Sunday, August 26, 2012

Experimental Reason and Mathematics

Husserl's criticism, in The Crisis of European Sciences, of the replacement of "method" by "true being", could be interpreted as implicitly directed at Heidegger.  Regardless, its explicit target is the mathematization of nature, pioneered by Galileo, which obscures, according to Husserl, not only its origin as Method, but the "hidden reason" that constitutes that origin.  Now, if Husserl had pursued the latter formulation, instead of seeking to ground Mathematization in the Transcendental Ego of Phenomenology, he might have considered the possibility that that covert faculty is Experimental Reason.  As a mode of Experimental Reason, it is easy to argue that Mathematization, while an undeniably useful tool, is not co-extensive with it, e. g. that quantification is not involved in many ordinary experiences of 'What if?'  Also as such, it is easy to distinguish between the experimental production of events, and the subsequent interpretation of them, from which it can be inferred that the primary value to Science of Mathematization is technological precision, not theoretical idealization, despite the continued presumption, 400 years after Galileo, of the ontologizers of Mathematics, e. g. many prominent Physicists.

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