Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-788cddb947-tr9hg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-08T02:55:39.977Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

10 - Merleau-Ponty’s Existential Conception of Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2006

Taylor Carman
Affiliation:
Barnard College, New York
Mark B. N. Hansen
Affiliation:
Princeton University, New Jersey
Get access

Summary

Maurice Merleau-Ponty is best known as a philosopher of science for his detailed investigations of psychology. Perhaps because of this, the significance of his work for a broader philosophical reflection on science has been overlooked, but Merleau-Ponty intended his work as a general investigation of the epistemological and ontological status of meaning and structure. The structures discovered through research in solid-state physics or molecular biology must be included within the scope of his inquiry as much as the more primary perceptual structures of color or visual depth. It is true he often insisted that science cannot account for or understand a particular phenomenon and went on to contrast his phenomenological discoveries with the inadequate analyses produced by science. When Merleau-Ponty spoke of “science” in this way, however, he used the term interchangeably with “objective thought.” The task remains to show that scientific investigation can also be freed from the traditional prejudices of objective thought and exhibited as a mode of human existence. Merleau-Ponty was admittedly ambivalent about this possibility, and he rarely thematized scientific research in the course of his investigations. The aim of this chapter, however, is to develop an existential conception of science within the context of Merleau-Ponty’s work. It seems clear to me that his project cannot be completed unless it incorporates science, and not just the body and the perceived world, poetry and history, painting and love.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×