Abstract

Husserl's (1970) discussion of "Galilean science" is often dismissed as naïvely instrumentalist and hostile to science. He has been explicitly criticized for misunderstanding idealization in science, for treating the lifeworld as a privileged conceptual framework, and for denying that science can in principle completely describe the world (because ordinary prescientific concepts are irreplaceable). I clarify Husserl's position concerning realism, and use this to show that the first two criticisms depend upon misinterpretations. The third criticism is well taken. Nevertheless, this is consistent with Husserl's fundamental claim that the manifestations of things are important to discuss, but are inaccessible to empirical science