Transcendental Phenomenology and the Scientific Image

Richard Sebold (La Trobe University)

The scientific perspective often provides dramatically revisionary pictures of the world when contrasted with the average, common sense viewpoint. Many of these discoveries are incorporated into everyday experience and change how we describe those phenomena. In other words, parts of our worldview are transformed in light of scientific advancement. But just how far can this process go? Is it possible for the scientific image of the world to fully replace the familiar everyday lifeworld that characterizes pre-scientific experience? Phenomenologists uniformly answer in the negative. According to them, this is because the scientific perspective remains grounded in and derives its very sense from the very lifeworld it is supposed to replace. Thus, the total triumph of the scientific image would be its simultaneous undoing; its intelligibility would be lost due to its totalizing ambitions.
The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I intend to detail the nature of this common phenomenological refrain toward the scientific image. To do this, I will discuss variations of the charge found in the writings of the most prevalent phenomenologists. This will then lead into the second aim of the paper: to provide an assessment of the success of the argument. Ultimately, I argue that the worries expressed by the phenomenologists are mistaken. There is no in principle reason why the scientific image cannot be wholly revisionary of experience, including of the background from which it emerges. In the end, I briefly sketch what this means for phenomenology as a distinct method from science that needs preservation.