Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T14:52:09.447Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Husserlian Phenomenology and Scientific Realism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Joseph Rouse
Joseph Rouse*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy Wesleyan University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Husserl's (1970) discussion of “Galilean science“ is often dismissed as naïvely instrumentalist and hostile to science. He has been explicitly criticized for misunderstanding idealization in science, for treating the life world as a privileged conceptual framework, and for denying that science can in principle completely describe the world (because ordinary prescientific concepts are irreplaceable). I clarify Husserl's position concerning realism, and use this to show that the first two criticisms depend upon misinterpretations. The third criticism is well taken. Nevertheless, this is consistent with Husserl's fundamental claim that the manifestations of things are important to discuss, but are inaccessible to empirical science.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , June 1987 , pp. 222 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

An earlier version of this paper was written with the support of a Summer Research Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. I am most grateful to the Endowment for its support.

References

REFERENCES

Cartwright, N. (1983), How the Laws of Physics Lie. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davidson, D. (1984), Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Dreyfus, H., and Hall, H. (eds.) (1982), Husserl, Intentionality and Cognitive Science. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Fine, A. (1984), “The Natural Ontological Argument”, in Leplin (1984), pp. 83–107.Google Scholar
Gutting, G. (1976), “Phenomenology and Scientific Realism”, New Scholasticism 48: 253–266.Google Scholar
Gutting, G. (1979a), “Continental Philosophy of Science”, in Asquith, P. D. and Kyburg, H. E. (eds.), Current Research in Philosophy of Science. East Lansing, Michigan: Philosophy of Science Association, pp. 94–117.Google Scholar
Gutting, G. (1979b), “Husserl and Scientific Realism”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 39: 42–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hacking, I. (1975), The Emergence of Probability. London: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Heidegger, M. (1977), “The End of Philosophy and the Task for Thinking”, Basic Writings. New York: Harper and Row, pp. 373–392.Google Scholar
Hesse, M. (1980), Revolutions and Reconstructions in the Philosophy of Science. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Husserl, E. (1970), The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Translated by David Carr. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Leplin, J. (ed.) (1984), Scientific Realism. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nickles, T. (ed.) (1980), Scientific Discovery, Logic, and Rationality. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quine, W. V. (1960), Word and Object. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Rorty, R. (1979), Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Searle, J. (1983), Intentionality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sellars, W. (1963), Science, Perception and Reality. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Sellars, W. (1965), “Scientific Realism or Irenic Instrumentalism”, in Cohen, R. and Wartofsky, M. (eds.), Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, volume 2. New York: Humanities Press, pp. 171–204.Google Scholar
Sokolowski, R. (1974), Husserlian Meditations. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Sokolowski, R. (1977), Review of Roman Ingarden, On the Motives which Led Husserl to Transcendental Idealism, Journal of Philosophy 74: 176–180.Google Scholar
Tiles, M. (1984), Bachelard: Science and Objectivity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar