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hmrnal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol. Vol. 4 No. 3. October 1973.

ON THE DIMENSIONS OF A PHENOMENOLOGY OFSCIENCE IN HUSSERL AND THE YOUNG DR.HEIDEGGERTHEODORE KISIEL

Our theme, "Phenomenology and Science,"* isproblematic in many ways. Even the interpretationof the little word "and," whether it is to be takenas integrating or disjunctive, thrusts us into the~ h i c k of the family feud between Husser! andHeidegger, as yet by no means settled among theirrespective followers. For Husser!, phenomenologyis the science of science, and the particularsciences are to find their fulfilment as branchesof the all-encompassing science of phenomenology.For Heidegger. in pursuit of what he considers tobe "a more faithful adherence to the principle ofphenomenology,"1 the disjunction between phenomenology and science becomes so sharp that herehe lets his most infamous pronouncement fall:"Science itself does not think." Yet the works ofthe very young and very Husserlian Heideggerclearly belong to the philosophy of science. AndHusser! himself insisted on a difference in levelbetween transcendental phenomenology andpositive science. Clearly then, the issue betweenHusser! and Heidegger on this point is none tooclear. What follows is dedicated in part to measuring the distance between Husser! and Heideggeron this issue.

But there is a related and more timely ramification to our theme. Recently, from various quartersand in various ways, the possibility of applyingphenomenology to the specific problems of thephilosophy even of natural science has beenbroached. But Husserl's programme for phenomenology as a science of science still remainsprogrammatic, and the efforts of Heidegger and

Merleau-Ponty supply not so much a specificphenomenology of science as rich veins of cluesyet to be mined. Current developments in thephilosophy of science promoted by other schoolssuggest that the time is ripe on the part of phenomenologists not only to specify precisely the tasksand bases of a phenomenology of science butfinally to test its fruitfulness in specific problems:l . In continental Europe, the assumption of certainelements from phenomenology into the metascience of ideology critique, the so-called"philosophical anthropology of knowledge" pro

posed in particular by Habermas and Apel. Forexample, Habermas' "cognitive interest" bearsmanifest relations to similar notions in Husser!and to Heidegger's comprehensive notion of"care" or "concern", and Apel's communicationapriori strongly suggests the social dimension ofthe Jifeworld.2. On this side of the continental divide, theemergence of a new anti-positivistic philosophyof science which emphasizes the ongoing processof research in actual historical context (Hanson,Kuhn, Toulmin), the role of subjectivity inscience (Polanyi) and a "presupposition theory ofmeaning":! (Feyerabend and all the others justmentioned).

But a confrontation of these trends by phenomenologists soon raises the same issue we beganwith. For the rationalist ideals of the Enlightenment operative in idealogy critique, the fusion oftheoretical and practical reason. and of freedomthrough reason as the ideal pole of history: theseideals are also operative in Husser!. But the discontinuous movement of the history of sciencesketched by T. S. Kuhn is more in keeping withHeidegger's epochal schema for history. Moreover, Husser! was a latecomer to the problems ofa historicity of scientific reason. The task ofspecifying the bases of phenomenology of science*This was the announced title of the paper delivered at the Edmund Husser! Conference at DePaul Universityof Chicago on November 12. 1971. What follows is a somewhat longer version of what then had to be abbreviated because of time limitations.l . Preface to William J. Richardson, S. J., Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought (The Hague:Nijhoff, 1963) pp. xiv-xv.2. Dudley Shapere's phrase. Cf. his "Meaning and Scientific Change," in Robert G. Colodny (ed.), Mind andCosmos (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1966) p. 50.

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is nowadays inevitably drawn into this openwound of phenomenology, into the issue of thehistoricity of the foundations themselves.In response to the foundational task. Husserl

outlined a system of foundations which are (1)apriori in character and (2) unified by the correlation of intentionality. Thus Husserl's way tophenomenology through the critical effort to foundthe positive sciences laboriously wends its wayfrom the empirical sciences to the formal aprioriof mathematics and pure logic, then to the material ontologies of regions which culminate in thecomprehensive ontology of the lifeworld, all ofwhich receive their ultimate grounding in thetranscendental subjectivity) For in Husserl'swords "the function of phenomenology is to provide transcendental rationality to all sciences, togive them a new and ultimate rationality, thetotally different rationality of all-sided clarity andintelligibility and thereby to transform them intobranches of a single absolute science."4 In fact,the positive sciences are themselves haunted bythis drive toward legitimation in perfect evidencewhich can only be fulfilled by a science of higherdignity.

Heidegger even now maintains that Husserl'sapproach to foundations remains completelyforeign to the historicity of thought. I t is in viewof this central issue that Heidegger was alreadydirectly confronting Husser! as early as his contribution to the 1929 Husserl-Festschrift under thetitle Vom Wesen der Grundes (On the Essence ofRationality). This same issue will underlie oursurvey of each in terms of their treatment ofspecific problems in the phenomenology ofscience. We turn first to Husserl's development.

Husser/'s ArcheologySo much is phenomenology a direct response tothe critical philosophical situation created by

modern science that it might even be said thatscience first had to manifest itself in its fullnessbefore phenomenology could come into being.Husser! says as much in a famous letter toLucien Levi-Bruhl. Merleau-Ponty echoes thisletter in the following words: "Phenomenologycould never have come about . .. prior to theconstruction of science. It measures the distancebetween our experience and this science. Howcould it ignore it? How could it precede it?";

Even the name "phenomenology" was in partadapted or at least reinforced from a trend inphysics itself, which attempted to give concretecontent to scientific theories by a direct description of their relevant phenomena. Husser! viewedthis effort of the late nineteenth century on thepart of Ernst Mach and others as "a reactionagainst a theorizing through mathematical speculations, which form concepts far removed fromintuition. accordingly a theorizing in which anintuitive clarity into the legitimate sense andachievement of the theories is not attained."C

From this. we gather that the crisis to whichphenomenology responds is a crisis of distance.the distance that gradually opened between thesciences and life, thereby making it difficult tofound the significance of their abstractions in andfor concrete life. Such was the theme of phenomenology not only as specified in the Crisis - which formulation we have just paraphrased -but even the germinal task for Husser! alreadyin his first work. Philosophie der A rithmetik.Two points in particular are to be noted in thisearly work: (1) Husser! attempts to reactivate theoriginal sense of the most basic concepts ofarithmetic by tracing their roots to what later willbe called the Gestalt structures of perception, thisat a time when Ehrenfels was just beginning topublish his pioneering papers on Gestalt psycho-

3. An account of this way is to be found in the essay ''Phenomenology as the Science of Science" in JosephJ. Kockelmans and Theodore J. Kisiel, Phenomenology and the Natural Sciences (Evanston: NorthwesternU.P., 1970) pp. 5-44. . ..4. Edmund Husser!, Erste Philosophie (1923-24) Vol. II, Husserliana Vlll, ed. R. Boehm (The Hague: NI]hoff,1959) p. 358. .5. Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The Primacy of Perception and oilier cssavs, ed. James M. Ed1e (Evanston,Northwestern U.P., 1964) p. 29.6. Edmund Husser], Phiinomeno/ogische Psychologic (1925). 1-lusserliana lX. ed. Walter Biemal (The Hague:Nijhoff, 1962) p. 302.

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l o g y . ~ Husserl is thus already moving toward aradically different conception of experience, onealready thickened by a richness of human meaning, than that which vitiated Mach's phenomenalism and all positivistic philosophy of sciencesince, of an experience described in terms of thethin immediacy of atomic sensations. Decadeslater, Merleau-Ponty was to go much further indeveloping for phenomenology a thoroughgoingtheory of perception, the indispensable basis forany philosophy of science. (2) Against Frege,Husser! insists that arithmetic cannot be foundedby an exhaustive formal-logical definition of itsmost elementary concepts, and seeks rather anintuitive description of how we come to theintrinsically indefinable concepts of number,plurality, unity and the l i k e . < ~ ' The "ground"concepts of sciences are to be clarified rather thandefined, and this task will become central in thephenomenology of science. Husser! thereby locatesthe ideal of knowledge in a direct intuition of theideational order rather than in the deductivemathesis which had been the governing ideal sinceDescartes.

And yet Husserl's next major effort movesdirectly into the neighbourhood of the very deductive systems which remove empirical sciencesfrom their intuitive origins. But the same drive toultimate origins incipiently reasserts itself inanother, non-psychological way in the Logicallnvesti[;ations. For the basic insight against logicalp'ychologism, the doctrine of the ideal object thatremains identically the same in and through themultiplicity of acts in which it is grasped, willbecome the basis for an ontological dimensionwitnin formal logic itself. When formal ontologyand the concomitant theory of manifolds areadequately situated in a pure logic of meaning,the way is paved to trace their forms of a possibleworld back to the world in which we live.

Here is Husserl's antidote to the highly technical and functionalized mathematical logic then in

the initial stages of its development, a development that he viewed as perfectly natural, while atthe same time potentially dangerous in its unfounded status. For a logician or mathematician,like all working scientists, fortunately does notneed the full clairvoyance of essential insight intohis basic concepts in order to pursue his research,but only a certain "scientific instinct" coupledwith his method. He is like an artist who createswithout being particularly aware of the basis forhis performance. He possesses a certain "technicalrationality" of his science, a relative and onesided rationality which leaves the other side incomplete irrationality and obscurity. It is only inmoments of crisis that the scientist feels the needto clarify the more original presuppositions underlying his research. It belongs to the philosopher toassume this clarification as a continuing and neverending task.

This natural tendency in science toward obfuscation of foundations, already sounded in theLogical Investigations,9 becomes an increasinglyimportant theme for Husser!. In the later works, itsurfaces as a Sinnentleerung, a process of thedepletion of intuitive sense in the progressivedevelopment of a science. Husser! now sees thisnatural tendency to be severely aggravated andexaggerated by a naturalistic Zeitgeist. For whenthe philosophical temper of the times is naturalistic, when the irrational fact is accepted as the lastcourt of appeal, when the task of science isreduced to mathematical manipulation of thesefacts, then the process of Sinnentleerung is left toreign unchecked. A scientific theory finally comesto be viewed as a mere calculating device, accompanied by only a bare minimum of the rationalinsight that the Greeks honoured with the nameof theory. Theorizing is reduced to a subtlemental game with symbols. in effect on a par withthe typical engineering student going through his"math" problems. In Husserl's words, "oneworks with letters according to the rules of the

7. Cf. Philosophic der Arirhmetik, ed. Lothar Eley, Husserliana XII (The Hague: Nijhotf. 1970) pp. 210-2Iln.8. Ibid., p. 119. This particular critique of Frege still holds. I believe, despite Husscrl's general retraction ofthese pages in the Logical Investigations. trans!. J. N. Findlay (New York: Humanities, 1970) vol. I, 45.p. 179n. Cf. Marvin Farber, The Foundation of Phenomenology (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard U.P., 1943)p. 38.9. Op. cit., 4. 54 and 71.

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game, as in cards and chess. The original thoughtthat gives this technique its proper meaning is thusobscured."lO Accordingly, "the rationality of exactscience is in direct line with the rationality of theEgyptian pyramids."11 Heidegger will extend thisdiscussion of the technical character of scientificrationality. His themes of calculative thinkingand of technology as an ontological power inscience are already present in ovo in Husserl'sdescription of the "technology of knowledge" inthe Prologomena of 1900.Another side of the same problem is objectivism. In the obfuscation of their original experiential senses as well as of the processes of idealization and formalization by which they are derivedfrom the lifeworld, the algorithmic entities of

science acquire a seeming autonomy and can betaught without reference to their foundations.One thereby tends to forget that these are mentalconstructions and therefore also the "how" of theconstructive activities and that out of which theyare constructed. With the apparent autonomy thatthe algorithmic entities acquire, it is now an easystep to the declaration that this scientific world isthe really real world as it is in itself, and that thechiaroscuro lifeworld is only a world of appearance. The constructed universe derived throughthe mathematization of nature thus comes to beviewed as a replacement rather than the modifica-tion of the lifeworld that it is. I t is to reverse thisobjectivistic tendency of the age that Husser! callsfor an ontology of the lifeworld in relation towhich the mathematical manifold is shown to beonly an overcoat of ideas. Hence one aprioriscience based on eidetic intuition is evoked tocounter another utilizing mathematical construction. The eidetic ontology is to establish theinvariant content of the perceptual and culturalexperience of the lifeworld, the very same contentwhich mathematization then transforms into theclear and distinct ideal dressing that comes to besuperimposed over the intuitive given. Since theevidence of the lifeworld is the evidence of experience, from Husserl's transcendental point of viewit is the lifeworld truth rather than the natural

scientific truth which is considered the moreauthentic truth. The transcendental sense of ascience like mathematical physics is therefore tobe established by tracing its structures back to thestructures of the world-experiencing life.For the malady of our technological age,Husser! thus prescribes the thoroughgoing rationality of phenomenology, which seeks to rationalizeeven the given, the doxa of everyday knowledge.The scientific constellations of meaning are to beviewed within the context of the total field ofmeaning. The activities and motivations of theworking scientist are to be traced to their transcendental origins. So, for example, in the problemof analysing fundamental concepts, it is a matterof "undressing" the concept of its logical andformal clothing in order to reveal the naked given"in the flesh" (leibhaft), and further, to determinethe how of this givenness in the transcendentalfield of experience. It is against the background ofthis contextual network of meanings whichprecede science that a fundamental scientificconcept is to be assessed.

CritiqueOne cannot help being impressed by the overriding return to origins deeper and broader than

science itself which phenomenology pursues,winning for it the etymological synonym of"archeology". But it is precisely this radicalismthat has also promoted profound misgivings forphenomenologists concerned with the problematicof science itself. For does not the reduction toorigins other than science place in jeopardy theentire endeavour of a phenomenology of science?Is not the archeological sense of natural scienceemphasized to the point that radical phenomenology no longer does justice to the internal senseof the science itself? In demystifying the ideological claims of objectivism, which pretends tosecure a world in itself, and in reducing thescientifically constructed world of formal meaningto the intuitive meanings of the lifeworld, doesnot Husserl at the same time "reduce" to the

10. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental PhenomenoloJ:y, transl. David Carr (Evanston: North-western U.P., 1970) 9g, p. 46. My free rendering of this passage.II . Ibid., Appendix I, p. 295.220


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vanishing point a certain limited validity ofscience's claim to establish a domain of senseover and above the lifeworld? Is it because themost extensive Husserlian treatment of mathematical physics takes place in the context ofresisting the exaggerations of objectivism and themechanical technization of knowledge that thenegative theme of Sinnentleerung tends to overshadow the positive sense of natural science?One need only to consult commentaries onthese Husserlian texts in order to note the tendency on the part of phenomenologists themselvesto equate the intrinsic sense of physics with (1)its technical sense and (2) even worse, with theaberrant metaphysical assumptions of objectivism.But quite often, the very problem of the intrinsicvalidity of mathematical physics is literally over-shot and overshadowed by the larger problem of"the significance of science for life"Jt How muchthe task of founding science in its larger humancontext is essentially tied to the more specific taskof determining the proximate foundations of thescience is generally not confronted. The solutionto this difficulty lies in the recognition of therelation between the different types of foundationsthat science has.In this regard, perhaps the metaphor of the

"ground" has not been exploited to its fullest.The ultimate foundation according to phenomenology is the transcendental field of the "worldexperiencing life". It is in the nutritive soil of thisfield that the plant of science finds its roots.However. not only science but also language, art,society, morality, religion and other humanendeavours are cultivated from this soil. Theimmediate task of a phenomenology of science isto seek out the proximate origins of science, i.e.not the soil itself. but the seed of science thattook root in this soil, and to trace the growth ofeach of its plants according to its own guidingtelos as well as in terms of its assimilation of theelements from the soil. And to extend the metaphor further, perhaps the soil needs preparation.even a fertilizing catalyst, before the scientificplant can hope to flourish, i.e. a certain level of

cultivation in the form of language and other"strata" of human culture. Moreover, underlyingthe efforts towards organized cultivation of thejungle of natural growth, is the possibility of theevolution of the earth itself. In other words, onemust take into account the possibility of a historicity of the ground itself.

This extended metaphor may now help toorient us in the assessment of various dimensionsof the conception of phenomenology as an archeology. Some of the classical critiques of Husserl'sphenomenology of science suggest at least thefollowing topics for consideration: (1) the primacyof perception, (2) the significance of scientificformalization, and (3) the essence of historicity.(1) The neo-Kantians of Husserl's day alreadysaw in his doctrine of the primacy of intuition acommitment to perception as the prototype ofknowledge. Critical philosophy since Kant concentrated on the question of the apriori conditionsof possibility of theoretical objects and endeavoured to validate scientific knowledge by constructingthese theoretical objects through the synthesis ofa transcendental-logical form with a given content.

From its perspective, therefore, Husserl's intuitionism seemed to shift the locus of knowledge to theprelogical and pretheoretical. thereby doingviolence to the essential character of scientificknowledge.The classical response to this objection is to befound in the almost notorious article written byEugen Fink in 1933 and blessed by Husserl'sunequivocal authorization. Fink points out thatthe primacy of intuition does not necessarilyentail the primacy of perception. For perception

is only one instance of knowledge as a selfgivenness of things with evidence. Categorialintuition, for example, is not necessarily a knowledge achieved in one stroke. but may require along and complex process in order to be fulfilled.It is this fulfilment that is of the essence ofintuition, which accordingly is primary only inrelation to the signitive act, the empty intentiondevoid of evidence. What is new in Husser! is the

12. !bid., 2, p. 5. Menschliches Dasein is here translated as "life'' by me in keeping with its ties with thetifeworld.221


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intentional essence of evidence, of evidence as thebasic mode of intentionality, which always has asits opposite the mode of empty i n t e n t i o n . " ~

To which might be added, to anticipate theissue of historicity, that it is from this intentionalcharacter of evidence, whose goal is self-givenness,that conscious life assumes a teleological character. And when it is finally admitted that apodicticand adequate evidence is a regulative idea, anideal pole, then this life situates itself between thearcheology and teleology of human reason andfinds itself posed with a never-ending task. In itsmore advanced history. this life must labourmightily for its intuition, i.e. for the more extensive logical intuitions of the abstract structure ofscience.

Merleau-Ponty in particular has made the'primacy of perception" central to phenomenology. And yet he also tells us that we cannot letperception have a monopoly on truthJ.I Sciencefinds itself both motivated by the perceptual worldand free in the translation of its text into formalstructures. Perceptual structures are thus necessarybut not sufficient conditions for science. Science isnot merely a variant of perception, just as perception is not an incipient science. On the one hand,science only deepens the relations alreadyoutlined in the perceived world. whose vaguetypicality motivates its search. But on the otherhand, through its free variation, science transformsand even enriches these perceptual structures byrefining them to their purity. Its contributiontherefore cannot be a defect but an excess ofknowledge. But in the course of the process. itintroduces the distance of idealization betweenitself and the perceptual world. Formalization cutsboth ways: The Galilean genius both discoversand conceals. Such is the price that the scientistmust pay for his exactness, finding that he must

constantly correct for the remotions of hisidealized schematismsJ" The scientific modification of the lifeworld thus suggests a dialecticbetween perceptual origin and the continuing andnever-ending formalization of it in the historicalmovement of science.The crucial issue then devolves upon the interpretation of the identity and difference betweenthe terms that interplay within this dialectic. Whatis the ultimate sense of the structural "sameness"between science and the lifeworld that Husser!affirms in the Crisis?lfi Are the structures of theJifeworld retained in the internal conceptualstructures of science in a simple Auflzebung thatleaves the former unchanged while merely ideali:J;ing them, as Marcuse concludes?ll Or is the gulfbetween experience and thought unbridgeable tothe point that a "certain phenomenological discontinuity" must ultimately be affirmed. asMohanty concludes?IS Or is a principle of continuity a la John Dewey,J-? which excludes bothmere repetition and complete rupture. sufficientto account for the emergence of the rea 1 differences instituted by the "novelty" that science is?(2) Curiously, if we follow Cavailles' interpretation, Husserl defines the role and significance ofscientific formalization in a way that makes even

the question of continuity versus discontinuityacademic. Especially in his later works, Husser!seems to reinforce the overwhelming privilege ofthe primitive by granting to science only a technical function in relation to perception. Thus thefavourite theses of logical positivism in its nadirof instrumentalism and operationalism still seemto lurk behind Husserl's formulations of his ownphenomenological positivism: the empty languageof mathematics is applied to the invariant mass ofthe lifeworld merely in order to acquire a measureof predictive control over it. Physical theories arethus reduced to merely an abstract interlude and

13. Eugen Fink. "The Phenomenological Philosophy of Edmund Husser! and Contemporary Criticism," in ThePhenomenoloRy of Husser/, trans!. R. 0. Elveton (Chicago: Quadrangle. 1970) pp. 73-147. e


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useful complication in our practical concerns, andtherefore can be suppressed at any time withoutthe loss of any real knowledge.toBut ever since Godel's results, the orthodoxview of mathematics as a tautology, a deductivenomology in which the initial axioms implicitlycontain all that comes after, cannot be maintainedfor most mathematical and logical systems.Cavailles even questions whether any philosophyof consciousness is capable of coming to termswith the nature of a movement which now seemsto generate its own contents. The deductive modelof an initial fixation from which a linear series ofjuxtaposed results is directly explicated is nowreplaced by the suggestion of a discontinuousseries that brings suppression as well as resumption, interruptions in the movement and a complicated branching out into a proliferation ofdirections not evident from the initial positing ofaxioms.2J "The rational increases by reorganizingitself, by continually making new starts fromenlarged bases as more and more complex rationalstructures establish themselves. In this way anoriginal power is always active in the very development of rational science."2 The teleology ofscience thus seems to generate a surplus of sensethat exceeds the promise of its archeology.Because of this unexpected turn of events. the

reductive approach of .radical phenomenologyfalls short in its assessment of the potentials ofscientific advance. Another model is therebysuggested, that of a dialectical movement betweenintuitive given and its formalization in andthrough the mutually fertilizing tension betweenthe concretizing and the abstractive tendency ofthought. Science finds its full sense between thetwo irresoluble horizons of given and system.The attempt to resolve these horizons alwaysexposes an unbridgeable gap, which is at it werethe fount of continual surprises in the life ofscience,.N

(3) Thus the two issues of the primacy of perception and the significance of formalizationinevitably lead to the third and most central forour topic, the essence of the historicity of science.And here we encounter the same reductiveambiguities, which have provoked from Cavaillcsthe charge of a "myth of the return to the p a s t " ~ ' ) and from J. N. Findlay at the recent SPEP!:;meeting the charge of romantic primitivism. Thereis of course no question of empirical primitivismhere, since the issue concerns the genesis of meaning and not of fact. Nevertheless, the explicitemphasis of Husserl's treatment of historicityfavours the archeological regression to historicalorigins, to the perceived bedrock hidden undermore advanced sedimentations and to the originating motivations that prompted departure fromit. Husserl's antiquarian interests even lead himto identify his historical investigations with aRuckfrage toward origins. "For a genuine historyof philosophy, a genuine history of the particularsciences, is nothing but the reduction of thehistorical sense-formations or evidences given inthe present - along the documented chain ofhistorical references - back to the concealeddimension of primal evidences that underliethem."!!/

And yet, in Husserl's favour, it must also bestated that the teleology that emerges from theseorigins is also kept in view. Even though geneticanalysis has a way of separating the receptiveexperience from the predicative production, nodeprecation of categorial activity is intended. Thetwo levels always work alternately and in reciprocal influence toward the achievement of meaning.And ultimately the vague uncrystallized meaningsof prepredicative experience find their teleologicalfulfilment precisely in the categorial productions.The only difficulty is that our enthusiasm for thegoal tends to make us forget the origin. It isprecisely this tendency that Husser! seeks to

20. Jean Cavailles, "On Logic and the Theory of Science," in Kockelmans and Kisiel, op. cit., pp. 351. 401-8.21. Ibid., pp. 404-9.22. Suzanne Bachelard, "Phenomenology and Mathematical Physics," Ibid., p. 516.23. Theodore Kisiel, "Husserl on the History of Science," Ibid., pp. 85-88. Cf. also the two essays by JeanLadriere in this collection.24. I bid., p. 408.25. Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, New Orleans, October 28-30, 1971.26. Crisis, pp. 372-3.

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counteract.:!!Moreover. there is Husserl's discussion of thehistorical teleology of European man in the Idea ofphilosophy as science and the erratic modern

development of science with its telos of nature asa mathematical manifold. In both cases. the goalis seen as a Platonic-Kantian ideal of an infinitepole of truth in itself. For Husserl, this becomesthe goal of apodictic evidence which philosophyand its scientific branches approach asymptotically. For Heidegger, by contrast. the indefinabilityof ground concepts is already an index of theinexhaustibility of the ground into which theseconcepts sink their roots. to the point that eventhe goal no longer remains fixed. A constant regulative idea is replaced by temporary teleologieswhich are given up as particular projects exhausttheir possibilities.!,\

Which leads to a final objection: the kinds of"historical" apriori that Husserl seeks are stilleidetically invariant and therefore supra-historicalto the movement of history. The treatment of thehistoricity of history, essential to current philosophical problems arising from the history ofscience such as progress. historical continuity anddiscovery, is sparse. One begins to perceive theprecise dimensions of Heidegger's charge that the"historicity of thought remained completelyforeign to such a position."!''The Young Heidegger' s Logical Conception

of ScienceBy contrast, Heidegger's futuristic conception

of phenomenology promises a basis for the solution of the very problems of the philosophy ofscience which Husser! does not confront head-on.And the surprising thing is that this preference forthe future is already present in avo in the onlywork purely in the philosophy of science writtenby the young student Heidegger strongly underthe influence of Husserl.

In an article on "Heidegger's Critique ofScience," Fr. Richardson opens with the following remark: "O n the longest day he ever lived,Heidegger could never be called a philosopher ofscience."f11 I suggest that July 27, 1915 was justsuch a day. For on that day, the young Dr.Heidegger held his demonstration lecture, entitled"Der Zeitbegriff in der Geschichtswissenschaft,"before the philosophical faculty at the Universityof Freiburg, conceiving it precisely as the investigation of a particular problem in the philosophyof science. This lecture by the 25-year-old Heidegger may well serve as a basis for our venture inHeidegger's phenomenology of science.

Beginning with the university student of theyears 1909-1915, we discover a very HusserlianHeidegger enthralled by the Logical Investigationsand deeply committed to developing their implications in specific problems of logic and thephilosophy of science. In one of his recent autobiographical declarations, Heidegger speaks ofthe fascination which the Logical Investigationsexerted on him, and of "the magic which emanatedfrom the work".n This display of superlatives by

'27. Edmund Husser), Erfahrung und Urteil (Hamburg: Claassen, 3, 1964) pp. 44, 239-240. Cf. Suzanne Bachelard, A Study of Husser/'s Formal and Transcendenat Logic, transl. Lester E. Embree (Evanston: North-western U.P., 1968) pp. 153-4; Robert Sokolowski, The Formation of Husserl's Concept of ConstitutionTh e Hague: Nijhoff, 1964) pp. 171-2. The need to methodically ''zigzag" (e.g. Crisis, 9g, p. 58) in analysing the sedimented strata is itself an affirmation of their intertwining an d interplay.28. Perhaps even the term "teleology" no longer applies to Heidegger's later metaphor of the "woodpath"which abruptly trails off into the untrodden. which meanders within the wood without leading to anywhereoutside. Ct. Hannah Arendt, "Martin Heidegger at Eighty," The Ne w York Review of Books XVII, No. 6(October 21, 1971) pp. 50-54, esp. p. 51. Heidegger's description of his own Denkweg is thus described as"the attempt to walk a path of which I did no t know where it would lead. I know only the most immediateshort-range perspectives along that path, because they beckoned to me unceasingly, while the horizonshifted and darkened more than once." On the Way to Language, transl. Peter D. Hertz (New York:Harper & Row, 1971) p. 6.29. Preface to Richardson, op. cit., pp. XIV-XV.30. New Scholasticism 42 (1968) 511-536. But he condudes by suggesting how a philosophy of science couldbe developed within a Heideggerian framework.31. Martin Heidegger, Zur Sache des Denkens (Tiibingen: Niemeyer, 1969) p. 82. "Yet I remained so struckby Husserl's work that in the following years 1 read it again and again without sufficient insight into justwhat fascinated me."

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tne old Heidegger ecnoes the first published workby the young Heidegger in 1912, a progress reporton research in logic, in which he refers to"Husserl's penetrating and extremely fortunatelyformulated investigations.";/! Engaged at firstwith Aristotelian-scholastic philosophy andtheology and studying in the stronghold of thesouthwest German school of neo-Kantianismunder the foremost of its exponents, Heideggernevertheless tells us that Husserl's influence datesearlier, from the very first semester at the university, lasted longer and was more far-reaching thanthe others. Perhaps one could even defend thethesis that most, if not all, of the Kantian echoesone wishes to hear in Heidegger's first publicationson logic and the theory of science already resoundin the Logical Investigations themselves, and aremerely reinforced for Heidegger by his neoKantian mentors. An intensive reading of theLogical Investigations during these early years isevident not only in the explicit problematic buteven in the interstitial detail of these early works.It is well known that Heidegger's dissertation dealswith the "Doctrine of Judgment in Psychologism"after the pattern set by the Prole{?omena, and thathis Habilitationschrift is an exposition of a medieval anticipation of the apriori logical grammarwhich Husser! outlined in the fourth investigation.

But it is less recognized that the 1915 demonstration lecture by the young Dr. Heidegger isequally an attempt to apply Husserl's generalprogramme of logic as a theory of science toparticular problems. And what emerges in theopening pages of Husserl's Prolegomena is ateleological definition of science which impressedHeidegger so deeply that he not only makes it thebasis of his approach in 1915 but is still explicitly

avowing it in his magnum opus of 1927.-JJ In hisearly lecture, Heidegger lays down the methodological principle that the logical structuresof the ground concepts of a particularscience are to be determined on the basisof the aim of that science. Husser! himselfsanctions just such an approach when he suggeststhat science in all of its facets is to be assessedin terms of its e n d J ~ And the goal of science,generally speaking, is specified by Husser! withone of those pregnant German words which seemsto have fascinated the already word-consciousHeidegger. This single word, Begrundungszusam-menhang;J!j specifies first the systematic unity thatall science aims at, and second, that this unity ofcoherence consists of grounded demonstration.The essence of science accordingly resides in theideal unity that comes from the "systematiccoherence of demonstrated grounds," a goal whichis constitutive of its truth.

Important for our purposes is the point thatthere are not only typical systematic forms common to all the sciences, whose exposition belongsto pure logic, but also principles of coherencepeculiar to each science according to the respective objectives of each,36 whose elucidation belongsto the philosophy of those particular sciences. It isprecisely on the basis of the unique structuralcomplexes aimed at by natural and by historicalscience that the Heidegger of 1915 proposes todetermine their respective concepts of time.No doubt other influences of that time wereoperative in Heidegger's formulation of his basictask. Particularly decisive could have been JonasCohn's book of 1908, entitled Voraussetzungenund Ziele des ErkennensJI which Husserl himself

32. "Neuere Forschungen tiber Logik," Literarische Rundschau filr das katholische Deutschland 38 (1912)column 467.33. Sein und Zeit (Tiibingen: Niemeyer, 1957) pp. 11, 357.34. Logical Investigations I, 11, p. 71.35. Ibid., 6, 63. Cf. Gerd Brand, Gesellschaft und personliche Geschichte (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1972) pp.16 ff. Working out of the Husserlian tradition, this book bases itself precisely on the notion of rationalityas Begriindungszusammenhang.36. Ibid., 8, p. 67. Compare Heidegger's review of Charles Sentroul's Kant und Aristoteles, in LiterarischeRundschau fiir das katholische Deutschland 40 (1914), esp. column 332. Here (c. 331) Kant's problematicis said to belong to the philosophy of science. In Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (1925-9), Heidegger turns against his neo-Kantian upbringing by taking Kant's problematic as fundamentally metaphysical.37. The subtitle is Untersuchungen iiber die Grundfragen der Logik (Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann, 1908).Heidegger first cites this work in "Neuere Forschungen tiber Logik" (1912), c. 522, n. 2, along withHeinrich Rickert's Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis (Tiibingen: Mohr, 2, 1904), where the issue of the goalof science is raised on pp. 1, 8, 28, 173, 204. Cf. also Heinrich Rickert, Die Grenzen der naturwissen-schaftlichen Begriffsbildung (Tiibingen: Mohr, 1902) pp. III. 31. 36. 49, 103, 117. 124. 139. 680.225


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is known to have read soon after it appeared andpraised highly.3s Cohn. a follower of Rickert, alsotaught at Freiburg during Heidegger's studentdays. As the title indicates, the book treats theparadoxical circular relationship between the presuppositions and goals of knowledge. The aims ofknowledge, which enable it, must be presupposedfrom the start. In relation to science conceived asa body of propositions already on hand or as anongoing pursuit, the conception of it in terms of itsaim transforms "science" into a normative concept, and accordingly a sought-for but unattainable ideal. And the grounded coherence ofjudgments which is the general aim of science hastruth as its guiding value. This principle ofjudicative coherence varies with the particularscience and does not necessarily prescribe adirection of coherence that progresses linearly.The problem of the truth value of science, therelation of the judicative context to the context ofreality. leads to the problem of a doctrine ofcategories. For categories are forms that pertainto the context of reality and serve to ground itsknowability. In short, the categories serve to makea context (Zusammenhang) out of reality, ormore phenomenologically, to constitute reality asa context. Hence a theory of science ultimatelygravitates to the categories or fundamental concepts of a science as to its "last objects." and thesecan only be justified through their necessity forthe context to be investigated and determinedthrough their methodological relation to otherobjects)!'

As we now know from his recent autobiographical statements, reference to the categories hasfrom his Gymnasium days been for Heidegger theroad to ontology.VJ Brentano's dissertation on themanifold sense of Being in Aristotle (1862),Husserl's Logical Investigations (1900-l), Cohn'sbook ( 1908), Emil Lask's Die Logik der Philo-sophie und die Kategorienlehre (1911), Heidegger's

own thesis on the doctrine of categories of DunsScotus alias Thomas of Erfurt (1915): all of theseare early stepping stones along the way to hishermeneutical phenomenology, which crests in thedoctrine of existential categories in Being andTime and the predilection for the basic conceptsof the West emerging from their pre-Socraticground.This shift from an epistemological to the ontological perspective lies at the background of the1915 lecture, as evidenced by Heidegger's openingreference to a certain "metaphysical pressure''.,{]then manifesting itself in critical epistemology.and to the indispensability of an ultimate metaphysical foundation for the problems of thephilosophy of science. But with this brief glance

at the Zeitgeist, he then turns to the problems ofexposing the "logical" foundations (or better,"epistemological," since logic is here taken in thebroad sense) of the particular sciences. The exposition of the "logical" structure of the groundconcept of time in natural and historical scienceis to be a contribution in this direction. And yet,as we shall see, within this epistemologicallyoriented lecture the ontological exigence alreadybegins to manifest itself.

Now to an outline of the essentials of thelecture. Generally speaking, the logical structureof a ground concept is to be exposed from itsfunction in the science, which in turn is determined by the aim of the science. Thus the issueof the lecture specifically formulated becomes:"What structure must the concept of time inhistoriology have in order to be able to functionas the time-concept appropriate to the aim of thisscience?"J! To answer this question, no particularphilosophical theory of historiology is to bepresupposed, i.e. a bracketing of sorts. Instead wemust go to actual historiology itself, we begin withthe science accepted as a fact.

38. lso Kern. Husser/ und Kant (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1964) p. 33.39. Jonas Cohn. Voraussetzum;en und Zie/e des Erkenncns. pp. 2-6, 313-334. 353-361, 404-5, 426, 451-2.40. "'Doctrine of categories' is the usual name of the di>cussion of the Being of beings." On the Way toLanguage, p. 6.41. "Der Zeitbegriff in der Geschichtswissenschaft." Ze itschrift fiir Phi/vsophie und philvsophische Kritik 161(1916) pp. 173-188; p. 173.42. I bid., p. 175.

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But in order to focus more sharply the distinctive character of the concept of time in historiology, Heidegger proposes first to conduct a parallelinvestigation of the concept of time in physics.The aim of physics is read off by Heidegger fromthe fundamental tendency - he will later call itthe "project" of physics - that it exhibits fromGalileo to the present, which distinguishes it fromancient and medieval natural philosophy.4J But itsoon becomes evident that the determination ofthe aim of a particular science is no simple anddirect matter. In order to elucidate the end ofphysics, Heidegger in fact examines the means tothis end, i.e. its method, from which he exposesthe determinants of the method that constitute theaim of the science. And what ultimatelydetermines the method is the object of thescience and the viewpoint from which theobject is consideredJI The aim of ascience accordingly manifests the structure"something as something." as the more hermeneutical later Heidegger will put it. Theobject of modern physics is the law-governedsystem of the movements of nature, and theselawlike relations in the manifold of natural phenomena are considered in an idealized way andgrasped mathematically. The goal of modernphysics is accordingly the reduction of all appearances to the mathematically ascertainable basiclaws of motion that constitute a generaldynamics.-!;

What then is the function of "time" in themathematical determination of the systematic~ o h e r e n c e of natural motion? There is a manifestrelation between motion and time, and in thiscontext motion becomes the integral sum of thetemporally successive positions of a materialpoint. Time accordingly serves to enable themeasurement of motion as change of place interms of the magnitudes of velocity and acceleration. In order to perform its function of quantitative determination, its logical structure musttherefore have the homogeneous character of a43. I bid., p. 176n.4-l-. Ibid., p. 174.45. Ibid., p. 178.46. Ibid., p. 183.47. Sein 11nd Zeit, p. 393.

scale or parameter that orders position uniformly.Time is the independent variable that changes ina constant way, i.e. flows without leaps from pointto point.Heidcgger's treatment of historical sciencemanifests at least the terminological influence ofRickert's theory of history. The object of historiology is said to be man as creator of culture andthe resulting objectifications of his spirit. The pointof view is their relation to value, which guides theselection of what is to be considered historicalfrom the fullness of the given. "Accordingly theaim of historiology is to represent the operativeand developmental system and interconnection ofthe objectifications of human life in their unique

ness. which can be understood in terms of theirrelevance to cultural v a l u e s . " - ~ G Time functions todistinguish qualitatively one epoch from another,according to the unique character of the Zeitgeist,and thereby, on the basis of these qualitativetraits, to place e.g. suspect factual sources intotheir proper time. The qualitative structure of thetime of history, essentially related to the meaningful achievements of a period, involves as it werethe crystallization or thickening of particularobjectifications given in history. Even thoughchronological reckoning of historical time ispossible, it is always based on a historicallymeaningful event (birth of Christ, founding ofRome, the Hegira). in keeping with the qualitativevalues of history.

The Existential Conception of ScienceIt is well-known that Heidegger in Being andTime backtracks to a more original pre-scientifictime that precedes any scientific conceptualizationof it. In fact, so basic is this original temporalitythat even the teleological "Idea" of sciences likehistory and mathematical physics are to be traced

back to it.F According to Heidegger now, sciencein all of its dimensions finds its existential sourceand ontological structure in the temporality ofDasein. In this shift from logic to existence, from

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epistemology to "fundamental" ontology, we findonce again the reductionism of phenomenologicalradicalism and apriorism that shifts the center ofgravity from the foundations within science tomore original foundations which envelop it. Butnow, even though the general intent of the regressfinds its inspiration in Husser!, Heidegger seeshimself parting ways with his old mentor preciselyon the issue "of the Essence of Ground," as heclearly indicates in his contribution bearing thistitle in the Husserl-Festschrift of 1929, for thesake of what he considers to be "a more faithfuladherence to the principle of phenomenology".The problem is still Husserlian, namely, thetranscendental constitution of the world,iS but insituating this in the temporal project of Dasein,Heidegger marks out a path that leads to theradical temporalizing and ontologizing of theconception of "phenomenological foundation";whether of science or anything else. No longer the"living present" of a transcendental ego, but thefuturizing project of Dasein; not the perceptualinvariants of a lifeworld, but the intrinsicallyhistorical structures of Being-in-the-world. Thegenesis is no longer described in terms of a mentaloperation of idealization motivated by the vaguetypicality of the world of perception, but rather asthe hermeneutical process of a mathematicalproject which is determined by latent senses given

in one's historical situation. From the vantagepoint of a phenomenology of science, Heideggerthereby overrides the issue of the role of perception in science, but gains in providing a basis forthe problems of the historicity of science. With thecenterline of discussion now in the conceptualarticulation of "something as something," theground begins to gravitate to language rather thanperception.

The more comprehensive ground achieved inBeing and Time now gives us vantage to evaluatethe approach to science employed in the 1915lectHre. Heidegger himself still sees a limitedvalidity in utilizing the factual content of sciences- their fundamental concepts, for example -- ,"but only as a possible clue to the primordialconstitution of the Being of history or nature. forexample ... which must itself be constantlysubjected to the sort of criticism that has alreadytaken its bearings in the fundamental problematicof all inquiry into the Being of being."i'1Ontological evaluation of the basic concepts of ascience accordingly requires the prior determination of the pre-scientific content which "consolidates itself" in such conceptions. Strikingly, theelements of consolidation are now discussed interms similar to 1915, in terms of the projected"what" and "how" of the Being of the domain,

48. Cf. the first enclosure to Heidegger's letter of October 22, 1927, to Husserl, in Plziinomeno/ogisclze Psycho-logie, p. 601. Husserl's letters to Ingarden of the same period document the beginnings of his disenchantment with Heidegger. April 9, 1927: "You simply must go to Marburg to experience at first hand Prof.Heidegger's great and earnest originality." November 19, 1927: "Heidegger has become my close friendand I consider myself one of his admirers, which makes me regret all the more that his work (and hislectures as well) in method and content appear to be essentially different from mine. and at least at themoment none of our mutual students have provided any bridge between us. A great deal is at stake forfuture philosophy on how an d whether he works his way through to an understanding of my generalintuitions. Unfortunately. I had nothing to do with his philosophical formation. he evidently had alreadydeveloped his unique style when he studied my writings. He is now a power house, absolutely honest andambitious, directed simply to the things themselves. Every great onesidedness, that of genuinely selfmadethinkers, blazes the trail to what is new. Let us hope so." December 26. 1927: "I allow myself to becomedepressed by the kind of impact that my publications have and by the fact that my better students overlook the depth dimension that l point to and, instead of finishing what 1 have started, time and againprefer to go their own way. So also Heidegger, this natural power of a genius, who carries all the youthaway with him. so that they now consider (which is not at all his opinion) my methodic style to be ou tof date and my results to be part of a passing era. And this from one of the closest of my persona l friends .. . . The new article for the Encyclopaedia Britannica has cost me great deal of effort, chiefly because lagain thought through from the ground up my basic direction and took into account the fact that Heidegger, as l now must believe, has no t understood this direction and thus the entire sense of the method ofphenomenological reduction." Edmund Husserl. Briefe an Roman lngarden (The Hague: Nijhoff. 1968) pp.39, 41, 42. 43.49. Mart in Heidegger. The Essence of Reasons, trans!. Terrence Malick (Evanston: Northwestern U.P., 1969)pp. 24-6. We revert to this issue of the factual content of science in view of Aron Gurwitsch's suggestionthat phenomenology no longer takes science as a fact but as a problem. Cf. his "Comments on the Paperby Herbert Marcuse." Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, ed. Robert S. Cohen and Marx W.Wartofsky (New York: Humanities, 1965) vol. II, 291306.228


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which make up what Heidegger now calls theontological constitution (Seinsverjassung) of thebeing under study. What in 1915 were the basicconstituents of the teleological structure of ascience now make up the hermeneutical structureof the scientific project, the primary "something assomething," the hermeneutical "as", which guidesand determines the formulation of the multiplicityof judgments in the form of the apophantic "as"and provides these judgments with their principleof coherence. The primacy of the terminating goalis simply transformed into the primacy of theinaugurating project, in a reversal that accordswith the Aristotelian-Scholastic maxim of the finalcause, which is "first in intention, last in execution". It is therefore not surprising that, in hisdiscussion of the "what," "how" and "towardwhich" (Woraufhin) in terms of the "for the sakeof which" and the "who" of Dasein, Heidegger isquite conscious of a certain proximity to theAristotelian doctrine of the four causes or"grounds" .;u And the notion of the "end" continues to play a major role in his philosophy ofradical finitude. An end not only sets limits, butat once delineates the "leeway" (Spielraum), thehorizons of a field of play within which somethingbegins to be)Z The end of science is at once itsorigin - which is why the 1915 lecture is not sofar removed from Heidegger's later reflections onscience. But the context is now broader: one cannow ask about the existential as well as the logicalaims of science. In Husserlian terms, the approachof 1915 serves as the noematic guiding clue to theproblem of the transcendental constitution of ascience. For Heidegger, it is the point of departure of that stretch of the road that leads fromscience as a Begriindungszusammenhang, agrounded system of propositions, to science as agrounding project of Dasein. The constant in thisstretch of his Denkweg is a triple foundation whichcan be read directly from the facticity of science:the "what" and "how" of its domain, and its mostincipient articulation into fundamental categories.50. /hid., pp. 118-9.

Hence his later discussion of the hermeneuticalprocess that lays foundations for any particularscience is in terms of a unifying project whoseprimary functions are (l) to delineate its domain,(2) to thematize the access routes to this domainand thus provide it with methodic direction, and(3) to outline the integral structure of the fundamental concepts which initially interprets theaspects of the object under consideration. Thusthe scientific project manifests the more universaltriple hermeneutical apriori of a prepossession,preview and preconception.-';!And what the unified thrust of Vorhabe,Vorsicht and Vorgrifj structures is a comprehensive field of meaning in terms of which the moreparticular something as something becomes com

prehensible. The latter so-called "apophantic as"suggests the familiar Frege-Husserl distinctionbetween referential object and connotative meaning, whose model is the atomic meaning of wordsand things. But the priority resides with the fieldtheory of meaning of the hermeneutical "as''which, for example, gives an entire science itstopology in the form of "paradigms" (Kuhn) or"ideals of natural order" (Toulmin), where meaning is first an existential of Dasein, a mode ofscientifically being in the world, and not a propertyof things. Heidegger on this point significantlymakes tacit allusion to Husserl's notion of signitive or "empty" intentionality: the inauguratingproject opens up a space now to be "fi lied in" bythe particular discoveries of science.;:

Interestingly enough, the Heidegger of 1915,even before his move from a logical to an existential conception of science, possessed anotherguiding clue for the transition, which since hasbecome all-important in the philosophy of science.In his I912 report on logic, he points to the intermediate character of the phenomenon of thequestion, that poses a problem "which is not tobe solved either purely logically or purely psychologically"Ji In line with this guiding clue, the

51. Martin Heidegger, Der Satz vom Grund (Pfullingen: Neske, 1957) p. 125; An Introduction to Mct


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reduction of science to its project is notorsimply areduction to its prescientific origins in the worldof dailiness, but rather to its origin proper in theinaugural question, which points forward to a goalas well as back to a motive, where old conceptslike "time" are reshaped for new tasks, where oldpresuppositions are channelled into the project byway of the sense or direction of the question.Later, the life style of scientists like Galileo,Newton, Bohr and Heisenberg, their passion tochallenge old presuppositions, thereby creatingnew ways of posing questions, and above all theircapacity to hold out in the questionable, willsuggest to Heidegger how science too has itssource in authentic existence. For the questioningmode of comportment in which scientific discoveries are anticipated is in its way based on theradical resolve in which man projects himself intohis fupdamental possibilities for truth)5 Here isthe central thrust of what Heidegger calls theexistential conception of science, which does notconsider science in terms of its finished results inthe judicative structure, as in the logical conception, but as an originative process in which mandiscovers beings even in their being.7G

The Mathematical as AprioriAnother insight present in ovo in the early

student work concerns the historical uniqueness ofmodern science when compared with the medievalscientia and the Greek episteme. A constant inHeidegger is that the distinctive trait of modernscience does not reside in its empirical observationof facts, experimental verification, or the application of mathematics to the physical world in orderto secure exact measurements, but rather in thecharacter of its mathematical projectJ" For theproject, in delineating in advance a particularontological structure of the world and Dasein'smode of comportment toward this world, at once

lays down the ground plan which determines theacceptable procedures for providing grounds andproofs within the science, and accordingly howfacts are to be found and exact measurements areto be obtained, as well as the manner in whichthe experimental tests are to be set up. It mightbe noted that Heidegger seems once again to bebasing himself on Husserlian terminology whenhe calls the totality of the scientific project athematization, an act which objectifies beings andmakes them available for the intuition that makesthem present.;s

The apriori character of the mathematicalproject is underscored by the broadened conception of the mathematical that Heidegger develops.He traces mathematics in the narrow sense of adiscipline of numbers back to a more comprehensive Greek sense of mathesis as a process oflearning, in which we come to know what wealready know. Ta mathemata, the learnable, thusrefer to everything that we already know inadvance: of bodies - the corporeal; of plants -the v(getative; of animals- the animate; of man- the human; and of things their thingness/;,r,The mathematical in general is accordingly anyobjrctive apriori whatsoever, not only the bestknown and well-established apriori, the formalapriori of mathematics and logic, but also thematerial apriori that for Husserl enter into thefoundations of the specific sciences. Heideggerthereby seems to repeat in disguised and eveninflated terminology Hus,serl's reduction of eachscience to its respective eidos in the lifeworld.

But it might be noted that Husserl himselfbroadens the conception of mathematics in thesame direction, and even goes so far as to speakof phenomenology as a mathesis universalissima,a "mathematics" of cognitive achievements, whose55. Sein und Zeit. p. 363. Cf. Martin Heidegger, What is a Thing? transl. W. B. Barton, Jr., and Vera DeutschChicago: Regnery, 1967) pp. 65-6.56. Ibid., p. 357.57. "Der Zeitbegriff in der Geschichtswissenschaft" p. 176n. Sein und Zeit, p. 362; What is a Thing? pp. 66-8;Holzwege (Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann, 3, 1957) p. 70. In this way Heidegger retains the basic insightof Kant's philosophy of science.58. Sein und Zeit, p. 363. The Husserlian terminology of "theme'' an d "object" has been amplified in particular by the school of Aron Gurwitsch. Cf . his The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne U.P.,1964) and Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology (Evanston: Northwestern U.P., 1966) pp. 182ff. AlsoRichard M. Zaner, The Way of Phenomenology (New York: Pegasus, 1970) pp . 115-7.59. What is a Thing? p. 73; Ho/zwege, p. 72.230


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noetic study carried out in pure subjectivitycomprehends the Jesser mathematics of thenoematic correlates of cJnsciousness.6aPerhaps Heidegger's inflation of terminology is

even a veiled attack on Husser!, whose mathematical orientation left its mark on the invariantcharacter of the eidos and even on the method ofdetermining it. For in his first acknowledgment ofthe underlying material ontological structuresalready available to the sciences from prescientificexperience, in the opening pages of Being andTime,lil Heidegger at once moves to overcome thestatic stratification that this structure conveys. Inemphasizing the immanent crises which on occasion shift the conceptual foundations of a scienceand thus constitute its real movement, he alreadysees the material apriori in a historical andprojective role. In insisting that the real progressof a science comes not so much from the accumulation of facts as from foundational investigations,which can revolutionize the ways in whichdomains of research are basically constituted, hesuggests a dialectic between conceptual levels thatlater will find resonances in the theories of scientific historicity of such diverse thinkers as JeanCavailles and T. S. Kuhn. Cavailles with hisdialectic of concepts and Kuhn with his comparison of paradigm switch with linguistic translation.both suggest Heidegger's hermeneutical model ofa historicity of language. The Ariadne's thread insuch investigations are the fundamental concepts,whose roots go down to the prescientific interpretation of the scientific domain, and whoseintegrated contexture suggests a hermeneuticalrevival of the metaphor of the "Book of Nature"Ji:2The continual rereading of this text, which is basicresearch at its most philosophical, in effect leapsahead of the positive sciences toward new foundational structures, thereby opening up new possibilities in the fields under study. The degree to whichthe material apriori is drawn into actual historicalcontexts is indicated by Heidegger's suggestion

that such preliminary research which served toprovide basic concepts to the sciences is concretely illustrated by speculative cosmologies likePlato's Timaeus, Aristotle's De Anima and Kant'stranscendental logic of nature. The entire treatment of the material apriori is pervaded byHeidegger's futuristic conception of human existence, whereby presuppositions lie not so muchbehind us as ahead of us, as possibilities awaitingtheir projection. Science is not reduced to staticeidetic structures but projected into its possibilities a tack which cannot but enhance it to itsfullest as a positive phenomenon.

The Epochal Conception of ScienceUp to this point, the mathematical has been

discussed only in terms of its general aprioricharacter, which makes it applicable to allsciences. But in what specific sense is modernscience mathematical, if not in the narrow andusual sense that its norm, mathematical physics,suggests to us? Heidegger deals with this issue ina 1935 lecture course now published under thetitle What is a Thing?, in a study of the approachdeveloped by the founding fathers of modernphysics, Galileo and Newton about the sametime, it might be noted, that Husser! was preparinga similar study which appeared in the Crisis articleof 1936 under the title, "Galileo's Mathematization of Nature". According to Heidegger, bothGalileo and Newton dramatically exemplify theproject that leaps ahead of factual evidence andverification through "thought experiments" ofidealization which develop and posit propositions(hypo-theses) anticipating the "as" structure offacts. the thingness of things. The project therebyoutlines an open field of meaning which prefiguresthe ways in which things are to show themselves.Inasmuch as the positing principles articulateideal standards according to which things :ueevaluated, e.g. "freely falling body" and "frictionless plane", they are axioms in the original Greek

60. Erste Philosophie I I, pp. 249-250. This manuscr ipt dates from 1921. i.e. during the time of Heidegger'sassistantship to Husser!.61. Sein und Zeit, pp. 9-11.62. Cf. Theodore Kisiel; "Z u einer Hermeneutik naturwissenschaftlicher Entdeckung," Zeitschrift fiir allw!meincWissenschaftstheorie II (1971), no. 3. An earlier and shorter English version of this text is to be found inDavid Carr and Edward Casey (ed.), The PhenomenoioRical Horizon (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1972), cf. e


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sense ot the word. The mathematics of modernscience is thus an axiomatic project, utilizingaxioms of the type exemplified by Newton'sidealized laws of motion. According to thisproject, nature is no longer the inner capacity ofa body to determine its particular form of motionand place, as it had been in ancient and medievalscience. but is now axiomatically predeterminedas a uniform context of space-time relations.Because all bodies now move uniformly in spaceand time. it is possible and even necessary toestablish a universally uniform measure for them,i.e. numerical measurement. The condition ofpossibility of mathematics in the narrow sense istherefore the more profound mathematical projectof modern science. It is because of this axiomaticproject. and not vice-versa. that analyticalgeometry and calculus could be and had to bedeveloped as a "language" to articulate theinstituting project. It is against the background ofthis more comprehensive mathematizing projectthat the burning question central to phenomenology, of the justification and limits of mathematical formalism in relation to the demand toreturn to our intuitive experience of nature, is tobe assessed. This question cannot be decided by

an either/or but rather on a more fundamentallevel. For the question of the justification andlimits of the mathematical in general remains themore decisive one.fl-1Accordingly, it is necessary to probe the deepergrounds of the mathematical spirit as it emergedin modern times. As such, it belongs to the modeof historical existence of a particular time, itsbasic attitude toward things and toward what is

at all. Investigating the mathematical in thisregard therefore takes us beyond the existentialconception of science to its metaphysical sense,and this means for Heidegger its epochal sense,inasmuch as science constitutes a terminal epochin the history of metaphysics. This history ultimately grounds itself not in the grounding projectof Dasein but in an epochal movement that takesits course beyond human controLAn account of Heidegger's reading of thehistory of metaphysics or even of the origin ofmodernity cannot be ventured h e r e . G ~ Only a fewsketchy remarks relevant to our topic might bepresented by way of conclusion. Our most relevantpoint: Heidegger sees Husser! to be still under the

63. What is a ThinR?, pp. 91-5.64. A brief summary of his reading of the origin of modernity in relation to science may at least suggest theoverall style of his account.

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In the medieval period of truth founded on faith. natural knowledge did not have its own grounds orindependent foundations. With the rejection of the tradition, a new freedom toward self-grounding arose.Man no longer conceives of himself as a creature, bu t as a subject who freely proposes his objects to!oimself. The certitudes of faith are replaced by the self-certitude of the human subject. Everything becomessubject to the absolutely certain axiom of the Cogito and Volo. Because man falls back strictly on his ownresources, the mathematical posits itself as the authoritative principle of knowledge and binds itself toself-imposed obligations. Th e spirit of modernity thereby becomes the spirit of the rnatlzesis universalis, theSystem. Man now creates his own order: he proposes to himself what is to be known. determines inadvance the principles he needs to reach this goal, assures his way by means of the controls of calculativethinking. Within the mathematical project, the dimension of the point of view becomes absolutized into aworldview. Th e how becomes all-important, method usurps science. Scientific research becomes an indispensable form of the planning and conquest that enter into fulfillment of the worldview. The newlydeclared freedom of modernity manifests itself in the form of the thought experiments of idealization.what Einstein later characterized as the free invention of hypothesizing. Th e scientist enters into the Zeit-geist of the will to power. Not that the individual scientist acts outside of all controls. Th e axiom of theCo[?ito and Volo manifests itself more in the fact that the final tribunal for the paradigms of science lies inthe scientific community, which sometimes exerts a communal dogmatism that smacks of the old ecclesiastical dogmatism of the middle ages.This Zeit[?eist of modernity now leaves its mark on the what. how and conceptual medium of science.Scientific domains are objectively secured, sharply divided and distributed to. distinct disciplines for theircontrol and regulation. Th e objectifying approach adjusts and reworks a domain in order to be able to"count on" it. The clear and distinct categories of the subject-object relation permit self-assured speculation on the one hand, experimental confirmation on the other. F a c t ~ themselves are sharply defined throughmeasurement in order to subject them to the rigorous control of the formalized schemes necessitated bythe subject-object relation. Th e spirit of confirmation overshadows its circuit with the inauguratingproject to the point that science is defined in terms of its context of justification. The vagaries of thecontext of discovery are systematically excluded or explained away in terms of the "free invention'' of thescientific "genius".


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spell of the spirit of modernity, the period dominated by the axiomatic project of the mathematical.The period is characterized by the positing ofself-evident and indubitable principles in order tosecure the ground for a mathesis or System,especially the "I posit" of the Cogito principlethat placed the subjectivity of method in thecentral position. And Husser! still bases himselfon the Cartesian ideal of science: not a deductivemathesis. to be sure, but instead the mathesisuniversalissima comprehending all the sciencesand based on the methodological "principle of allprinciples," the primordially giving intuition ofthe transcendental subjectivity.cr;

As Heidegger sees it. the phenomenologicalfoundation in experience is no longer fully articulable in indubitable propositions which thereforecan be clearly located within the structure of ourknowledge. Because of the radical discontinuitybetween our immediate experience and the knowledge that springs from it. foundational thinkinginvolves a leap from the said to its unsaid- evento its prolongation in the unsayable. And opennessto experience in the full sense at times puts us ontreacherous ground. when the old ground givesway in order to prepare for the emergence of thenew. Foundational thinking thus is no longermathematical in any sense but rather hermeneutical in the profoundest sense,liC where we learnwhat we don't know, what springs the limits of ourknowledge and what nevertheless promises tocome into its purview. For life is more than sciencecan ever hope to be, even the self-groundingscience of phenomenology as Husserl sees it.Science grounds itself in a bottomless Other whichis never capable of being secured by a method orsubsumed into a science.

ConclusionHeidegger in this way seeks to justify his claim

to radicalize the phenomenological zu den Sac/zenselbst beyond Husser!. Yet in many ways, theHeideggerian strategy is reminiscent of the65. Zur Saclre des Denkens, pp. 69-70.

Husser! of the Crisis: The history of science is considered within the history of philosophy, and thisin turn as a reflection of the history of the spirit ofthe West. Even the phases in the rise of modernscience are comparable to Husserl's: The methodbecomes dominant and first turns metaphysical inthe objectivism of the world in itself, and thenturns back on itself in the absolutizing of technization. I f anything, Heidegger's conception oftechnical rationality is even more restrictive thanHusserl's. Heidegger's antidote to the crisis islikewise a call to return to sources, often markedby poetic and mystical nuances that seem remoterfrom science than Husserl's "world-experiencinglife". As Heidegger at one point puts it, in areference strongly suggestive of Husserl's lifeworld, the sciences manifest an "inconspicuousstate of affairs" of an unavoidable (unumgiinglich)and indispensable presence which is neverthelessinaccessible (unzugiinglich) to the sciences themselves and thus always passed over (iibergangen)by them. This inconspicuous state of affairs is thehistorical stream in which science finds its place,accessible only to a more radical reflection on itsepochal sense.mSuch a comprehensive reflection is intrinsic tothe phenomenological return to the things themselves, whose system of foundations installs a

built-in tendency to broaden its issues beyond thecognitive to the precognitive in all its phases. It isthus that phenomenology strives to fulfil itshistorical mission, namely, "to measure the distance between our experience and science". Thenatural outcome of phenomenological questioningis accordingly the larger issue of science in thecontext of life and of history. But here it runs therisk of overriding its initial orientation in specificphenomena. This is particularly true of the phenomenon of science, which we are even methodologically instructed to bracket in favour of theprescientific. To counter the danger of overhastymetabasis and its accompanying distortions. thebroader reflection on the epochal sense of science

66. Perceptive readers may have already noticed a certain overlap in Heidegger's conception of the mathematical and the hermeneutical. I have tried to clarify this in a paper entitled "The Mathematical and theHermeneutical: On Heidegger's Notion of the Apriori," read at the Heidegger Conference meeting atDePaul University in Chicago on March 25, 1972.67. Martin Heidegger, Vortriige und Aufsiitze (Pfullingen: Neske, 1954) pp. 67-8.

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must at once cultivate the more specific orientations of the transcendental-existential and logicalconceptions of science. The time has come for theparticular and detailed investigations in a phenomenology of science to "fill in" the broad contextprovided by classical phenomenology, and thereby

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to make contact with parallel efforts which striveto overcome the positivistic misreading of thephenomenon of science.

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