{"id":14,"date":"2011-10-05T15:27:39","date_gmt":"2011-10-05T15:27:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.phenomenologybooks.com\/blog\/?p=14"},"modified":"2012-01-10T15:39:09","modified_gmt":"2012-01-10T15:39:09","slug":"epistemological-difficulties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.phenomenologybooks.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/05\/epistemological-difficulties\/","title":{"rendered":"Epistemological Difficulties"},"content":{"rendered":"

The word “Phenomenology” was coined by the 20th<\/sup> Century German Philosopher Edmund Husserl, which he defined as “Philosophy as a strict science, with an open frame of reference.”\u00a0 Like most Philosophers from the early 19th<\/sup> Century onward, Husserl was heavily influenced by the 18th<\/sup> Century German Philosopher Immanuel Kant.<\/p>\n

The book I am working on now, Meta-Scientific Phenomenology<\/em>, shall pick up Epistemology where Kant left it, informed by the empirical data of Relativity Theory and Quantum Mechanics.\u00a0 It is important to understand that the ideas of Kant did not come out of a vacuum, but were dependent upon the contemporary thought at that time.<\/p>\n

The Classical Physics of Isaac Newton was achieving astounding success both in describing astronomical events as well as helping to foment the Industrial Revolution.\u00a0 Meanwhile, Philosophy was deducing a null result.<\/p>\n

Bishop George Berkeley and David Hume, two British 18th<\/sup> Century Philosophers, were denying any type of absolute knowledge whatsoever.\u00a0 Berkeley held that material objects are illusory, and that all reality exists as ideas within the mind of God.\u00a0 Hume was casting doubt upon the Law of Causality, and asserted that consciousness is merely meaningless thought associations.\u00a0 A humorous commentator remarked on this series of events by saying “Never mind, no matter.”<\/p>\n

That is how Kant discovered the a priori<\/em> (Latin for “before the fact”).\u00a0 He marveled at how statements such as “7 + 5 = 12” or “The sum of the interior angles of all Triangles on a flat surface equals 180 degrees.”\u00a0 These kinds of Propositions Kant called “Synthetic a priori<\/em> cognitions.”<\/p>\n

The principles of Logic, Geometry, and Mathematics are purely Objective, and exist independently of any individual Observer.\u00a0 In the terminology of the Theory of Relativity these relations are what is called “Invariant.”\u00a0 They seem to exist independently of human thought.\u00a0 The Argument Forms presented in Handbook of Logical Validity<\/em> are examples of this type of concept.\u00a0 To call them a priori<\/em> is perhaps obsolete.\u00a0 It would be better to call them Principles of the Theoretical Sciences<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Theoretical Sciences<\/em> are defined as Logic, Geometry, and Mathematics.\u00a0 In contrast, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology can be called Empirical Sciences<\/em>.\u00a0 More details on this scientific compartmentalization can be found within the book HYPERMETROPHIA<\/em>, which is described on the Website (www.phenomenologybooks.com).<\/p>\n

Perhaps Hume was correct, in the sense that the Newtonian Physics of his day did not constitute some kind of inviolable Law of Nature, but was essentially a Principle of Human Understanding.\u00a0 The extent to which Classical Mechanics corresponds with Reality is an issue which cannot be fully resolved here.<\/p>\n

The fact that Quantum Mechanics and Relativity Theory have evolved over and above the older Classical Physics constitutes a kind of Confirmation of Hypothesis for the assertions made by thinkers such as Berkeley, Hume, and Kant.<\/p>\n

Relativity had “removed all trace of physical objectivity from time and space.”\u00a0 The Uncertainty Relation of Quantum Mechanics states that it is in principle impossible to perform an Empirical Experiment without fundamentally altering the Phenomena observed.\u00a0 The Uncertainty Relation also holds that anything at the Atomic level (around 10-10<\/sup> meters) is by definition not<\/em> an Empirical concept.<\/p>\n

Simply put, Physics begins with Inter-subjective Empirical Reality and ends with the Conscious Observer.\u00a0 Philosophy begins with the Conscious Observer and ends with Inter-subjective Empirical Reality.\u00a0 Clearly these two branches of knowledge ought to be brought together within the Science of Phenomenology.<\/p>\n

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The word “Phenomenology” was coined by the 20th Century German Philosopher Edmund Husserl, which he defined as “Philosophy as a strict science, with an open frame of reference.”\u00a0 Like most Philosophers from the early 19th Century onward, Husserl was heavily … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phenomenologybooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phenomenologybooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phenomenologybooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phenomenologybooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phenomenologybooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.phenomenologybooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62,"href":"https:\/\/www.phenomenologybooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions\/62"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phenomenologybooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phenomenologybooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phenomenologybooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}