Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is twofold: To demonstrate that thinking, separate from human experience, leads to dangerous abstractions, both epistemological and cultural. The term "abstraction" describes a process whereby phenomena are "drawn-out" from their experiential ground, placed within a mathematical-causal structure, and then used to formulate scientific theories. This transposition of ideal forms for concrete reality takes the "constituted" forms as the basis for scientific knowledge. Through this abstractive process, the subject's qualitative experiences of the natural world are filtered out of this mathematical-causal matrix. The danger arises when the subject becomes objectified, which leads to alienation from our own knowledge, and from one another as well. Reality, however, is neither "objective" nor "subjective," but experiential, with the terms "objective" and "subjective" being "abstractions" from this fundamental experiential ground. To examine the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, especially his concept of intentionality, as a way to expand our narrow definition of reason to include human experience. This method is "transcendental" to cultural norms, which means that it establishes the structural conditions that make our knowledge of the world possible. Husserl's phenomenological method is then applied to Goethe's epistemology, providing a philosophical basis for Goethe's scientific methodology. It is argued here that Goethe took the first steps toward a rigorous way of knowing grounded in human experience, pointing toward an epistemology that avoids the dangers of abstraction. With the aid of Husserl's phenomenological method, Goethe's scientific method and experiments can be more clearly seen through the light of experience. ;The conclusion drawn is that consciousness evidences "intentionality" and therefore has the capacity for a more immediate way of knowing. This way of knowing more accurately reflects our qualitative experiences. With Goethe's method, these qualitative experiences can be placed within a scientific framework without being objectified. Goethe's scientific methodology opens up the possibility for us to get "back to things themselves," and to ground our knowledge in human experience. While the focus here is on epistemology in the natural sciences, implications for the social sciences and humanities are discussed as well