From: "Anthony Crifasi" <crifasi-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: devastating page on Husserl?
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 21:04:55 +0000


Jud wrote:

> > How does he say that the phenomena are most familiar to us? Insofar as 
>we
> > are absorbed and interested in them, not in the detached mode of knowing 
>or
> > science.
>
>Jud:
>This it seems to me is an ill-thought out wild generalisation on 
>Heidegger's
>behalf, for not all scientists adopt the same degree of detachment
>in their modes of knowing entities/phenomena, etc. Many scientists are
>UTTERLY absorbed and INTENSELY  interested in the
>subjects of their study, and often feel a strong personal ATTACHMENT, some 
>to
>the extent that the phenomena under investigation take on an obsessional
>nature for them.

You are misunderstanding, he does not mean that a scientist cannot be 
passionate about what they are studying. He means that passion does not 
constitute any part of the actual scientific experiment or result, even if 
passion motivated the scientist to do the experiment in the first place. In 
other words, when a scientist properly documents an experiment and its 
results, he or she only describes objective observations or possible 
hypothesis. Personal feelings are scientifically irrelevant, though they may 
be motivationally relevant. That is what it means to say that scientists are 
"detached," not that they are unmotivated or dispassionate about their 
subjects, but that the actual scientific method and its results are supposed 
to be totally objective and not "tainted" by the scientists' personal 
feelings. An experiment should be able to be reproduced by anyone, 
regardless of how passionate they are.

Anthony Crifasi

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