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Part of the book series: Contributions To Phenomenology ((CTPH,volume 76))

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Abstract

In my paper, I do not follow the well-known story of how Husserl wanted to solve the crisis of mankind by his transcendental phenomenology. Neither do I analyse Heidegger ’s views on the danger of science and technology. Rather, I examine a new book by renowned physicist Stephen Hawking and his colleague Leonard Mlodinow, to see how they reflect on this situation today. Although I accept their method of a “model-dependent realism”, I cannot agree with their arrogant formulation of a purely deterministic physical concept of the universe, and I strongly refute their conviction that human beings are merely deterministic robots without free will .

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Notes

  1. 1.

    German edition: Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phӓnomenologie (Husserl 1954).

  2. 2.

    Translation: Erika Abrams.

  3. 3.

    Czech edition: Kacířské Eseje o Filosofii Dějin (Patočka 2007).

  4. 4.

    “All men by nature desire to know” (Aristotle 1941: I, 1, 980 a 921).

  5. 5.

    “…what is being, i.e. what is substance?” (Aristotle 1941: VII, 1, 1028 b 1024).

  6. 6.

    Pourquoi il y a plutôt quelque chose que rien?”; “Why is there something rather than nothing?” (Leibniz 1934 [1714]: §7, 26).

References

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Correspondence to Ivan Chvatík .

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Chvatík, I. (2015). Are We Still Afraid of Science?. In: Učník, Ľ., Chvatík, I., Williams, A. (eds) The Phenomenological Critique of Mathematisation and the Question of Responsibility. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 76. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09828-9_14

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