Husserl and Galileo

the mathematization of nature as a starting point of the crisis of contemporary Science and Philosophy

Abstract

This article aims to explore husserlian criticism of the crisis in contemporary science and philosophy based on a phenomenological analysis of the change in scientific paradigm inaugurated by Galileo. According to Husserl, the galilaic perspective that nature is expressed in mathematical language became a condition of possibility for a new understanding of the world. This is because if for the ancient Greeks, empirical data corresponded to an idea that, when accessed, became the foundation of knowledge of the world, with Galileo, for the phenomena of the given or pre-scientific world, there corresponds a mathematical structure that can be intuited. from which this same world can be determined, making it scientific, that is, delimited by mathematical predictability and accuracy. In this way, Galileo's research boosted the positive sciences, expanded their field of activity, gave them a certain primacy in relation to other rationalities, and guaranteed them greater technical efficiency, inaugurating a new phase of humanity in modernity. However, according to Husserl, if on the one hand Galileo discovered a new possibility for the progress of science, on the other hand, he covered up, so to speak, his genuine philosophical horizon, a determining factor for the contemporary feeling of crisis.