Of exact and inexact essences in modern physical science

Pierre Kerszberg

pp. 93-118

in: Lee Hardy, Lester Embree (eds), Phenomenology of natural science, Berlin, Springer, 1992

Abstract

Husserl has argued in the Crisis that the application of mathematics to the physical sciences (the Galilean project) has effected a rather superficial (non-phenomenological) reduction of the qualities proper to the concretely intuitable physical world. On the bash of a close analysis of the essential motivations and implications of Einstein'stheory of relativity, it is possible to argue that a parallel to the phenomenological method operates within the modern physical conceptions of space, time, and matter. The main issue turns around the ideal of exactness, as the development of these conceptions tends to include inexactness as a primary quality of the world.

Cited authors

Husserl Edmund