Why Relativity Needs Phenomenology? Eidetic-Relativistic Kinesthetics and Temporality in Husserl, Weyl and Einstein

Abstract

Abstract This paper claims that there is an epistemological evidence of an unavoidable gap between purely formal sciences (sciences of essences) and the empirical sciences for which they provide the foundation. A second key theme is the way that all empirical sciences are grounded in a pure science of essences. At the same time, I endeavour to explain how the insights Weyl gleaned from Husserl played an important role in his scientific work, and to show how Einstein’s major work exhibit important parallels to Weyl’s work, thereby establishing phenomenology both as an indirect historical influence and a systematic underpinning for Einstein’s work in theoretical physics. In so doing, this paper seeks to show how some of the most basic problems that Einstein addresses have a kinship not just to problems addressed in a completely different context by Husserl and his circle, but also to perennial problems in ontology and epistemology that go back to Kant, Hume and Leibniz. The conclusion highlights how phenomenology influenced Einstein, but also how Einstein’s work on relativity had an important influence on the work of the most important phenomenologist of the twentieth century, namely Husserl in his Crisis of European Sciences.