Heidegger on Science and Naturalism

Joseph Rouse Wesleyan University Heidegger’s reputation in the Anglophone philosophical world suggests that he was unsympathetic to the natural sciences, and generally unconcerned with the philosophy of science. Even among those who know his work, philosophy of science is not usually considered central to Heidegger, nor is he seen as a significant contributor to philosophy of science. This dissociation is evident in the recent secondary literature: several comprehensive volumes on Heidegger’s philosophy (Guignon 1993, Dreyfus and Hall 1992) include no essays about his philosophy of science, while Heidegger’s views are almost never considered by Anglophone philosophers of science. Yet the dismissal of Heidegger’s involvement with philosophy of science is mistaken from both directions. I shall argue not merely that Heidegger made significant contributions to philosophical understanding of the sciences, but that philosophy of science was at the center of his project and its development throughout his career. To capture this centrality, I will examine Heidegger’s conception of science and its relation to philosophy at several key points in his philosophical work. Science and Philosophy in Being and Time Understanding Heidegger’s philosophy of science requires situating his project with respect to the epistemological anti-naturalism that was central to neo-Kantianism and Husserlian phenomenology. Relations between philosophy and the sciences had taken on new urgency for many early-20th Century philosophers. The dramatic successes of physics and chemistry, and the recent emergence of rigorous scientific disciplines in the human and life sciences, gave plausibility to philosophical naturalism. Naturalists believed that the concerns and subject matter traditionally accorded to philosophy could be better served by empirical research in the relevant sciences. Heidegger’s Freiburg predecessor Edmund Husserl exemplified a widespread philosophical response to the perceived threat of naturalism. Husserl (1981) argued against naturalists that the empirical sciences could not account for their own normativity. In particular, no empirical science could establish the meaning and validity of scientific claims themselves. A radically different kind of philosophical science was therefore needed, one that did not merely describe how the world is, but showed how it must or ought to be understood. For both Husserl and the neo-Kantians (including the logical positivists), philosophical reflection on science concerned scientific knowledge. Science aspired to establish objectively valid knowledge, while philosophy sought to clarify the grounds for its validity. Initially, it might seem obvious that observational evidence is the basis for empirical knowledge. Yet it was not so obvious how empirical evidence was related to scientific judgments or statements about