Heidegger and the question of physics
pp. 207-225
in: Olga Kiss (ed), Hermeneutics and science, Berlin, Springer, 1999Abstract
Heidegger's position on science and technics has been analyzed in very many papers and essays in a very general philosophical context. Indeed, Heidegger's hermeneutical criticism of science has been neglected as irrelevant or dangerous by the majority of physicists and philosophers of science.1 On the contrary, recently some works have been developing a first hermeneutical interpretation of science and have also been dealing with Heidegger' s particular ideas about physics, sometimes by trying a comparison between hermeneutics and the implications of a physical theory like quantum mechanics.2 However, in my opinion, one should neither a priori reject Heidegger' s criticism of science, nor try to understand science on the ground of any pre-constituted philosophy like hermeneutics. Furthermore, on the one hand the general philosophical analysis has missed an actual deep insight into physics and on the other the specific comparison has been performed within the image of classical and modern physics as reconstructed by the scientific community on a very superficial level.
