From the Mathematization of Nature to the Forgetting of the Lifeworld: An Analysis of Husserl’s Crisis of European Sciences in Light of Koyré’s Philosophical Historiography

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Philosophy of science department of Sharif University

10.22059/jihs.2026.411800.371884

Abstract

Through a review of Edmund Husserl’s The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology and Alexandre Koyré’s Galileo Studies, this article examines the concept of the “crisis of European sciences” within the horizon of a historical-philosophical reading. The central thesis posits that the crisis articulated by Husserl pertains not to the empirical or methodological shortcomings of the natural sciences, but rather to a historical-semantic crisis arising from the foundational modality of modern science and its severance from the horizon of the lifeworld (Lebenswelt). Within this framework, Koyré’s analysis of the “mathematization of nature” in Galilean thought—understood as the substitution of the sensible world with an ideal, geometrical one—is construed as the historical matrix of the very process Husserl designates as “objectivism” and the “forgetting of the meaning-fundament of science.” The article demonstrates that although Koyré is not a phenomenologist, his philosophical historiography lays bare the historical underpinnings of the crisis that Husserl analyzes on a transcendental plane. Consequently, the “crisis of European sciences” must be apprehended as a crisis concerning the meaning of rationality and the relation of science to human life, rather than an internal crisis of science itself.

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Journal for the History of Science

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 11 April 2026

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