Historico-Philosophical Aspects of Mathematisation of Nature in Modern Science

Abstract

Introduction. The paper deals with the philosophical problems of the mathematisation of nature in modern science.Methodology and sources. The analysis is based on the issues in modern science viewed through the prism of the critique of the mathematisation of nature in phenomenological philosophy.Results and discussion. It is argued that the radical mathematisation of nature devoid of any references to the source of its contingent facticity in humanity, leads to the diminution of humanity and concealment of the primary medium of existence, that is the life world. Phenomenology shows how the life-word can be articulated through contrasting it to “nature” constructed scientifically. It is the analysis of the scientific universe as mental creation that can help to uncover the life-world when “nature” (as scientifically constructed and abstracted from the life-world), is itself subjected to a kind of deconstruction which leads us back to the life-world of the next, so to speak, reflected order.Conclusion. The life-world is articulated under the conditions that there exists a scientific explicability of nature. The life-world as it is articulated in theology does require some alternative explication of nature, but, contrary to science, it never leads to the concealment of the life-world. What is common to these life-worlds is exactly that which cannot be explicated by science, namely the underlying personhood.