Logic and Formal Ontology1

Introduction Logic, for Husserl as for his predecessor Bolzano, is a theory of science. Where Bolzano, however, conceives scientific theories very much in Platonistic terms, as collections of propositions existing outside space and time, Husserl defends a theory of science which takes seriously the project of understanding how scientific theories are related to specific sorts of activities of cognitive subjects. His Logical Investigations thus represents the first sustained attempt to come to grips with the problems of logic from a cognitive point of view. The present essay begins with an exposition of Husserl’s conception of what a science is, and it goes on to consider against this background his account of the role of linguistic meanings, of the ontology of scientific objects, and of evidence and truth. The essay concentrates almost exclusively on the Logical Investigations. This is not only because this work, which is surely Husserl’s single most important masterpiece, has been overshadowed first of all by his Ideas I and then later by the Crisis, but also because the Investigations contain, in a peculiarly clear and pregnant form, a whole panoply of ideas on logic and cognitive theory which are not readily apparent in Husserl’s own later writings or became obfuscated by an admixture of that great mystery which is ‘transcendental phenomenology’.