Naturalism, historism, and phenomenology

Thomas M. Seebohm

pp. 7-32

in: Thomas Nenon, Philip Blosser (eds), Advancing phenomenology, Berlin, Springer, 2010

Abstract

According to a generally accepted thesis, science and metaphysics are separate intellectual activities. The thesis is new and not generally accepted in the philosophical systems of Classical Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the first centuries in the development of the modern philosophy. The thesis presupposes the existence of sciences and their methodologies. Natural sciences in the modern sense exist since the sixteenth century, human sciences since the first half of the nineteenth century, and formal sciences since the end of the nineteenth century. Only the relation between the natural and the human sciences as empirical sciences are of interest for this investigation. Systematic reflections on the methodologies of the natural sciences emerge in the first half of the nineteenth and of the human and the formal sciences since the second half of the nineteenth century. Before proceeding, two key concepts need preliminary clarification, namely (a) methodology and (b) ontology.