Thomas M. Seebohm 
History as a Science and the System of the Sciences [PDF ebook] 
Phenomenological Investigations

This volume goes beyond presently available phenomenological analyses based on the structures and constitution of the lifeworld. It shows how the science of history is the mediator between the human and the natural sciences. It demonstrates that the distinction between interpretation and explanation does not imply a strict separation of the natural and the human sciences. Finally, it shows that the natural sciences and technology are inseparable, but that technology is one-sidedly founded in pre-scientific encounters with reality in the lifeworld. In positivism the natural sciences are sciences because they offer causal explanations testable in experiments and the humanities are human sciences only if they use methods of the natural sciences. For epistemologists following Dilthey, the human sciences presuppose interpretation and the human and natural sciences must be separated. There is phenomenology interested in psychology and the social sciences that distinguish the natural and the human sciences, but little can be found about the historical human sciences. This volume fills the gap by presenting analyses of the material foundations of the ‘understanding’ of expressions of other persons, and of primordial recollections and expectations founding explicit expectations and predictions in the lifeworld. Next, it shows, on the basis of history as applying philological methods in interpretations of sources, the role of a universal spatio-temporal framework for reconstructions and causal explanations of ‘what has really happened’.

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Chapter 1. Introduction.- Part I. Phenomenological Preliminaries.- Chapter 2. The Formal Methodological Presuppositions of a Phenomenological Epistemology.- Chapter 3. Material Presuppositions of a Phenomenological Epistemology in the Structures of the Lifeworld.- Chapter 4. The Lifeworld and the System of the Sciences: First Steps toward a Phenomenological Epistemology.- Part II. The Methodology of the Historical Human Sciences.- Chapter 5. History as a Science of Interpretation.- Chapter 6. Causal Explanations in History.- Part III. The Methodology of the Natural Sciences.- Chapter 7. The Empirical Basis and the Thematic Attitude of the Natural Sciences.- Chapter 8. The Structure of Theories in the Natural Sciences.- Part IV. The Natural Sciences, the Historical Human Sciences and the Systematic Human Sciences.- Chapter 9. History and the Natural sciences.- Chapter 10. History and the Systematic Human Sciences.- Part V. Summary and Conclusion.- Index.

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Thomas M Seebohm took his Dr. phil. habil. at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz in 1969. Vis. professor 1970-1972 and then professor at the Pennsylvania State University and at the New School for Social Research 1973 -1984; Institutional offices: chairman of the Philosophische Seminar; Dean Fachbereich 11 (Philosophic I Pedagogik), the Universitat Mainz between 1984-1999. Guest professorships in Canada, Germany and Latvia. Extra-institutional professional offices: member of the board of directors, Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology. Member of the board of the Kant – Gesellschaft e. V. Bonn; president of the Kant – Gesellschaft e.V Bonn. 1988-1990 Secretary of the Inner Circle of the Allgemeine Gesellschaftfür Philosophie in Deutschland; Honorary Member: North American Kant Society. Ballard Prize: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology (for: Hermeneutics, Method and Methodology, Contributions to Phenomenology 50, 2004.)