Belousek, Husserl on Scientific Method and Conceptual Change

7/27/2019 Belousek, Husserl on Scientific Method and Conceptual Change

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DARRIN W. BELOUSEK

HUSSERL ON SCIENTIFIC METHOD AND CONCEPTUAL

CHANGE: A REALIST APPRAISAL

ABSTRACT. Husserl claimed that all theoretical scientific concepts originate in and are

valid in reference to life-world experience and that scientific traditions preserve the sense

and validity of such concepts through unitary and cumulative change. Each of these claims

will, in turn, be sympathetically laid out and assessed in comparison with more standard

characterizations of scientific method and conceptual change as well as the history of

physics, concerning particularly the challenge they may pose for scientific realism. The

Husserlian phenomenological framework is accepted here without defense, and hence the

present project is limited to the task of asking what can and cannot be accommodatedwithin that framework on its own terms.

1. INTRODUCTION

In The Crisis of European Sciences, including The Origin of Geometry,

Husserl advances two important claims concerning scientific methodology.

The first is a constraint on theory construction, specifically concerning

the genesis and validity of theoretical scientific concepts; the second is a

constraint on scientific progress through conceptual change. First, Husserl

claims that a theoretical concept has its origin in and obtains its validity

solely in reference to a founding meaning constituted in originary life-

world experience. Second, Husserl views conceptual change in science

as a unitary and cumulative historical progression of meaning modifica-

tion that preserves the validity of all past meanings as a basis for future

modification. Put succinctly, according to Husserl all valid and progres-

sive construction of theoretical concepts in science must preserve through

modification both founding meanings constituted in originary life-world

experience and historically accumulated meanings acquired on the basis

of such founding meanings and handed down through tradition.

Support provided by the John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology and Values,University of Notre Dame. The author wishes to thank Professors Fred Crosson and Gary

Gutting for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay, Pat McDonald for sev-

eral stimulating conversations on Husserl and philosophy of science, and two anonymous

referees for their suggestions for improving this paper.

Synthese 115: 7198, 1998.

1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.


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72 DARRIN W. BELOUSEK

Husserls views have come under close scrutiny in the last two decades

with critics charging principally that his claim concerning the genesis and

validity of theoretical scientific concepts commits him to anti-realism, re-

garding especially the status of theoretical entities. I show where suchcharges either are founded upon a misunderstanding of Husserls claim

or can be avoided by modifying Husserls position to accord with a realist

point of view, as well as where Husserls framework is inadequate to com-

prehend certain aspects of scientific methodology. I then make the case

that the incompatibility of his characterization of conceptual change with

the history of science poses a further challenge for Husserls position from

a realist point of view.

2. GENESIS AND VALIDITY OF THEORETICAL SCIENTIFIC CONCEPTS

As is well known, Husserl claimed that The concrete life-world . . . is

the grounding soil of the scientifically true world (Husserl 1970, 131),

that objective theory . . . is rooted, grounded in the life-world, in the

original self-evidence belonging to it (Husserl 1970, 129130), where the

life-world is the ordinary, everyday surrounding world of immediate, pre-

reflective, pre-theoretical experience. The consequence of this that the

scientific world and, hence, the meanings of all theoretical scientific con-

cepts are founded upon the life-world and its meanings constituted in the

self-evidence of originary (i.e., immediate, pre-reflective, pre-theoretical)

experience is that objective science has a constant reference of meaning

to the world in which we always live.. .a reference, that is, to the gen-

eral life-world (Husserl 1970, 130). And it is this constant reference

of meaning to the life-world by every theoretical scientific concept that

grounds the validity of the concept: the pregiven world . . . is . . . the con-

stant ground of validity (Husserl 1970, 122); the life-world constantly

functions as subsoil . . . its manifold pre-logical validities act as grounds

for the logical ones, for theoretical truths (Husserl 1970, 124).

This validity has two aspects. First, the theoretical scientific concept

makes its appearance in consciousness as a distinctive modification of

a founding life-world meaning constituted in originary intuition (or as

the result of a series of such modifications). Second, theoretical scientific

concepts motivate or pre-figure possible courses of experience within or

directed towards the life-world horizon for the sake of their verification inconfrontation with things themselves given in self-evidence. We will look

at these in turn and discover that the latter is possible only insofar as the

former is the case.


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HUSSERL ON SCIENTIFIC METHOD AND CONCEPTUAL CHANGE 73

First is the construction of theoretical scientific concepts through mod-

ification of originary intuition. Originary intuition is the immediate (pre-

reflective, pre-theoretical) conscious grasping or presenting to conscious-

ness of the thing itself in the life-world as an object or under a specificdescription (e.g., as a particular thing of a certain kind), and that descrip-

tion (i.e., the aspect of the thing itself through which it is grasped or

presented) constitutes (i.e., forms the content of) the sense of the originary

life-world meaning. Husserl emphasizes that such originary intuition, in

which founding life-world meanings are constituted, is a direct confronta-

tion with and a presenting or showing of things themselves (not sense

data) to consciousness: That which is self-evidently given is, in percep-

tion, experienced as the thing itself , every manner of intuition [being]

a presentification of the thing itself (Husserl 1970, 127128), where

self-evidence means nothing more than grasping the entity with the con-

sciousness of its original being-itself-there (Husserl 1970, 356). Hence,

all modifying intuitions, or modifications of originary intuitions, presentthe thing itself to consciousness, albeit in a form modified from that of the

originary intuition; i.e., all modifying intuitions present to consciousness

the originally experienced thing itself but not as originally experienced.

Indeed, the modification of the originary intuition changes (or reconsti-

tutes) the sense of the thing itself such that it is presented to consciousness

through a different aspect or under a different description than that by

which it was presented originally.

And such is the case with all theoretical scientific modifications of

originary life-world intuitions, these being just a peculiar sort of modifying

intuitions or re-presentings in general. Husserls well-known examples are

the process of idealization in geometry and Galileos mathematization ofnature. According to Husserl, geometric objects arose in consciousness

through a series of modifications of originary intuition as a stratified

structure of idealities (Husserl 1970, 363), i.e., as the idealization of bod-

ily shapes given in life-world experience whereby ideal objects (limit-

shapes) were constituted in successive modifying intuitions or presentings

of the original shapes (Husserl 1970, 32). Similarly, Husserl casts Galileo

(figuratively, of course) as accomplishing the mathematization of nature

i.e., the transformation of bodies given in life-world experience into ideal

objects geometrically determinable in all their essential aspects through a

series of modifications that reconstituted the perceptually given indefinite

plena of sensible qualities as a manifold of sense objectively determinable

in all its essential aspects according to the ideal objects (limit-shapes) ofgeometry (Husserl 1970, 33f.).


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What is crucial about the genesis of constitution of concepts is that

the founding life-world meanings constituted in originary intuition are

preserved through the series of modifications by which the theoretical con-

cepts are constituted; that is, the founding meaning becomes sedimentedwith the originary intuition and is carried forward in each successive modi-

fying intuition. This is possible because each intuition serves as the found-

ing intuition for the succeeding modifying intuition: scientific thinking

attains new results on the basis of those already attained, . . . the new ones

serve as the foundation for still others, etc. in the unity of a propagative

process of transferred meaning (Husserl 1970, 363). Thus, the sense of

modifying intuitions, i.e., the aspect through which or the description un-

der which the thing itself is re-presented to consciousness and by which

the theoretical concept is constituted in its genesis, preserves a relation

of significance to the life-world meaning constituted in originary intuition

upon which the meaning of the theoretical concept is ultimately founded.

And thereby does the theoretical concept maintain a constant referenceof meaning to the life-world. Thus, for any theoretical concept, it is at

least possible to exhibit a series of such modifying intuitions whereby the

concept grew out of the soil of self-evidence given in originary intuition;

that is, one can, beginning with a theoretical concept, perform a series of

regressive or de-constructive modifications that carry one back through

the constitutive modifications to the originary intuition by which the found-

ing meaning was constituted. In this way, one can reactivate the original

self-evidence that founded the originary intuition itself (Husserl 1970, 361,

363).

Herein also lies the ultimate source of the validity of the theoretical con-

cept, for preserved along with the founding life-world meaning is the origi-nal self-evidence that grounds the validity of all meanings founded thereon

by modifying intuitions; and the validity of that original self-evidence and,

hence, of the founding meaning itself is guaranteed by the thing itself given

in originary intuition: Things, objects . . . are given as being valid in

each case (Husserl 1970, 143). The validity of any theoretical conceptual

construction is first only a claim which can be justified as an expression of

the alleged truth-meaning only through the actual capacity for reactivation

(Husserl 1970, 368). Therefore, any claim to the validity of a theoretical

scientific concept (or system of such concepts) must be justified on the

basis of the possibility of exhibiting the series of founding intuitions by

which the meaning of that concept was constituted in its genesis out of

the original self-evidence of the life-world. Note that this does not commitHusserl to anything like a pure logic of discovery as a necessary condi-


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tion for the validity of theoretical scientific concepts; Husserl himself says

that discovery is really a mixture of instinct and method (1970, 40).

Now, Gutting takes Husserls claim that all theoretical scientific con-

cepts are ultimately founded upon originary life-world experience to meanthat all scientific meanings are reducible to those of the life-world, that

scientific concepts are wholly derivative from those of the life-world (Gut-

ting 1978, 47, 49; cf. Gutting 1974). Gutting seems to take founded upon

to mean something akin to logically derivable from or reducible to; he

thus maintains that [Husserls] view resembles that of the logical em-

piricists, who spent immense energy attempting to reduce the language

of scientific theories to a purely empirical language (Gutting 1978, 47).

Husserl, however, was no positivist. Indeed, he rejected outright the notion

that we are given sense data immediately in perception, a fundamental

tenet of logical empiricism: And above all to dispose of an important

point right away one must not go straight back to the supposedly imme-

diately given sense data, as ifthey were immediately characteristic of thepurely intuitive data of the life-world (Husserl 1970, 125). As we have

already emphasized, what is given to consciousness in originary life-world

experience are objects, i.e., things under specific descriptions. Husserl,

then, certainly does not intend to reduce the meaning of all scientific con-

cepts to mere sense data, for, as Gutting himself acknowledges, [Husser-

ls] phenomenological descriptions yield a much richer content for imme-

diate experience than the Humean austerity of the positivists would ever

have allowed (Gutting 1978, 47).

But neither does Husserl intend to claim, as Gutting suggests, that all

scientific concepts should be completely analyzable in terms of life-world

meanings. Gutting is perhaps misled by the passage he cites in supportof his interpretation: life-world experience . . . is what determines the

genuine sense of all scientific concepts (Husserl 1970, 125). Apparently,

Gutting takes genuine here to mean legitimate or true. Now, if that

were correct, then the only valid meanings could be those constituted di-

rectly in originary intuition in life-world experience. Theoretical scientific

concepts, to be valid, could be nothing more than mere shorthand for

collections of life-world meanings, which would leave Husserl in a posi-

tion somewhat akin to logical empiricism and surely opposed to scientific

realism. But, if that were so, then such concepts would not articulate or

categorially structure the life-world in any distinctively new sense; and

Husserl would disagree sharply with that conclusion: The knowledge of

the objective-scientific world is grounded in the self-evidence of the life-world. The latter is pregiven to the scientific worker, or the working com-

munity, as ground; yet, as they build upon this, what is built is something


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new, something different (Husserl 1970, 130, emphasis added). Indeed,

it is just this something new, something different that gives theoreti-

cal scientific constructions, such as Galileos mathematization of nature,

their significance as accomplishments or buildings up from or out of thelife-world.

Moreover, if theoretical scientific concepts did not articulate the life-

world in any distinctively new sense, then not only would the significance

of theoretical scientific constructions as accomplishments from the life-

world be nullified, but there could be no making intelligible Husserls

charge concerning Galileos surreptitious substitution of the mathemat-

ically substructed world of idealities for the only real world, the one that is

actually given through perception, that is ever experienced and experience-

able our everyday life-world (Husserl 1970, 4849). Rouse emphasizes

this point:

Husserl regards Galilean science as important and problematic precisely because it did

result in the formation of new meanings (not just new notations) which were not available

prior to its accomplishment . . . . What, then, does Husserl mean when he says that the

sense of Galilean science is founded in lifeworld experience? It is not that the meaning-

structures of science can be derived from the concepts of everyday life, for this would

trivialize Galileos accomplishment and obviate Husserls concern with it. (Rouse 1987,

226227)

That is, if scientific concepts were merely shorthand for collections of

life-world meanings, as Guttings interpretation would suggest, then the

substitution of a theoretically constructed world for the life-world could

be nothing more than a mere redenomination of the life-world, a referring

to the life-world under different names but in the same terms (i.e., in the

same sense as originally experienced). Thus, there simply could be no

surreptitious substitution of idealized nature for prescientifically intuited

nature (Husserl 1970, 4950) for there would be no difference in sense or

meaning between them.

Gutting, I conclude, misreads Husserl. Indeed, reading further along in

the text shows clearly that by genuine Husserl means original actual

experience, as determining sense quite originally (Husserl 1970, 125). We

must be careful, here, not to conflate derived from and founded upon.

It is the validity, not the sense, of theoretical scientific concepts that is

derived from the original self-evidence of the life-world that validates all

founding meanings; and such validity is transferred from originary life-

world meanings to theoretical scientific concepts via the relations of refer-

ence from the latter to the former. The sense of such concepts is foundedupon originary meanings constituted in life-world experience through suc-

cessive modifying intuitions that transform those originary meanings by

adding distinctively new higher-level meaning-formations (Husserl 1970,


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140); and the new aspect through which or new description under which a

thing is re-presented to consciousness in modifying intuition is related to

but not logically implied by or reducible to the originary sense by which

it was originally grasped in intuition.This brings us to the second aspect of the validity of theoretical scien-

tific concepts, for we might next ask what is the empirical content of the va-

lidity of such concepts. Theoretical scientific concepts founded upon orig-

inary life-world meanings have validity for or in reference to the life-world

This reference is one of a founding of validity. (Husserl 1970, 140) -

and such validity implies that the concept will motivate possible courses of

experience within the life-world horizon that if undertaken would verify or

fulfill the concept through the intuition of things themselves given in self-

evidence. And such motivation is possible just because the founding mean-

ing constituted in originary intuition of things themselves given in self-

evidence is preserved as sediment in the series of founded modifications

through which the meaning of the concept is constituted: All conceivableverification leads back to these modes of self-evidence because the thing

itself . . . lies in these [founded] intuitions themselves as that which is

actually, intersubjectively experienceable and verifiable (Husserl 1970,

128). Thus the concept pre-figures, delineates or outlines in advance of ex-

perience what is to be expected with empirical certainty in the intuitively

given world of concretely actual life (Husserl 1970, 43). Indeed, it is this

going beyond the sphere of immediately experiencing intuitions and the

possible experiential knowledge of the prescientific life-world by the hy-

pothetically substructed idealities of mathematical theoretical science that

is the decisive accomplishment of scientific method (Husserl 1970, 43,

original emphasis). And it is the fulfillment (in originary intuition) of suchexperiences projected in advance on the basis of the concept that comprises

the verification of the concept. Note that it is the validity of the theoretical

scientific concept that is verified, not its sense. The sense of the concept,

insofar as it preserves the founding meaning constituted in originary in-

tuition, makes verification possible but is not constituted thereby. Thus,

Husserl is in no way committed to a verificationist semantics here.

3. EXPLANATION, THEORETICAL ENTITIES, AND SCIENTIFIC REALISM

In assessing Husserls account of scientific concept formation and verifi-

cation, one crucial point needs to be emphasized here: such verificationcould in no way add to or strengthen the validity of a theoretical scien-

tific concept. There is for Husserl nothing comparable to confirmation

whereby the successful projection of a theoretical construct in experience


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constitutes part of its justification. Why is this so? A theoretical construct

is not itself verified directly in experience. Rather, certain consequences

are drawn logically from it acting as a premise (in conjunction with other

constructs acting as premises), and it is these consequences that come intodirect confrontation with things themselves given self-evidently in life-

world experience. The verification of these consequences as projections

in advance of experience on the basis of the theoretical construct can-

not, however, validate those consequences and, in turn, confer additional

validity upon the theoretical construct. For whatever validity those con-

sequences might have is already transferred to them by the theoretical

construct from which they were deduced, and whatever validity the the-

oretical construct itself might possess is already derived via the original

self-evidence that is the intuitive basis for the founding of its meaning.

Hence, both the theoretical construct and its logical consequences pos-

sess already whatever validity they might have in advance of any possible

verificational experience:

Now what about the possibility of complete and genuine reactivation in full originality,

through going back to the primal self-evidences, in the case of geometry and the so-

called deductive sciences . . . ? Here the fundamental law, with unconditionally general

self-evidence, is: if the premises can actually be reactivated back to the most original

self-evidence, then their self-evident consequences can be also [reactivated back to the

most original self-evidence]. Accordingly it appears that, beginning with the primal self-

evidences, the original genuineness must propagate itself through the chain of logical

inference, no matter how long it is . . . . These sciences are not handed down ready-made in

the form of documented sentences; they involve a lively, productively advancing formation

of meaning, which always has the documented, as a sediment of earlier production, at its

disposal in that it deals with it logically. But out of sentences with sedimented signification,

logical dealing can produce only other sentences of the same character. That all new

[logically deduced] acquisitions express an actual geometrical truth is certain a priori under

the presupposition that the foundations of the deductive structure have truly been produced

and objectified in self evidence. (Husserl 1970, 365366)

That is, if the theoretical construct has been validly constituted out of the

self-evidence of the life-world given in originary intuition i.e., if it is the

case that such original self-evidence can be reactivated through decon-

structive modifications of the construct, then the deductive consequences

of that construct are already valid for the life-world, such validity being

transferred through the chain of logical inference.

So, for Husserl, the verification of theoretical scientific concepts is just

that, the finding out in life-world experience of the already possessed va-

lidity of such concepts rather than the constitution of such validity. Strictlyspeaking, then, there is no confirmation of concepts, or conferring of va-

lidity via successfully projected life-world experience, which implies that

theoretical scientific concepts derive their validity solely via the possibility


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of reactivating the original self-evidence of the life-world that lies at the

intuitive basis of the founding of their meaning. This, though, is clearly at

odds with the so-called hypothetico-deductive method in science. Here,

the empirical confirmation of the deductive consequences of a theoreticalhypothesis is taken to constitute (at least) part of the warrant or justifica-

tion of that hypothesis. Moreover, such theoretical hypotheses are inferred

retroductively from the original empirical evidence, where retroductive

inference is the reasoning from observed effects to hypothesized causes,

the latter thus serving as explanation for the former. If the hypothesized

cause is sufficient or adequate to explain the relevant phenomena, then

such explanatory success is taken to confer warrant upon the theoretical

hypothesis. Thus, explanatory success is taken to carry epistemic weight;

i.e., the explanatory success of a theoretical hypothesis is taken as evidence

of its truth (cf. McMullin 1984a).

Husserl, as Gutting (1978) rightly points out, is not interested in expla-

nation vis vis theoretical concepts, at least not in the sense of deductivelyaccounting for phenomena on the basis of hypotheses. For Husserl, to

explain is to exhibit phenomenologically the transcendental conditions of

validity of a concept or theoretical construct, which, of course, just is to

exhibit the self-evidence given in originary intuition upon which the con-

cept is ultimately founded. Thus, deductive prediction of phenomena is no

explanation of anything:

no objective science, no matter how exact, explains or can explain anything in a serious

sense. To deduce is not to explain. To predict, or to recognize the objective forms of the

composition of physical or chemical bodies and to predict accordingly all this explains

nothing but is in need of explanation. The only true way to explain is to make transcen-

dentally understandable. Everything objective demands to be understood. (Husserl 1970,189)

It is the theoretical constructs of objective science that require explana-

tion (in Husserls sense) via the original self-evidence of the life-world,

not vice-versa. Indeed, to construe the explanatory problem the other way

around is to beg the question; for in Husserls view theoretical scientific

concepts, in virtue of the genesis of their constitution, presuppose the va-

lidity of the evidence given in originary life-world intuition and hence can

in no way account for it. In Harveys words:

To explain our [prescientific] understanding of the [life-]world by an appeal to the [objective-scientific] world that we (think we) understand, is to beg the essential questions of epis-

temology. Wherever the results of natural or natural scientific thinking are appealed to

in order to explain the truth or validity of our [intuitions], the truth and validity of those

[intuitions] are already presupposed. (Harvey 1986, 294)


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That is, any valid appeal to a scientific explanation of life-world experience

is itself possible only because of the prior validity of the experience to be

explained.

This tension between Husserls account and scientific realism can bedrawn out from a Sellarsian perspective (cf. Gutting 1974 and 1978). In

Sellarsian terminology, Husserls claim is that any scientific image (con-

stituted within what Husserl calls the theoretical attitude) of the world

is not simply posited or hypothesized out of nothing but rather is built

upon the manifest image (constituted within the natural attitude). Here,

Husserl and Sellars appear to be in agreement; Sellars writes: the sci-

entific image is a construct from a number of images, each of which is

supported by the manifest world . . . [E]ach theoretical image is a con-

struction on a foundation provided by the manifest image, and in this

methodological sense pre-supposes the manifest image (Sellars 1963, 20,

original emphasis). Sellars, then, like Husserl, grants the manifest image

methodological priority over the scientific image. Also, as emphasized inthe previous section, Husserl would agree with Sellars that the scientific

image articulates the world in distinctively new categories that surpass

(i.e., are not logically derivable from or reducible to) those of the man-

ifest image; Sellars says: while conceptual structures of this framework

[i.e., the scientific image] are built on the manifest image, they are not

definable within it (Sellars 1963, 17, original emphasis). What Husserl

would reject in the Sellarsian view is precisely the thesis that the scientific

image of the world has primacy with regard to the legitimacy of concepts

and the standard of what is real. It is this reversal of priority (a reversal

from Husserls perspective) that presents the scientific image as a rival

to the manifest image Thus although methodologically a developmentwithin the manifest image, the scientific image presents itself as a rival

image (Sellars 1963, 20, original emphasis) and engenders the aim of

theoretical science to supplant or replace the manifest image by an au-

tonomous scientific image that is more adequate or complete with regard

to explaining experience. In particular, it is the explanatory success of the

scientific image that confers independent warrant upon it and justifies its

primacy over, and hence substitution for, the manifest image (cf. Gutting

1974 and 1978).

Just such a replacement is what Husserl would call a surreptitious

substitution of a scientifically constructed world for the one and only

real world, a substitution that forgets the genuine or original basis of the

sense and validity of the scientific image that is substituted for the man-ifest image. Thus, one might argue, by forbidding such a replacement of

the manifest image by an explanatorily superior scientific image, Husserl


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places himself at odds here with the scientific realist. But, as noted above,

from Husserls point of view the motivation for such a substitution begs the

epistemological question regarding explanation. Thus, to make the claim

that Husserls view fundamentally conflicts with scientific realism on thispoint, one must argue further that the justification or validity of theoreti-

cal constructs must (at least in part) be grounded in explanatory success,

i.e., that explanatory success is essential to a realist appraisal of scientific

theory. In any case, Husserls depiction of scientific method, as pertains

to the genesis and validity of theoretical scientific concepts, is clearly in

serious tension with (at least some arguments for) scientific realism. Can

Husserls framework be modified to relieve this tension? I dont think so;

for such a modification would require one to admit an autonomous ground

of explanatory success as an independent source of validity for theoretical

scientific concepts, which would undercut Husserls fundamental commit-

ment to the exclusive primacy of the self-evidence of the life-world itself

as the original ground of all validities.The source of this tension is that Husserl has what some would argue

(correctly, I think) is an impoverished notion of scientific explanation.

Clearly, from the passages quoted above, he understands explanation in

science to be solely deductive-nomological explanation (i.e., logical sub-

sumption of phenomena under general laws); and such explanation, he

claims, explains nothing but rather is itself in need of explanation. But

some scientific realists (e.g., McMullin 1984a) take causal explanation via

retroductively inferred theoretical hypotheses and entities to be the charac-

teristic mode of explanation in science (McMullin calls retroduction the

inference that makes science). Now, insofar as such realists take the causal

explanatory success of a theoretical hypothesis (in addition to its empiricalaccuracy) as the primary warrant for the truth of the hypothesis, Husserls

framework would seem incapable of accommodating this form of scientific

realism. Husserl, then, simply fails to appreciate the role of retroductive

inference in scientific methodology, perhaps because his chief example

of a science is geometry, in which logical deduction is the paradigm of

explanation. Well return to the issue of the epistemological relevance of

explanation below.

This leads us to what is usually taken as the principal challenge that

Husserls characterization of theoretical concept formation might pose to

scientific realism viz., his treatment of the status of the substructed ide-

alities retroductively posited by theoretical hypotheses, i.e., the problem

of theoretical entities; for the causal explanatory success of theoreticalhypotheses is taken by the scientific realist to also provide warrant for

the existence of the theoretical entities posited in such hypotheses (cf. Mc-


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Mullin 1984b). One claim of Husserls that has often been taken (e.g., Gut-

ting 1978) to illustrate his supposed anti-realist stance toward theoretical

entities is the following:

The contrast between the subjectivity of the life-world and the objective, the true world,

lies in the fact that the latter is a theoretical-logical substruction, the substruction of some-

thing that is in principle not perceivable, in principle not experienceable in its own proper

being, whereas the subjective, in the life-world, is distinguished in all respects precisely by

its being actually experienceable . . . . The objective is precisely never experienceable as

itself. (Husserl 1970, 127, 129)

The typical example of such in-principle unobservable substructed ideali-

ties are the limit-shapes of geometry. The life-world does not show itself

as geometrically determinate (or determinable); i.e., no limit-shapes are

(or could be) ever intuitively given in life-world experience: here we

find nothing of geometric idealities, no geometrical space or mathematical

time with all their shapes (Husserl 1970, 50). Now, the life-world is theworld of all known and unknown realities (Husserl 1970, 50). Thus, the

argument would go, given that all realities belong to the life-world and

are experienceable within its horizon and that theoretical scientific entities

are in principle not experienceable within the life-world and hence do not

belong to it, the theoretical entities of science cannot belong to the real.

But, need Husserl be committed to such an anti-realist view regarding

theoretical entities? I think not; indeed, I think Husserls view can be made

to accord with scientific realism on this point. Husserls claim is that, to

count as real, a thing must be capable of showing itself within the life-

world horizon, i.e., must be capable of being given to consciousness in

originary intuition in life-world experience. At first, Husserls claim would

seem to require that this showing-itself of something real be a showing-

itself of something in its very own being, i.e., an original, self-evident or

in-person showing-itself of something. In Heideggers terminology, such

showing-itself of something from itself as it is in itself is the primordial

sense of showing itself, viz., phenomenon (Heidegger 1962, 51). Now,

founded upon this primary sense phenomenon are other positive senses

of showing itself. One such derivative mode of showing itself founded

upon phenomenon is the appearance of something, which does not

mean showing itself; it [appearance] means rather the announcing-itself

by something which does not show itself, but announces itself through

something which does show itself (Heidegger 1962, 52). Can Husserl al-

low for such derivative modes of showing itself? Indeed, he does: How-ever, though the objects of the life-world, if they are to show their very

own being, necessarily show themselves as physical bodies, this does not

mean that they show themselves only in this way (Husserl 1970, 108).


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The question, then, is whether all grounding evidence must be on the ba-

sis of the primordial showing-itself of things themselves, i.e., whether all

grounding evidence must be self-evidence. Husserl does claim as much: a

substruction, insofar as it makes claim to truth, can have actual truth onlyby being related back to such self-evidences (Husserl 1970, 127). But,

we need not, I think, take this to necessarily imply that the grounding self-

evidence must be the self-evident showing-itself of whatever theoretical

entity is retroductively inferred or posited on the basis of such evidence.

Rather, Husserls claim requires only that whatever theoretical entities we

do retroductively infer or posit must have as their evidential basis the self-

evident showing-itself of something in originary intuition in life-world

experience. This would allow appearances to be the grounding evidence

for retroductive inferences, for appearing is possible only by reason of a

showing-itself of something (Heidegger 1962, 53, original emphasis), i.e.,

any appearance is founded upon a phenomenon.

So, the retroductive inferences that posit theoretical scientific entitiescan be made valid (in Husserls sense) by being evidentially grounded in

appearances (in Heideggers sense). The retroductive inference can now

be described phenomenologically as a modifying intuition by which the

sense of the thing given in originary intuition is modified from that of

the self-evident showing-itself of something (original sense) to that of

the announcing-itself of an entity that does not show itself self-evidently

but announces itself through something that does show itself (modified

sense), i.e., from phenomenon to appearance. An example will help

clarify matters. Consider the observation of elementary particles via a

bubble chamber experiment. What one perceives originarily (typically in

photographs) are not elementary particles (e.g., protons, electrons, etc.)themselves at all, or even particle tracks or ionization trails. Rather, what

is perceived originarily in this case are curved lines. And the modification

of this originary perception occurs against the background of or within the

horizon of expectations conditioned by current (relevant) scientific theory,

which guides the originary perception as well as the subsequent modifica-

tion of its sense. Against the background of the theory of the function of the

experimental apparatus at hand, such curved lines appear first as ionization

trails; founded upon this primary modified intuition and within the horizon

of the world of elementary particle theory, such ionization trails appear

second as elementary particle tracks; and founded upon this secondary

modified intuition through thematic reflection upon such particle tracks in

terms of the conceptual categories and laws of elementary particle theory,the elementary particle track appears as the track of an elementary particle

of a certain kind; finally, founded upon this tertiary modified intuition, the


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existence of such an elementary particle of that kind is inferred and its

presence is posited to explain the observed phenomenon (i.e., the curved

line in the photograph). Thus, in this series of modifying intuition and

retroductive inference, the sense of what was perceived originarily wasmodified from the showing-itself of a curved line to the appearing of an

elementary particle of a certain kind. To draw an analogy with everyday

experience (bearing in mind the limitation of all analogies): to posit the

presence of an elementary particle of a certain kind based on a retroductive

inference from the evidence of a curved line in a bubble-chamber photo-

graph is not like perceiving a mountain and seeing that it has an opposite

side, or even like seeing that there must be a landscape beyond the other

side of the mountain, but rather is akin to imagining a village or, better yet,

a house with a fire in the hearth in a village set in the landscape beyond

the other side of the mountain in order to explain the smoke one perceives

rising above the mountains peak.

Of course, as with all meaning modifications, the original sense (i.e.,curved line) is carried forward with or sedimented into the modified senses

constituted in the subsequent modifying intuitions leading to the retroduc-

tive inference, for appearance signifies the showing-itself (Heidegger

1962, 53, original emphasis): elementary-particle bubble-chamber track

signifies (but is notidentical in meaning to) curved trail of ionized mole-

cules. And this sedimentation of original sense makes possible both the

reactivation of the self-evidence that ultimately grounds the retroductively

inferred theoretical entity (and, hence, the validity of the inference) and

the verification of that entity in experience via the self-evidence of the life-

world. In this way, the verification of the theoretical scientific entity in

life-world experience, or the fulfillment of life-world experience projectedon the basis of the theoretical concept of that entity, would take place via

a founded intuition (i.e., the perception of an appearance that is founded

upon a phenomenon). I thus concur with Soffer that the foundedness of

the fulfillments of scientific entities and states of affairs cannot be taken

to undermine their reality (Soffer 1990, 88), but rather accords with their

founded sense. Indeed, if a retroductive inference is one that leaps from

the given of experience to what is not directly, immediately or self-given

in intuition, then the phenomenological condition of the possibility of any

retroductive inference being valid is that it be founded upon appearance.

Moreover, any hypothetically inferred entity incapable of showing it-

self in any mode, either as phenomenon or as appearance, i.e., an entity

unobservable in principle (either directly or indirectly), would on this viewstill not count as real, in accordance with Husserls requirement that every-

thing real be capable of showing itself in some positive mode within the


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life-world horizon. Indeed, such a inference could not be validated via

the reactivation of any grounding self-evidence. For if it were grounded

in original self-evidence, then its original sense constituted in originary

intuition on the basis of such self-evidence and carried forward by the mod-ifying intuition (i.e., by the retroductive inference) would make possible

its verification via the self-evidence of the life-world in some projectable

course of experience; given that the latter is not possible, the substruction

is therefore invalid. A scientific realist would also deny the reality of such

an entity, but on the grounds that the postulation of such an entity has no

empirical consequences and hence is ad hoc. Thus, Husserls characteri-

zation of scientific method can accommodate a realist view regarding the

observational and existential status of retroductively inferred theoretical

entities (cf. Harvey and Shelton 1992).

Nonetheless, I think Husserls notion of founded intuition as the source

of all theoretical scientific conceptual construction is insufficient to com-

prehend fully the character of retroductive inference, for it fails to accountfor a crucial aspect of such inference, viz., its fallibility. Retroductive infer-

ence involves more than a mere modification of the sense of what is given

in originary intuition from phenomenon to appearance. Being founded

upon appearance, the retroductive inference posits the reality not of the

phenomenon (i.e., what is given), for its reality is self-evident, but rather

of what appears (i.e., what is indicated by the phenomenon taken as a sign),

the reality of which is not self-evident. The retroductive inference posits

novel reality that, although indicated by, radically exceeds what is given

and, hence, cannot be guaranteed by the self-evidence of the phenomena;

for even if, as Husserl says, things are given in each case as valid, the

retroductive inference posits the reality of something that is not given. InMcMullins apt phrase, retroduction enlarges the known world. Thus,

whereas mere sense-modification of originary intuition of what is given

self-evidently retains the original validity of self-evidence insofar as the

modifying intuition maintains a constant meaning-reference to what is

given, such validity is not necessarily transferred to the reality posited

retroductively just because the retroductive inference does not maintain

such a constant meaning-reference but rather shifts or extends meaning-

reference from what is given to what is posited (i.e., to the hypothetical

theoretical entity).

In our example above, the primary and secondary modifying intuitions

changed merely the sense of the originary intuition from curved line

to ionization trail to elementary particle track with each subsequentmeaning modification being founded upon the prior intuition and preserv-

ing a constant meaning-reference to what was perceived originarily. How-


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ever, the retroductive inference changed not only the sense of the prior

modified intuition from elementary particle track to track of an ele-

mentary particle of a certain kind but also shifted or extended the ref-

erence of that meaning from what was perceived originarily to the positednovel reality i.e., from the curved line to the elementary particle itself.

Indeed, such reference-extension posits the evidential basis of the excess

meaning that the retroductive inference attaches to the originary intuition;

and because this excess meaning contains an implicit reference to the

posited (rather than given) theoretical entity, the intuition of the existence

or presence of a theoretical entity cannot be reducible in meaning (i.e., can-

not be identical in both sense andreference) to mere phenomenal meanings

grasped in originary perception. So, retroductive inference both extends

the reference of theoretical scientific concepts beyond what is given in

originary intuition and modifies the sense of such intuition on the basis

of that reference-extension, thereby generating radical meaning change

(i.e., of both sense and reference) of a sort Husserl never envisioned andwhich his notion of founded intuition does not encompass. Therefore,

the validity of retroductive inference cannotbe guaranteed by the original

validity of the self-evidence of originary intuition precisely because such

inference posits its own evidential basis that radically exceeds reference to

original self-evidence; to put this in another (somewhat ironic) way, it is

precisely because the phenomenological condition of the possibility of any

retroductive inference being valid is that it be founded upon appearance

that the validity of what is posited retroductively is underdetermined by the

original self-evidence of the phenomena. Here, then, is the source of the

underdetermination of theory by evidence in science, a problem Husserl

himself did not countenance and which cannot, I think, be adequatelyaddressed within his framework as it stands.

The upshot of such radical meaning modification, and hence the em-

pirical underdetermination of theoretical scientific concepts, is that retro-

ductive inferences are fallible, i.e., possibly invalid. Inference from effect

to cause is never completely certain; in Husserls terms, retroductive in-

ference never achieves apodicticity. Thus enters the need in science for a

ground of validity other than the original self-evidence of the life-world

given in originary intuition viz., confirmation (via secondary evidence)

and (causal) explanatory success which confers independent (though

non-apodictic) warrant upon theoretical hypotheses and the entities they

posit. Moreover, that retroductive inferences are possibly invalid implies

that what is motivated in experience by retroductively inferred hypothesesand posited entities can not(as Husserl says) be expected with empirical

certainty and, hence, presents the possibility that such hypotheses and


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entities could be disconfirmed or go unfulfilled in experience and thereby

need to be modified in confrontation with disconfirming evidence. Now,

within Husserls framework there can, for sure, be cancellation of con-

cepts via the failure of the phenomena to fulfill conceptually motivated cat-egorial intuitions. Such cancellation, though, would on Husserls account

merely reflect a concepts lack of a valid sense-foundation and indicate

only the impossibility of reactivating any originary life-world evidence at

its basis (i.e., indicate that it was founded upon a mistaken perception);

hence, it would lead one to simply reject the concept outright rather than

to modify it in accord with the disconfirming evidence. Science would

thus proceed in a way that is merely bounded negatively by disconfirming

evidence. Yet, theory modification can be guided positively by disconfirm-

ing evidence whereby the meaning of inadequate conceptual structures

is transformed in a progressive way so that they remain faithful to the

phenomena (Belousek 1998). Husserls framework does not naturally ac-

commodate this possibility; for as much as he does not provide a genuineepistemic role for confirmation to play in the construction and valida-

tion of theoretical-scientific concepts, he cannot give any positive place to

disconfirmation in progressive theory modification and constructive con-

ceptual change. Indeed, because on his account all valid and progressive

conceptual modification in science builds cumulatively upon theoretical

constructs that are taken over or handed down as already valid (see next

section), such conceptual change can be motivated only by further discov-

ery but never provoked and guided forward by disconfirming evidence (cf.

Popper 1948). So, in failing to appreciate the central role and characteristic

fallibility of retroductive inference in science, Husserl also overlooks the

positive place of falsification in scientific methodology and its potentialimport for scientific realism.

4. CONCEPTUAL CHANGE AND THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE

We consider next Husserls characterization of conceptual change in sci-

ence. Here, Husserl is unequivocal regarding the essential progressive and

continuous character of scientific traditions: science progresses as the

unity of a propagative process of transferred meaning (Husserl 1970,

363). There are two key characteristics to this propagative process. Con-

ceptual change in science is a unitary process, constituting a single pro-

gression: The scientific world, the scientists horizon of being, has thecharacter of a single work or edifice growing in infinitum, upon which the

generations of scientists, belonging to it correlatively, are unendingly at

work (Husserl 1970, 380). Conceptual change in science is also a cumu-


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lative process whereby all past meanings laid down are carried forward as

sediment and retain their validity for the present life-world:

[geometry] is not only a mobile forward process from one set of acquisitions to another

but a continuous synthesis in which all acquisitions maintain their validity, all make upa totality such that, at every present stage, the total acquisition is, so to speak, the total

premise for the acquisitions of the new level . . . . The same thing is true of every science.

(Husserl 1970, 355)

Thus,

the propositions, theories, the whole edifice of doctrine in the objective sciences are struc-

tures attained through certain activities of scientists bound together in their collaborative

work or, to speak more exactly, attained through a continued building up of activities,

the later of which always presuppose the results of the earlier. And we see further that all

these theoretical results have the character of validities for the life-world, adding them-

selves to its own composition and belonging to it even before that as a horizon of possible

accomplishments for developing science. (Husserl 1970, 131)

Again, I will consider each of these unity and cumulativity in turn andassess them against both other appraisals of scientific conceptual change

as well as the history of physics.

First is the unitary character of scientific conceptual change. Science,

according to Husserl, is a unitary progression, taking place within a sin-

gle horizon of possible accomplishments for developing science. But,

is that so? Kuhn, of course, depicts science as developing through a non-

cumulative succession of competing and mutually incompatible traditions

(or, paradigms), transitions between them being revolutions (Kuhn 1970).

Such incompatibility, or incommensurability, between successive para-

digms, it would seem, is surely contrary to viewing the history of a science

as a single, coherent progressing tradition, for the incommensurability of

two paradigms implies just that they cannot be brought together within

a single, coherent conceptual framework. Indeed, scientists belonging to

different paradigms cannot even understand one another completely; what

each says must appear (at least in part) unintelligible to the other: Com-

munication across the revolutionary divide is inevitably partial (Kuhn

1970, 149). In short, scientists in competing paradigms (literally) speak

different scientific languages. But, for Husserl, it is precisely the unity of

scientific language that preserves and ensures the unity of the progressive

transference of meaning of theoretical scientific constructions and, hence,

of the scientific tradition: In the unity of the community of communica-

tion among several persons the repeatedly produced structure becomes an

object of consciousness, not as a likeness, but as the one structure commonto all (Husserl 1970, 360). As Kisiel puts it, it is language which is the

condition of the possibility for the retention and protention of meaning be-

yond the finite individual and for the tradition (Kisiel 1970, 73). That is, a


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single, common scientific language is a condition for the very possibility of

the progressive transmission of meaning within a single scientific tradition

(cf. Klein 1940).

A paradigm shift, though, is more than a change in scientific vocabularythat creates difficulties in communication between scientists in competing

paradigms. A paradigm is constitutive of a scientists world-view; thus, a

revolution is a change in world-view, a displacement of the conceptual

network through which scientists view the world (Kuhn 1970, 102) or,

more suggestively, a change in worlds: the proponents of competing par-

adigms practice their trade in different worlds (Kuhn 1970, 150). So, the

incommensurability between successive paradigms is more serious than

the lack of a common scientific language; it is in some sense the lack of

a shared world. In Husserls terms, to undergo a paradigm shift is for a

scientific tradition to already move within a different objective-scientific

world, to already be directed in its research activity toward a radically

transformed horizon of meaning. Therefore, if science does sometimeschange through Kuhnian revolutions, then Husserls characterization of the

development of scientific tradition as a unitary progression is untenable.

Now, one might respond on Husserls behalf that, even if science does

develop through the revolutionary succession of incommensurable para-

digms, all such change is still bounded by a single horizon of possible

scientific development toward which all research in every succeeding para-

digm is directed. Certainly the life-world horizon is such an horizon, for all

scientific theorizing in every epoch must take place within it: To be sure,

everyday induction grew into induction according to scientific method, but

that changes nothing of the essential meaning of the pregiven world as the

horizon of all meaningful induction (Husserl 1970, 51). The life-worldis the single horizon toward which all questions tend, and the scien-

tific world . . . like all other worlds . . . itself belongs to the life-world

(Husserl 1970, 380). But, Husserls claim requires more than this, for if

the universality of the life-world as an ultimate horizon of meaning were

sufficient to constitute the unity of a tradition directed in its activity toward

it, then there would be no specific difference between the totality of human

cultural activity in its unified historical movement within the life-world

(Husserl 1970, 371) and the essential unity constituting the movement of

any particular scientific tradition. And that would nullify the significance

of scientific theorizing as a decisive accomplishment arising out of the

life-world.

One must, then, find a horizon that is specifically scientific, and hereGalileos accomplishment, the mathematization of nature, might be con-

sidered as having opened an infinite horizon for the development of physics


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by setting a task or program of research that cannot be outstripped viz.,

the reduction of all aspects of material bodies to geometrically determinable

(i.e., spatio-temporally quantifiable) properties and their mechanical rela-

tions. But, has not theoretical physics already outstripped this task? I offertwo developments in the history of physics that indicate that the horizon of

research opened by Galileos achievement has indeed been eclipsed.

The first is the case of the postulation of the electron. Nineteenth-century

mathematical physics (Maxwell, Thomson, Tait, etc.) had persisted in its

attempt to explain electromagnetic phenomena by reducing all the proper-

ties of the electromagnetic field to the geometrically determinable stresses

and strains in a mechanical ether (Harman 1982, chap. 4). This project

was eventually abandoned and, with Lorentz setting the leading example,

supplanted by the program of introducing point sources for the electromag-

netic field whose properties could not be reduced to the geometric proper-

ties of a mechanical ether. Thus was conceived the notion of electric charge

as an irreducibly non-mechanical property of matter, and the electromag-netic field was subsequently reborn as a substantial entity existing indepen-

dently of a mechanical medium (with the special theory of relativity acting

as midwife, of course). It might be argued, though, that the electron and

electromagnetic field still had spatio-temporally determinable properties

(as, e.g., determined per the Lorentz force law and Maxwells equations)

such that the theoretical substruction of the electron and electromagnetic

field still took place within and in reference to the Galilean horizon. In

response to this, I offer the development of the quantum-mechanical atom.

Here, the project of determining the atom in all its aspects as a fundamen-

tally spatio-temporal, mechanical entity was decisively abandoned (Ser-

wer 1977). Indeed, the Uncertainty Principle was taken to imply that it isimpossible to determine all the classical-mechanical properties of matter

simultaneously in a geometrically precise manner. The result of this rad-

ical shift is that no longer is it the task of theoretical physics to reduce

all aspects of matter to geometrically determinable mechanical proper-

ties. Indeed, the quantum-mechanical particle property of spin, which

has notoriously resisted a geometrical interpretation, has instead been un-

derstood primarily in terms of the non-spatio-temporal symmetries of the

wave-function. Following upon this, the prevalent use of group theory

in contemporary elementary particle physics has opened up a new horizon

for development within which the theoretician is handed the task of deter-

mining the properties of matter algebraically. For sure, I think, the Galilean

research tradition has been replaced and the horizon within which it movedruptured. And, if so, Husserls claim for the unitary character of scientific

conceptual change is inconsonant with the history of physics.


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If one wants to maintain that the shift from the geometricization of

nature (characteristic of classical mechanics and its research program) to

the algebraicization of nature (characteristic of quantum mechanics and

its research program) occurs within the horizon of the Galilean project,and hence that both research programs belong to one and the same sci-

entific tradition, then the significance of Galileos accomplishment must

change from the geometricization of nature specifically to the mathema-

tization of nature generally. The latter, of course, is the way in which

early twentieth-century historiography of science reconstructed Galileos

decisive accomplishment for mechanics (Cohen 1994, sec. 2.3). But, to

characterize Galileos project in such general terms as to include the alge-

braicization of nature is (at least potentially) to do violence to history, for

the abstract algebra from which contemporary physics derives its methods

of formal representation was developed only in the nineteenth century

(Boyer 1991, chaps. 26 and 28). What must be inquired into, then, is

whether this latter development can itself be reconstructed historiograph-ically as a modification of or a building up out of the same geometric

tradition out of and in relation to which Galileo opened up the horizon

of research for classical mechanics. If so, then the claim that the respective

projects of the geometricization and algebraicization of nature belong to

one and the same scientific tradition may prove tenable. Such an inquiry,

however, outstrips the task of this essay.

It should be noted here that the shift from Newtonian gravitational

theory to the general theory of relativity does occur within the Galilean

horizon even though the latter employs a non-Euclidean geometry. This

is clear for two reasons. First, non-Euclidean geometry itself (including

the Riemannian geometry of relativity theory) did arise as a modifica-tion within the Euclidean geometric tradition (Gray 1989, part 2). And,

second, in general relativity, the reduction of nature to the geometrically

determinable is carried out in the extreme the foundation of the real is a

mathematical manifold and its precisely determinable metrical properties

and thus it fulfills rather than overtakes the Galilean project.

The second characteristic Husserl ascribes to scientific conceptual

change is cumulativity: all meanings acquired in the history of a theoretical

scientific concept are handed down through tradition as sediment. The

key aspect of this cumulativity is that such handing-down maintains the

validity for the life-world of those concepts. The ground of the possibility

of such retention of validity is the ahistorical essential character of the

life-world itself: the life-world does have, in all its relative features, ageneral structure. This general structure, to which everything that exists

is relatively bounded, is not itself relative (Husserl 1970, 139). This


22/28


actually intuited, actually experienced and experienceable world remains

unchanged as what it is, in its own essential structure and its own concrete

causal style, whatever we may do with or without techniques (Husserl

1970, 51). In this sense, the life-world is a priori such that, as the ex-pression a priori indicates, it lays claim to a strictly unconditioned and

truly apodictic self-evidence extending beyond all historical facticities

(Husserl 1970, 373). Husserl is thereby able to avoid the embarrassment

of historicism in that the life-world is a constant, ever-present ground of

validity; all theoretical scientific concepts founded in every tradition have

their validity in reference to a common source of self-evidence that persists

identically as one and the same (in its essential structure) throughout all

historical epochs: the human surrounding world is the same today and

always, and thus also in respect to what is relevant to primal establishment

and lasting tradition (Husserl 1970, 378). Thus, once a sedimented sense

of a concept obtains validity (either originary or derivative) for the life-

world, it remains always valid because the life-world never changes itsself- evident style upon which such validity was based originally. So, when

inquiring back to the self-evident origins of geometry, for instance, we

need not be familiar with the detailed particularities of the life-world of

the Greeks; for

It is now clear that even if we know almost nothing about the historical surrounding world

of the first geometers, this much is certain as an invariant, essential structure: that character

. . . that these pure bodies had spatio-temporal shapes and material qualities it was a world

of things . . . ; that all things necessarily had to have a bodily character . . . that these

pure bodies had spatio-temporal shapes and material qualities (color, warmth, weight,

hardness, etc.) related to them. (Husserl 1970, 375)

Indeed, it is such constancy of the life-world that is the ground of the con-tinuity of history itself as an internally unified acquisition and unfolding

of meaning, a vital movement of the coexistence and the interweaving of

original formations and sedimentations of meaning (Husserl 1970, 371).

And the unity of history itself binds the totality of human cultural traditions

into a continuous, unified movement within the life-world, which is

to say that the whole of the cultural present, understood as a totality, implies the whole

of the cultural past in an undetermined but structurally determined generality. To put it

more precisely, it implies a continuity of pasts which imply one another, each in itself

being a past cultural present. And this whole continuity is a unity or traditionalization up

to the present, which is our present as [a process of] traditionalizing itself in flowing-static

vitality. (Husserl 1970, 371)

The conceptual cumulativity of scientific tradition has two crucial impli-

cations, one for scientific practice and one for phenomenological inquiry

into scientific method. For practicing scientists, the valid accumulation of


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past, sedimented meanings allows a theoretical conceptual structure to be

taken over in the present from the past precisely as a tradition, i.e., as a

pregiven conceptual structure that is already valid for the life-world in ad-

vance of experience. The geometry which is ready-made, so to speak, . . .is a tradition (Husserl 1970, 354). Even Galileo could have accomplished

the mathematization of nature only on the basis of a ready-to-hand geom-

etry taken over by him as already valid for the life-world: The relatively

advanced geometry known to Galileo, already broadly applied not only to

the earth but also to astronomy, was for him, accordingly, already pregiven

by tradition as a guide to his own thinking (Husserl 1970, 28). Thus, the

scientific practitioner need not re-think the whole of his science back to its

origins in order to validly employ its concepts in projecting and fulfilling

experience in the life-world. Indeed, if one must run through the whole

immense chain of groundings back to the original premises and actually

reactivate the whole thing, then a science like our modern geometry

would obviously not be possible at all (Husserl 1970, 363). Rather,

Through a method of idealization and construction which historically has long since been

worked out and can be practiced intersubjectively in a community, these limit-shapes have

become acquired tools that can be used habitually and can always be applied to something

new . . . . Like all cultural acquisitions which arise out of human accomplishment, they

remain objectively knowable and available without requiring that the formulation of their

meaning be repeatedly and explicitly renewed. (Husserl 1970, 26)

That is, a science which is given as a tradition . . . has become a

(Husserl 1970, 57). Thus, the conceptually cumulative development of sci-

entific tradition, in Husserls view, just is what makes scientific practice

itself possible in the first place (cf. Klein 1940). Recalling our earlier ex-

ample, once the successful retroductive inference of an elementary particle

is verified in experiment and becomes established within scientific theory

and practice it will form part of the background or horizon of normal

science; the physicist will henceforth see through (rather than repeat) the

whole series of founding intuitions and retroductive inference by which the

theoretical concept was constituted and the theoretical entity was posited

in the first place and simply perceive the elementary particle as show-

ing itself (rather than as merely appearing) in the bubble-chamber pho-

tograph, the conceptual reference-extension achieved by the retroductive

inference allowing the physicist to see beyond the phenomena. Tradition,

then, does not blind the practicing scientist to the phenomena, but rather

is the very mode of access through which the things themselves (i.e.,theoretical-scientific entities) are encountered in scientific experience.

Regarding the phenomenological inquiry into scientific method, the cu-

mulative character of conceptual change is what makes the de-constructive


24/28


inquiry back to self-evident origins possible all de-construction must take

as its point of departure a tradition: The geometry which is ready-made, so

to speak, from which the regressive inquiry begins, is a tradition (Husserl

1970, 354). As Kisiel puts it, It is because of this tightly woven networkin the progression of scientific meaning that Husserl now insists that it is

possible to regress to the most incipient meanings solely along essential

lines (Kisiel 1970, 7071). That is, only insofar as the originary sense of

a concept is preserved as sediment in the progressive modification of its

meaning within a tradition is it even possible, beginning with that concept

as handed down by tradition, to regress to the self-evident origins in which

its originary sense was laid down or constituted. Now, in that Husserl

claims that a scientific theoretical construction is valid only insofar as

the originary intuitive genesis of that construction out of the self-evidence

of the life-world can be exhibited phenomenologically, it is clear that if

scientific traditions do not change conceptually in a cumulative manner,

then the phenomenological task of exhibiting the self-evident ground ofvalidity for theoretical scientific concepts proves to be in vain. And the

upshot for Husserls characterization of scientific method would be that no

scientific tradition could uncover and exhibit the originary meaning of its

concepts and thereby establish the validity of its theoretical structures for

the life-world:

The developed method, the progressive fulfillment of the task, is, as method, an art ()

which is handed down; but its true [i.e., original] meaning is not necessarily handed down

[explicitly] with it. And it is precisely for this reason that a theoretical task and achievement

like that of a natural science . . . can only be and remain meaningful in a true and original

sense if the scientist has developed in himself the ability to inquire back into the original

meaning of all his meaning-structures and methods, i.e., into the historical meaning of their

primal establishment, and especially into the meaning of all the inherited meanings taken

over unnoticed in this primal establishment, as well as those taken over later on. (Husserl

1970, 56, original emphasis)

Thus, for Husserl, the cumulativity of scientific conceptual change is a con-

dition for the possibility of scientific realism, for it is only by appealing to

the possibility of inquiring back through the tradition itself to the originary

self-evidence of the ahistorical life-world that he avoids historicism in the

first place.

Husserls view here, of course, is at odds with the Kuhnian picture

paradigm shifts are non-cumulative. Such non-cumulativity results in so-

called Kuhn loss: the obvious questions of one paradigm are not even

intelligible in a succeeding paradigm; problems to be solved or phenomenato be explained are no longer in need of solution or explanation; terms

which referred to entities out there in the world are thought to not really

refer at all or are taken to refer to different things; etc. (Kuhn 1970, chaps. 9


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and 10). But, I think it would be more instructive here to contrast Husserls

view with history directly rather than with just another reconstruction of

that history.

The question, then, is whether or not the history of science exhibits suchcumulativity in its conceptual development as Husserl claims. In order to

assess this claim, I suggest considering the case of the theoretical concept

atom. In its origin with the Greek atomists Democritus and Leucippus,

the originary meaning of atom was (literally) indivisible and incom-

posite. Now, if Husserls claim is correct, this originary sense should

have been sedimented into and handed down (as valid for the life-world)

along with the concept atom as it was transmitted through the atomist

tradition over the centuries. For sure, this originary sense of atom was

the founding meaning for all atomic theorists of the modern period from

Gassendi and Hobbes in the seventeenth century down to Dalton in the

nineteenth century, serving as the basis for the characteristics such as finite

extension and impenetrability further ascribed to atoms in this period. But,beginning with the late nineteenth century, the atom-concept was radically

transformed beyond its originary sense. Following the postulation of elec-

tric charge as a non-mechanical, independent property of matter, the atom

of Thompson and Rutherford became composite, being comprised of a

positively charged core of some sort surrounded by a region of negative

charge. And with Bohr, the atom became not only composite but also divis-

ible, that positively charged core or nucleus being subject to radioactive

decay and spontaneous fission.

The question thus is whether or not through this transformation the

atom-concept retained as valid for the life-world its original sense of in-

divisible and incomposite. If so, then the contemporary atom-concepthanded down from Bohr is, strictly speaking, logically incoherent and,

hence, not possibly valid for the life-world. For, if it were valid, then it

must be possible to verify its meaning through the (perceptual) intuition

of things themselves given in self-evidence, which, in turn, would require

that it be possible for something to show itself (either directly or indi-

rectly) as both composite-divisible and incomposite-indivisible, which is

(metaphysically) impossible. So, either the contemporary atom-concept is

invalid or Husserls claim is incorrect. Insofar as one takes the contempo-

rary atom-concept to be valid for the life-world, Husserls claim must be

incorrect.

The defender of Husserl on this point has at least three options. One

could deny that the contemporary atom-concept is valid for the life-world;but, given the overwhelmingly successful confirmation of contemporary

atomic theory over the past seventy years, such a move would be unwar-


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ranted. One could deny that the originary sense ofatom was (and, hence,

is) valid for the life-world; but this would render invalid a fortiori all

the theoretical constructions of the atomist tradition of the early modern

period inasmuch as its atom-concept was founded upon the original Greekconcept. Or, one could deny that the atom-concept of the Greek and early

modern tradition and the contemporary atom-concept refer to the same

kind of entity in the life-world; but this would disrupt the unity of the

atomist tradition and result in the sort of Kuhn loss mentioned above.

None of these responses appears tenable.

Still, it might be suggested on Husserls behalf that, although the term

atom itself no longer refers to what is indivisible, incomposite, etc., there

are theoretical entities in contemporary science that do satisfy such a de-

scription, viz. the quarks and leptons: quarks compose the hadrons, includ-

ing baryons (three-quark entities) such as protons and neutrons as well

as mesons (two-quark entities) such as the pions; and the leptons include

electrons, neutrinos and photons. Thus, one might claim that quarks andleptons play the same role in the standard model of elementary particles as

did atoms in the physical theories of the l7thl9th centuries, so that while

what we now call atoms are themselves no longer strictly atomic in the

original sense of the term, there are still genuinely atomic (i.e., indivisible,

incomposite, etc.) entities in our current physical theory. We thus need to

distinguish here between two notions of atom (such a distinction was

actually introduced in the 19th century to avoid terminological confusion):

the chemical atom, which refers to the smallest units of matter having the

chemical properties of a given element (represented in the periodic table),

and the physical atom, which refers to truly indivisible, incomposite, etc.,

fundamental entities of all matter (represented in a chart of elementaryparticles). And it is atom in this second sense that is the rightful inheritor

of the atomist tradition stretching back unbroken to the Greeks and which

has its proper reference in current physical theory to quarks and leptons,

not to units of hydrogen, helium, etc.

This suggestion, however, while compatible with both the history of

science and contemporary usage, cannot be easily fit into Husserls frame-

work. For it introduces a subtle shift in the notion of the meaning of a

theoretical-scientific concept. Implicit in the suggestion is the claim that

the meaning of a theoretical-scientific concept is constituted primarily by

the semantical role it plays within a given theory, rather than originally

by the self-evidence of the life-world as in Husserls view. Such a se-

mantics of theoretical terms was employed by Kuhn and Feyerabend inthe argument for conceptual incommensurability across theory change: if

there is no theory-independent (i.e., pre-theoretical) meaning of scientific


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concepts, then a single term used in succeeding theories has two disparate,

incommensurate meanings. Thus, the suggestion would require Husserls

framework to allow for the possibility of incommensurability, which, as

emphasized above, is at odds with his view of scientific conceptual changeas the unity of a propagative process of transferred meaning; for what

would get transferred from one theory to the next would be merely a

semantical role, not any originary life-world evidence that Husserl insists

is at the founding of the meaning of all theoretical-scientific concepts.

What has been shown with this case, then, is not that all scientific con-

ceptual change must be non-cumulative as according to Kuhn, but rather

that such conceptual change need not be cumulative in the manner char-

acterized by Husserl. And this, I think, poses yet another challenge to a

phenomenological basis for scientific realism insofar as such cumulativ-

ity is, on Husserls account at least, a condition of the possibility of any

scientific realism. What is needed, as indicated by the history of atomic

theory and suggested in the previous section, is a phenomenological ac-count of scientific conceptual change that allows for the possibility of

theory change through the non-cumulative meaning-modification of the-

oretical concepts in a way that need not be inimical to scientific realism;

and such non-cumulative yet progressive meaning modification, when pro-

voked and guided by disconfirming or falsifying evidence, can preserve

valid meaning-reference founded upon originary intuition and thereby al-

low theoretical concepts to remain faithful to the phenomena without

carrying along disconfirmed or falsified (i.e., unfulfilled and invalidated)

senses. We have already laid the basis for such an account (Belousek 1998),

but further development awaits a future occasion.

To sum up. From a realist point of view, Husserls phenomenologicalaccount of scientific method and conceptual change is inadequate for three

chief reasons: First, his description of the formation and modification of

theoretical scientific concepts in terms of founded intuition is inadequate

to encompass the characteristic conceptual reference-extension and epis-

temic fallibility or evidential underdetermination of retroductive inference;

second, he accords no genuine epistemic weight to confirmation regard-

ing the warrant of theoretical concepts and, hence, does not countenance

the possibility of falsification as playing a positive role in theory change;

and, third, his description of scientific conceptual change as a unitary and

cumulative progression appears incompatible with the actual history of

science.


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REFERENCES

Belousek, D. W.: 1998, Falsification, the DuhemQuine Thesis, and Scientific Real-

ism: From a Phenomenological Point of View, Journal of the British Society for

Phenomenology 29, 145161.Boyer, C. B.: 1991, A History of Mathematics, Wiley, New York.

Cohen, H. F.: 1994, The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry, University of

Chicago Press, Chicago.

Gray, J.: 1989, Ideas of Space: Euclidean, Non-Euclidean, and Relativistic, 2nd ed.,

Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Gutting, G.: 1974, Phenomenol

Belousek, Husserl on Scientific Method and Conceptual Change

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