Ideas for a Hermeneutic Phenomenology of the Natural Sciences

This companion volume to "Ideas for Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Natural Sciences" focuses on methodological issues in the natural sciences. Its first part elucidates the methodical hermeneutics developed in the 19th century by Boeckh, Birt, Dilthey and others. Its second part, through the use of concrete examples drawn from modern physics as it unfolded from Copernicus to Maxell, clarifies and "proves" the main points of the ontologico-hermeneutical conception of the sciences elaborated in the earlier volume. It thereby both illuminates the most important problems confronting an ontologico-phenomenological approach to the natural sciences and offers an alternative to Kuhn's conception of the historical development of the natural sciences.