Hermeneutics of experimental science in the context of the life-world

Patrick A. Heelan

pp. 7-50

in: Don Ihde, Richard Zaner (eds), Interdisciplinary phenomenology, Berlin, Springer, 1977

Abstract

Natural science, familiarly called "science," has a pervading presence and influence in our culture because it, more than any other form of knowledge, seems effectively to lay claim to the rigor, objectivity, permanence and universality that the Greeks sought as their emancipatory goal ¹ and the search for which, Husserl claims,² is the special teleology of the Western community. Natural science, then, developed within the total cultural and philosophical perspective of the West, which gave it impetus and which in turn derived sustenance from its achievements. As an element of our total culture, I shall call this "historical science." The critique of historical science, then, is a critique of a total cultural milieu.

Cited authors

Husserl Edmund