things’ existence (as well as our own) is a phenomenon. We perceive things in the world and, just as importantly, we can perceive that they exist and how they exist. We make ontological distinctions simply by dint of navigating everyday life (e.g., we distinguish wildlife from pets, my stuff from your stuff, the living from the dead). And when prompted, we can articulate those distinctions more or less cogently.

Heidegger thinks Dasein has a peculiar relationship to time. In traditional Christian theology, God is, to borrow a grammatical term, perfective (fully present at every moment, lacking in nothing). Dasein, by contrast, is imperfective – processual, or structurally incomplete; it “is … that which … it is not yet” (SZ 145). That is to say, a thorough account of us must refer to things that we lack at any given present moment. For instance, my dog Luna is an important part of my life. But having a dog means assuming a suite of standing obligations that I cannot completely discharge at any given moment. Having Luna structures my activities and emotions across an undefined stretch of my future, and it involves me in various relationships (e.g., with my spouse, Luna’s veterinarian, her kibble manufacturer, etc.). This imperfective relationship toward the future is an example of what Heidegger calls projection (Entwurf).Footnote ²¹ When we project, our experiences are pre-structured in accordance with some existential possibility – i.e., a possible way of existing – of higher or lower order (having a dog versus walking the dog; being the primary household cook versus cooking tonight’s dinner). For instance, when I project upon the possibility of making a fresh pasta dinner, certain objects, places, activities, and relationships become salient: a cookbook, pot, and pasta roller; my kitchen and a well-stocked pantry; hours of prior practice; those who taught me various techniques and my spouse who feeds the pasta into the roller while I pull and lay it out.

Note that while individual projections may end, projection itself is never complete; finishing the meal means that a new project begins (eating, cleaning up, re-stocking, etc.). Death alone puts an end to projecting, but it also puts an end to me. We, for Heidegger, have this peculiar relationship to time: we ceaselessly project into the future; we are intrinsically dynamic and imperfective.

2.2 Truth

Anglophone academic philosophy has generally analyzed truth via the truth predicate.Footnote ²² In this tradition, the central question is what it means for a proposition (or a belief, sentence, etc.) to be true or false.Footnote ²³ But as Wrathall (Reference Wrathall2011, pp. 43–44) points out, this question isn’t of primary concern to Heidegger. When it comes up, he accepts some version of the correspondence theory without much ado.Footnote ²⁴

Heidegger’s concept of truth is instead premised on other uses of “true” and “truth,” especially cases where we attribute truth to entities (“a true friend”) or when “truth” takes on an ethical resonance (“speak truth to power”). Thus, Heidegger supplements but doesn’t supplant the familiar truth-predicate discourse.Footnote ²⁵ Nevertheless, as we will see presently, Heidegger thinks these other senses of truth are structurally related to the truth predicate, and he worries that the dominance of truth-predicate analysis pushes these other – and, as he sees it, more fundamental – aspects of truth to the margins.

Heidegger claims that, at least since the nineteenth century, German philosophy has conceived of truth within the narrow limits of the truth predicate.Footnote ²⁶ I henceforth refer to this aspect of truth as propositional truth. The target of Heidegger’s critique is what Dahlstrom calls the logical prejudice: “the notion that propositional truth is the most elementary sort of truth” (Reference Dahlstrom2001, p. 385). In other words, the logical prejudice claims that an account of propositional truth more or less exhausts a philosophical account of truth.Footnote ²⁷

Heidegger disagrees. Take, for instance, the proposition Paul’s laptop is silver. This proposition has a truth value; but to understand or evaluate it, we must first be acquainted with the entities it references (my laptop, the color silver). Heidegger’s term for this ontic acquaintance is uncovering (Entdeckung). Note also that a particular object cannot be uncovered for me unless I have some acquaintance with what it means to be an object of that kind (what a laptop or color is). Heidegger’s term for this ontological acquaintance is disclosedness (Erschlossenheit). Disclosedness and uncovering are, therefore, necessary conditions of our ability to understand and evaluate propositional truth. Heidegger’s concept of truth hinges on these phenomena of uncovering and, more fundamentally, disclosedness. Henceforth, I refer to this aspect of truth as disclosed truth. Disclosed truth is supposed to ground rather than negate propositional truth. “Assertion,” he writes, “is not the primary ‘locus’ of truth. On the contrary … assertion is grounded in Dasein’s uncovering or rather in its disclosedness” (SZ 226).

Let me close by noting two crucial differences between propositional truth and disclosed truth. First, they have different temporal orientations. A proposition’s truth value is eternal. Two plus two equals four is true now and forever. But being’s disclosedness is ephemeral and historical: people were not acquainted with laptops until the late twentieth century; electrons went unnoticed until the late nineteenth century. Heidegger is intensely interested in the historicity of disclosures, i.e., in understanding how whole realms of things enter or exit our perceptual orbit.

Second, and structurally related to the first, is something Wrathall (Reference Wrathall2011, pp. 1–2, 17–18) highlights: Heidegger generally uses privative words (uncovering, unconcealment, aletheia) to characterize disclosed truth. Each bespeaks a more basic concealment. This implication isn’t supposed to be an artifact of language: Heidegger thinks that disclosed truth is a privative phenomenon. As he writes,

Heidegger means at least two things here. First, the disclosure or uncovering of any given phenomenon is structurally dependent on the concealing of other phenomena. For instance, insofar as we focus on the two-dimensional area of a strip of land, we allow its other features (e.g., its beauty, arability, or history) to recede into the background; in a similar vein, Nietzsche contends that egalitarian assumptions lead us to ignore (or downplay) the various inequalities among humans that were of paramount significance for the ancient Greeks.Footnote ²⁹ Heidegger’s frequently invoked metaphor of the “clearing” (Lichtung) highlights this structural dependence of disclosure on concealment.Footnote ³⁰

Second, Heidegger notes a tendency for disclosures to lapse over time, either because they have been forgotten or replaced or, more insidiously, because they have become so taken for granted that we have lost their original sense.Footnote ³¹ For instance, MacIntyre (Reference MacIntyre2007) famously worries that various assumptions, over time, have led to modern Western philosophers losing the ability to have successful ethical discourse; as we will discuss in Section 3.3, Heidegger thinks that the equation of being with constant presence has become so taken for granted in the West that we have lost a sense of its original motivation. Note, then, that any given instance of disclosure or uncovering is not eternally secure but, rather, must be repeated time and again. “It is therefore essential,” he writes, “that Dasein should explicitly appropriate what has already been uncovered, defend it against semblance and disguise, and assure itself of its uncoveredness again and again” (SZ 222).

Disclosed truth’s privative nature highlights the ethical salience of Heidegger’s concept of truth: we must constantly work to achieve and maintain our acquaintance with things. All of us, most of the time, remain within the narrow limits of intelligibility furnished by society. Disclosures require painstaking effort, and are never final: most truths are undiscovered, and those that have been discovered inevitably fade into insignificance or obscurity.Footnote ³² But Heidegger worries that the logical prejudice, by foregrounding propositional truth and ignoring disclosed truth, offers the comforting delusion that truth, once discovered, is secure.

2.3 Authenticity

Heidegger’s notion of authenticity poses significant interpretive challenges. But its first appearance in SZ furnishes perhaps Heidegger’s most straightforward remarks: Dasein “can, in its very being, ‘choose’ itself and win itself”; in so doing, Dasein achieves authenticity (Eigentlichkeit). Conversely, Dasein can also be inauthentic, or “lose itself and never win itself; or only ‘seem’ to do so” (SZ 42).Footnote ³³

Note thus that “authenticity” names a specific good that Dasein can achieve – and this is so notwithstanding Heidegger’s occasional protests that his analysis of authenticity serves primarily to round out his descriptive account of the existential analytic of Dasein, and that neither it nor any other concept is offered primarily in service to an ethics. But an ambiguity lurks in these protests. Contrast (1) “ethics” qua a descriptive account of the human good premised on a detailed analysis of human existence (à la Aristotle) with (2) “ethics” qua an analysis of moral prescriptions (à la Bentham or Kant). I contend that Heidegger’s protests primarily concern (2); indeed, he sometimes suggests that Aristotle’s ethics in fact constitutes an existential analytic of Dasein – i.e., the same kind of project he pursues in SZ. “One cannot force Greek ethics,” he writes, “into the mode of questioning of modern ethics … Dasein was simply seen there with regard to its possibility of being as such” (PS 122).Footnote ³⁴ Heidegger’s notion of authenticity thus indeed has ethical significance in this broader, Aristotelian sense. Moreover, I argue that authenticity, for Heidegger, functions in a role that partially parallels Aristotle’s eudaimonia – indeed, Heidegger even writes in PS that eudaimonia, for Aristotle, “constitutes the authenticity of the being [Eigentlichkeit des Seins] of human Dasein” (118). The parallel shouldn’t be overstated; we will see that Heideggerian authenticity is both more specific and more fragile than Aristotelian eudaimonia, which denotes an overall and robust state of well-being, encompassing virtuous action and good fortune.Footnote ³⁵ Nevertheless, like eudaimonia, Heideggerian authenticity constitutes a specific kind of flourishing – or, as Taylor Carman writes, (though without reference to eudaimonia) “a desirable or choice-worthy mode of existence” (Reference Carman, Dreyfus and Wrathall2005, p. 286).

The specific good that “authenticity” names concerns self-ownership, as indeed the German word Eigentlichkeit, with its root eigen (own), suggests. On my reading, we achieve authenticity when we take ownership of ourselves amid the social norms that structure our lives by adopting a thoroughly first-person stance toward ourselves. When inauthentic, by contrast, we evade self-ownership by adopting a third-person stance toward ourselves. Such a stance, importantly, does not primarily involve considering the perspective of someone whom we specifically care about and find ourselves in relationship with – we might call that a second-person stance toward ourselves. Rather, it means considering how we measure up to a more or less abstract sense of how one should act, which means with how we measure up to prevailing social norms.

Heidegger thinks that we are generally inauthentic. Largely, we take care to do what one does with more or less turbulence (e.g., one brushes one’s teeth twice a day). And simply to rebel against the norm is only to underscore its current authority. In either case, we relate to ourselves third-personally, as someone whose life is measured against social norms, and so we pass off responsibility for our actions (and feelings, impulses, and so on) to the social norms from which we regard ourselves. Heidegger thus calls my everyday self a “one”-self rather than my own self. Meanwhile, he calls our tendency toward inauthenticity falling (Verfallen), i.e., the tendency passively to accept the authority of prevailing social norms.Footnote ³⁶ But how do we achieve authenticity? And why do we fall into inauthenticity?

Social norms are contingent but ineluctable: for instance, contemporary American norms are different from those in medieval Japan, and it is pure chance that I happen to live in twenty-first-century America rather than medieval Japan. Yet I can no more become a samurai than I can sprout wings and fly. It’s a contingent fact that a community happens to abide by these norms rather any of the other infinite possibilities. Nevertheless, none of us has the power to ignore our social norms. We are socialized into them before we can articulate any objections and, once we can, it’s too late – our discourse, habits, social relationships, and pursuits have been irrevocably shaped. Nevertheless, social norms are generic, and hence, necessarily underdetermine specific actions – the “one,” writes Heidegger, “has always stolen away whenever Dasein presses for a decision” (SZ 127). Social norms inexorably structure our deliberations but can’t settle them. And they are also dynamic: although we can’t arbitrarily slough off their influence, we can nevertheless creatively “reply” (erwidert) to them, and hence, contribute to the emergence of new possibilities (SZ 383–86). We thus are “forced to be free”: each of us bears an inalienable responsibility for our actions (a phenomenon that Heidegger refers to as our existential guilt or responsibility (Schuld)Footnote ³⁷).

For instance, in modern America, we learn the norm prioritize work. So what should you do when in the middle of a shift you hear that your child is sick and needs to be picked up from school? To leave might jeopardize your job. Then again, another norm we learn is prioritize family. Someone needs to pick up your child, and who better than you, their parent? So which norm takes priority? Deciding in this manner is palpably alienating; we feel that whatever action we take is dictated to us by these underdetermined social norms.Footnote ³⁸

When we evade responsibility, we are inauthentic. And inauthenticity is suboptimal: it leaves us deceived (we falsely believe that prevailing norms are responsible for our actions) and powerless (by passively acquiescing to extant social norms, our possible actions are especially constrained by them).

Authenticity, by contrast, liberates us. We achieve authenticity when we embrace our existential responsibility, a phenomenon which Heidegger calls resoluteness (Entschlossenheit).Footnote ³⁹ And we embrace our responsibility when we anticipate our “death” in Heidegger’s peculiar existential sense.Footnote ⁴⁰ Crucially, to anticipate death does not mean to recognize the fact that, like everyone else, we too will die someday (and be buried, mourned, forgotten, etc.), or even to dwell on the fact that my death in the ordinary sense (which Heidegger calls “demise”) appears empirically certain (SZ 257–58). Rather, anticipating death means recognizing that all my pursuits face the latent threat of dissolution (whether because they encounter an obstacle, prove impracticable, or lose their grip on me). I recognize that my activities, habits, feelings, relationships, and so on – in short, all aspects of my identity – are subject to contingency, change, and destruction. Heidegger thus writes that death “is possible at any moment” (SZ 258) and stresses that “Dasein is dying as long as it exists” (SZ 251; see also SZ 254, 259).

Anticipating our death, Heidegger thinks, forces me to adopt a thoroughly first-person relationship to myself, because I recognize a threat to my own existence. It thus discloses my existential responsibility. Social norms cannot be pushed aside, but we can creatively respond to them rather than passively acquiescing to them: we can see that they too are contingent and fragile, we can catch sight of new possibilities, and we can decide when to defy or accept.

Given that authenticity is optimal, why does Heidegger think that it is relatively rare? At least part of the answer is that falling and inauthenticity are, as Heidegger remarks, “tempting” and “tranquilizing” (SZ 177), while authenticity, born of existential anxiety and uncanniness, is burdensome.

We feel anxiety when we recognize our existential responsibility. I am forced to act amid social norms and within a situation that is largely beyond my control. No authoritative guidance is to be found – we would be responsible even for the decision to follow any proffered guidance.Footnote ⁴¹ My decisions are consequential: being projectival, they will pre-structure my experiences across an indefinite stretch of time.Footnote ⁴² And my pursuits are all subject to an insuperable threat of dissolution.

Anxiety discloses the latent uncanniness or eeriness (Unheimlichkeit) of our existence.Footnote ⁴³ Moments ago, the world appeared ordinary and obvious (before hearing about your child’s illness, it was an ordinary day at work), and most people apparently find it unproblematic (your coworkers and customers are going about their business). But we now recognize it as deeply questionable. Whereas before there seemed to be an obvious course of action (handling orders, sweeping up, catching up with coworkers), we now recognize that innumerable actions are possible.Footnote ⁴⁴ Anxiety thus is destabilizing; but for that reason, it shakes us out of our prior falling and allows us to achieve authenticity. It forces us to attend with fresh eyes to the particulars of our concrete situation in making our decision rather than filtering our perception and deliberation through generic, ossified norms.Footnote ⁴⁵ Say you decide to stay at work and find a relative to pick up your child. You recognize that others might harshly judge your action, but you can accept this because you’ve taken ownership of your choice. (You recognize, perhaps, that losing your job would harm your child most of all.)

I noted earlier that Dasein, for Heidegger, is processual or structurally incomplete. We now can sharpen this point: Dasein’s existence consists of a biphasic cycle, where we fall from authenticity into inauthenticity. We must repeatedly retrieve (wiederholen) our authentic selves; we never attain a perfect or permanent authenticity. Why do we find ourselves in this cycle? The best answer we get from Heidegger is that authenticity-engendering resolute decisions are made in the face of death – i.e., in the face of the acknowledgment that all of my pursuits will dissolve. The dissolution is total and permanent in the case of my demise; but we also experience dissolution in daily life when my pursuits fail or when I cease to identify with them. A resolute decision thus demands that “one holds oneself free for the possibility of taking it back” – and “[i]n its death,” Heidegger adds, “Dasein must simply ‘take back’ everything” (SZ 308). Authenticity is thus necessarily ephemeral; it must be repeated again and again as my pursuits dissolve for one reason or another.Footnote ⁴⁶ Eventually, we find ourselves “going through the motions,” passively doing what “one” would do, and hence, existing in the mode of inauthenticity.

2.4 The Red Herring of Presence-at-Hand

Scholars have generally held that Heidegger thinks science privileges the study of entities that instantiate a mode of being he dubs Vorhandenheit (typically translated as “presence-at-hand”).Footnote ⁴⁷

Presence-at-hand is an ontological concept that, along with its counterpart, readiness-to-hand (Zuhandenheit), characterizes entities that are distinct from Dasein. I’ll say more about presence-at-hand in Section 3; for now, Table 1 summarizes this threefold distinction.Footnote ⁴⁸

I think the dominant interpretation of Heidegger’s philosophy of science is false, and importantly so. Heidegger believes classical and modern physics (henceforth, post-Scholastic physics) privilege presence-at-hand, and that science only under the distorting influence and guise of physicalism privileges presence-at-hand. Crucially, therefore, Heidegger thinks that neither science nor natural science proper privileges presence-at-hand.

Given the standard interpretation’s dominance, properly refuting it would require a sustained treatment that would take us beyond the scope of this project. But let me briefly list the main problems it confronts.

3.1 What Is Physicalism?

Physicalism (or Physikalismus) is a term that Heidegger rarely uses.Footnote ⁵³ Nevertheless, it names a principal target of his critique of modern metaphysics and philosophy of science.

In the current academic literature, “physicalism” usually refers to the position in metaphysics which holds that everything is physical. I will henceforth call this position ontological physicalism (OP) and reserve “physicalism” for a broader package of commitments that includes OP as well as three other claims. All four claims are suggested by the view that physics – its concepts, methods, and results – is the privileged mode of inquiry (see Table 2).

Note that “physics” here refers to both classical and modern physics. Besides his occasional qualified praise of Einstein, the early Heidegger does not comment much on the emerging modern physics.Footnote ⁵⁴ At this point, he believes that his analysis, generally directed at classical physics, applies mutatis mutandis to modern physics.Footnote ⁵⁵ Classical physics gives birth to the mathematization of nature, which modern physics, for all its innovations, carries forward.

Henceforth, “physicalism,” unless otherwise specified and with few exceptions, refers to the cluster of these four claims. They are not mutually entailing, but they are mutually supportive. For instance, OP is perhaps the chief motivation for the other three; meanwhile, PP provides prima facie motivation for MP, as does MP for PES. We will see that Heidegger denies all four claims.

3.2 What Is Wrong with Physicalism?

Heidegger’s primary objection is to OP; he thinks it collapses genuine ontological distinctions. For instance, Heidegger frequently stresses that physicalism collapses the distinction between Dasein and physical nature. Section 3.2.1 unpacks this complaint.

Heidegger has another basic commitment about science that, when combined with his primary objection to OP, renders MP, PES, and PP implausible: each science should operate autonomously. Section 3.2.2 elaborates on these claims.

I also cover two further objections. In Section 3.2.3, I discuss Heidegger’s claim that physicalism distorts our understanding of science (objection to MP, PES), and Section 3.2.4 canvasses his view that physicalism emerges as the result of an epistemically unreliable process that I call historical falling (objection to OP, MP, PES, PP).

3.3 What Is Physicalism’s Historical Origin?

Motion, in the broad sense of flux, is a central theme of ancient Greek philosophy. Everything on Earth is temporary, subject to change and contingency. Things grow, decay, and die; they are subject to exhaustion, destruction, and transformation. In other words, earthly things are dynamic and structurally incomplete; as Aristotle suggests in his discussion of eudaimonia and fortune, our lives are incomplete until we die – and death does not “complete” us so much as it destroys us.Footnote ⁷⁴ Thus, at any given moment, earthly things offer only a limited slice of themselves. (For instance, a butterfly is never simultaneously all of its life stages.) The decisive ancient Greek thinkers – Heidegger names Aristotle, Plato, and Parmenides in SZ 25–26 – all find this earthly realm of flux ontologically deficient. The true or supreme reality as they conceive it – the unmoved mover and the heavenly bodies (Aristotle), the forms (Plato), being (Parmenides) – is maximally stable; more precisely, it is complete, immutable, and eternal. The most real things lack nothing proper to them at any moment.

Take Aristotle on the heavenly bodies.Footnote ⁷⁵ To the naked eye, the heavens exhibit profound regularity; Babylonian astronomical records stretching back centuries were available to the Greeks, and they confirmed that the heavenly bodies move in apparently unchanging cycles.Footnote ⁷⁶ The heavens appear to be both active yet curiously immune to the pervasive exhaustion, decay, and destruction on Earth.Footnote ⁷⁷ Aristotle’s bifurcated concept of locomotion, which Heidegger unpacks in his 1935 QT (pp. 56-60), drives this point home.Footnote ⁷⁸ Heavenly bodies move rotationally while earthly bodies move rectilinearly. Notice, however, that the end (telos) of rectilinear motion brings motion to a halt. Nothing on Earth, then, both moves and achieves its end; the one forecloses the other. But rotational motion is different: its end is radial distance from the origin. Thus, a rotating thing achieves its end at every point along its path. Earthly motion is imperfect while heavenly motion is perfect. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1 Visualizing imperfect rectilinear earthly motion (left) and perfect rotational heavenly motion (right).

The heavenly bodies are thus most real because they are completely and eternally present – they are not only immortal but also perfectly active. Things on Earth (including humans) are ontologically deficient because they are incomplete and temporally dispersed; a residue of potentiality always inheres. Heidegger thus writes the following about the Greeks:

Heidegger thinks these ontological commitments have seismic ramifications. The heavenly bodies’ exemplary stability (presence and completeness) for the Greeks inaugurates the dominance of the ontological notion that Heidegger calls “presence-at-hand” in SZ: subsequently, in Western metaphysics, to be means to be “present” or “on-hand,” such that maximally present entities are considered most real.

Heidegger observes that Aristotle extends metaphysical concepts suited to one particular kind (the heavenly bodies) to other domains – e.g., consider his analysis of the bios theoretikos as divine, or his claim that organisms reproduce to approximate heavenly immortality.Footnote ⁸⁰ Heidegger’s worry is that Dasein has been analyzed with the aid of inappropriate ontological concepts (presence, completeness, presence-at-hand):

His remark about the “tradition” is striking. His claim, I believe, is that the Greeks mitigate his worry because they are aware that their ontological scheme privileges the heavenly bodies and only partially illuminates imperfect earthly things. For instance, Aristotle recognizes the need to problematize the phenomenon of imperfect motion.Footnote ⁸¹ And most of the Nicomachean Ethics examines the virtues relevant to dynamic social life, such as phronesis. (Indeed, despite claiming that the bios theoretikos is the supreme human life, Aristotle suggests that the bios politikos is the distinctively human life.Footnote ⁸²) Crucially, however, the tradition degenerates as its commitment to Greek metaphysics becomes increasingly dogmatic.

Medieval theologians, Heidegger thinks, also rely on Greek metaphysics. Now God, the cosmos’ creator and superintendent, is ontologically supreme – but on the same grounds that, for the Greeks, rendered the heavenly bodies ontologically supreme: God is maximally complete (God is perfect, and hence, lacks nothing) and present (God is omnipresent, immutable, and eternal).Footnote ⁸³

Similarly, in an extended discussion in SZ §§19–22, Heidegger argues that modern thinkers, for all their innovations, maintain an especially dogmatic commitment to ancient Greek metaphysics, a key result of which is physicalism. Interestingly, Heidegger thinks that Descartes, despite not being committed to OP himself—famously, he believes that the mind is irreducible to the body—is the paradigmatic figure. Descartes’ ontology privileges different kinds of entities – minds (res cogitans) and bodies (res extensa).Footnote ⁸⁴ But his rationale betrays his reliance on Greek metaphysical assumptions: these things are maximally stable; they best approximate perfect, unvarying presence-at-hand. For Heidegger, Descartes’s treatment of bodies, which I unpack below, articulates key assumptions that allow physicalism to emerge.

Descartes thinks the basic characteristic of external objects (i.e., entities that we perceive in the world and in nature) – is extension in length, width, and depth.Footnote ⁸⁵ He justifies this claim as follows: every other feature (e.g., color, texture, weight, hardness) asymmetrically depends on spatial extension. As such, when we strip all other features, an extended body still remains; but when we strip the thing’s spatial extension, all its other features are thereby destroyed. Spatial extension is thus external entities’ one feature that cannot be removed without destroying them. For instance, take a stone. If we remove all its features other than spatial extension, we still have an external object. Meanwhile, if we remove the stone’s spatial extension, we have entirely destroyed it. Therefore, the stone essentially is its spatial extension. Descartes’ physics thus aims to reduce all other features to variations of geometrical extension and motion.

But Descartes’ argument tacitly presupposes Greek metaphysics. Spatial extension may indeed be necessary condition for being an external object. But this fact does not prove that extension is the essence of all external objects. It only could be taken for such proof if we conceive of being as complete presence. To illustrate, consider an alternative interpretation of the example. Perhaps when we remove the stone’s texture, hardness, color (and so on) we are in fact destroying one entity (the stone) and what remains is a different entity (a merely extended body). On this alternative view, the set of all external objects is much wider than the set of all merely extended bodies. Just as a statue is not identical to its matter, so too external entities are not identical to their spatial extension. Descartes’ argument thus shows that spatial extension is the most present (stable, persisting) feature of external objects, not that it is the essence of external objects as such.

Descartes’ commitment to Greek metaphysics also can be gleaned from his geometrical approach to nature. His methodological writings explicitly model proper reasoning on mathematical reasoning.Footnote ⁸⁶ Mathematics uniquely furnishes us with certain knowledge. And it is able to do so, Heidegger claims, because mathematical objects (shapes, numbers, operators, variables, etc.) are accessible yet – unlike empirical objects – paradigmatically eternal, not subject to decay or change.Footnote ⁸⁷ The properties of a triangle are the same now as they ever were or will be.

In other words, mathematical objects are exemplars of complete presence. Things like organisms, and even rocks, are intrinsically dynamic and hence incomplete, but numbers, equations, and geometrical relationships are wholly present at every moment. We thus can attain certainty in mathematics because we can be assured that, blunders notwithstanding, we have completely grasped our subject matter. History won’t reveal anything that will render our conclusions false.

Thus, Descartes mathematizes nature because he seeks empirical knowledge that approximates the certainty we can achieve about mathematical objects. And he fetishizes certainty because he is dogmatically committed to the Greeks’ presence-at-hand–privileging metaphysics. Heidegger expresses his interpretation with remarkable clarity in one passage:

The Greeks understand that their metaphysics privileges certain entities and fails to illuminate the flux that is apparent in everyday earthly phenomena. But Descartes adopts Greek metaphysics uncritically; in doing so, he sets the stage for physicalism. Heidegger continues:

The most enduring mathematizable things of nature, those to which we can reduce all others, are what truly exist. And the mathematical sciences set the standard of rigor. Although Descartes’ physics lost out to Newton’s, Descartes nonetheless lays out the philosophical parameters for physicalism and, concomitantly, SCS. Science aims to produce theories that approach the form and certainty of mathematical proofs – phrased in maximally precise, unambiguous, and ideally quantitative expressions; and organized in logically perspicuous, deductive relationships. And the regulative ideal of science is reduction to elementary quantitative physics (much as geometrical truths are reducible to their axioms). Thus, any subject matter that resists reduction appears suspect.

Heidegger suspects that Greek metaphysics – and, a fortiori, physicalism – are motivated by an evasion of existential anxiety and Dasein’s uncanniness.Footnote ⁸⁹

Recall that our existence is uncanny because although the public has always decided on a particular interpretation of reality, it is in fact radically open. Anxiety discloses this uncanniness. Our own existence is dynamic, structurally incomplete, and threatened constantly with dissolution; hence, our grasp on reality is neither complete nor certain. Furthermore, most things that we experience are dynamic; mathematical objects (or the heavenly bodies for the Greeks, or God for the medievals) are some of the few exceptions. We constantly discover novelty or error that forces us to refine our concepts. Fetishizing certainty, and reducing reality to what is ascertainable – to what is complete, immutable, and accessible to us – allows us to evade everything else. Most importantly, Heidegger postulates, these epistemological and metaphysical commitments, which undergird physicalism, allow us to evade the anxious-making facts of our own finite, incomplete existence.

But what is Heidegger’s proposed alternative to physicalism and SCS? I turn now to this question.

4.1 Science and Truth

Recall the distinction between SCS and ACS. The former, which Heidegger rejects, privileges propositional truth: it views science’s primary aim as formulating maximally secure theories. The latter, which Heidegger advances, privileges disclosed truth and views science’s primary aim as opening up access to reality, acquainting (or re-acquainting) us with things and what it means to be a given kind of thing.

But it’s worth noting that opening up access to reality is not unique to science. Skills like cooking are disclosive: a good cook uncovers features of food and kitchen equipment (e.g., peeling, chopping, salting, and roasting sweet potatoes on high heat brings out their sweetness, resiliency, and tenderness). Art is also disclosive; the later Heidegger famously describes how a van Gogh painting discloses what it means to be a trusty pair of shoes and how a Greek temple brings out the beauty and terror of nature.Footnote ⁹¹ So what is unique to scientific disclosure?

Heidegger’s answer can be found in his scattershot analysis of the notions of thematizing, projection, and objectivity (Objektivität).Footnote ⁹² The first and third concepts are described only briefly, so I will have to extrapolate. Nevertheless, Heidegger provides the germs of an illuminating analysis.

By thematizing, Heidegger means that scientific disclosure is discursive, conceptual, and systematic.

Cooks disclose primarily by preparing and presenting their dishes for consumption. Novelists and poets produce works that are, to some degree, conceptual and discursive. But they generally do not prioritize systematicity. The scientist, however, develops and works within a set of systematic basic concepts that comprises a given discipline’s ontological, epistemological, and methodological principles.

Take, for instance, motion: all of us have a pre-theoretical acquaintance with motion. But Aristotelian and Newtonian physics analyze motion via a set of foundational, systematic concepts.

Aristotle thematizes flux, and so movement across space (locomotion) is merely a species of motion (motion also comprises, e.g., growth, decay, transformation, and destruction).Footnote ⁹⁴ Aristotle further analyzes locomotion: heavy objects move downward because their dominant elements are earth or water, which naturally strive toward the center of the Earth; light objects move upward because their dominant elements are air or fire, which naturally strive toward the heavens. Meanwhile, heavenly bodies are composed of aether, which naturally moves rotationally. Natural objects thus have their respective proper places: specified domains wherein they reside or toward which they move.Footnote ⁹⁵

Classical physics, by contrast, does not conceive of locomotion as a species of a more general phenomenon of change; it reduces rotational motion to rectilinear motion with the help of concepts like inertia, gravity, and friction. Thus, circular motion, as Heidegger writes in his later QT lectures, “is now no longer the grounding basis,” i.e., the paradigm of perfect motion.Footnote ⁹⁶ Now, it is “precisely what needs grounding” (QT 59) – i.e., it must be explained as an apparent deviation from inertial, rectilinear motion. Relatedly, Heidegger points out that absent Aristotle’s differentiation between different basic kinds (and correspondingly different ends) of motion, the notion of proper places drops out of classical physics in favor of arbitrary spatial position (QT 59).

So much for thematizing. But our discussion has tacitly presupposed the concept of projection. Thematizing involves the development of a set of basic concepts. Projection concerns how these basic concepts are used to structure subsequent research. We encountered this concept in Section 2.1; recall that projections orient us by pre-structuring our engagement with things in accordance with some future possibility, such that we attend to things salient to that possibility and ignore the rest. Scientific disclosures are themselves projectival: research is pre-structured by the thematic basic concepts.Footnote ⁹⁷

Let’s return to Aristotle and Newton. Given Aristotle’s broad concept of motion, his physics is qualitative rather than quantitative: calculating rates of motion is relatively uninteresting; more interesting is identifying the kinds of motion proper to a given thing. Conversely, Newtonian physics is quantitative instead of qualitative in part because of Newton’s narrow concept of motion as rectilinear locomotion; on this view, defining rates, trajectories, and influences on locomotion becomes the chief way to analyze and differentiate moving things.

Note that Heidegger’s notion of scientific projection anticipates Kuhn: the scientist is distinguished not by her empirical openness (first approximating a tabula rasa and proceeding inductively) but, instead, by her acceptance of rigid constraints. What appears salient or trivial – as a puzzle to be solved, a problem to be shelved, or a distraction to be sidestepped – is pre-figured or “projected” by the scientist’s thematic disclosure.

So much for projection. We now come to objectivity. Heidegger’s analysis here is underdeveloped, but one comment is especially suggestive:

His point, let me suggest, is that science is committed to demonstrability, i.e., to making the portion of reality it thematizes accessible and responsive to public scrutiny. My reading particularly relies on the italicized verb entgegenbringen, rendered with two words (“confront” and “bring”) to capture its full sense. Entgegenbringen means, literally, “to bring out into relief”; colloquially, “to show,” “to meet with,” “to demonstrate” – e.g., “he showed respect,” “she met the proposal with great interest.” Science’s virtue, Heidegger suggests, lies in its ethic of demonstrability rather than in its alleged adherence to a common method.

Heideggerian objectivity, on my reading, bears a striking resemblance to Helen Longino’s concept of objectivity. Longino argues that objectivity has little to do with individual researchers’ disinterest (emotional detachment, absence of bias). Instead, Longinoan objectivity applies to science as a social enterprise: a science is objective, roughly, to the degree that it is open and responsive to public criticism.Footnote ⁹⁸ Similarly, for Heidegger, science is objective not because sound scientific reasoning adheres to some privileged logical schema(s). Rather, science is objective insofar as it makes its thematized objects accessible to a concrete audience.

Science, for Heidegger, thus discloses and uncovers via research that is projectival, thematic, and objective – i.e., pre-structured in accordance with a set of basic concepts and guided by a norm of demonstrability to a concrete audience. But my discussion so far has been fairly abstract. What are some concrete consequences for philosophers and scientists?

1. 1. Heidegger undermines the significance of the distinction between the “context of discovery” and the “context of justification” in science, by which some philosophers (especially in the early and middle twentieth century) set great store. The former concerns how scientists in fact discover and formulate their ideas, concepts, claims, and so on; the latter concerns how scientists’ claims and theories can be tested and justified, especially whether and how they pass muster when rationally reconstructed. Philosophers, the thought goes, should focus on the context of justification and leave the context of discovery to psychologists, sociologists, and other empirical scientists.Footnote ⁹⁹ Heidegger would see this distinction as emerging out of the misguided SCS.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Approaching science primarily by rationally reconstructing scientific theories is a consequence of thinking that science’s primary aim is to establish secure claims and theories. But if we accept ACS, on which science primarily aims to open up access to reality, which occurs historically and always to a concrete audience, then it’s clear that philosophers should not pass over the context of discovery if they want to understand what is essential to science (and indeed, what accounts for its epistemic virtue).Footnote ¹⁰¹

2. 2. Current scientific norms almost exclusively support research on esoteric puzzles. I suspect that Heideggerian science would differ by granting significant resources and prestige to effective popular presentations of science.Footnote ¹⁰² To be clear, esoteric research would still be a priority; it stands on the frontiers of knowledge and hence opens up access to hitherto concealed regions of reality. But effective accounts of science aimed at the general public are also disclosive and objective in Heidegger’s sense: they make the thematized objects of research accessible to the educated public. If only a handful of specialists are able to understand research, then science has in an important respect failed to make good on its ethic of demonstrability. Thus, those with the unique skills to identify and articulate a field’s key insights for the general public are bona fide Heideggerian scientists.

3. 3. Perhaps the chief consequence of Heideggerian science, for scientists and philosophers alike, is the embrace of science’s dynamic character and, in particular, of scientific crises.Footnote ¹⁰³ Several passages are worth quoting at length.

Heidegger’s account is sketchy but anticipates some insights from Kuhn – above all, that science develops in biphasic cycles consisting of a revolutionary crisis phase and a positivistic consolidation phase (which correspond to Kuhn’s “extraordinary science” and “normal science”). Moreover, like Kuhn, Heidegger claims that crises are spurred, paradoxically, as a science reaches “maturity” in its positivistic consolidation phase. Heidegger is sketchy on what constitutes maturity, but he suggests that a mature sciences has a well-defined set of basic concepts (SZ 362–63) and has accumulated a hefty amount of positive “information” (SZ 9) about its subject matter.

Note, however, a key difference in Heidegger’s and Kuhn’s respective evaluations of science’s epistemic merit. Kuhn stops short of making any prescriptions; nevertheless, he makes clear that nearly all the goods we associate with modern science (above all, increasingly esoteric knowledge that enables technological development) flow from normal science (Reference Kuhn2012, pp. 17–25), which crises interrupt by directing inquiry back to foundational issues. Heidegger, meanwhile, views crises favorably because they direct inquiry back to foundational philosophical issues. Foundational inquiry leads researchers to renew their access to reality by disclosing unseen, forgotten, or underappreciated domains of reality.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ By contrast, “normal” phases lead inexorably to the ossifying consensus that we discussed earlier as “historical falling.”Footnote ¹⁰⁵

The last two sentences underscore Heidegger’s existential approach to science. Kuhn explains science’s biphasic cycles purely in terms of research problems that scientists confront – namely, successful paradigms lead to esoteric research, which tends to generate recognized anomalies, which, over time, engender crises out of which a new paradigm emerges. But Heidegger also suggests an existential explanation for science’s biphasic cycles: science is a pursuit of Dasein’s; and Dasein, as we saw earlier, moves through biphasic cycles of achieving authenticity via resolute decisions and subsequently falling into inauthenticity.

4.2 Science and Authenticity

We have just seen that Heidegger is committed to the following two claims.

1. 1. Science is the pursuit of disclosed truth (i.e., science essentially opens up access to reality via thematic, projectival, and objective research).

2. 2. Scientific research occurs in biphasic cycles, with a revolutionary crisis phase spurring a positivistic consolidation phase, which eventually engenders a new crisis, and so on.

I also identified a parallel between science’s biphasic cycle (crisis-consolidation) and Dasein’s biphasic cycle (authenticity-inauthenticity), which recalls Heidegger’s remark quoted at the start of Section 4. I thus read Heidegger as committed to a third claim:.

1. 3. The disclosures that occasion and resolve scientific crises require authenticity; crises demand researchers who are resolute in the face of uncanniness and death.

Before I unpack this claim, let me note an important caveat: Heidegger fails to detail how scientific disclosures relate to his analysis of authenticity. The account I offer next is therefore schematic and speculative, and I rely on Kuhn to flesh out some of Heidegger’s suggestions.Footnote ¹⁰⁶

The aspiring scientist learns the prevailing norms of intelligibility for their community – above all, an established set of basic concepts that delineates a working ontology and methodology for their subject matter, but also, a sense of the past achievements in their field and of the day’s more or less pressing problems.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ And Kuhn famously writes that normal science generally does not aim “to produce major novelties, conceptual or phenomenal” (Reference Kuhn2012, p. 35); rather, it consists of “mop-up work” – often requiring profound ingenuity – of roughly three kinds: “determination of significant fact, matching of facts with theory, and articulation of theory” (Reference Kuhn2012, pp. 24, 34). We might thus understand Heidegger’s suggestion that the scientist’s everyday research is generally inauthentic. The scientist is trained to accept passively the authority of the prevailing norms – i.e., to measure their actions against such norms, and hence, to view themselves third-personally as one engaged in their research program: research generally aims to refine established models or to assimilate recalcitrant phenomena (“anomalies”) to them. This account helps us understand a remark that otherwise appears obtuse and disparaging: “the scientific work of one individual,” Heidegger writes, “can in principle always be represented by someone else; the scientific discoveries that one person makes could also have been made by someone else” (GA27 225–26). The researcher in positivistic consolidation phases, Heidegger suggests, evades self-ownership by passing off responsibility to the prevailing norms.Footnote ¹⁰⁸

Crises call the reigning norms into question; they are ultimately resolved (though they also may be occasioned or exacerbated) by scientists who venture a new disclosure and, in so doing, achieve authenticity. To disclose reality anew requires an antecedent recognition that the norms of intelligibility – and with them, one’s identity as a scientist – are fragile, subject to contingency, change, and dissolution (existential death). This recognition leads to the breakdown in the world’s apparent coherence that is constitutive of anxiety and uncanniness. Indeed, Kuhn claims that crises are utterly disorienting, both theoretically and personally. The world that previously seemed well understood now appears “out of joint” and disturbingly open (Reference Kuhn2012, p. 79). The scientist must face her inalienable responsibility to interpret reality; the veneer of authority the norms previously had disintegrates. Their contingency, fragility, and generic nature – i.e., the fact that they underdetermine the scientist’s research in any concrete situation – is now palpable. Facing this responsibility shakes the scientist out of their prior falling. They are brought into the concrete situation; i.e., they attend to their subject matter with fresh eyes rather than passively understanding them via staid, generic norms. Indeed, Kuhn writes that crises generally involve the “loosening of the rules for normal research” (Reference Kuhn2012, p. 84). The scientist can thus discover latent possibilities for research, and, in so doing, venture a creative “reply” to their tradition, which yields a new ontological disclosure of their subject matter. Recall Heidegger’s remarks from HCT 3 that in crises, scientists “reclaim” their subject matter “originally,” and that such research “assumes a philosophical cast.” The result, when successful, is a scientific revolution, the experience of which Kuhn, following Hanson, likens to a Gestalt switch:Footnote ¹⁰⁹ not just this or that phenomenon but, rather, a whole domain of phenomena now appears in a radically new light.

No longer judging the success of their research by extant norms, the scientist must now adopt a thoroughly first-person stance toward themselves: they must take self-ownership in venturing a resolute decision about their subject matter. Following his remark about the anonymity and interchangeability of (normal) scientific work, quoted earlier, Heidegger claims that philosophical work – undertaken, as we have seen, by scientists in crisis – “is never a mere duplicate” and demands that “everyone is in themselves whole and unique” (GA27 226). Resolute decisions require us to acknowledge existential death, i.e., the ever-looming threat that our pursuits and our corresponding identities will dissolve. As Kuhn and Feyerabend point out – and as the case of Barbara McClintock illustrates – norm-challenging research initially raises far more problems than it solves, its ultimate success is far from guaranteed, and its proponents are frequently viewed by their colleagues with suspicion.Footnote ¹¹⁰ But by rendering a resolute decision, the scientist achieves authenticity and offers a revolutionary disclosure of their subject matter.

4.3 Science’s Epistemic and Ethical Significance

In the aftermath of a scientific revolution, a new positivistic consolidation phase of research emerges. Hence, the cycle continues: as historical falling sets in, access to reality must eventually be re-established via a new ontological disclosure; authenticity in science must be “repeatedly retrieved.” We thus can now more fully appreciate Heidegger’s remark from GA27 quoted earlier:

Mature scientific research, for Heidegger, does not, and ought not, deliver us ever more secure theories, as SCS would suggest; instead, since its aim is opening up access to reality (following ACS), it issues in cyclical crises that lead to renewed, potentially revolutionary ontological reflection. Scientists therefore must “appropriate” their subject matter “ever anew”; and in so doing, they take ownership of their research and achieve authenticity. It is in this sense that science is Dasein’s existential possibility of “being-in-the-truth” and “has its origin in authentic existence” (SZ 363); for Heidegger, science thus is an epistemically and ethically privileged pursuit.

5.1 “Science Is the theory of the actual”

“[T]hat in which the essence of science lies … may be expressed in one concise statement. It runs: Science is the theory of the actual [Wirklichen]” (SR 157). Heidegger immediately adds that “science” here refers to modern science rather than to its medieval or ancient predecessors.

Heidegger’s essay then unfolds, characteristically, with an etymologically informed analysis of “theory” and “the actual.” I must pass over a detailed treatment of the various turns in his analysis. Key for our purposes is that these terms respectively refer to what Heidegger calls “entrapping and securing representing” and “objecthood” (Gegenständigkeit), which indicate what he believes to be modern science’s epistemological and ontological commitments.Footnote ¹¹³ Let me briefly unpack each notion, beginning with the latter.

Just after introducing the term “objecthood,” Heidegger writes that “what presences becomes an object for a setting-before, a representing [Vor-stellen]” (SR 163). In other words, under a metaphysics of “objecthood,” to be is to be an object that is available to a representing subject. Objects have several key features.

1. (1) Objects occupy stable roles within an efficient causal sequence. Heidegger stresses how reality (or “the actual,” i.e., “what presences as self-exhibiting” (SR 167)) “appears now in the in the light of the causality of the causa efficiens” (SR 161; see also QCT 7, 26), or how for modern science, “the actual will exhibit itself as an interacting network, i.e., in surveyable series of related causes” (SR 168).

2. (2) Objects behave according to precise, ideally mathematical laws. Heidegger observes that “the possibilities for the posing of questions” about objects in a given field of science is “map[ped] out in advance,” such that “[e]very new phenomenon emerging within an area of science is refined to such a point that it fits into the normative objective coherence of the theory” (SR 169; his remarks on mathematics on SR 170, quoted and discussed in a moment, are also relevant).

3. (3) The existence of a given object is intersubjectively verifiable by following a set of privileged, specified procedures. Under a metaphysics of objecthood, Heidegger claims that reality now appears to be what “stand[s] firm as guaranteed” (SR 162). “The actual, he writes, “thus becomes surveyable and capable of being followed out in its sequences. The actual becomes secured in its objecthood” (SR 168, emphasis added). Or as he writes in OBT, “procedure secures for itself, within the realm of being, its sphere of objects” (59).

Meanwhile, “entrapping and securing representing” is the epistemological counterpart to a metaphysics of objecthood (SR 168). It is characterized by the aim to make entities fit within a “surveyable series of related causes.” We might thus say that under these epistemological commitments, subjects know objects when the latter are assigned roles within efficient causal sequences and behave according to laws that are intersubjectively verifiable via favored procedures – i.e., when they can be “entrapped” and “secured” within an ordered representational framework.Footnote ¹¹⁴

Heidegger thus claims that modern science generally is “mathematical” in a broad sense: it aims at

Heidegger suggests here that the reason mathematical physics is considered exemplary among the sciences is because we have tacitly accepted a metaphysics of objecthood and an epistemology of entrapping securing representing. Physics’ success in producing quantitative predictions and explanations (i.e., its mathematics in the familiar, narrow sense) is an especially potent example of “mathematics” in the broad sense: rendering reality surveyable as a sequence of anticipated effects. Moreover, he suggests that what we now commonly refer to as a “theory of everything” (ToE) – i.e., “a set of equations capable of describing all phenomena that have been observed, or that will ever be observed” (Reference Laughlin and PinesLaughlin and Pines 2000, p. 28) – remains the holy grail of physics because it epitomizes what he sees as the regulative epistemic ideal of modern science: the creation of a “knowledge map” or “world picture” so secure that, for any legitimate theoretical question, the correct answer could be produced algorithmically.Footnote ¹¹⁵

Heidegger claims not only that these metaphysical and epistemological commitments are historically novel – they “would have been as strange to medieval man as [they] would have been dismaying to Greek thought” (SR 168) – but also that they severely restrict our disclosive range in modernity. For example, consider that Augustine (despite his express opposition to skepticism) repeatedly stresses that what is most real – namely, God – escapes our efforts at clear and comprehensive representation.Footnote ¹¹⁶

The basic commitments of modern science render it impossible to countenance such an entity. More broadly, they render it impossible to countenance any entity that is recalcitrant to the currently favored representational frameworks.

Heidegger’s remarks thus amount to an elaboration (indeed, a deepening) of his earlier commitments. Under the reigning ontological and epistemological commitments, Heidegger observes, the aim of science is understood to be developing a set of theories so secure as to transform inquiry into a matter of calculation rather than opening up and maintaining access to reality (principally via cyclical, revolutionary ontological disclosures, which upset extant theories). ACS, he worries, is increasingly losing ground to SCS. As we will presently see, Heidegger thinks this trend means that science proper might eventually cease to exist.

5.2 A Key Development: Heidegger on the “Industry” (Betrieb) of Science

5.3 Ontological Indifference in the Age of Technology

Ontological inquiry is the “essential task” of science proper; it thus has priority over specialized research puzzles. Ontological disclosures open up access to reality in the most fundamental way; research puzzles emerge as the scientist investigates the possibilities for uncovering that a given disclosure affords. Thus, ontological inquiry grounds and guides specialized research. But as research on specialized puzzles becomes dislodged from its proper aim of opening up access to reality, ontology undergoes, to borrow from Quine, “a humiliating demotion” (Reference Quine1983, p. 501). We thus become not only inattentive but also indifferent to ontology. Ontological inquiry – attending to our ontological assumptions – for the sake of ensuring that they are cogent, coherent, and hence, genuinely disclosive, is seen as worthless; ontological inquiry is, at best, valuable only instrumentally, insofar as our “framework” can help or hinder our puzzle-solving capabilities, and thus can enhance our control over a given domain.

Heidegger suspects that this indifference betrays a suppressed ontological assumption. By the middle of the twentieth century, he believes, modern science has come under the aegis of “the age of technology,” the final stage in the history of Western metaphysics. In this age, being is no longer conceived in terms of the sort of mind-independence and amenability to mathematical modeling that Heidegger earlier dubbed “presence-at-hand”; rather, to be is now to be exploitable as a resource (Bestand) for the sake of unceasing human power-enhancement.

Indeed, as I will presently discuss in Section 6, Heidegger comes to believe that the emergence of quantum physics in the early and middle twentieth century depended on the age of technology’s characteristic ontological indifference and commitment to an ontology of “resourcehood” (Beständigkeit).

6.1 Heisenberg’s Claims

Heisenberg makes a bold claim toward the beginning of his remarks:

Quantum theory undermines the metaphysical assumptions that undergird classical physics. And the new metaphysics demanded by quantum physics is both a cause and a consequence of a broader historical shift whereby humans increasingly come to see their products, activities, and interests reflected in the world.

Heisenberg thinks classical physics is premised on the subject-object dichotomy and the corollary concept of “objectivity.” As Scholasticism waned, nature was increasingly regarded as independent of both divine will and human concerns. The aim of classical physics was thus to study nature “in itself”: we aim to be objective in our studies and to limit the influence of our subjective biases as much as possible (Reference Heisenberg1958a, p. 96). “To the nineteenth century,” Heisenberg elaborates,

A foundational assumption of classical physics is that nature exists mind-independently; to study it properly, therefore, we ought to guard vigilantly against the influence of our subjective biases.

Classical physics also conceives of objective reality as atomistic. Atoms – or, later, subatomic particles – are considered to be “the intrinsically real” or “the final objective reality” (Reference Heisenberg1958a, p. 99). Everything in nature reduces to these “smallest building blocks of matter”: “through their mutual arrangement and motion, [atoms] call forth the colorful phenomena of our sense world” (Reference Heisenberg1958a, pp. 98–99). Therefore, when we have a proper understanding of the behavior of elementary particles, we will thereby have attained objective knowledge about the most fundamental aspect of nature.

It thus came as a shock when researchers discovered that elementary particles appeared not to behave mind-independently. Heisenberg remarks:

On Heisenberg’s interpretation, a basic implication of quantum mechanics is that there is no clear boundary between observer and observed. As a result,

This final sentence is especially significant; Heisenberg claims that the broader historical shift he spoke of earlier as “profound transformations in the fundamentals of our existence” is best characterized by the claim that “for the first time in the course of history man on earth faces only himself … he no longer finds any other partner or foe” (Heisenberg Reference Heisenberg1958a, p. 104).

Scientific technologies have transformed our relationship to nature. The science behind these technologies is so recondite that we feel “uncanny” or alienated from “natural experience” in our daily, technologically mediated interactions. Meanwhile, such technologies are so widespread that nearly every time we interact with nature we do so mediated through technology; therefore, increasingly, our encounters with nature are simultaneously encounters with ourselves (Reference Heisenberg1958a, pp. 101–2, 104).

Similarly, quantum physics transforms our relationship to nature: the old picture, on which nature was “a realm existing according to its own laws, and into which man somehow had to fit himself,” is now obsolete (Reference Heisenberg1958a, p. 104). Nature at the most fundamental level is apparently not independent of us in the way classical physics assumed. Heisenberg thus concludes: “The world view of natural science thus ceases to be a view of ‘natural’ science in its proper sense” (Reference Heisenberg1958a, p. 107). Quantum physics is a science of us humans as much as of nature; there no longer is any room for nature “in itself” in science.

We might finally ask what Heisenberg thinks motivates this seismic shift in the aims and assumptions of physics. He hints at his answer in the long quotation earlier: “the transparent clarity of [the] mathematics.” He later elaborates:

Quantum theory surrenders “the earlier ideal” of an objective science (Reference Heisenberg1958a, p. 105) because doing so increases the power of our mathematics: we can model and predict a more comprehensive set of physical phenomena with heretofore unseen quantitative precision. Heisenberg illustrates this tradeoff in a discussion elsewhere of Bohr’s concept of complementarity: depending on the experiment, matter (or light) will behave as a particle or as a wave. “The[se] two pictures,” Heisenberg writes, “are of course mutually exclusive”; but the “dualism … is no longer a difficulty since we know from the mathematical formulation of the theory that contradictions cannot arise.” Nevertheless, “[a] real difficulty … arises … when one asks the famous question: But what happens ‘really’ in an atomic event?” (Reference HeisenbergHeisenberg 1958b, pp. 50–51).Footnote ¹²⁷

With this increase in our predictive and technological power over nature, Heisenberg claims, quantum physics betokens a new age that has provoked considerable anxiety. We experience a disturbing claustrophobia and pessimism in always confronting “ourselves.” Like other thinkers on modernity, Heisenberg develops a metaphor likening inquiry to a voyage aboard a ship.Footnote ¹²⁸ Previously, we were confident that we could navigate to unseen destinations and experience genuine discovery. Now, however, it’s as if our ship

The implication is that we have lost confidence that we can discover real features of nature, and thus the confidence that our knowledge is genuine – and hence, that it’s capable of genuinely progressing. Nevertheless, Heisenberg hopes that “[t]o the extent that we reach clarity about this limit, the limit itself may furnish the first firm hold by which we can orient ourselves anew”; hence, perhaps “in the course of long stretches of time” we will find a new “common center” for our thoughts, which will alleviate our anxiety (Reference Heisenberg1958a, p. 108).

Let me thus distill four claims from Heisenberg:

1. C1. The shift from classical to quantum physics betokens a new intellectual age shaped by unique metaphysical and epistemological assumptions.

2. C2. Quantum physics betokens this new intellectual age insofar as it forecloses the old ideal of “objectivity,” or, rather, scientific realism as applied to nature, which held sway under classical physics. (“Scientific realism” here means the claim that the aim of science is the accurate representation of mind-independent reality – i.e., of what is the case independently of our conceiving it so – and, concomitantly, that successful scientific theories faithfully represent mind-independent reality.Footnote ¹²⁹)

3. C3. Quantum physics is willing to sacrifice scientific realism because doing so allows scientists to develop more powerful mathematical models – i.e., equations that allow us to generate more numerous, precise, and accurate predictions.

4. C4. The new intellectual age betokened by the emergence of quantum physics has provoked considerable anxiety, but the depth and durability of this anxiety is unclear.

6.2 Heidegger’s Response: The Dominant Reading

Heidegger, as I read him, is positively disposed toward Heisenberg’s claims – especially C1-C3, which he takes on board in articulating his concept of modern technology. His disagreement concerns C4; Heidegger is less ambivalent and more pessimistic than Heisenberg. Most striking on my reading, thus, is the generative affinity between Heidegger’s and Heisenberg’s views.

But most commentators suggest that Heidegger disagrees with C1, Heisenberg’s most fundamental claim; they read Heidegger as holding a largely deflationary view of quantum physics’ metaphysical and epistemological significance. Some frame Heidegger as a deflationist without clearly acknowledging the countervailing evidence.Footnote ¹³⁰ Others, meanwhile, acknowledge such evidence but argue that Heidegger’s considered position is deflationary.Footnote ¹³¹

An explanation of my disagreement with extant scholarship is in order. The basic problem is that Heidegger’s writings on quantum physics are prima facie ambivalent. Some passages suggest deflationary disagreement with C1. For instance:

Heidegger suggests here that despite their empirical and methodological differences, classical and quantum physics share the same basic philosophical commitments. Elsewhere, however, he states just the opposite:

One response to this prima facie tension is to argue that Heidegger’s views evolved, such that his position became more deflationary as he matured.Footnote ¹³² But Heidegger’s most counter-deflationary remarks are found in some of his latest works (namely, his 1953 SR and QCT, his 1955–56 PR, and his 1969 LT); making matters worse, SR contains both deflationary and counter-deflationary remarks.

Carman (Reference Carman, Wendland, Merwin and Hadjioannou2019) and Ma and van Brakel (Reference Lin and van Brakel2014) take a more promising approach. They develop sophisticated interpretations under which Heidegger has a more or less consistent deflationary position. They allege that Heidegger allows for lower-order discontinuity between classical and quantum physics (and early and late modernity more broadly), which is nevertheless subsumed under a higher-order continuity, which renders their differences “secondary” to their commonalities (Carman Reference Carman, Wendland, Merwin and Hadjioannou2019, p. 308). Carman thus claims:

I agree that Heidegger thinks that the epochal break betokened by the classical-quantum shift is of a lower order, and that, at a higher order, he sees continuity. But there’s a crucial difference. Carman and Ma and van Brakel suggest that this higher-order continuity is, for Heidegger, a unique feature of modernity and explains an ambivalence he displays uniquely about early and late modernity. But I think Heidegger displays the same ambivalence for each pair of successive epochs in his “history of being”; each new epoch introduces deep qualitative shifts in metaphysical and epistemological commitments, but each shift develops by extrapolating latent tendencies in the prior epoch.Footnote ¹³³ Furthermore, all epochs exist within a Western tradition that itself is unified by higher-order features.Footnote ¹³⁴ Thus, the higher-order continuity Heidegger posits is a general feature of the history of Western metaphysics rather than a specific feature of modernity. Notwithstanding such continuity, then, I maintain, contrary to Carman and Ma and van Brakel, that early and late modernity constitute distinct epochs in Heidegger’s history of being on par with the ancient Greek and medieval epochs.

Nevertheless, properly litigating this debate would require a deep dive into Heidegger’s philosophy of history and the relationship between technology and early modern metaphysics, matters which remain the subject of considerable scholarly dispute and require a detailed treatment in their own right that is beyond this project’s scope.Footnote ¹³⁵

Next, I provide a sustained account of the substantial affinity between Heidegger’s and Heisenberg’s views, which the literature currently lacks.Footnote ¹³⁶

6.3 Heidegger on C1-C3

In PR, Heidegger affirms C1:

Quantum physics betokens the emerging age of “modern technology”; its key shift in metaphysics is its “transformation” of the subject-object relationship, which, in turn, has implications for epistemology. Here Heidegger gestures toward claims that he develops several years earlier for his public conversation with Heisenberg.

We will examine those in a moment. First, however, we must turn to a passage where Heidegger in fact makes one of his clearest and oft-cited expressions of deflationary disagreement with C1 and C2.Footnote ¹³⁷

Recall the concepts of “objecthood” (Gegenständigkeit) and “entrapping and securing representing” introduced earlier.Footnote ¹³⁸ Scientific realism remains a live possibility under these assumptions: theories and concepts are human constructions; nevertheless, it remains plausible to claim that the aim of such theories and concepts is to mirror a mind-independent realm of nature, such that successful theories faithfully represent that realm. In claiming that classical and quantum physics alike are characterized by a metaphysics of objecthood and an epistemology of entrapping and securing representing, Heidegger thus here denies C1 and C2. Remarkably, however, he dramatically reverses himself in his next breath:

(Objecthood changes into the resourcehood of the resource [Beständigkeit des Bestandes], a resourcehood determined from out of enframing. {See “The Question Concerning Technology.”} The subject-object relation thus reaches, for the first time, its pure “relational,” i.e., ordering, character in which both the subject and the object are sucked up as resources. That does not mean that the subject-object relation vanishes, but rather the opposite: it now attains to its most extreme dominance, which is predetermined from out of enframing. It becomes a resource to be commanded and set in order.) (SR 173)Footnote ¹³⁹

The key remark here is Heidegger’s claim that the classical-quantum shift betokens a shift from objecthood (Gegenständigkeit) to resourcehood (Beständigkeit). Both terms, and their related root words object (Gegenstand) and resource (Bestand), carry epochal significance for Heidegger.Footnote ¹⁴⁰ For instance, in QCT, he writes:

Heidegger thus endorses C1. And he hints as to how he will interpret C2 and C3: quantum physics betokens the late modern age of technology insofar as it relates to entities as resources rather than objects, and this shift has something to do with “ordering,” “challenging,” and “enframing.” Several pages later, Heidegger elaborates in a reference to Heisenberg’s remarks about the “uncanniness” of nature under modern science.Footnote ¹⁴²

Enframing (Ge-stell) is Heidegger’s coinage for late modernity’s unique epistemological commitment; we will return to it in a moment. For now, let me address the metaphysical commitment. The key questions are: (1) what distinguishes resourcehood from objecthood? And (2) how does the classical-quantum shift reflect the shift from objecthood to resourcehood? A passage from LT addresses (1) and is worth quoting at length:

Recall that objecthood leaves room for scientific realism. The objects we investigate maintain an “objective neutrality” vis-à-vis us: they plausibly furnish reality independently of our schemes and aims (e.g., forests). But resources are dependent on our schemes and aims (e.g., greenspaces, which exist only due to urban planning): they are a “means,” “orderable,” “held in readiness for being consumed,” or (as he says elsewhere) “completely unautonomous” (QCT 17). More precisely, resources are essentially instrumental and schematized: their existence depends on an artificial scheme of production or consumption within which they serve a role and on the basis of which they can be deployed. Hence, they do not furnish mind-independent reality. Scientific realism would thus be a nonstarter under a metaphysics of resourcehood. Meanwhile, the epistemological commitment of enframing is now legible: in the age of technology, we know something as a resource when we are able to fit it within a production or consumption scheme such as to exploit its instrumental value.

This will have to suffice for an answer to question (1). The answer to (2), meanwhile, lies in C2 and C3. Quantum physics, as Heisenberg understands it, requires us to forego scientific realism for the sake of increased predictive power. Heidegger thinks this tradeoff carries epochal significance. Once we have made it, he suggests, we have eliminated the conceptual gap between science and engineering. That is to say, physics no longer primarily aims to know nature for its own sake; instead, it now aims, above all, to manipulate nature – paradigmatically in the form of experimentation.Footnote ¹⁴⁴

Heidegger elaborates in Z and LT. For classical physics, “space and its characteristics are viewed as actually existing” – “[o]ne can still have an intuition of Newtonian space.” By contrast, quantum physics employs “models” that are understood to “ha[ve] a merely instrumental character” – they are held to be valuable just insofar as they yield accurate quantitative predictions, insofar as they allow us to “identically repea[t] an experiment within the schema of ‘if x … then y’.”Footnote ¹⁴⁵

Similarly, on LT 54, Heidegger reportedly claims that “the concept of theory developed by Newton and Galileo stands in the middle between theoria in the Greek sense and the contemporary significance of the word.” The passage continues:

The decisive shift between classical and quantum physics, Heidegger suggests, lies in the latter’s ontological indifference and, concomitantly, its renouncing of scientific realism. Recall Heisenberg’s admission that quantum physics’ ontological presuppositions are incoherent, and hence, not robustly disclosive.Footnote ¹⁴⁶ If one accepts scientific realism, then this situation would be alarming and demand resolution; after all, one cannot possibly represent mind-independent reality faithfully if one’s ontological assumptions are incoherent. Scientific realism, which remained plausible under classical physics, thus demands that scientists not be indifferent to ontology. But research in quantum physics pressed forward all the same. It thus made an epochal break in being manifestly premised on ontological indifference; it forswears scientific realism – and does so, moreover, for the sake of enhanced predictive power.

Therefore, for quantum physics, “nature” is conceptualized under resourcehood rather than objecthood: natural phenomena can no longer be understood to reflect a mind-independent realm governed by laws that our equations purport to represent. Rather, natural phenomena serve as instruments for producing successful experiments, and our mathematical models purport merely to facilitate such success. Heidegger thus endorses and appropriates C1-C3 in developing his claim that we are in a new epoch characterized by resourcehood rather than objecthood.

But the joint revolutionary developments in late modern science (quantum physics) and metaphysics (the age of technology) ultimately entrench, in a newly potent form, SCS over ACS. Classical physics, on account of retaining an “ontological” view of nature that allows for scientific realism, was still partially informed by ACS; quantum physics, which discards this in favor of an “instrumental” view of nature, more decisively entrenches SCS. In 1929, Heidegger claims that ontological disclosure is the “essential task” of science (P 95); but in the ensuing years, he comes to worry that ontological indifference has begun to take hold, such that the aim of science is now more than ever understood to be developing increasingly comprehensive, predictive models rather than opening up access to reality.

6.4 Heidegger on Quantum Theory’s Perverse Ethical Implications in the Age of Technology

As we discussed earlier, Heisenberg acknowledges that quantum theory and the age it betokens have provoked considerable anxiety, but he hopes that this anxiety will prove short lived. Heidegger is more gravely concerned. He thinks that quantum theory, as Heisenberg articulates it, furthers the process that eventuates in us taking ourselves to be resources:

Heisenberg claims that quantum theory shows that we “encounter ourselves” in our interactions with the smallest building blocks of nature. Heidegger’s reply is that we encounter “ourselves” in such experiments only through the influence of our measuring instruments. Heidegger thus perceives in Heisenberg’s view an unwitting equation of humanity with such instruments, which betrays that we now understand ourselves to be resources. QCT elaborates on this claim:

I pointed out earlier that quantum theory, as Heidegger hears Heisenberg articulate it, arises from and reinforces the “technological” assumptions of resourcehood and enframing, under which we understand everything – including ourselves – to be resources awaiting deployment for the sake of continual human power enhancement. The irony, for Heidegger, is that quantum physics’ apparently human-empowering features come about as a result of losing a sense of the unique ontological character of humanity qua Dasein. Let me elaborate.

Heidegger’s concept of “ek-sistence” (literally, “standing-outside”) refers, above all, to his commitment to Dasein’s ontological receptivity: we essentially do not bestow but rather reveal or disclose ontological significance (that and how beings are).Footnote ¹⁴⁸ We are “in the realm of an exhortation or address,” receptive to rather than generative of being.Footnote ¹⁴⁹ Hence man “can never encounter only himself.”

But Heisenbergian quantum theory’s rejection of scientific realism promotes the view that “everything man encounters exists only insofar as it is his construct” such that “man everywhere and always encounters only himself” – in which case, reality as we encounter it reflects us, i.e., our assignments of ontological significance. In other words, it promotes the “impression” or “deceptive appearance” that we are not ontologically receptive – i.e., that we in fact do bestow ontological significance.

Heisenbergian quantum theory, for Heidegger, thus betokens a historical age in which humanity has lost a sense of itself as Dasein – and indeed, has come to see both itself and everything else as merely different kinds of resources. Let me unpack this final point.

A core perversity of modern technology’s characteristic instrumental logic, for Heidegger, is that it has become dislodged from any intrinsic end that would promote human flourishing – after all, modern technological assumptions leave us bereft of the sort of robust concept of human existence needed to anchor an account of human flourishing. Technological instrumentalization, then, merely serves the end of further instrumentalization, i.e., a continual expansion of humanity’s range of manipulative control, to be exercised for no other end than to promote further control (BFL 28). But in that case, since any given means is defined by its end, a palpable emptiness and absurdity suffuses our relationships with all things (which are, so to speak, “pure means”).Footnote ¹⁵⁰ Indeed, Heidegger stresses that every being comes to seem fungible and disposable (LT 62): everything, including each of us, becomes subject to a utility calculus – but one where, perversely, utility is defined as enhancing human control, for no intrinsic end.Footnote ¹⁵¹ We thus will be tempted to cease respecting ourselves and others as the unique disclosive beings that we in fact are.