Abstract
The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology and earlier writings mention prima facie only one abstractive reduction for the natural sciences in general. Considered more closely, however, two abstractions can be distinguished. The first reduction abstracts from the purposes and values of everyday practical life, and in general from all contents that are given in lived experience and reflections on lived experience. The second abstractive reduction abstracts from all secondary qualities of observable objects that are given in the residuum of the first abstraction, reducing them to primary qualities. The first abstraction determines the ontological region of the natural sciences in general, including the life sciences. The second abstraction determines, within this broader region, the empirical basis and the methodology of the hard sciences, physics, and chemistry insofar as it can be reduced to physics.
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Notes
- 1.
“The difficulty for Schutz in the cultural context of the United States, which was governed at this time by analytic positivism, was in effect to explain the difference between a Wissenschaftslehre and a Wissenschaftstheorie, i.e., a theory of science. A theory of science is an epistemology of positive sciences in general” (Seebohm 2015, 307, cf. 318).
- 2.
“The present investigation is interested in ‘epistemology’ in the narrower sense. It is a phenomenology of scientific knowledge of the empirical sciences and their methodology as a part of a theory of scientific knowledge in general, i.e., of a Wissenschaftslehre, a theory of science, and a theory of scientific knowledge is in tum a partial theory of knowledge in general, including the knowledge implied in the elementary understanding of practical knowledge. In contrast, a phenomenological epistemology in the broad sense is interested in all subjective intentional acts and intersubjective activities because all of them imply ‘knowledge,’ understanding, of their intentional objects as their correlates. Thus, it includes the phenomenological reflections on intentional acts and syntheses in the practical activities of elementary understanding and in systems of first-order higher understanding such as religion, poetry, arts, etc., that refer to practical actions and interactions” (Seebohm 2015, 88, cf. 307f).
- 3.
“Schutz, following Rickert, sometimes preferred Kulturwissenschaften, cultural sciences. From the epistemological point of view, this term has the advantage of avoiding the metaphysical connotations of the te1m ‘Geist’ but also of connotations of ‘human’ as a predicate used in te1ms for branches of the natural sciences or the technological application of natural sciences, e.g., in medical technologies. The terminology of the following investigations will use ‘human sciences’ because it is not advisable to ‘deconstruct’ systems of already established terminological traditions in the sciences” (Seebohm 2015, 71 n.15, cf. 384).
- 4.
“A methodology of a science has to determine the type of admitted theoretical constructs guiding the search for promising hypotheses. It determines, secondly, the basis, the type of objects that can count as objects of the science. This determination presupposes a methodological abstraction, i.e., the determination of a limited ontological region of objects with a common formal and material categorial structure in the residuum of the abstraction, with all other types of objects always bracketed. The universal realm in which such abstractions are possible is the lifeworld” (Seebohm 2015, 89).
- 5.
Wanting a more technical sounding expression, Seebohm found “animalic” in a dictionary and introduced it later (Seebohm 2015, 7 n. 5).
- 6.
“Animal interaction requires in addition certain messages between living beings. The messages guiding animal understanding are bodily life expressions. Some of them are not deliberately addressed to another currently living being, e.g., the smell and bodily behavior of a bitch in heat, while others are indeed a reaction to an encounter with another living being and are addressed to this other living being with the intention of … causing a ce1iain reaction, e.g., the growling and snarling of a dog. The ability to interact with the life expressions addressed to it is different in different species [and] the ability of a bodily being to understand, i.e., to react properly in interactions, increases with the degree of similarity between the living bodies, and is of the highest degree within one’s own species… . Sending and understanding bodily life expressions should not be called ‘body language’ but ‘non-verbal bodily communication’” (2004, 104).
- 7.
“First-order understanding” occurs five times (2015, 298, 300, 323, 349, 406) but “second-order animalic” occurs nowhere explicitly. Perhaps it is implied in some places.
- 8.
“Tools” are defined broadly as “instruments that can be used to introduce changes in the course of events…” (Seebohm 2015, 274, cf. 270) and are related to techniques. Thus, there are scales (219), “the experience of weight is already an outstanding necessary part of the structure of the lived experience on the level of animalic understanding of one’s own body and its relation to the surrounding bodies” (220). There is counting (191) and measuring (217). Measuring can use a measuring rod (192), reckoning can use the abacus (192, cf. 343, 334), but the hour glass is not mentioned. Then again, arithmetical and geometrical techniques can be applied (266, cf. 329, 331), there is also “the mechanical art, the mechanike techne as the art of producing instruments, i.e., tools, and machines in the crafts” (214), medical arts (241), and finally “weapons, i.e., ‘tools’ that can serve as instruments in social interactions” (361), which presumably include war and crime as well as law enforcement.
- 9.
To refer to the distinction between the subjective meaning of an action and its social context on the one hand and their objective meaning for an observer on the other is misleading. An onlooker can be, and usually is, involved in the context of acts in interactions. The “objectivity” is restricted by concrete practical and social interests. It is not very helpful to add that the onlooker or observer ought to be disinterested in the social actions of the actor. Without fu1iher specifications such an onlooker would be either guided by idle curiosity or restricted to an empty stare. Scientific observations are interested. Their interest in the human sciences is precisely the objective validity of the interpretation of the action or life expression. But this explication of the meaning of a “disinterested onlooker or observer” is obviously circular. The questioning of participants in social interactions causes, however, serious difficulties for observers who want to be in disinterested contemporary observers in every respect. It was and is a generally accepted methodological principle of the systematic human sciences that observations of social interactions and the secondary understanding of social interactions ought not to be involved or interested in the social interactions. The difficulty given with this methodological requirement is that research in the social sciences and in social psychology needs communication between the researcher and the objects of research” (Seebohm 2015, 289).
- 10.
Seebohm recognizes fixed life expressions besides texts traditionally understood: “In the last two centuries technology has offered ways of producing new types of fixed life expressions beginning with photographs and records to videotapes; such inventions cause additional methodological difficulties for the systematic human sciences and for contemporary history. It is easy to manipulate such “sources” for attempts to reconstruct “what is or was really the case.” Required are new methods of “critique” for these new types of “historical” sources and these methods will have to use results of the natural sciences” (Seebohm 2015, 291 n. 29). I might add that he declined to use email and probably hardly knew of texting and Skype, which of course can also yield fixed life expressions.
- 11.
“The basic epistemological problem for the systematic human sciences is that this distance between the present and past historical reality shrinks in contemporary history and reaches the zero limit for the interest in the future development of social structures given in the actual present in the social sciences. The type of distance that is left for possible “value-free” objectively valid research in the systematic human sciences is the distance between a disinterested observer and interpreter of Others in the space of systems of social interactions in the present lifeworld. The objects of research are Others who are participants in social interactions and their first order understanding of the social interactions. But these “objects” are themselves other subjects who can participate in communications and interactions with the subjects carrying out the research. As such they are potential partners in dialogues in the present. In contrast, the predecessors who are the authors of the presently available fixed life expressions, i.e., the immediate objects of historical research, cannot appear as partners in dialogues in the present. Research in the systematic human sciences, i.e., psychology and the social sciences, is first of all theoretically “interested” in events in the present” (Seebohm 2015, 411, cf. 95).
- 12.
“According to Schutz, it is possible to use the term “ideal type” for certain essential dependent or independent partial structures of “course of action types.” Schutz distinguishes (1) course of action types; (2) personal ideal types guided by typical in-order-to-motives; (3) cultural products or artifacts (including tools). For Schutz type (2) can be derived from type (1) and vice versa.
Type (3) can be understood the realized product of (1) as guided by in-order-to-motives. The personal ideal types (2) are the ideal types or constructs that can be understood as puppets or homunculi in the classification of Schutz. A precise understanding of this classification has to cope with difficulties. The main difficulty is that there seems to be a one-to-one correlation between a course of action type and a personal type. It follows that it will be difficult for Schutz to distinguish clearly between a phenomenological epistemology (Wissenschaftslehre) for the social sciences and a phenomenological psychology serving as a phenomenological epistemology for social psychology as an empirical science. It cannot be the task of a systematic investigation to decide problems of the interpretation of Schutz’s theory of ideal types and constructs and his division of different types and constructs. What had to be emphasized is only that his theory is, though partially modified and extended here, the presupposition of a formal and material analysis of a system of different subtypes of the general type of ideal types that can be applied in the social sciences” (Seebohm 2015, 315).
- 13.
“Higher understanding is contemplative. It presupposes time that is not dominated by the needs of the practical activities of elementary understanding. Of interest for higher understanding are all relevant aspects of elementary understanding. Of interest for higher understanding are, furthermore, the social structures of the lifeworld and changes in the social structures, including customs such as fashions and styles, as well as customary laws and written laws with their distinctions between right and wrong in interactions. Of interest are, moreover, significant deeds of members of the community that have changed structures of the lifeworld in the past, significant changes in the natural environment of the lifeworld, and encounters with foreign lifeworlds. The manifestations of higher understanding are cults, artifacts serving cult activities, myths, prophetic revelations, poetry, philosophical reflections, and finally the sciences” (Seebohm 2015, 51).
- 14.
“There are several misunderstandings concerning the type of objectivity governing both philological-historical research and archaeological research. The first is implied in the claim that pure and disinterested contemplation governs the attitude of the researcher. Such a claim was made in the nineteenth century. In a certain sense this is true, but seen from another viewpoint it is an illusion, because it can be said that the present in general transcends the past. It considers objects in the past as objects at a temporal distance. But it is already obvious for subjective time-consciousness that every present will flow off into the past. Pure contemplation of the past is possible, but it is possible only in the present. Moreover, further reflection can show that the contemplation was not pure after all, because it was determined by the temporal situatedness of the contemplator, and further reflection is always possible if the contemplation and its life expressions has flowed off in the past” (Seebohm 2004, 248).
- 15.
“Modern historical research presupposes in addition archaeological interpretations of presently given a1iifacts and monuments created in a past lifeworld. Archaeological interpretations can use interpretations of texts with information about the use and the purpose, i.e., the meaning, of artifacts and monuments whenever this is possible. This possibility is, however, restricted to historical archaeology. The situation is different in pre-historic archaeology, i.e., in the case of past lifeworlds without literary traditions!’ (Seebohm 2015, 102).
References
Embree, Lester. 2015. The Schutzian theory of the cultural sciences. Dordrecht: Springer.
Seebohm, Thomas M. 2004. Hermeneutics: Method and methodology. Dordrecht: Springer.
———. 2015. History as a science and the system of the sciences: Phenomenological investigations. New York: Springer.
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Embree, L. (2020). The First Specific Abstractive Reduction in Seebohm’s Theory of Science. In: Nenon, T. (eds) Thomas Seebohm on the Foundations of the Sciences. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 105. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23661-8_7
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