TITLE:
What Science Cannot Do: The Question Concerning Science and Heidegger
AUTHORS:
Bowen Zha
KEYWORDS:
Heidegger, Science, Ontology, Metaphysics, Being, Thinking
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Philosophy,
Vol.12 No.1,
February
17,
2022
ABSTRACT: This
paper revisits Heidegger’s views on science and examines the relationship
between science and thinking. Science, dominated by metaphysical subject-object
thinking, understands beings (Seiende) as an object while forgetting the Being
(Sein), and for Heidegger, this lack of understanding of Being is the lynchpin
to his perception of modern science. This paper re-examines Heidegger’s
challenge and concludes that while science ignores Being, Heidegger’s
assessment of science is not a critique of science per se, but rather a
critique of the danger the scientific way of thinking poses to our life world.
It suggests that our unrestricted use of scientific thinking makes the meaning
of Being in our own lifeworld become lost. What Heidegger implies is not that
“science does not think,” but that human beings who living in the metaphysical
and scientifical thinking do not think.