Abstract
Much ink has been spilled over the interrelations between philosophy and physics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as well as over the emergence of philosophy of science as an autonomous philosophical sub-discipline. Although our understanding of these issues is certainly more nuanced today than it was only a couple of years ago, more work needs to be done in order to arrive at an adequate picture of the intricate relations between philosophy and physics on the one hand and of how philosophical reflections on the physical sciences evolved during the last century on the other. This volume addresses one of the remaining blind spots, namely the role of phenomenology in the development of twentieth century (philosophy of) physics. In this introductory chapter, we shed light on the characteristics and historical development of phenomenological approaches to physics, indicate how current debates in philosophy of physics could benefit from phenomenological approaches, and provide summaries of the individual chapters.
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Notes
- 1.
Cf., for more detailed introductions to phenomenological philosophy, e.g. Smith (2007), Luft and Overgaard (2012) or Zahavi (2012). The relations between phenomenology and (philosophy of) science are discussed in Kockelmans and Kisiel (1970), Feist (2004), Gutting (2005) or Hyder and Rheinberger (2010).
- 2.
- 3.
It should be mentioned, however, that such an apparently clear distinction between the empirical sciences and phenomenology would be blurred if the first-person perspective were incorporated to the natural sciences. For instance, there are trends in current experimental psychology that explicitly argue for incorporating the first-person perspective into science, emphasizing the significance of Husserlian phenomenology. One such proposal is Liliana Albertazzi’s “experimental phenomenology” (cf. Albertazzi, 2013). As we will see, some phenomenologists, such as Merleau-Ponty, believe that the incorporation of subjectivity is even possible in physics.
- 4.
Cf., for detailed information concerning the personal relationship between Husserl and Weyl, Ryckman (2005b, chapter 5).
- 5.
Although there have been critical voices as well (Ihde 2011), Husserl’s interpretation of Galilean science had a strong impact on several Galileo scholars, especially on the French historian of science Alexandre Koyré. Cf., for a discussion of the relationship between Husserl and Koyré, Parker (2017).
- 6.
For an excellent analysis of the historical origins of gauge theory as well as an overview of its role in string theory, cf. O’Raifeartaigh and Straumann (2000).
- 7.
- 8.
Merleau-Ponty adopts this terminology from the French physicist and logician Paulette Destouches-Février. Below we see in more detail how strongly Merleau-Ponty was influenced by Destouches-Février. For a portrayal and further development of the approaches of Destouches-Février and her husband Jean-Louis Destouches, cf. Bitbol (1998, 2001).
- 9.
Unfortunately, the fact that Merleau-Ponty is quoting Destouches-Février here is easily overlooked in the English translation because the quotation marks are missing (Merleau-Ponty 2003, 98).
- 10.
For instance, readers familiar with Husserl’s oeuvre will not fail to notice Weyl’s allusion to section 49 of Ideas I: The notion of the “coordinate system as the necessary residue of the ego-extinction” is, of course, a reference to Husserl’s thought experiment of the “absolute consciousness as the residue of the annihilation of the world” (Husserl 1983, section 49). Moreover, it interesting to note that the trained mathematician Husserl also explicitly refers to the “origin of the coordinate system” (Husserl, 1973c, 116; our translation) in order to elucidate the role of the embodied subject in our cognitive engagements with the world.
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Acknowledgements
The majority of the chapters in this volume were initially presented at the conference “Phenomenological Approaches to Physics,” which we organized at the University of Graz in June 2018. We would like to thank the participants who made the conference a truly memorable event. Special thanks are also due to Otávio Bueno, the editor of the Synthese Library series, to Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl, the head of the working unit “Phenomenology” at the University of Graz, and to Springer’s project coordinator Palani Murugesan. Finally, we would like to thank our families for emotional support, and the Austrian Research Fund (FWF) for a generous grant to carry out a research project on Hermann Weyl’s phenomenological philosophy of physics (project number: P31758).
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Berghofer, P., Wiltsche, H.A. (2020). Phenomenological Approaches to Physics: Mapping the Field. In: Wiltsche, H.A., Berghofer, P. (eds) Phenomenological Approaches to Physics. Synthese Library, vol 429. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46973-3_1
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