Pierre Kerszberg

Natural Science and the Experience of Nature

In his famous Gifford Lectures in the winter of 1927, which were soon thereafter to become his book The Nature of the Physical World, the great astronomer Arthur S. Eddington dealt with the philosophical outcome of what were then the recent changes brought to scientific thought in the wake of relativity theory and quantum mechanics. He took the risk of a brief introductory excursus in which he tackled this philosophical outcome from a rather unusual angle, assuming in a deliberately false pretense that the scientist, facing the strangeness of the new conceptions of the physical world, is compelled to forget all of his spontaneous philosophy. Eddington began by reminding us that modern physics has taken away any trace of a mysterious substance attached to such a simple thing as the table that stands before me: its essence is anything but impenetrable substance. We have learned to see it as an array of atoms and fields of force, all of which are scattered in a space which is mostly empty. What, then, does it mean to say that it stands ‘‘there’’? From the scientific perspective, the fact that it is ‘‘there’’ is immaterial, because it could just as well be situated anywhere: our mathematical concept of space allows for a reversible substitution between ‘‘here’’ and ‘‘there’’ without damage to the being of the table, whatever this being may be. As Eddington says: only the scientific table ‘‘is really there – wherever ‘there’ may be.’’ Since it can be anywhere, the thereness of the thing cannot belong to its thingness. However, how legitimate is this latter claim, since thingness is precisely what the modern scientist claims not to know, on account of the now redundant mystery traditionally associated with substance? In so doing, mathematical physics has simultaneously rejected substance and any possible meaning for the ‘‘there’’ in ordinary experience. This dramatic conclusion did not come abruptly. It was prepared for by the modern mathematical physics brought about by Galileo and Newton. Indeed, a philosopher such as Kant realized the need for a doctrine of the pure experience of ‘‘thereness’’ which tallies with that part of science which, by construction, is totally free from ‘‘substance,’’ namely geometry. According to this doctrine (Transcendental Aesthetic), space and time, as pure a priori forms of sensibility which enable our attunement to the material things of the world which are ‘‘there,’’ are indeed also the forms of geometry. But with the rise of the theory of relativity things became even more radical, in the sense that, as the coordinates of space and time lost their direct physical significance, geometry began to insinuate pierre kerszberg

On the Alleged Equivalence Between Newtonian and Relativistic Cosmology

Among the many controversial contributions of E. A. Milne to cosmology, the only one which is taken seriously today (to the extent that it has been absorbed as a premise in most scientific approaches to the problem of the universe as a totality) is his early suggestion that a formal equivalence may be made between Newtonian and Relativistic cosmology. My own paper suggests that, over and above any logical validity in the alleged equivalence, the actual way in which it has subtly insinuated itself into nearly all contemporary speculation reveals as few things could some of the epistemological foundations that underlie the current assumptions in cosmological science.

The sound of the life-world

Husserls investigations of internal time-consciousness take sound as the primary temporal object. However, in these investigations, the structure of the flux of temporal subjectivity is established to the detriment of the rich tonal content of sound. Just as Husserl has enlarged the significance of the spatial object of mathematical physics to include the historically-sedimented layers of its appearance, so the temporal object will receive additional intelligibility if the rich texture of musical sound is taken into consideration. Particularly useful for this task is Bergsons philosophy of the listening experience.

Of Exact and Inexact Essences in Modern Physical Science

Husserl has argued in the Crisis that the application of mathematics to the physical sciences (the Galilean project) has effected a rather superficial (non-phenomenological) reduction of the qualities proper to the concretely intuitable physical world. On the bash of a close analysis of the essential motivations and implications of Einstein’stheory of relativity, it is possible to argue that a parallel to the phenomenological method operates within the modern physical conceptions of space, time, and matter. The main issue turns around the ideal of exactness, as the development of these conceptions tends to include inexactness as a primary quality of the world.

On Kant's Transcendental Account of Newtonian Mechanics

Kants account of Newtonian science in terms of a priori structures of the mind has been generally interpreted as too restrictive. If Newtonian science is an instantiation of the system of categories, then, in order to retain any value, they need to be dynamized in accordance with the development of science beyond Newton. This paper suggests that the restriction in best understood as Kant attempt to provide a primary matrix of sense for any possible natural science, inasmuch as it reflects the “first idea” contained in the Copernican Revolution.

Philosophie des sciences et philosophie première

Depuis son institution a l’epoque de Galilee, la science mathematique de la nature a voulu s’affranchir des apparences trompeuses de l’experience familiere. Pourtant la reference a l’experience familiere demeure une exigence de sens que les theories contemporaines ne peuvent pas eviter, meme si elles transforment profondement la nature et la portee de cette experience. Finalement la precomprehension de ce qui est effectivement compris dans les sciences est l’enigme du sens obliteree par et grâce a leur pouvoir operatoire. Cette enigme impose la tâche philosophique de reprendre l’ancien projet de philosophie premiere a l’aune de l’horizon d’une mathesis universalis. Cet article explore les possibilites d’une epistemologie qui se debarrasse a la fois du fantasme d’une maitrise absolue de ce qui est et du scepticisme qui suit immanquablement la frustration de ce fantasme. Dans le sillage de Kant, la phenomenologie transcendantale ouvre la voie vers une telle epistemologie. Du fantasme inacheve et inachevable d’une evidence apriorique a propos de ce qui existe effectivement, heritage de la mathesis universalis, une telle epistemologie retient des efforts de la science moderne et contemporaine qu’elle commence par inventer des evidences en jouant d’une maniere inhabituelle avec les gestes du corps traduits dans les espaces de la pensee.

From the World of Life to the Life-World

The experience of life is particularly problematic for the phenomenologist. Unlike living creatures, life itself cannot be seen or experienced directly as a phenomenon in its own right. Is there a phenomenality specific to life, apart from the manifestations of life exhibited by living creatures? At first it seems doubtful that what is specific to life as such is describable as a phenomenon. Rather it seems that life is felt from within, going beyond any form of life in particular. If an absolutely original intuition of life existed, how could it be construed as relative to a constitutive consciousness, as the phenomenological method requires? In his later career, Husserl tried to bypass this difficulty by coining the concept of life-world (Lebenswelt). Understanding life means, first and foremost, understanding the life of spirit (Geist). Spirit shares at least two significant features with life felt from within: (i) it is creative beyond all predictability; (ii) it exemplifies an immediate presence to self. Indeed, the main source that Husserl drew on in developing his concept of life-world was Dilthey. Husserl acknowledged, moreover, that however significant it may be, the concept of life-world is intrinsically obscure and vague.1 Arguably, Husserl’s life-world is an echo of the fashionable Lebensphilosophie of the early twentieth century, of which Rickert said ironically that its main character was Prinzipienlosigkeit, the unscrupulous absence of principle which was thought to do justice to the inherent, immediate and concrete dynamism of life.

Being and Knowing in Modern Physical Science

One of the most interesting, but also most perplexing, features of modern physical science is its tendency to repeatedly reconstruct itself. This unending activity of reconstruction is not just a matter of superficial technical adjustments necessitated by progress in the development of science’s abstractive procedures. What is at stake in any instance of reconstruction is the primary ground of experience itself. Copernicus, Newton, or Einstein (choosing three of many possible examples) each represent, in their work, a new attempt to shed light on this ground, to bring it into view from a different perspective. Our interest is not so much in what physicists make of this empirical ground, and how they use it, as in what is actually meant by the act of putting this ground to the test.

The Hermeneutical Status of the History of Science: The Views of Hélène Metzger

The most delicate problem raised by Gad Freudenthal is that mentioned in his conclusion, namely, the possibility of overcoming the relativism to which the hermeneutical circle seems to lead. Not only is it the most delicate problem — it is also the most decisive point. Indeed, the attempt to circumscribe this possibility in the framework of Helene Metzger’s contributions is not in itself limited to conjectures as to what she really did or really thought: it is far more. It involves, as I would like to show here in following Freudenthal’s line of argument, a tentative approach to a question which is of paramount importance for the status and fate of the history and philosophy of science in general.