THE LIFE-WORLD AS THE MEANING-FUNDAMENT OF SCIENCE

Husserl's concept of the life-world presents the starting-point of Husserl's philosophical reconsideration of science. It is the main concept of his Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (1936), one of the main Husserl's works, and at the same time one of the fundamental works in philosophy of science. I analyse the concept of the life-world in regard to the reconsideration of the contemporality of understanding context. My analysis is two-fold. On the one hand, I reconsider Husserl's formation and understanding of the concept of the life-world within contemporality of understanding context of Husserl's own thought. Husserl's understanding of the life-world and his attitude towards science are essentially co-defined by specific contemporary reconsideration of science that can be, for example, observed in Niels Bohr's and Ludwik Fleck's works on philosophy of science. On the other hand, Husserl's concept of the life-world itself includes reconsideration of the contemporality of understanding context of scientific thought. Science is always essentially embedded in (its own) life-world, which presents its meaning-fundament. Through research, science constantly returns to the life-world, it evolves and at the same time, with the new knowledge and new perspectives based on this knowledge, dynamically changes the life-world it is part of. Each science is always historical, based on vertical and horizontal connections between its actors, who meet each other in the life-world. There, the role of language is crucial. Language enables the scientists to share their knowledge with his/her scientific community. Furthermore, every naming of a new scientific phenomenon emplaces these phenomena within a network of meanings; it co-defines their history and relationship with other phenomena. I propose that the concept of the life-world can offer a firm foundation for contemporary philosophical reconsideration of science and its meaning, which is essentially co-defined by the contemporality of understanding context.