Thomas Seebohm on the Foundations of the Sciences

This book explores the work of Thomas Seebohm (1934-2014), a leading phenomenologist and hermeneuticist. It features papers that offer a critical and constructive dialogue about Seebohm’s analyses and their implications for the sciences. The net result is an in-depth study and a helpful overview of Seebohm’s general approach and his specific views on various areas of modern science.

The contributors focus especially upon his final text, History as a Science and the System of the Sciences. They view this as the culmination and summary of his historical and phenomenological investigations into the foundations, nature, and limits of modern sciences. This includes not just history but the Geisteswissenschaften more generally, along with the social and natural sciences as well. The essays in this volume reflect that range.

This volume presents insightful discussions about the nature and legitimacy of the human sciences as sciences and the unique character ofthe social sciences. It will be of interest not just as a matter of historical scholarship, but also and above all as an important contribution to phenomenology and to the philosophy of science and the sciences as such. It deserves attention by scholars from any philosophical tradition interested in thinking about the foundations of their disciplines and a philosophy of science that includes, but is not limited to, the natural sciences.

Chapter 1.Seebohm’s Hermeneutics (Robert Dostal).- Chapter 2. The Tasks and Contexts of Understanding in Dilthey and Seebohm (Rudolf Makkreel).- Chapter 3. Phenomenological Reduction and Methodological Abstraction (Roberto Walton).- Chapter 4. The First Specific Abstractive Reduction in Seebohm’s Theory of Science (Lester Embree).- Chapter 5. Mathesis and Lifeworld: Some Remarks on Thomas Seebohm’s History as a Science and the System of the Sciences (James Dodd).- Chapter 6. The Inadequacy of Husserlian Formal Mereology for the Regional Ontology of Chemical Wholes (Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino).- Chapter 7. Science, Intentionality, Control, and the Strata of Experience (Harry Reeder).- Chapter 8. On Thomas Seebohm’s History as a Science and the System of the Sciences (David Carr).- Chapter 9. Seebohm und Husserl on the Humanities (Thomas Nenon).- Chapter 10. History, the Sciences, and Disinterested Observers: A Dialogue between Alfred Schutz and Thomas Seebohm(Michael Barber).- Chapter 11. From the Epistemology of Physics to the Phenomenology of Nature: Some Reflections in the Wake of Seebohm’s Theses (Pedro Alves).- Chapter 12. The paradox of subjectivity and the Idea of Ultimate Grounding in Husserl and Heidegger," in Phenomenology and Indian Philosophy, ed. Chattopadhyaya, D.P. et. al.  (SUNY Press 1992) 153-168.- chapter 13. Fichte's and Husserl's Critique of Kant's Transcendental Deduction.- Chapter 14. Husserls on the Human Sciences in Ideen II.- Chapter 15. "Possible Worlds," in Phenomenology East and West, ed. FM Kirkland & DP Chattopadhyaya.