Phenomenology and Science ― Confrontations and Convergences

This book investigates the complicated, sometimes fraught relationship between phenomenology and the natural sciences. The contributors attempt to subvert the divide and opposition that has historically tended to characterize this relationship. Phenomenology has traditionally been understood to be methodologically distinct to scientific practice, and thus discrete from any claim that philosophy is strictly continuous with science. While there is something to this story that has dominated consideration of the relationship between phenomenology and science throughout the twentieth century, there are also emerging trends within both phenomenology and empirical science that complicate this too stark opposition, and call for more systematic consideration of the two fields' inter-relation. These essays explore such issues, either by directly examining meta-philosophical and methodological matters, or by looking at particular topics that seem to require the resources of each, including imagination, cognition, temporality, affect, imagery, language, and perception.