>I have been trying to get a handle on Heidegger's relationship to modern
>science, particularly in judging the intended effects of his plan to reform
>the German universities. Specifically, what would happen with scientific
>research? Would it continue as it is, but in a more unified fashion,
>whatever that would mean? What would "Heideggerian science" look like?
>
>I have long suspected that Heideggerian science boils down in the end to
>fundamental ontology, despite talk of "regional ontologies" which are
>grounded in the fundament laid out in the fundamental ontology. The
>question is the relationship of these regional ontologies (fields of
>research) to the already existing fields of scientific research. My
>contention is that these regional ontologies cannot operate according to
>the standards of modern science, and what Heidegger desires is in effect an
>Aristotelian-style science which is driven fundamentally by metaphysics (an
>understanding of being).
>
>I begin with a rather astonishing claim Heidegger makes in a text from
>1922. "Indeed the Eleatics -- according to Aristotle's explicit
>observation -- do not 'actually' belong at all within the theme of the
>critique. Their preconceptions, their theory of Being, are such that they
>fundamentally block access to the beings as beings in movement (and thus
>block access to the physis)."(Phenomenological Interpretation with Respect
>to Aristotle, 388) The Eleatic theory of being is, of course, the theory
>that being is one, which is to say, being is the unchanging. Nature
>(physis), as Heidegger understands it (following Aristotle, so he believes)
>is movement, i.e. changing. It is impossible to understand change through
>the unchanging, so the Eleatic theory of being cannot understand nature.
>What changes is mist, smoke, formless; it permits no knowledge.
>
>In Book 6 of the Ethics, Aristotle distinguishes episteme from other
>knowledges, particularly techne and phronesis, in that episteme is
>concerned with unchanging things and the others with changing. Given that
>everything natural and int he world changes, according to Heidegger (not
>necessarily Aristotle), episteme drops out for the most part; techne and
>phronesis become the two leading types of knowledge or seeing.
>Incidentally, these roughly correspond to Part One and Part Two of Being
>and Time. Phronesis thus becomes (after being suitably translated and
>interpreted) the faculty most suited to understanding nature.
>
>To say that the changing cannot be understood through the unchanging is to
>pass over the momentous shift that took place at the birth of modern
>physics, which was precisely to translate movement into mathematical
>(arithmatical) figures; in other words to translate change into the
>unchanging, because mathematical laws never change. It was possible to
>give mathematically precise descriptions of movement, which could thus be
>described as natural laws.
>
>I am not saying Heidegger was unaware of this; far from it, he always
>insisted on the fundamentally mathematical nature of modern science. It
>does put a finger on the point that most bothered Heidegger, and also gives
>credence to his objections to modern science. Not only does modern science
>necessarily limit its description of the thing to what it can comprehend
>mathematically (because only that can be certain), but it is WRONG. Modern
>science commits what for Aristotle is the fundamental scientific error of
>metabolis, or understanding something through categories not meant for it.
>It is a category mistake to understand change mathematically. That it can
>be done is beside the point; to do it is bad science. The problem with
>modern science is not that it is insufficiently grounded, but rather that
>it is incorrectly grounded.
>
>It should be clear why Heidegger says in 1934 that the reformation of
>science must be a reformation of being. We must rid ourselves of a theory
>of being which states that being in the unchanging (constant presence is
>but another way of saying unchanging), and return to an understanding of
>being which allows access to things that change. Phronesis must become the
>faculty of scientific knowledge. I am not certain what, for instance,
>would be a phronetic study of life (biology), but I am certain it would not
>resemble what passes for biology in biology departments worldwide.
>
>Is it any wonder Heidegger met with such resistance from the faculty at
>Freiburg when he instituted his reforms? If he had succeeded with his
>vision, they would have been useless: all of their knowledge, skills, and
>techniques would have been revealed as empty and flawed.
>
>I have read attempts to appropriate Heidegger to a Kuhnian-style philosophy
>of science. While Heidegger was indeed an anti-positivist, this
>appropriation seriously sells short the radicality of Heidegger's critique
>of modern science. Modern science is wrong, whether or not the community
>of practicing scientists work within its paradigm or not. The point is not
>that the knowledge derived from ongoing research is contingent, but wrong.
>
>Any (constructive) comments or criticisms are welcome.
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