The Scientific World-Conception, Worldview, World Picture: Towards a Heideggerian Positivism
The Scientific World-Conception, Worldview, World Picture: Towards a Heideggerian Positivism

Summary/Abstract: In my paper I set out to find a middle ground between Heidegger’s early, i.e. pre-1930, conception of science, and the scientific world conception of the logical empiricist or logical positivists in the late 1920s and early 1930s. It is a commonplace in the history of philosophy that Heidegger’sand the logical positivists’ views on science were diametrically opposed. I argue, nonetheless, that, despite appearances, a synthesis of these views is both possible and desirable. I draw on the shared conviction of Heidegger and the positivists that, on the one hand, science proper, or authentic science, is characterized by a certain openness, or readiness to fundamental change, and, on the other hand, that it is always at risk of becoming a rigid,closed system of principles, that is, a worldview, as the logical positivists said,or, in Heidegger’s words, a world picture. That risk can only be averted by leading science back to its foundation in the experiential and practical sphere of ordinary life, for science, and the scientific conception of the world, as the Vienna Circle’s manifesto makes it clear, ought to serve life.

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