The Crisis of European Sciences

Husserl’s last work, written under Nazi rule, argues that modern science went wrong not in its results but in forgetting its own ground. Since Galileo, he says, mathematised nature has been mistaken for nature itself, so the world of lived experience — the Lebenswelt, in which all measurement and all meaning actually originate — dropped out of view, leaving a science that can predict everything and answer no question about how to live. His remedy is to trace the formalism back to the experience it came from.

Why it’s on the list: It sits in the Science, Technology, and Epistemology section as the critique of scientism from inside philosophy — the counterweight to Arthur’s mechanism of technological progress and Hayek’s psychology of classification.

Where I saw it: On Brendan McCord’s Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List, in the section on Science, Technology, and Epistemology, saved to Kyle’s “Books To Read” Apple Note. The full 211-entry transcription lives on The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List.

Connections

• Epistemology — the field of the argument.
• Knowledge — what Husserl says the sciences mislaid the foundations of.
• The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List — the list this came from.