Patrick A. Heelan

(1926 - 2015)

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 Gottingen science of the Golden Years. For Husserl, theory "grows" out of the "soil" of the prescientific, that is, pretheoretical, 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 prior "prescientific" inductive praxis is analyzed, also Husserl's residual objectivism and failure to appreciate the hermeneutic character of measurement. Though not a scientific (theory-)realist, neither was he an instrumentalist, but he was a scientific (phenomena-)realist

Using the methods of hermeneutic phenomenology, and against the background of the principle that the real is what is or can be given in a public way in perception as a state of the World, and of the thesis established elsewhere that acts of perception are always epistemic, contextual, and hermeneutical, the writer proposes that objects of scientific observation are perceptual objects, states of the World described by theoretical scientific terms and, therefore, real. This thesis of Hermeneutical Realism is proved by showing how the response of a standard instrument is 'read' as if it were a 'text'. Conclusions are then drawn about a number of topics, including Scientific Realism, Conventionalism, and Cultural Relativism.

The topic of this excellent little book is the debate about whether the humanities proceed differently from the natural sciences, and in particular, about whether literary interpretations are decidably true or false or whether they are decidable merely in relation to assertability. Decidability and historicity are, as Stegmuller points out, also a problem for the natural sciences, because of the dilemmas of confirmation and of background knowledge. The excellence of this book is in the way Anglo-American realist and Continental constructivist approaches consider and reconsider the core problem of how meaning is found in texts and in experimental facts by interpretation and how--or whether--this meaning can be assessed for truth.

My scientific field is theoretical physics. My philosophical orientation is phenomenology, especially hermeneutical phenomenology, as modified and extended under the influence of Bernard Lonergan's cognitional theory. In fact, I was already deeply under the influence of Bernard Lonergan's workbefore I went to Louvain/Leuven to study phenomenology as a propaedeutic to my preparation in the philosophy of science. The specific topic of this paper is one close to the center of Philip's interest, namely, to articulate the right balance among theory, experiment, and what Husserl called 'die Sache selbst' or the 'givenness' of scientific objects as experienced and understood. The method I shall adopt is that of Husserl's phenomenology of perception, as modified by Lonergan's method of 'self-appropriation.' I will be concerned then with the 'constitution' of experimental data in science - any science

A structural analogy is pointed out between a check hermeneutically developed phenomenological description, based on Husserl, of the process of perceptual cognition on the one hand and quantum mechanical measurement on the other hand. In Husserl's analytic phase of the cognition process, the 'intentionality-structure' of the subject/object union prior to predication of a local object is an entangled symmetry-making state, and this entanglement is broken in the synthetic phase when the particular local object is constituted under the influence of an iota ('inner horizon') and the 'facticity' of the local world ('outer horizon'). Replacing 'perceptual cognition' by 'measurement' and 'subject' by 'expert subject using a measuring device' the analogy of a formal quantum structure is extended to the conscious structure of all empirical cognition. This is laid out in three theses: about perception, about classical measurement, and about quantum measurement. The results point to the need for research into the quantum structure of the physical embodiment of human cognition

The author proposes the thesis that all perception, including observation in natural science, is hermeneutical as well as causal; that is, the perceiver (or observer) learns to 'read' instrumental or other perceptual stimuli as one learns to read a text. This hermeneutical aspect at the heart of natural science is located where it might be least expected, within acts of scientific observation. In relation to the history of science, the question is addressed to what extent the hermeneutical component within scientific observation opens natural science to the charge of reflecting merely cultural values, and of providing merely a culturally acceptable reading of the "Book of Nature", rather than, as the author states, one stating universal antecedent conditions of possibility of cultural activity itself

Hermeneutics, or interpretation, is concerned with the generation, transmission, and acceptance of meaning within the lifeworld, and was the original method of the human sciences stemming, from F. Schleiermacher and W. Dilthey. The `hermeneutic philosophy' refers mostly to Heidegger. This paper addresses natural science from the perspective of Heidegger's analysis of meaning and interpretation. Its purpose is to incorporate into the philosophy of science those aspects of historicality, culture, and tradition that are absent from the traditional analysis of theory and explanation, to re-orient the current discussion about scientific realism around the hermeneutics of meaning and truth in science, and to establish some relationship between the current philosophy of natural science and hermeneutical philosophy. The paper has particular relevance to the history and social studies of science and technology