The crisis of modernity: Husserl, Heidegger, and natural science

The later writings of Edmund Husserl, and certain texts which span the career of Martin Heidegger, are concerned with the intersection of metaphysics and science. The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (1937), Husserl's last work, marks the culmination of his latter thought on the theoretical essence of naturalism, or the metaphysics implicit in empirical science. Husserl traces the crisis of modernity in naturalism's lack of a sufficiently rigourous foundation, then proposes phenomenology as a method, and transcendental subjectivity as a ground. Husserl attempts to trace the historical development of naturalism, and its emerging influence on all areas of thought. Heidegger, at this time, also begins what will become an ongoing concern to address the relationship of naturalism, science, or technology to the history of metaphysics. Both Husserl and Heidegger elaborate a particular metaphysical position that requires a critical assessment of naturalism. In the context of the debate and questions raised by Husserl and Heidegger, it is possible to discern aspects fundamental to the interdisciplinary relationship of science and metaphysics.