Husserl's Later Philosophy of Natural Science

Abstract

Husserl argues in the Crisis that the prevalent tradition of positive science in his time had a philosophical core, called by him "Galilean science", that mistook the quest for objective theory with the quest for truth. Husserl is here referring to Göttingen science of the Golden Years. For Husserl, theory "grows" out of the "soil" of the pre-scientific, that is, pre-theoretical, life-world. Scientific truth finally is to be sought not in theory but rather in the pragmatic-perceptual praxes of measurement. Husserl is faulted for taking measuring processes to be "infinitely perfectible". The dependence of new scientific phenomena on the existence of pri or "pre-scientific" inductive praxis is analyzed, also Husserl's residual objectivism and failure to appreciate the hermeneutical character of measurement. Though not a scientific (theory-)realist, neither was he an instrumentalist, but he was a scientific (phenomean-)realist.