Comments on Henry Margenau’s “Phenomenology and Physics”

Abstract

A commentary on a conference paper of 1943 by Henry Margenau, this posthumously published text includes clarifications of the essences of and differences between (1) the eidetic and transcendental methods of Husserlian phenomenology and between (2) sense data, the properties of sensible objects, and the constructs produced in physics. Gurwitsch’s emphatic endorsement of Margenau’s methodology of physics is also quite significant.

This brief text by Aron Gurwitsch is a commentary on a paper by Henry Margenau entitled “Phenomenology and Physics” that was read at a conference, possibly the American Philosophical Association, in about 1943. It is numbered C 17 in the Gurwitsch Nachlass. Margenau’s essay of the same title (Philsophy and Phenomenological Research. 5 [1944]: 269-80) would seem a revision of the paper Gurwitsch commented on because it lacks the emphasis on introspection, which Gurwitsch takes such issue with, and, given Gurwitsch’s place in the group editing that journal, Margenau’s manuscript was probably published only after these objections were taken into account. Gurwitsch was at that time the phenomenologist most knowledgeable about physics in the United States. Indeed, he was an instructor in physics and published in physics at Harvard during 1943–46. This text is published here not chiefly as commentary on Margenau’s comprehension of Husserl’s theory of physics but rather as an expression from Gurwitsch on that topic as well as an interpretation of Husserl on eidetics which complements other discussions of natural science in Gurwitsch’s oeuvre.

The editing of this text has included corrections of spelling and syntax, addition of data on translations, and some mild rewording, such as the editor did for the author when he was alive. The several handwritten additions beginning with “P.S.,” presumably for “post script,” have been placed between parentheses in footnotes attached to the paragraphs they were inscribed next to in the surviving typescript. Finally, some references to other work by Gurwitsch have been added in notes initialed by the editor with “L.E.” Mrs. Gurwitsch has examined and approved this work. Lester Embree