Husserl On ScientificMethod

DARRIN W.
BELOUSEK
HUSSERL ON SCIENTIFIC METHOD AND CONCEPTUAL

CHANGE: A REALIST APPRAISAL ?
ABSTRACT. Husserl claimed that all theoretical scientific concepts originate in and are
valid in reference to ‘life-world’ experience and that scientific traditions preserve the sense
and validity of such concepts through unitary and cumulative change. Each of these claims
will, in turn, be sympathetically laid out and assessed in comparison with more standard
characterizations of scientific method and conceptual change as well as the history of
physics, concerning particularly the challenge they may pose for scientific realism. The
Husserlian phenomenological framework is accepted here without defense, and hence the
present project is limited to the task of asking what can and cannot be accommodated
within that framework on its own terms.
1. INTRODUCTION
In The Crisis of European Sciences, including ‘The Origin of Geometry’,

Husserl advances two important claims concerning scientific methodology.
The first is a constraint on theory construction, specifically concerning
the genesis and validity of theoretical scientific concepts; the second is a
constraint on scientific progress through conceptual change. First, Husserl
claims that a theoretical concept has its origin in and obtains its validity
solely in reference to a founding meaning constituted in originary life-
world experience. Second, Husserl views conceptual change in science
as a unitary and cumulative historical progression of meaning modifica-
tion that preserves the validity of all past meanings as a basis for future
modification. Put succinctly, according to Husserl all valid and progres-
sive construction of theoretical concepts in science must preserve through
modification both founding meanings constituted in originary life-world
experience and historically accumulated meanings acquired on the basis
of such founding meanings and handed down through tradition.
? Support provided by the John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology and Values,
University of Notre Dame. The author wishes to thank Professors Fred Crosson and Gary
Gutting for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay, Pat McDonald for sev-
eral stimulating conversations on Husserl and philosophy of science, and two anonymous
referees for their suggestions for improving this paper.
Synthese 115: 71–98, 1998.

© 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
72 DARRIN W. BELOUSEK
Husserl’s views have come under close scrutiny in the last two decades
with critics charging principally that his claim concerning the genesis and
validity of theoretical scientific concepts commits him to anti-realism, re-
garding especially the status of theoretical entities. I show where such
charges either are founded upon a misunderstanding of Husserl’s claim
or can be avoided by modifying Husserl’s position to accord with a realist
point of view, as well as where Husserl’s framework is inadequate to com-
prehend certain aspects of scientific methodology. I then make the case
that the incompatibility of his characterization of conceptual change with
the history of science poses a further challenge for Husserl’s position from
a realist point of view.
2. GENESIS AND VALIDITY OF THEORETICAL SCIENTIFIC CONCEPTS
As is well known, Husserl claimed that “The concrete life-world . . . is

the grounding soil of the ‘scientifically true’ world” (Husserl 1970, 131),
that “objective theory . . . is rooted, grounded in the life-world, in the
original self-evidence belonging to it” (Husserl 1970, 129–130), where the
life-world is the ordinary, everyday surrounding world of immediate, pre-
reflective, pre-theoretical experience. The consequence of this – that the
scientific world and, hence, the meanings of all theoretical scientific con-
cepts are founded upon the life-world and its meanings constituted in the
self-evidence of originary (i.e., immediate, pre-reflective, pre-theoretical)
experience – is that “objective science has a constant reference of meaning
to the world in which we always live.. .a reference, that is, to the gen-
eral life-world” (Husserl 1970, 130). And it is this “constant reference
of meaning” to the life-world by every theoretical scientific concept that
grounds the validity of the concept: “the pregiven world . . . is . . . the con-
stant ground of validity” (Husserl 1970, 122); “the life-world constantly
functions as subsoil . . . its manifold pre-logical validities act as grounds
for the logical ones, for theoretical truths” (Husserl 1970, 124).
This validity has two aspects. First, the theoretical scientific concept
makes its appearance in consciousness as a distinctive modification of
a founding life-world meaning constituted in originary intuition (or as
the result of a series of such modifications). Second, theoretical scientific
concepts motivate or pre-figure possible courses of experience within or
directed towards the life-world horizon for the sake of their verification in
confrontation with things themselves given in self-evidence. We will look
at these in turn and discover that the latter is possible only insofar as the
former is the case.
HUSSERL ON SCIENTIFIC METHOD AND CONCEPTUAL CHANGE 73
First is the construction of theoretical scientific concepts through mod-

ification of originary intuition. Originary intuition is the immediate (pre-
reflective, pre-theoretical) conscious grasping or presenting to conscious-
ness of the thing itself in the life-world as an object or under a specific
description (e.g., as a particular thing of a certain kind), and that descrip-
tion (i.e., the aspect of the thing itself through which it is grasped or
presented) constitutes (i.e., forms the content of) the sense of the originary
life-world meaning. Husserl emphasizes that such originary intuition, in
which founding life-world meanings are constituted, is a direct confronta-
tion with and a presenting or showing of things themselves (not sense
data) to consciousness: “That which is self-evidently given is, in percep-
tion, experienced as ‘the thing itself’ ”, every “manner of intuition [being]
a presentification of the thing itself” (Husserl 1970, 127–128), “where
self-evidence means nothing more than grasping the entity with the con-
sciousness of its original being-itself-there” (Husserl 1970, 356). Hence,
all modifying intuitions, or modifications of originary intuitions, present
the thing itself to consciousness, albeit in a form modified from that of the
originary intuition; i.e., all modifying intuitions present to consciousness
the originally experienced thing itself but not as originally experienced.
Indeed, the modification of the originary intuition changes (or reconsti-
tutes) the sense of the thing itself such that it is presented to consciousness
through a different aspect or under a different description than that by
which it was presented originally.
And such is the case with all theoretical scientific modifications of
originary life-world intuitions, these being just a peculiar sort of modifying
intuitions or re-presentings in general. Husserl’s well-known examples are
the process of idealization in geometry and Galileo’s mathematization of
nature. According to Husserl, geometric objects arose in consciousness
through a series of modifications of originary intuition as a “stratified
structure of idealities” (Husserl 1970, 363), i.e., as the idealization of bod-
ily shapes given in life-world experience whereby ideal objects (‘limit-
shapes’) were constituted in successive modifying intuitions or presentings
of the original shapes (Husserl 1970, 32). Similarly, Husserl casts Galileo
(figuratively, of course) as accomplishing the mathematization of nature –
i.e., the transformation of bodies given in life-world experience into ideal
objects geometrically determinable in all their essential aspects through a
series of modifications that reconstituted the perceptually given indefinite
plena of sensible qualities as a manifold of sense objectively determinable
in all its essential aspects according to the ideal objects (‘limit-shapes’) of
geometry (Husserl 1970, 33f.).
What is crucial about the genesis of constitution of concepts is that

the founding life-world meanings constituted in originary intuition are
preserved through the series of modifications by which the theoretical con-
cepts are constituted; that is, the founding meaning becomes ‘sedimented’
with the originary intuition and is carried forward in each successive modi-
fying intuition. This is possible because each intuition serves as the found-
ing intuition for the succeeding modifying intuition: “scientific thinking
attains new results on the basis of those already attained, . . . the new ones
serve as the foundation for still others, etc. – in the unity of a propagative
process of transferred meaning” (Husserl 1970, 363). Thus, the sense of
modifying intuitions, i.e., the aspect through which or the description un-
der which the thing itself is re-presented to consciousness and by which
the theoretical concept is constituted in its genesis, preserves a relation
of significance to the life-world meaning constituted in originary intuition
upon which the meaning of the theoretical concept is ultimately founded.
And thereby does the theoretical concept maintain a “constant reference
of meaning” to the life-world. Thus, for any theoretical concept, it is at
least possible to exhibit a series of such modifying intuitions whereby the
concept grew out of the soil of self-evidence given in originary intuition;
that is, one can, beginning with a theoretical concept, perform a series of
‘regressive’ or ‘de-constructive’ modifications that carry one back through
the constitutive modifications to the originary intuition by which the found-
ing meaning was constituted. In this way, one can ‘reactivate’ the original
self-evidence that founded the originary intuition itself (Husserl 1970, 361,
363).
Herein also lies the ultimate source of the validity of the theoretical con-
cept, for preserved along with the founding life-world meaning is the origi-
nal self-evidence that grounds the validity of all meanings founded thereon
by modifying intuitions; and the validity of that original self-evidence and,
hence, of the founding meaning itself is guaranteed by the thing itself given
in originary intuition: “Things, objects . . . are ‘given’ as being valid in
each case” (Husserl 1970, 143). The validity of any theoretical conceptual
construction “is first only a claim which can be justified as an expression of
the alleged truth-meaning only through the actual capacity for reactivation”
(Husserl 1970, 368). Therefore, any claim to the validity of a theoretical
scientific concept (or system of such concepts) must be justified on the
basis of the possibility of exhibiting the series of founding intuitions by
which the meaning of that concept was constituted in its genesis out of
the original self-evidence of the life-world. Note that this does not commit
Husserl to anything like a pure ‘logic of discovery’ as a necessary condi-
tion for the validity of theoretical scientific concepts; Husserl himself says
that “discovery is really a mixture of instinct and method” (1970, 40).
Now, Gutting takes Husserl’s claim that all theoretical scientific con-
cepts are ultimately founded upon originary life-world experience to mean
“that all scientific meanings are reducible to those of the life-world”, “that
scientific concepts are wholly derivative from those of the life-world” (Gut-
ting 1978, 47, 49; cf. Gutting 1974). Gutting seems to take ‘founded upon’
to mean something akin to ‘logically derivable from or reducible to’; he
thus maintains that “[Husserl’s] view resembles that of the logical em-
piricists, who spent immense energy attempting to reduce the language
of scientific theories to a purely empirical language” (Gutting 1978, 47).
Husserl, however, was no positivist. Indeed, he rejected outright the notion
that we are given ‘sense data’ immediately in perception, a fundamental
tenet of logical empiricism: “And above all – to dispose of an important
point right away – one must not go straight back to the supposedly imme-
diately given ‘sense data’, as if they were immediately characteristic of the
purely intuitive data of the life-world” (Husserl 1970, 125). As we have
already emphasized, what is given to consciousness in originary life-world
experience are objects, i.e., things under specific descriptions. Husserl,
then, certainly does not intend to reduce the meaning of all scientific con-
cepts to mere ‘sense data’, for, as Gutting himself acknowledges, “[Husser-
l’s] phenomenological descriptions yield a much richer content for imme-
diate experience than the Humean austerity of the positivists would ever
have allowed” (Gutting 1978, 47).
But neither does Husserl intend to claim, as Gutting suggests, that all
scientific concepts should be completely analyzable in terms of life-world
meanings. Gutting is perhaps misled by the passage he cites in support
of his interpretation: “life-world experience . . . is what determines the
genuine sense of all scientific concepts” (Husserl 1970, 125). Apparently,
Gutting takes ‘genuine’ here to mean ‘legitimate’ or ‘true’. Now, if that
were correct, then the only valid meanings could be those constituted di-
rectly in originary intuition in life-world experience. Theoretical scientific
concepts, to be valid, could be nothing more than mere shorthand for
collections of life-world meanings, which would leave Husserl in a posi-
tion somewhat akin to logical empiricism and surely opposed to scientific
realism. But, if that were so, then such concepts would not articulate or
categorially structure the life-world in any distinctively new sense; and
Husserl would disagree sharply with that conclusion: “The knowledge of
the objective-scientific world is ‘grounded’ in the self-evidence of the life-
world. The latter is pregiven to the scientific worker, or the working com-
munity, as ground; yet, as they build upon this, what is built is something
new, something different” (Husserl 1970, 130, emphasis added). Indeed,

it is just this ‘something new, something different’ that gives theoreti-
cal scientific constructions, such as Galileo’s mathematization of nature,
their significance as accomplishments or buildings up from or out of the
life-world.
Moreover, if theoretical scientific concepts did not articulate the life-
world in any distinctively new sense, then not only would the significance
of theoretical scientific constructions as accomplishments from the life-
world be nullified, but there could be no making intelligible Husserl’s
charge concerning Galileo’s “surreptitious substitution of the mathemat-
ically substructed world of idealities for the only real world, the one that is
actually given through perception, that is ever experienced and experience-
able – our everyday life-world” (Husserl 1970, 48–49). Rouse emphasizes
this point:
Husserl regards Galilean science as important and problematic precisely because it did
result in the formation of new meanings (not just new notations) which were not available
prior to its accomplishment . . . . What, then, does Husserl mean when he says that the
sense of Galilean science is founded in lifeworld experience? It is not that the meaning-
structures of science can be derived from the concepts of everyday life, for this would
trivialize Galileo’s accomplishment and obviate Husserl’s concern with it. (Rouse 1987,
226–227)
That is, if scientific concepts were merely shorthand for collections of

life-world meanings, as Gutting’s interpretation would suggest, then the
‘substitution’ of a theoretically constructed world for the life-world could
be nothing more than a mere redenomination of the life-world, a referring
to the life-world under different names but in the same terms (i.e., in the
same sense as originally experienced). Thus, there simply could be no
“surreptitious substitution of idealized nature for prescientifically intuited
nature” (Husserl 1970, 49–50) for there would be no difference in sense or
meaning between them.
Gutting, I conclude, misreads Husserl. Indeed, reading further along in
the text shows clearly that by ‘genuine’ Husserl means ‘original’ – “actual
experience, as determining sense quite originally” (Husserl 1970, 125). We
must be careful, here, not to conflate ‘derived from’ and ‘founded upon’.
It is the validity, not the sense, of theoretical scientific concepts that is
derived from the original self-evidence of the life-world that validates all
founding meanings; and such validity is transferred from originary life-
world meanings to theoretical scientific concepts via the relations of refer-
ence from the latter to the former. The sense of such concepts is founded
upon originary meanings constituted in life-world experience through suc-
cessive modifying intuitions that transform those originary meanings by
adding distinctively new “higher-level meaning-formations” (Husserl 1970,
140); and the new aspect through which or new description under which a
thing is re-presented to consciousness in modifying intuition is related to –
but not logically implied by or reducible to – the originary sense by which
it was originally grasped in intuition.
This brings us to the second aspect of the validity of theoretical scien-
tific concepts, for we might next ask what is the empirical content of the va-
lidity of such concepts. Theoretical scientific concepts founded upon orig-
inary life-world meanings have validity for or in reference to the life-world
– “This reference is one of a founding of validity”. (Husserl 1970, 140) -
and such validity implies that the concept will motivate possible courses of
experience within the life-world horizon that if undertaken would verify or
fulfill the concept through the intuition of things themselves given in self-
evidence. And such motivation is possible just because the founding mean-
ing constituted in originary intuition of things themselves given in self-
evidence is preserved as ‘sediment’ in the series of founded modifications
through which the meaning of the concept is constituted: “All conceivable
verification leads back to these modes of self-evidence because the ‘thing
itself’ . . . lies in these [founded] intuitions themselves as that which is
actually, intersubjectively experienceable and verifiable” (Husserl 1970,
128). Thus the concept pre-figures, delineates or outlines in advance of ex-
perience “what is to be expected with empirical certainty in the intuitively
given world of concretely actual life” (Husserl 1970, 43). Indeed, it is this
“going beyond the sphere of immediately experiencing intuitions and the
possible experiential knowledge of the prescientific life-world” by the hy-
pothetically substructed idealities of mathematical theoretical science that
is the ‘decisive accomplishment’ of scientific method (Husserl 1970, 43,
original emphasis). And it is the fulfillment (in originary intuition) of such
experiences projected in advance on the basis of the concept that comprises
the verification of the concept. Note that it is the validity of the theoretical
scientific concept that is verified, not its sense. The sense of the concept,
insofar as it preserves the founding meaning constituted in originary in-
tuition, makes verification possible but is not constituted thereby. Thus,
Husserl is in no way committed to a verificationist semantics here.
3. EXPLANATION , THEORETICAL ENTITIES , AND SCIENTIFIC REALISM
In assessing Husserl’s account of scientific concept formation and verifi-

cation, one crucial point needs to be emphasized here: such verification
could in no way add to or strengthen the validity of a theoretical scien-
tific concept. There is for Husserl nothing comparable to ‘confirmation’
whereby the successful projection of a theoretical construct in experience
constitutes part of its justification. Why is this so? A theoretical construct

is not itself verified directly in experience. Rather, certain consequences
are drawn logically from it acting as a premise (in conjunction with other
constructs acting as premises), and it is these consequences that come into
direct confrontation with things themselves given self-evidently in life-
world experience. The verification of these consequences as projections
in advance of experience on the basis of the theoretical construct can-
not, however, validate those consequences and, in turn, confer additional
validity upon the theoretical construct. For whatever validity those con-
sequences might have is already transferred to them by the theoretical
construct from which they were deduced, and whatever validity the the-
oretical construct itself might possess is already derived via the original
self-evidence that is the intuitive basis for the founding of its meaning.
Hence, both the theoretical construct and its logical consequences pos-
sess already whatever validity they might have in advance of any possible
verificational experience:
Now what about the possibility of complete and genuine reactivation in full originality,
through going back to the primal self-evidences, in the case of geometry and the so-
called “deductive” sciences . . . ? Here the fundamental law, with unconditionally general
self-evidence, is: if the premises can actually be reactivated back to the most original
self-evidence, then their self-evident consequences can be also [reactivated back to the
most original self-evidence]. Accordingly it appears that, beginning with the primal self-
evidences, the original genuineness must propagate itself through the chain of logical
inference, no matter how long it is . . . . These sciences are not handed down ready-made in
the form of documented sentences; they involve a lively, productively advancing formation
of meaning, which always has the documented, as a sediment of earlier production, at its
disposal in that it deals with it logically. But out of sentences with sedimented signification,
logical ‘dealing’ can produce only other sentences of the same character. That all new
[logically deduced] acquisitions express an actual geometrical truth is certain a priori under
the presupposition that the foundations of the deductive structure have truly been produced
and objectified in self evidence. (Husserl 1970, 365–366)
That is, if the theoretical construct has been validly constituted out of the
self-evidence of the life-world given in originary intuition – i.e., if it is the
case that such original self-evidence can be ‘reactivated’ through decon-
structive modifications of the construct, then the deductive consequences
of that construct are already valid for the life-world, such validity being
transferred through the chain of logical inference.
So, for Husserl, the verification of theoretical scientific concepts is just
that, the ‘finding out’ in life-world experience of the already possessed va-
lidity of such concepts rather than the constitution of such validity. Strictly
speaking, then, there is no confirmation of concepts, or conferring of va-
lidity via successfully projected life-world experience, which implies that
theoretical scientific concepts derive their validity solely via the possibility
of reactivating the original self-evidence of the life-world that lies at the

intuitive basis of the founding of their meaning. This, though, is clearly at
odds with the so-called ‘hypothetico-deductive method’ in science. Here,
the empirical confirmation of the deductive consequences of a theoretical
hypothesis is taken to constitute (at least) part of the warrant or justifica-
tion of that hypothesis. Moreover, such theoretical hypotheses are inferred
retroductively from the original empirical evidence, where retroductive
inference is the reasoning from observed effects to hypothesized causes,
the latter thus serving as explanation for the former. If the hypothesized
cause is sufficient or adequate to explain the relevant phenomena, then
such explanatory success is taken to confer warrant upon the theoretical
hypothesis. Thus, explanatory success is taken to carry epistemic weight;
i.e., the explanatory success of a theoretical hypothesis is taken as evidence
of its truth (cf. McMullin 1984a).
Husserl, as Gutting (1978) rightly points out, is not interested in expla-
nation vis á vis theoretical concepts, at least not in the sense of deductively
accounting for phenomena on the basis of hypotheses. For Husserl, to
explain is to exhibit phenomenologically the transcendental conditions of
validity of a concept or theoretical construct, which, of course, just is to
exhibit the self-evidence given in originary intuition upon which the con-
cept is ultimately founded. Thus, deductive prediction of phenomena is no
explanation of anything:
no objective science, no matter how exact, explains or can explain anything in a serious
sense. To deduce is not to explain. To predict, or to recognize the objective forms of the
composition of physical or chemical bodies and to predict accordingly – all this explains
nothing but is in need of explanation. The only true way to explain is to make transcen-
dentally understandable. Everything objective demands to be understood. (Husserl 1970,
189)
It is the theoretical constructs of objective science that require explana-

tion (in Husserl’s sense) via the original self-evidence of the life-world,
not vice-versa. Indeed, to construe the explanatory problem the other way
around is to beg the question; for in Husserl’s view theoretical scientific
concepts, in virtue of the genesis of their constitution, presuppose the va-
lidity of the evidence given in originary life-world intuition and hence can
in no way account for it. In Harvey’s words:
To explain our [prescientific] understanding of the [life-]world by an appeal to the [objective-

scientific] world that we (think we) understand, is to beg the essential questions of epis-
temology. Wherever the results of natural or natural scientific thinking are appealed to
in order to explain the truth or validity of our [intuitions], the truth and validity of those
[intuitions] are already presupposed. (Harvey 1986, 294)
That is, any valid appeal to a scientific explanation of life-world experience

is itself possible only because of the prior validity of the experience to be
explained.
This tension between Husserl’s account and scientific realism can be
drawn out from a Sellarsian perspective (cf. Gutting 1974 and 1978). In
Sellarsian terminology, Husserl’s claim is that any ‘scientific image’ (con-
stituted within what Husserl calls the ‘theoretical attitude’) of the world
is not simply posited or hypothesized out of nothing but rather is built
upon the ‘manifest image’ (constituted within the ‘natural attitude’). Here,
Husserl and Sellars appear to be in agreement; Sellars writes: the “sci-
entific image is a construct from a number of images, each of which is
supported by the manifest world . . . [E]ach theoretical image is a con-
struction on a foundation provided by the manifest image, and in this
methodological sense pre-supposes the manifest image” (Sellars 1963, 20,
original emphasis). Sellars, then, like Husserl, grants the ‘manifest image’
methodological priority over the scientific image. Also, as emphasized in
the previous section, Husserl would agree with Sellars that the scientific
image articulates the world in distinctively new categories that surpass
(i.e., are not logically derivable from or reducible to) those of the man-
ifest image; Sellars says: “while conceptual structures of this framework
[i.e., the scientific image] are built on the manifest image, they are not
definable within it” (Sellars 1963, 17, original emphasis). What Husserl
would reject in the Sellarsian view is precisely the thesis that the scientific
image of the world has primacy with regard to the legitimacy of concepts
and the standard of what is real. It is this reversal of priority (a reversal
from Husserl’s perspective) that presents the scientific image as a rival
to the manifest image – “Thus although methodologically a development
within the manifest image, the scientific image presents itself as a rival
image” (Sellars 1963, 20, original emphasis) – and engenders the aim of
theoretical science to supplant or replace the manifest image by an au-
tonomous scientific image that is more adequate or complete with regard
to explaining experience. In particular, it is the explanatory success of the
scientific image that confers independent warrant upon it and justifies its
primacy over, and hence substitution for, the manifest image (cf. Gutting
1974 and 1978).
Just such a replacement is what Husserl would call a “surreptitious
substitution” of a scientifically constructed world for the one and only
real world, a substitution that forgets the genuine or original basis of the
sense and validity of the scientific image that is substituted for the man-
ifest image. Thus, one might argue, by forbidding such a replacement of
the manifest image by an explanatorily superior scientific image, Husserl
places himself at odds here with the scientific realist. But, as noted above,
from Husserl’s point of view the motivation for such a substitution begs the
epistemological question regarding explanation. Thus, to make the claim
that Husserl’s view fundamentally conflicts with scientific realism on this
point, one must argue further that the justification or validity of theoreti-
cal constructs must (at least in part) be grounded in explanatory success,
i.e., that explanatory success is essential to a realist appraisal of scientific
theory. In any case, Husserl’s depiction of scientific method, as pertains
to the genesis and validity of theoretical scientific concepts, is clearly in
serious tension with (at least some arguments for) scientific realism. Can
Husserl’s framework be modified to relieve this tension? I don’t think so;
for such a modification would require one to admit an autonomous ground
of explanatory success as an independent source of validity for theoretical
scientific concepts, which would undercut Husserl’s fundamental commit-
ment to the exclusive primacy of the self-evidence of the life-world itself
as the original ground of all validities.
The source of this tension is that Husserl has what some would argue
(correctly, I think) is an impoverished notion of scientific explanation.
Clearly, from the passages quoted above, he understands explanation in
science to be solely deductive-nomological explanation (i.e., logical sub-
sumption of phenomena under general laws); and such ‘explanation’, he
claims, explains nothing but rather is itself in need of explanation. But
some scientific realists (e.g., McMullin 1984a) take causal explanation via
retroductively inferred theoretical hypotheses and entities to be the charac-
teristic mode of explanation in science (McMullin calls retroduction “the
inference that makes science”). Now, insofar as such realists take the causal
explanatory success of a theoretical hypothesis (in addition to its empirical
accuracy) as the primary warrant for the truth of the hypothesis, Husserl’s
framework would seem incapable of accommodating this form of scientific
realism. Husserl, then, simply fails to appreciate the role of retroductive
inference in scientific methodology, perhaps because his chief example
of a science is geometry, in which logical deduction is the paradigm of
explanation. We’ll return to the issue of the epistemological relevance of
explanation below.
This leads us to what is usually taken as the principal challenge that
Husserl’s characterization of theoretical concept formation might pose to
scientific realism – viz., his treatment of the status of the substructed ide-
alities retroductively posited by theoretical hypotheses, i.e., the problem
of theoretical entities; for the causal explanatory success of theoretical
hypotheses is taken by the scientific realist to also provide warrant for
the existence of the theoretical entities posited in such hypotheses (cf. Mc-
Mullin 1984b). One claim of Husserl’s that has often been taken (e.g., Gut-
ting 1978) to illustrate his supposed anti-realist stance toward theoretical
entities is the following:
The contrast between the subjectivity of the life-world and the ‘objective’, the ‘true’ world,
lies in the fact that the latter is a theoretical-logical substruction, the substruction of some-
thing that is in principle not perceivable, in principle not experienceable in its own proper
being, whereas the subjective, in the life-world, is distinguished in all respects precisely by
its being actually experienceable . . . . The objective is precisely never experienceable as
itself. (Husserl 1970, 127, 129)
The typical example of such in-principle unobservable substructed ideali-

ties are the ‘limit-shapes’ of geometry. The life-world does not show itself
as geometrically determinate (or determinable); i.e., no ‘limit-shapes’ are
(or could be) ever intuitively given in life-world experience: “here we
find nothing of geometric idealities, no geometrical space or mathematical
time with all their shapes” (Husserl 1970, 50). Now, the life-world is “the
world of all known and unknown realities” (Husserl 1970, 50). Thus, the
argument would go, given that all realities belong to the life-world and
are experienceable within its horizon and that theoretical scientific entities
are in principle not experienceable within the life-world and hence do not
belong to it, the theoretical entities of science cannot belong to the real.
But, need Husserl be committed to such an anti-realist view regarding
theoretical entities? I think not; indeed, I think Husserl’s view can be made
to accord with scientific realism on this point. Husserl’s claim is that, to
count as real, a thing must be capable of showing itself within the life-
world horizon, i.e., must be capable of being given to consciousness in
originary intuition in life-world experience. At first, Husserl’s claim would
seem to require that this showing-itself of something real be a showing-
itself of something in its very own being, i.e., an original, self-evident or
‘in-person’ showing-itself of something. In Heidegger’s terminology, such
showing-itself of something from itself as it is in itself is the primordial
sense of ‘showing itself’, viz., ‘phenomenon’ (Heidegger 1962, 51). Now,
founded upon this primary sense ‘phenomenon’ are other positive senses
of ‘showing itself’. One such derivative mode of ‘showing itself’ founded
upon ‘phenomenon’ is the ‘appearance’ of something, which “does not
mean showing itself; it [‘appearance’] means rather the announcing-itself
by something which does not show itself, but announces itself through
something which does show itself” (Heidegger 1962, 52). Can Husserl al-
low for such derivative modes of ‘showing itself’? Indeed, he does: “How-
ever, though the objects of the life-world, if they are to show their very
own being, necessarily show themselves as physical bodies, this does not
mean that they show themselves only in this way” (Husserl 1970, 108).
The question, then, is whether all grounding evidence must be on the ba-
sis of the primordial showing-itself of things themselves, i.e., whether all
grounding evidence must be self-evidence. Husserl does claim as much: “a
substruction, insofar as it makes claim to truth, can have actual truth only
by being related back to such self-evidences” (Husserl 1970, 127). But,
we need not, I think, take this to necessarily imply that the grounding self-
evidence must be the self-evident showing-itself of whatever theoretical
entity is retroductively inferred or posited on the basis of such evidence.
Rather, Husserl’s claim requires only that whatever theoretical entities we
do retroductively infer or posit must have as their evidential basis the self-
evident showing-itself of something in originary intuition in life-world
experience. This would allow ‘appearances’ to be the grounding evidence
for retroductive inferences, for “appearing is possible only by reason of a
showing-itself of something” (Heidegger 1962, 53, original emphasis), i.e.,
any appearance is founded upon a phenomenon.
So, the retroductive inferences that posit theoretical scientific entities
can be made valid (in Husserl’s sense) by being evidentially grounded in
appearances (in Heidegger’s sense). The retroductive inference can now
be described phenomenologically as a modifying intuition by which the
sense of the thing given in originary intuition is modified from that of
the self-evident showing-itself of something (original sense) to that of
the announcing-itself of an entity that does not show itself self-evidently
but announces itself through something that does show itself (modified
sense), i.e., from ‘phenomenon’ to ‘appearance’. An example will help
clarify matters. Consider the ‘observation’ of elementary particles via a
bubble chamber experiment. What one perceives originarily (typically in
photographs) are not elementary particles (e.g., protons, electrons, etc.)
themselves at all, or even particle tracks or ionization trails. Rather, what
is perceived originarily in this case are curved lines. And the modification
of this originary perception occurs against the background of or within the
horizon of expectations conditioned by current (relevant) scientific theory,
which guides the originary perception as well as the subsequent modifica-
tion of its sense. Against the background of the theory of the function of the
experimental apparatus at hand, such curved lines appear first as ionization
trails; founded upon this primary modified intuition and within the horizon
of the world of elementary particle theory, such ionization trails appear
second as elementary particle tracks; and founded upon this secondary
modified intuition through thematic reflection upon such particle tracks in
terms of the conceptual categories and laws of elementary particle theory,
the elementary particle track appears as the track of an elementary particle
of a certain kind; finally, founded upon this tertiary modified intuition, the
existence of such an elementary particle of that kind is inferred and its

presence is posited to explain the observed phenomenon (i.e., the curved
line in the photograph). Thus, in this series of modifying intuition and
retroductive inference, the sense of what was perceived originarily was
modified from the showing-itself of a curved line to the appearing of an
elementary particle of a certain kind. To draw an analogy with everyday
experience (bearing in mind the limitation of all analogies): to posit the
presence of an elementary particle of a certain kind based on a retroductive
inference from the evidence of a curved line in a bubble-chamber photo-
graph is not like perceiving a mountain and seeing that it has an opposite
side, or even like seeing that there must be a landscape beyond the other
side of the mountain, but rather is akin to imagining a village or, better yet,
a house with a fire in the hearth in a village set in the landscape beyond
the other side of the mountain in order to explain the smoke one perceives
rising above the mountain’s peak.
Of course, as with all meaning modifications, the original sense (i.e.,
curved line) is carried forward with or sedimented into the modified senses
constituted in the subsequent modifying intuitions leading to the retroduc-
tive inference, for “ ‘appearance’ signifies the showing-itself” (Heidegger
1962, 53, original emphasis): “elementary-particle bubble-chamber track”
signifies (but is not identical in meaning to) “curved trail of ionized mole-
cules”. And this sedimentation of original sense makes possible both the
reactivation of the self-evidence that ultimately grounds the retroductively
inferred theoretical entity (and, hence, the validity of the inference) and
the verification of that entity in experience via the self-evidence of the life-
world. In this way, the verification of the theoretical scientific entity in
life-world experience, or the fulfillment of life-world experience projected
on the basis of the theoretical concept of that entity, would take place via
a founded intuition (i.e., the perception of an appearance that is founded
upon a phenomenon). I thus concur with Soffer that “the foundedness of
the fulfillments of scientific entities and states of affairs cannot be taken
to undermine their reality” (Soffer 1990, 88), but rather accords with their
founded sense. Indeed, if a retroductive inference is one that leaps from
the given of experience to what is not directly, immediately or self-given
in intuition, then the phenomenological condition of the possibility of any
retroductive inference being valid is that it be founded upon appearance.
Moreover, any hypothetically inferred entity incapable of showing it-
self in any mode, either as phenomenon or as appearance, i.e., an entity
unobservable in principle (either directly or indirectly), would on this view
still not count as real, in accordance with Husserl’s requirement that every-
thing real be capable of showing itself in some positive mode within the
life-world horizon. Indeed, such a inference could not be validated via

the reactivation of any grounding self-evidence. For if it were grounded
in original self-evidence, then its original sense constituted in originary
intuition on the basis of such self-evidence and carried forward by the mod-
ifying intuition (i.e., by the retroductive inference) would make possible
its verification via the self-evidence of the life-world in some projectable
course of experience; given that the latter is not possible, the substruction
is therefore invalid. A scientific realist would also deny the reality of such
an entity, but on the grounds that the postulation of such an entity has no
empirical consequences and hence is ad hoc. Thus, Husserl’s characteri-
zation of scientific method can accommodate a realist view regarding the
observational and existential status of retroductively inferred theoretical
entities (cf. Harvey and Shelton 1992).
Nonetheless, I think Husserl’s notion of founded intuition as the source
of all theoretical scientific conceptual construction is insufficient to com-
prehend fully the character of retroductive inference, for it fails to account
for a crucial aspect of such inference, viz., its fallibility. Retroductive infer-
ence involves more than a mere modification of the sense of what is given
in originary intuition from ‘phenomenon’ to ‘appearance’. Being founded
upon appearance, the retroductive inference posits the reality not of the
phenomenon (i.e., what is given), for its reality is self-evident, but rather
of what appears (i.e., what is indicated by the phenomenon taken as a sign),
the reality of which is not self-evident. The retroductive inference posits
novel reality that, although indicated by, radically exceeds what is given
and, hence, cannot be guaranteed by the self-evidence of the phenomena;
for even if, as Husserl says, “things are given in each case as valid”, the
retroductive inference posits the reality of something that is not given. In
McMullin’s apt phrase, retroduction “enlarges the known world”. Thus,
whereas mere sense-modification of originary intuition of what is given
self-evidently retains the original validity of self-evidence insofar as the
modifying intuition maintains a constant meaning-reference to what is
given, such validity is not necessarily transferred to the reality posited
retroductively just because the retroductive inference does not maintain
such a constant meaning-reference but rather shifts or extends meaning-
reference from what is given to what is posited (i.e., to the hypothetical
theoretical entity).
In our example above, the primary and secondary modifying intuitions
changed merely the sense of the originary intuition – from “curved line”
to “ionization trail” to “elementary particle track” – with each subsequent
meaning modification being founded upon the prior intuition and preserv-
ing a constant meaning-reference to what was perceived originarily. How-
ever, the retroductive inference changed not only the sense of the prior
modified intuition – from “elementary particle track” to “track of an ele-
mentary particle of a certain kind” – but also shifted or extended the ref-
erence of that meaning from what was perceived originarily to the posited
novel reality – i.e., from the curved line to the elementary particle itself.
Indeed, such reference-extension posits the evidential basis of the excess
meaning that the retroductive inference attaches to the originary intuition;
and because this excess meaning contains an implicit reference to the
posited (rather than given) theoretical entity, the intuition of the existence
or presence of a theoretical entity cannot be reducible in meaning (i.e., can-
not be identical in both sense and reference) to mere phenomenal meanings
grasped in originary perception. So, retroductive inference both extends
the reference of theoretical scientific concepts beyond what is given in
originary intuition and modifies the sense of such intuition on the basis
of that reference-extension, thereby generating radical meaning change
(i.e., of both sense and reference) of a sort Husserl never envisioned and
which his notion of “founded intuition” does not encompass. Therefore,
the validity of retroductive inference cannot be guaranteed by the original
validity of the self-evidence of originary intuition precisely because such
inference posits its own evidential basis that radically exceeds reference to
original self-evidence; to put this in another (somewhat ironic) way, it is
precisely because the phenomenological condition of the possibility of any
retroductive inference being valid is that it be founded upon appearance
that the validity of what is posited retroductively is underdetermined by the
original self-evidence of the phenomena. Here, then, is the source of the
underdetermination of theory by evidence in science, a problem Husserl
himself did not countenance and which cannot, I think, be adequately
addressed within his framework as it stands.
The upshot of such radical meaning modification, and hence the em-
pirical underdetermination of theoretical scientific concepts, is that retro-
ductive inferences are fallible, i.e., possibly invalid. Inference from effect
to cause is never completely certain; in Husserl’s terms, retroductive in-
ference never achieves apodicticity. Thus enters the need in science for a
ground of validity other than the original self-evidence of the life-world
given in originary intuition – viz., confirmation (via secondary evidence)
and (causal) explanatory success – which confers independent (though
non-apodictic) warrant upon theoretical hypotheses and the entities they
posit. Moreover, that retroductive inferences are possibly invalid implies
that what is motivated in experience by retroductively inferred hypotheses
and posited entities can not (as Husserl says) “be expected with empirical
certainty” and, hence, presents the possibility that such hypotheses and
entities could be disconfirmed or go unfulfilled in experience and thereby

need to be modified in confrontation with disconfirming evidence. Now,
within Husserl’s framework there can, for sure, be ‘cancellation’ of con-
cepts via the failure of the phenomena to fulfill conceptually motivated cat-
egorial intuitions. Such ‘cancellation’, though, would on Husserl’s account
merely reflect a concept’s lack of a valid sense-foundation and indicate
only the impossibility of reactivating any originary life-world evidence at
its basis (i.e., indicate that it was founded upon a ‘mistaken’ perception);
hence, it would lead one to simply reject the concept outright rather than
to modify it in accord with the disconfirming evidence. Science would
thus proceed in a way that is merely bounded negatively by disconfirming
evidence. Yet, theory modification can be guided positively by disconfirm-
ing evidence whereby the meaning of inadequate conceptual structures
is transformed in a progressive way so that they remain “faithful to the
phenomena” (Belousek 1998). Husserl’s framework does not naturally ac-
commodate this possibility; for as much as he does not provide a genuine
epistemic role for confirmation to play in the construction and valida-
tion of theoretical-scientific concepts, he cannot give any positive place to
disconfirmation in progressive theory modification and constructive con-
ceptual change. Indeed, because on his account all valid and progressive
conceptual modification in science builds cumulatively upon theoretical
constructs that are taken over or handed down as already valid (see next
section), such conceptual change can be motivated only by further discov-
ery but never provoked and guided forward by disconfirming evidence (cf.
Popper 1948). So, in failing to appreciate the central role and characteristic
fallibility of retroductive inference in science, Husserl also overlooks the
positive place of falsification in scientific methodology and its potential
import for scientific realism.
4. CONCEPTUAL CHANGE AND THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE
We consider next Husserl’s characterization of conceptual change in sci-

ence. Here, Husserl is unequivocal regarding the essential progressive and
continuous character of scientific traditions: science progresses as “the
unity of a propagative process of transferred meaning” (Husserl 1970,
363). There are two key characteristics to this ‘propagative process’. Con-
ceptual change in science is a unitary process, constituting a single pro-
gression: “The scientific world, the scientists’ horizon of being, has the
character of a single work or edifice growing in infinitum, upon which the
generations of scientists, belonging to it correlatively, are unendingly at
work” (Husserl 1970, 380). Conceptual change in science is also a cumu-
lative process whereby all past meanings laid down are carried forward as
sediment and retain their validity for the present life-world:
[geometry] is not only a mobile forward process from one set of acquisitions to another
but a continuous synthesis in which all acquisitions maintain their validity, all make up
a totality such that, at every present stage, the total acquisition is, so to speak, the total
premise for the acquisitions of the new level . . . . The same thing is true of every science.
(Husserl 1970, 355)
Thus,
the propositions, theories, the whole edifice of doctrine in the objective sciences are struc-
tures attained through certain activities of scientists bound together in their collaborative
work – or, to speak more exactly, attained through a continued building up of activities,
the later of which always presuppose the results of the earlier. And we see further that all
these theoretical results have the character of validities for the life-world, adding them-
selves to its own composition and belonging to it even before that as a horizon of possible
accomplishments for developing science. (Husserl 1970, 131)
Again, I will consider each of these – unity and cumulativity – in turn and
assess them against both other appraisals of scientific conceptual change
as well as the history of physics.
First is the unitary character of scientific conceptual change. Science,
according to Husserl, is a unitary progression, taking place within a sin-
gle “horizon of possible accomplishments for developing science”. But,
is that so? Kuhn, of course, depicts science as developing through a non-
cumulative succession of competing and mutually incompatible traditions
(or, paradigms), transitions between them being ‘revolutions’ (Kuhn 1970).
Such incompatibility, or incommensurability, between successive para-
digms, it would seem, is surely contrary to viewing the history of a science
as a single, coherent progressing tradition, for the incommensurability of
two paradigms implies just that they cannot be brought together within
a single, coherent conceptual framework. Indeed, scientists belonging to
different paradigms cannot even understand one another completely; what
each says must appear (at least in part) unintelligible to the other: “Com-
munication across the revolutionary divide is inevitably partial” (Kuhn
1970, 149). In short, scientists in competing paradigms (literally) speak
different scientific languages. But, for Husserl, it is precisely the unity of
scientific language that preserves and ensures the unity of the progressive
transference of meaning of theoretical scientific constructions and, hence,
of the scientific tradition: “In the unity of the community of communica-
tion among several persons the repeatedly produced structure becomes an
object of consciousness, not as a likeness, but as the one structure common
to all” (Husserl 1970, 360). As Kisiel puts it, “it is language which is the
condition of the possibility for the retention and protention of meaning be-
yond the finite individual and for the tradition” (Kisiel 1970, 73). That is, a
single, common scientific language is a condition for the very possibility of

the progressive transmission of meaning within a single scientific tradition
(cf. Klein 1940).
A paradigm shift, though, is more than a change in scientific vocabulary
that creates difficulties in communication between scientists in competing
paradigms. A paradigm is constitutive of a scientist’s world-view; thus, a
revolution is a change in world-view, “a displacement of the conceptual
network through which scientists view the world” (Kuhn 1970, 102) – or,
more suggestively, a change in worlds: “the proponents of competing par-
adigms practice their trade in different worlds” (Kuhn 1970, 150). So, the
incommensurability between successive paradigms is more serious than
the lack of a common scientific language; it is in some sense the lack of
a shared world. In Husserl’s terms, to undergo a paradigm shift is for a
scientific tradition to already move within a different objective-scientific
world, to already be directed in its research activity toward a radically
transformed horizon of meaning. Therefore, if science does sometimes
change through Kuhnian revolutions, then Husserl’s characterization of the
development of scientific tradition as a unitary progression is untenable.
Now, one might respond on Husserl’s behalf that, even if science does
develop through the revolutionary succession of incommensurable para-
digms, all such change is still bounded by a single horizon of possible
scientific development toward which all research in every succeeding para-
digm is directed. Certainly the life-world horizon is such an horizon, for all
scientific theorizing in every epoch must take place within it: “To be sure,
everyday induction grew into induction according to scientific method, but
that changes nothing of the essential meaning of the pregiven world as the
horizon of all meaningful induction” (Husserl 1970, 51). The life-world
is the single “horizon toward which all questions tend”, and “the scien-
tific world . . . like all other worlds . . . itself ‘belongs’ to the life-world”
(Husserl 1970, 380). But, Husserl’s claim requires more than this, for if
the universality of the life-world as an ultimate horizon of meaning were
sufficient to constitute the unity of a tradition directed in its activity toward
it, then there would be no specific difference between the totality of human
cultural activity in its unified historical movement within the life-world
(Husserl 1970, 371) and the essential unity constituting the movement of
any particular scientific tradition. And that would nullify the significance
of scientific theorizing as a decisive accomplishment arising out of the
life-world.
One must, then, find a horizon that is specifically scientific, and here
Galileo’s accomplishment, the mathematization of nature, might be con-
sidered as having opened an infinite horizon for the development of physics
by setting a task or program of research that cannot be outstripped – viz.,

the reduction of all aspects of material bodies to geometrically determinable
(i.e., spatio-temporally quantifiable) properties and their mechanical rela-
tions. But, has not theoretical physics already outstripped this task? I offer
two developments in the history of physics that indicate that the horizon of
research opened by Galileo’s achievement has indeed been eclipsed.
The first is the case of the postulation of the electron. Nineteenth-century
mathematical physics (Maxwell, Thomson, Tait, etc.) had persisted in its
attempt to explain electromagnetic phenomena by reducing all the proper-
ties of the electromagnetic field to the geometrically determinable stresses
and strains in a mechanical ether (Harman 1982, chap. 4). This project
was eventually abandoned and, with Lorentz setting the leading example,
supplanted by the program of introducing point sources for the electromag-
netic field whose properties could not be reduced to the geometric proper-
ties of a mechanical ether. Thus was conceived the notion of electric charge
as an irreducibly non-mechanical property of matter, and the electromag-
netic field was subsequently reborn as a substantial entity existing indepen-
dently of a mechanical medium (with the special theory of relativity acting
as midwife, of course). It might be argued, though, that the electron and
electromagnetic field still had spatio-temporally determinable properties
(as, e.g., determined per the Lorentz force law and Maxwell’s equations)
such that the theoretical substruction of the electron and electromagnetic
field still took place within and in reference to the Galilean horizon. In
response to this, I offer the development of the quantum-mechanical atom.
Here, the project of determining the atom in all its aspects as a fundamen-
tally spatio-temporal, mechanical entity was decisively abandoned (Ser-
wer 1977). Indeed, the Uncertainty Principle was taken to imply that it is
impossible to determine all the classical-mechanical properties of matter
simultaneously in a geometrically precise manner. The result of this rad-
ical shift is that no longer is it the task of theoretical physics to reduce
all aspects of matter to geometrically determinable mechanical proper-
ties. Indeed, the quantum-mechanical particle property of ‘spin’, which
has notoriously resisted a geometrical interpretation, has instead been un-
derstood primarily in terms of the non-spatio-temporal symmetries of the
‘wave-function’. Following upon this, the prevalent use of group theory
in contemporary elementary particle physics has opened up a new horizon
for development within which the theoretician is handed the task of deter-
mining the properties of matter algebraically. For sure, I think, the Galilean
research tradition has been replaced and the horizon within which it moved
ruptured. And, if so, Husserl’s claim for the unitary character of scientific
conceptual change is inconsonant with the history of physics.
If one wants to maintain that the shift from the geometricization of

nature (characteristic of classical mechanics and its research program) to
the algebraicization of nature (characteristic of quantum mechanics and
its research program) occurs within the horizon of the Galilean project,
and hence that both research programs belong to one and the same sci-
entific tradition, then the significance of Galileo’s accomplishment must
change from the geometricization of nature specifically to the mathema-
tization of nature generally. The latter, of course, is the way in which
early twentieth-century historiography of science reconstructed Galileo’s
decisive accomplishment for mechanics (Cohen 1994, sec. 2.3). But, to
characterize Galileo’s project in such general terms as to include the alge-
braicization of nature is (at least potentially) to do violence to history, for
the abstract algebra from which contemporary physics derives its methods
of formal representation was developed only in the nineteenth century
(Boyer 1991, chaps. 26 and 28). What must be inquired into, then, is
whether this latter development can itself be reconstructed historiograph-
ically as a modification of or a building up out of the same geometric
tradition out of and in relation to which Galileo opened up the horizon
of research for classical mechanics. If so, then the claim that the respective
projects of the geometricization and algebraicization of nature belong to
one and the same scientific tradition may prove tenable. Such an inquiry,
however, outstrips the task of this essay.
It should be noted here that the shift from Newtonian gravitational
theory to the general theory of relativity does occur within the Galilean
horizon even though the latter employs a non-Euclidean geometry. This
is clear for two reasons. First, non-Euclidean geometry itself (including
the Riemannian geometry of relativity theory) did arise as a modifica-
tion within the Euclidean geometric tradition (Gray 1989, part 2). And,
second, in general relativity, the reduction of nature to the geometrically
determinable is carried out in the extreme – the foundation of the real is a
mathematical manifold and its precisely determinable metrical properties
– and thus it fulfills rather than overtakes the Galilean project.
The second characteristic Husserl ascribes to scientific conceptual
change is cumulativity: all meanings acquired in the history of a theoretical
scientific concept are handed down through tradition as ‘sediment’. The
key aspect of this cumulativity is that such handing-down maintains the
validity for the life-world of those concepts. The ground of the possibility
of such retention of validity is the ahistorical essential character of the
life-world itself: “the life-world does have, in all its relative features, a
general structure. This general structure, to which everything that exists
is relatively bounded, is not itself relative” (Husserl 1970, 139). “This
actually intuited, actually experienced and experienceable world remains

unchanged as what it is, in its own essential structure and its own concrete
causal style, whatever we may do with or without techniques” (Husserl
1970, 51). In this sense, the life-world is a priori such that, “as the ex-
pression ‘a priori’ indicates, it lays claim to a strictly unconditioned and
truly apodictic self-evidence extending beyond all historical facticities”
(Husserl 1970, 373). Husserl is thereby able to avoid the ‘embarrassment’
of historicism in that the life-world is a constant, ever-present ground of
validity; all theoretical scientific concepts founded in every tradition have
their validity in reference to a common source of self-evidence that persists
identically as one and the same (in its essential structure) throughout all
historical epochs: “the human surrounding world is the same today and
always, and thus also in respect to what is relevant to primal establishment
and lasting tradition” (Husserl 1970, 378). Thus, once a sedimented sense
of a concept obtains validity (either originary or derivative) for the life-
world, it remains always valid because the life-world never changes its
self- evident style upon which such validity was based originally. So, when
inquiring back to the self-evident origins of geometry, for instance, we
need not be familiar with the detailed particularities of the life-world of
the Greeks; for
It is now clear that even if we know almost nothing about the historical surrounding world
of the first geometers, this much is certain as an invariant, essential structure: that character
. . . that these pure bodies had spatio-temporal shapes and ‘material qualities’ it was a world
of ‘things’ . . . ; that all things necessarily had to have a bodily character . . . that these
pure bodies had spatio-temporal shapes and ‘material qualities’ (color, warmth, weight,
hardness, etc.) related to them. (Husserl 1970, 375)
Indeed, it is such constancy of the life-world that is the ground of the con-
tinuity of history itself as an internally unified acquisition and unfolding
of meaning, “a vital movement of the coexistence and the interweaving of
original formations and sedimentations of meaning” (Husserl 1970, 371).
And the unity of history itself binds the totality of human cultural traditions
into a continuous, unified movement within the life-world, which is
to say that the whole of the cultural present, understood as a totality, ‘implies’ the whole
of the cultural past in an undetermined but structurally determined generality. To put it
more precisely, it implies a continuity of pasts which imply one another, each in itself
being a past cultural present. And this whole continuity is a unity or traditionalization up
to the present, which is our present as [a process of] traditionalizing itself in flowing-static
vitality. (Husserl 1970, 371)
The conceptual cumulativity of scientific tradition has two crucial impli-

cations, one for scientific practice and one for phenomenological inquiry
into scientific method. For practicing scientists, the valid accumulation of
past, sedimented meanings allows a theoretical conceptual structure to be

taken over in the present from the past precisely as a tradition, i.e., as a
pregiven conceptual structure that is already valid for the life-world in ad-
vance of experience. “The geometry which is ready-made, so to speak, . . .
is a tradition’ (Husserl 1970, 354). Even Galileo could have accomplished
the mathematization of nature only on the basis of a ready-to-hand geom-
etry taken over by him as already valid for the life-world: “The relatively
advanced geometry known to Galileo, already broadly applied not only to
the earth but also to astronomy, was for him, accordingly, already pregiven
by tradition as a guide to his own thinking” (Husserl 1970, 28). Thus, the
scientific practitioner need not re-think the whole of his science back to its
origins in order to validly employ its concepts in projecting and fulfilling
experience in the life-world. Indeed, if one “must run through the whole
immense chain of groundings back to the original premises and actually
reactivate the whole thing”, then “a science like our modern geometry
would obviously not be possible at all” (Husserl 1970, 363). Rather,
Through a method of idealization and construction which historically has long since been
worked out and can be practiced intersubjectively in a community, these limit-shapes have
become acquired tools that can be used habitually and can always be applied to something
new . . . . Like all cultural acquisitions which arise out of human accomplishment, they
remain objectively knowable and available without requiring that the formulation of their
meaning be repeatedly and explicitly renewed. (Husserl 1970, 26)
That is, “a science which is given as a tradition . . . has become a ⌧ " ⌫⌘”
(Husserl 1970, 57). Thus, the conceptually cumulative development of sci-
entific tradition, in Husserl’s view, just is what makes scientific practice
itself possible in the first place (cf. Klein 1940). Recalling our earlier ex-
ample, once the successful retroductive inference of an elementary particle
is verified in experiment and becomes established within scientific theory
and practice it will form part of the background or horizon of ‘normal’
science; the physicist will henceforth ‘see through’ (rather than repeat) the
whole series of founding intuitions and retroductive inference by which the
theoretical concept was constituted and the theoretical entity was posited
in the first place and simply perceive the elementary particle as show-
ing itself (rather than as merely appearing) in the bubble-chamber pho-
tograph, the conceptual reference-extension achieved by the retroductive
inference allowing the physicist to ‘see beyond’ the phenomena. Tradition,
then, does not ‘blind’ the practicing scientist to the phenomena, but rather
is the very mode of access through which the ‘things themselves’ (i.e.,
theoretical-scientific entities) are encountered in scientific experience.
Regarding the phenomenological inquiry into scientific method, the cu-
mulative character of conceptual change is what makes the de-constructive
inquiry back to self-evident origins possible – all de-construction must take

as its point of departure a tradition: “The geometry which is ready-made, so
to speak, from which the regressive inquiry begins, is a tradition” (Husserl
1970, 354). As Kisiel puts it, “It is because of this tightly woven network
in the progression of scientific meaning that Husserl now insists that it is
possible to regress to the most incipient meanings solely along essential
lines” (Kisiel 1970, 70–71). That is, only insofar as the originary sense of
a concept is preserved as sediment in the progressive modification of its
meaning within a tradition is it even possible, beginning with that concept
as handed down by tradition, to regress to the self-evident origins in which
its originary sense was laid down or constituted. Now, in that Husserl
claims that a scientific theoretical construction is valid only insofar as
the originary intuitive genesis of that construction out of the self-evidence
of the life-world can be exhibited phenomenologically, it is clear that if
scientific traditions do not change conceptually in a cumulative manner,
then the phenomenological task of exhibiting the self-evident ground of
validity for theoretical scientific concepts proves to be in vain. And the
upshot for Husserl’s characterization of scientific method would be that no
scientific tradition could uncover and exhibit the originary meaning of its
concepts and thereby establish the validity of its theoretical structures for
the life-world:
The developed method, the progressive fulfillment of the task, is, as method, an art (⌧ " ⌫⌘)
which is handed down; but its true [i.e., original] meaning is not necessarily handed down
[explicitly] with it. And it is precisely for this reason that a theoretical task and achievement
like that of a natural science . . . can only be and remain meaningful in a true and original
sense if the scientist has developed in himself the ability to inquire back into the original
meaning of all his meaning-structures and methods, i.e., into the historical meaning of their
primal establishment, and especially into the meaning of all the inherited meanings taken
over unnoticed in this primal establishment, as well as those taken over later on. (Husserl
1970, 56, original emphasis)
Thus, for Husserl, the cumulativity of scientific conceptual change is a con-

dition for the possibility of scientific realism, for it is only by appealing to
the possibility of inquiring back through the tradition itself to the originary
self-evidence of the ahistorical life-world that he avoids historicism in the
first place.
Husserl’s view here, of course, is at odds with the Kuhnian picture –
paradigm shifts are non-cumulative. Such non-cumulativity results in so-
called ‘Kuhn loss’: the obvious questions of one paradigm are not even
intelligible in a succeeding paradigm; problems to be solved or phenomena
to be explained are no longer in need of solution or explanation; terms
which referred to entities “out there in the world” are thought to not really
refer at all or are taken to refer to different things; etc. (Kuhn 1970, chaps. 9
and 10). But, I think it would be more instructive here to contrast Husserl’s
view with history directly rather than with just another reconstruction of
that history.
The question, then, is whether or not the history of science exhibits such
cumulativity in its conceptual development as Husserl claims. In order to
assess this claim, I suggest considering the case of the theoretical concept
‘atom’. In its origin with the Greek atomists Democritus and Leucippus,
the originary meaning of ‘atom’ was (literally) ‘indivisible’ and ‘incom-
posite’. Now, if Husserl’s claim is correct, this originary sense should
have been sedimented into and handed down (as valid for the life-world)
along with the concept ‘atom’ as it was transmitted through the atomist
tradition over the centuries. For sure, this originary sense of ‘atom’ was
the founding meaning for all atomic theorists of the modern period from
Gassendi and Hobbes in the seventeenth century down to Dalton in the
nineteenth century, serving as the basis for the characteristics such as finite
extension and impenetrability further ascribed to atoms in this period. But,
beginning with the late nineteenth century, the atom-concept was radically
transformed beyond its originary sense. Following the postulation of elec-
tric charge as a non-mechanical, independent property of matter, the atom
of Thompson and Rutherford became composite, being comprised of a
positively charged core of some sort surrounded by a region of negative
charge. And with Bohr, the atom became not only composite but also divis-
ible, that positively charged core or ‘nucleus’ being subject to radioactive
decay and spontaneous fission.
The question thus is whether or not through this transformation the
atom-concept retained as valid for the life-world its original sense of ‘in-
divisible’ and ‘incomposite’. If so, then the contemporary atom-concept
handed down from Bohr is, strictly speaking, logically incoherent and,
hence, not possibly valid for the life-world. For, if it were valid, then it
must be possible to verify its meaning through the (perceptual) intuition
of things themselves given in self-evidence, which, in turn, would require
that it be possible for something to show itself (either directly or indi-
rectly) as both composite-divisible and incomposite-indivisible, which is
(metaphysically) impossible. So, either the contemporary atom-concept is
invalid or Husserl’s claim is incorrect. Insofar as one takes the contempo-
rary atom-concept to be valid for the life-world, Husserl’s claim must be
incorrect.
The defender of Husserl on this point has at least three options. One
could deny that the contemporary atom-concept is valid for the life-world;
but, given the overwhelmingly successful confirmation of contemporary
atomic theory over the past seventy years, such a move would be unwar-
ranted. One could deny that the originary sense of‘atom’ was (and, hence,
is) valid for the life-world; but this would render invalid a fortiori all
the theoretical constructions of the atomist tradition of the early modern
period inasmuch as its atom-concept was founded upon the original Greek
concept. Or, one could deny that the atom-concept of the Greek and early
modern tradition and the contemporary atom-concept refer to the same
kind of entity in the life-world; but this would disrupt the unity of the
atomist tradition and result in the sort of ‘Kuhn loss’ mentioned above.
None of these responses appears tenable.
Still, it might be suggested on Husserl’s behalf that, although the term
‘atom’ itself no longer refers to what is indivisible, incomposite, etc., there
are theoretical entities in contemporary science that do satisfy such a de-
scription, viz. the quarks and leptons: quarks compose the hadrons, includ-
ing baryons (three-quark entities) such as protons and neutrons as well
as mesons (two-quark entities) such as the pions; and the leptons include
electrons, neutrinos and photons. Thus, one might claim that quarks and
leptons play the same role in the standard model of elementary particles as
did atoms in the physical theories of the l7th–l9th centuries, so that while
what we now call ‘atoms’ are themselves no longer strictly atomic in the
original sense of the term, there are still genuinely atomic (i.e., indivisible,
incomposite, etc.) entities in our current physical theory. We thus need to
distinguish here between two notions of ‘atom’ (such a distinction was
actually introduced in the 19th century to avoid terminological confusion):
the ‘chemical atom’, which refers to the smallest units of matter having the
chemical properties of a given element (represented in the periodic table),
and the ‘physical atom’, which refers to truly indivisible, incomposite, etc.,
fundamental entities of all matter (represented in a chart of elementary
particles). And it is ‘atom’ in this second sense that is the rightful inheritor
of the atomist tradition stretching back unbroken to the Greeks and which
has its proper reference in current physical theory to quarks and leptons,
not to units of hydrogen, helium, etc.
This suggestion, however, while compatible with both the history of
science and contemporary usage, cannot be easily fit into Husserl’s frame-
work. For it introduces a subtle shift in the notion of the ‘meaning’ of a
theoretical-scientific concept. Implicit in the suggestion is the claim that
the meaning of a theoretical-scientific concept is constituted primarily by
the semantical role it plays within a given theory, rather than originally
by the self-evidence of the life-world as in Husserl’s view. Such a se-
mantics of theoretical terms was employed by Kuhn and Feyerabend in
the argument for conceptual incommensurability across theory change: if
there is no theory-independent (i.e., pre-theoretical) meaning of scientific
concepts, then a single term used in succeeding theories has two disparate,
incommensurate meanings. Thus, the suggestion would require Husserl’s
framework to allow for the possibility of incommensurability, which, as
emphasized above, is at odds with his view of scientific conceptual change
as “the unity of a propagative process of transferred meaning”; for what
would get ‘transferred’ from one theory to the next would be merely a
semantical role, not any originary life-world evidence that Husserl insists
is at the founding of the meaning of all theoretical-scientific concepts.
What has been shown with this case, then, is not that all scientific con-
ceptual change must be non-cumulative as according to Kuhn, but rather
that such conceptual change need not be cumulative in the manner char-
acterized by Husserl. And this, I think, poses yet another challenge to a
phenomenological basis for scientific realism insofar as such cumulativ-
ity is, on Husserl’s account at least, a condition of the possibility of any
scientific realism. What is needed, as indicated by the history of atomic
theory and suggested in the previous section, is a phenomenological ac-
count of scientific conceptual change that allows for the possibility of
theory change through the non-cumulative meaning-modification of the-
oretical concepts in a way that need not be inimical to scientific realism;
and such non-cumulative yet progressive meaning modification, when pro-
voked and guided by disconfirming or falsifying evidence, can preserve
valid meaning-reference founded upon originary intuition and thereby al-
low theoretical concepts to “remain faithful to the phenomena” without
carrying along disconfirmed or falsified (i.e., unfulfilled and invalidated)
senses. We have already laid the basis for such an account (Belousek 1998),
but further development awaits a future occasion.
To sum up. From a realist point of view, Husserl’s phenomenological
account of scientific method and conceptual change is inadequate for three
chief reasons: First, his description of the formation and modification of
theoretical scientific concepts in terms of ‘founded intuition’ is inadequate
to encompass the characteristic conceptual reference-extension and epis-
temic fallibility or evidential underdetermination of retroductive inference;
second, he accords no genuine epistemic weight to confirmation regard-
ing the warrant of theoretical concepts and, hence, does not countenance
the possibility of falsification as playing a positive role in theory change;
and, third, his description of scientific conceptual change as a unitary and
cumulative progression appears incompatible with the actual history of
science.
REFERENCES
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Cohen, H. F.: 1994, The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry, University of
Chicago Press, Chicago.
Gray, J.: 1989, Ideas of Space: Euclidean, Non-Euclidean, and Relativistic, 2nd ed.,
Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Gutting, G.: 1974, ‘Phenomenology and Scientific Realism’, New Scholasticism 48, 253–
266.
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Research 39, 42–56.
Harman, P. M.: 1982, Energy, Force, and Matter, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Harvey, C. W.: 1986, ‘Husserl and the Problem of Theoretical Entities’, Synthese 66, 291–
309.
Harvey, C. W. and Shelton, J. D.: 1992, ‘Husserl’s Phenomenology and the Ontology of
the Natural Sciences’, in Hardy, L. and Embree, L. (eds.), Phenomenology of Natural
Science, Kiuwer, Dordrecht, pp. 119–133.
Heidegger, M.: 1962, Being and Time, Macquarrie, J. and Robinson, E. (trans.), Harper
and Row, New York.
Husserl, E.: 1970, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology,
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T. J. (eds.), Phenomenology and the Natural Sciences, Northwestern University Press,
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Program in History and Philosophy of Science

Department of Philosophy
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556
USA

Husserl On ScientificMethod

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DARRIN W.

HUSSERL ON SCIENTIFIC METHOD AND CONCEPTUAL

In The Crisis of European Sciences, including ‘The Origin of Geometry’,

Synthese 115: 71–98, 1998.

2. GENESIS AND VALIDITY OF THEORETICAL SCIENTIFIC CONCEPTS

As is well known, Husserl claimed that “The concrete life-world . . . is

First is the construction of theoretical scientific concepts through mod-

What is crucial about the genesis of constitution of concepts is that

new, something different” (Husserl 1970, 130, emphasis added). Indeed,

That is, if scientific concepts were merely shorthand for collections of

3. EXPLANATION , THEORETICAL ENTITIES , AND SCIENTIFIC REALISM

In assessing Husserl’s account of scientific concept formation and verifi-

constitutes part of its justification. Why is this so? A theoretical construct

of reactivating the original self-evidence of the life-world that lies at the

It is the theoretical constructs of objective science that require explana-

To explain our [prescientific] understanding of the [life-]world by an appeal to the [objective-

That is, any valid appeal to a scientific explanation of life-world experience

The typical example of such in-principle unobservable substructed ideali-

existence of such an elementary particle of that kind is inferred and its

life-world horizon. Indeed, such a inference could not be validated via

entities could be disconfirmed or go unfulfilled in experience and thereby

4. CONCEPTUAL CHANGE AND THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE

We consider next Husserl’s characterization of conceptual change in sci-

single, common scientific language is a condition for the very possibility of

by setting a task or program of research that cannot be outstripped – viz.,

If one wants to maintain that the shift from the geometricization of

actually intuited, actually experienced and experienceable world remains

The conceptual cumulativity of scientific tradition has two crucial impli-

past, sedimented meanings allows a theoretical conceptual structure to be

inquiry back to self-evident origins possible – all de-construction must take

Thus, for Husserl, the cumulativity of scientific conceptual change is a con-

Program in History and Philosophy of Science

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