"Menaced Rationality": Husserl and Merleau-Ponty on the Crisis and Promise of Science

Abstract

In this paper I provide an overview of Husserl's and Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological critique of science, and suggest that such a critique is not only necessary in order to resolve an aporia that is otherwise apparently endemic to science, but that such a critique may also offer resources for productively addressing related philosophical difficulties, particularly the relationship between ideality and materiality/"nature." Following Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, I maintain that only a phenomenologically grounded science can be consistently "scientific."

Keywords: Husserl; Mathematics; Merleau-Ponty; Nature; Phenomenology; Physics; Rationality; Science.