Impossibility of the Positive Sciences to Know the Essence, since the Criticism of Husserl to Psychologism

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to show, from the phenomenology standpoint, why the natural approach of the positive sciences is insufficient for the knowledge of how things are. The perspective of this objective is to contribute to the current debate about the determination of what the human person is or is not, in response to the importance of rigorously justifying why the experimental scientific method cannot see the person as a unitary whole and consequently, that their definitions or conclusions about what human beings are will always be partial. In the current ethical debate, definitions are assumed, induced or based on the results or conclusions of the natural or exact sciences on “how things are”, from which it is intended to define what life, human sexuality, including dignity is, indiscriminately affirming that the data produced by this methodology are determinants to de- fine what things are and are not. Within this scenario, it is appropriate to revisit Husserl’s criticism of positivism, in which he exposes that the sciences based on the experimental scientific method are unable to rigorously justify how things are.