Glazebrook-Heidegger's Philosophy of Science PDF

Heidegger's Philosophy
of Science
TRISH GLAZEBROOK
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§
Fordham University Press

New York
2000
Copyright © 2000 by Fordham University Press
Allrights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means-electronic,
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printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Perspectives in Continental Philosophy No. 12

ISSN 1089-3938
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Glazebrook, Trish.
Heidegger's philosophy of science I Trish Glazebrook.-1st ed.
p. cm.-(Perspectives in continental philosophy; no. 12)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8232-2037-0 (hc)-ISBN 0-8232-2038-9 (pbk.)
1. Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976-{:ontributions in philosophy of science.
2. Science-Philosophy-History-20th century. l. Title. II. Series.
B3279.H49 G57 2000
193-<1c21 00-025802
Printed in the United States of America

00 01 02 03 04 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
For Geoffrey and Norma
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
1. Metaphysics, Mathematics, and Science 14

Husser!: Philosophy As Rigorous Science 20
Kant and Metaphysics: Grounding Science 25
Synthetic A Priori Judgments 36
The Thing and Copernican Revolution 41
The A Priori 47
Mathematical Projection: Galileo and Newton 51
Metaphysics and the Mathematical 60
Conclusion 63
2. Experiment and Representation 65

Crucial Experiments 73
Experiment and Experience 84
Violence 96
Setting Up the Real: Exact Science 104
Representation 112
Conclusion 117
3. Science in the Institution 119

The Nothing 124
Destiny as Nihilism 131
Self-Assertion: Knowing versus Amassing
lnformation 139
The Threat of Science 148
Valuative Thinking and Disillusionment 156
Conclusion 159
viii CONTENTS
4. Ancient Science 163

<l>uoU; As Truth 165
Aristotle's Analogy of Being 179
Theoretical versus Productive Knowledge 184
�uvaflEL ov 191
<l>uoU; and lEXVI') 199
Conclusion 205
5. Science and Technology 207

Epoch and Essence 209
"Science Does Not Think" 214
Thinking As Thanking: Being and Being
Represented 224
The Theory of the Real 232
Ge-stell 240
Quantum Theory 247
Conclusion 251
Bibliography 255
Index 267
Index of Greek Expressions 277
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are many people to thank for their support and assistance
during the time I have been working on this book. Research was
funded by the University of Toronto, the government of Ontario,
and the German government, and further supported by the De
partment of Philosophy at Auckland University. I could not have
done without the productive commentary, advice, and discus
sion on the entire manuscript that I got from Graeme Nicholson,
Rebecca Comay, Will McNeill, and Dan Dahlstrom. Their close
readings and prompt responses were indispensable to the devel
opment of this book. I am further indebted to Will McNeill for
his enthusiastic and precise suggestions on translation. I am
grateful to Father Joseph Owens for teaching me to love Aris
totle. Jim Brown's support at the University of Toronto was su
pererogatory, and lowe Ian Hacking a great deal for his
contribution to my understanding of the philosophy of science,
despite his dislike of both Heidegger and this project. Jim Wetzel
and Marilyn Thie read and commented helpfully on individual
chapters. I wish I knew the names of those who asked questions
on the chapter on experimentation at the Ontario Philosophical
Association meeting at Waterloo University in 1993. Their com
ments were useful. Likewise my critique of Heidegger's reading
of Aristotle was all the better for rigorous scrutiny at the Society
for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy in New Orleans
in 1993 (on <jl1Jm� and 'tfXV!']) and Georgetown in 1996 (on Aris
totle's analogy of being). T he chapter on Heidegger and the
institution benefited from exposure to the Department of Phi
losophy at DePaul University in Chicago and at the annual con
ference of The Society for Phenomenology and Existential
Philosophy in Seattle in 1991. The original idea for the book was
conceived in conversation with David Wood, and first tried out
in the philosophy department at the University of Guelph in
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
1991. In particular, I wish to thank Jack Caputo, whose ongoing

support of this work has been crucial to its completion.
On a more personal note, thanks to Brian Hackeson for keep
ing my computer running, to George Hendry for all those
lunches, to Louise Signal for spunk and chocolate biscuits, to
Ann Saddlemeyer and the residents of Massey College, to Jac
ques Bismuth for backgammon, and to Rachel Boyington, who
kept things in perspective by sharing the first weeks of her life
with me as I completed the original draft.
My deepest debts of love and life are to Geoff and Norma
Rotenberg, and it is to their memory that I dedicate this book.
ABBREVIATIONS
AM Aristoteles, Metaphysik IX. 1-3

An Post Posterior Analytics
AWP "The Age of the World Picture," in QCT
BC Basic Concepts (G)
BCP "On the Being and Conception of <jl1JOU; in Aristotle's
Physics B.l"
BdW "Die Bedrohung der W issenschaft"
BPP Basic Problems of Phenomenology (GP)
BT Being and Time (5Z)
BW Basic Writings
CPR Critique of Pure Reason
EGT Early Greek Thinking
EM Einfiihrung in die Metaphysik (IM)
EN Nicomachean Ethics
ET "On the Essence of Truth," in BW
FCM The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics (GM)
FD Die Frage nach dem Ding
FT "The Rectorate 1933/34: Facts and Thoughts," with 5A
G Grundbegriffe (BC)
GM Die Grundbegrifef der
GP Die Grundprobleme der Phiinomenologie (BPP)
H Holzwege
HCT History of the Concept of Time (PGZ)
IM Introduction to Metaphysics (EM)
K "Die Kehre"
KM Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (KPM)
KPM Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (KM)
MAL Metaphysische Anfangsgriinde der Logik (MFL)
Met Metaphysics
MFL The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic (MAL)
MNST "Modem Natural Science and Technology"
xii ABBREVIATIONS
MSMM "Modem Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics," in

BW/FD
N Nietzsche
NI Nietzsche I
NIl Nietzsche II
PA De Partibus Animalium
PGZ Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs (HCT)
Phys Physics
PRS "Philosophy as Rigorous Science" (Husserl)
QCT The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays
SA "The Self-Assertion of the German University"
SR "Science and Reflection," in QCT
SU "Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universitat;
Das Rektorat 1933/34: Tatsachen und Gedanken"
SZ Sein und Zeit (BT)
VA Vortriige und Aujsiitze
W Wegmarken
WCT What Is Called Thinking? (WHD)
WHD Was heisst Denken? (WCT)
WM What Is Metaphysics?
WMp Postscript to What Is Metaphysics?
ww "Vom Wesen der Wahrheit," in W
ZG "Der Zeitbegriff in der Geschichtswissenschaft"
Heidegger's Philosophy of Science
INTRODUCTION
"ON THE LONGEST DAY he ever Jived," said Father Richardson,

"Heidegger could never be called a philosopher of science"
(1968:511). W hat exactly does it mean, to be a philosopher of
science? The label received widespread adoption only in the late
1950s, and one of the few things philosophers of science agree
upon is that the discipline is not clearly demarcated. The
breadth and diversity of philosophy of science is due in large
part to the fact that the term "science" itself covers a wide range
of practices and modes of thought. Social science, for example,
may be no more scientific than the sociology of science is philo
sophical, or just as scientific as the latter is philosophicaL One
thing is clear: the task of the philosopher of science is, at least in
part, to ask what constitutes science.
Heidegger is certainly a philosopher of science in this respect.
Over several decades he explores the thesis that science is the
mathematical projection of nature. From its incipience in "Der
Zeitbegriff in der Geschichtswissenschaft," to its full formula
tion in Being and Time, to the analysis of representation in "The
Age of the World Picture," to the entanglement with technology
in Wha t Is Called Thinking?, to the setting up of the real in "Sci
ence and Reflection," the idea that science is the mathematical
projection of nature runs throughout Heidegger's work as a
background against which his critique of modernity unfolds.
This conception of science binds together his thinking of the
question of science over sixty years.
The several analyses of science that Heidegger undertakes
during his life have been remarked on and described, but never
interpreted as a coherent movement throughout his thought.
John Caputo has argued that there are two essences of science in
Heidegger's work: a hermeneutic one and a deconstructive one.
The former he uncovers in Being and Time and suggests is an
"existential genealogy" (1986:44), inseparably bound to an alleg-
2 INTRODUCTION
edly pure logic of science, that explores the genesis of science in

the historical life of the scientist. This essence is subsequently
suppressed in Heidegger's thought, Caputo argues, by the de
constructive sense, "which signifies an entire understanding of
man and world, of being and truth" (1986:44). Caputo intends
to correct a misunderstanding in which Heidegger is taken as
hostile to science by showing instead that Heidegger sought to
critique and delimit science in its deconstructive sense.
My reading of Heidegger's philosophy of science is sympa
thetic to Caputo's account. Heidegger was not well versed in
science, as Patrick Heelan has underscored (1995:579). Yet I resist
apologism. Heidegger's continual rethinking of the question of
science is not a naive non-scientist's condemnation, for which
greater technical expertise would be necessary to achieve valid
ity. Rather, his contribution to philosophy of science is his in
sight into the extent to which science underwrites modernity.
By laying out a sustained analysis of Heidegger's philosophy
of science, I extend Caputo's reading even further. I expose the
hermeneutic and deconstructive essences of science in Heideg
ger's early and late work, respectively, and furthermore suggest
a transitional period in Heidegger's thinking in order to trace
how it develops from the former to the latter.
Theodore Kisiel has also uncovered several-three, in fact
essences of science in Heidegger's work. The earliest he calls a
logical conception, and I find it in a 1916 text, "Der Zeitbegriff
in der Geschichtswissenschaft." He describes two further es
sences of science from Being and Time: an existential one, which
is much like Caputo's hermeneutic; and a metaphysical or ep
ochal conception, which he locates in the unpublished Part Two
of the book and claims is later elaborated under the rubric "over
coming metaphysics" (Kisiel 1977:163). Heidegger's later analy
sis of modem science is a critique of the nihilistic metaphysics
of subjectivity that he holds is essential to modem science. He
holds that science informs modernity, and hence his critique is
ultimately, as Kisiel suggests, an attempt to expose, and there
fore to overcome, the metaphysics of the modem epoch.
These different but not discordant accounts of the various es
sences of science in Heidegger's work uncover the complexity of
his thinking on the question of science. His thesis that the es-
INTRODUCfION 3
sence of science is the mathematical projection of nature does

not fail so much as it calls for reformulation when he realizes
that the relation between thinking and science is not what he
had previously taken it to be. That relation was expressed by the
thesis that philosophy is itself a science. This claim is not as sim
ple as it may seem.
Naturwissenschajt is natural or physical science, for which
physics is paradigmatic. But Wissenschajt also sounds of Geistes
wissenschajt, the arts or humanities. For the early Heidegger,
struggling against the yoke of transcendental idealism, these
two conceptions are entangled in his attempt to ground the sci
ences in metaphysics and his thesis that philosophy is itself a
science. When the attempt fails, Heidegger leaves behind that
thesis. What remains is a specific, if not always precise and never
entirely static, topic: the question of the nature of science. At
issue here is Naturwissenschajt-specifically, the mathematical
physics of modernity that begins with Galileo, flourishes under
Newton, and has its quintessential expression in quantum
theory.
Yet philosophy of science is more than a battle to draw the
borders of science. It is also an inquiry into several sets of ques
tions: the logic of discovery, proof, and method; the metaphysi
cal and epistemological suppositions of scientific knowledge;
the historical genesis and development of the experiment; the
political consequences of institutionalized science; and the na
ture and limits of theory. Not only can each of these constella
tions of inquiry be traced throughout Heidegger's work, but also
that work can be bridged to the analytic tradition of philosophy
of science. How are Kuhn's "paradigms" different from Heideg
ger's "basic concepts," and from Ge-stell? What conclusions does
Heidegger take from his insight, shared with Hacking, that ex
periments both represent and intervene? Where does Heidegger
stand in the realist debate? on the existence of crucial experi
ments? on the role of mathematics in modem physical science?
These are questions that can be answered out of Heidegger's
philosophy of science.
It would be ludicrous and tedious, however, to suggest that
Heidegger has a view on every issue taken up by the analytics.
He says almost nothing explicitly, for example, about the prob-
4 INTRODUCTION
lem of induction, the relation between the philosophy and the

history of science, the nature of probability, the logical founda
tions of statistical inference, and the function of explanation. Yet
neither does, nor even could, each analytic philosopher of sci
ence treat every issue that falls under the rubric of philosophy
of science. Certainly Heidegger has enough to say on a broad
range of topics pertaining to science that I can defend the claim
that he has a philosophy of science on the superficial basis of the
number and variety of way he addresses the issue. I will, how
ever, argue more deeply for Heidegger's philosophy of science
by mapping its content, and by locating his thinking in the ana
lytic discourse.
Accordingly, I share none of Father Richardson's reluctance to
call Heidegger a philosopher of science. The infamous distinc
tion Father Richardson drew between Heidegger I and Heideg
ger II was a useful and insightful tool for seeing changes and
transitions, breaks, and abandonments in Heidegger's ongoing
work. Yet now, some twenty-odd years after Heidegger's death,
when Father Richardson himself (1997:18) has grown uncom
fortable with the division, I emphasize rather the continuity in
Heidegger's work: the question of natural science is a constant
and continuous support against which Heidegger's thinking de
velops and grows.
Certainly, as Karlfried Grunder has claimed, the "problem of
the essence, possibility, and limitations of science pervades all
his writings published to date" (1963:18). The earliest entry in
the Gesamtausgabe uses the "dazzling results [gliinzenden Erfol
gen]" ("Realitatsproblem" 3) of scientific practice to press the
problem of realism. In reportedly the last thing Heidegger wrote
before his death, he questioned the relation between science and
technology (MNST 1-2). In the sixty-four years between these
two texts, natural science is ubiquitously peripheral and regu
larly central to his thought.
Yet an analysis of the significance of the question of natural
science to Heidegger's thought, though overdue, has not been
worked out. Indeed, whereas treatments of Heidegger's critique
of technology abound, his lifelong entanglement with issues
concerning the natural sciences has remained largely neglected.
There is a growing body of papers on the topic, but a systematic,
INTRODUCTION 5
sustained account of the development of Heidegger's treatment

of science is missing. This book is aimed precisely at addressing
that gap by demonstrating both the significance of science to
Heidegger's thought and the contribution of that thought to phi
losophy of science. I show not only that Heidegger works exten
sively and systematically on questions concerning science, but
also that his ongoing consideration of science guides and in
forms his work on other issues, especially his critique of technol
ogy. Further, I show that issues crucial to Heidegger's analysis
are central in the analytic tradition of philosophy of science, and
I bring his contribution to bear on that tradition. In a word, then,
I intend to interpret Heidegger in a radically novel way: accord
ing to his philosophy of science.
The years in which Heidegger wrote can be divided into three
distinct phases as philosophy of science: the early view, extend
ing into the 1930s, in which he held that philosophy is itself
scientific; a transitional phase, in which he turns to questions of
scientific practice and away from problems of philosophy, that
is, from metaphysics to physics; and a later phase, from the
1950s onward, in which he locates the essence of science in the
essence of technology. What binds these three periods together,
such that they are one path of thinking rather than simply three
different inquiries, is the notion that science is projective. In the
early years, Heidegger understands such projection as the estab
lishing of regional ontologies by means of basic concepts. Dur
ing the transitional phase, he struggles to work out the projective
nature of science by looking to the writings of Galileo and New
ton. He talks not of basic concepts, but of the mathematical,
which has been compared to the Kantian a priori (Kisiel 1973),
but which Heidegger reformulates away from Kant's idealism.
In the later years, Heidegger names what is projective in technol
ogy "Ge-stell," and argues that the essence of science is to be
found in this essence of technology. Hence the three stages of
Heidegger's critical inquiry into science have a unity insofar as
each is a different formulation of its projective nature.
Heidegger's early inquiries into the projection at work in sci
ence are made against a Husserlian background. Philosophy is
rigorous science for Heidegger, as it was for Husserl, rather than
Weltanschauung philosophy. By using phenomenology as a sci-
6 INTRODUCTION
entific method for doing ontology, however, Heidegger rejects

the bracketing of metaphysical issues for which Husserl's phe
nomenology called. He accepts Husserl's conception of regional
ontology, in which the sciences define some realm of beings as
their object by projecting a basic concept. But Heidegger further
argues that metaphysics, in contrast to the sciences, takes being
as its object. At the root of regional ontologies lies, then, funda
mental ontology. Hence Heidegger calls scientific philosophy a
pleonasm: ontology, as the exploration of the ground of the sci
ences, is already inherently scientific.
Yet this relation of grounding proves problematic to Heideg
ger as he attempts to understand it more deeply. The ground of
science may be the projection of a realm of being, but Heidegger
resists that the final word on science is idealism. The projective
nature of modem science lies in the fact that the scientist pro
ceeds on the basis of an idea, a hypothesis, rather than with the
object. That is to say, a science that begins with a regional ontol
ogy is idealistic in that it is founded on an a priori conception of
its object rather than on experience. Yet Heidegger no longer
holds that such an a priori conception is necessary to all and
every science. Rather, it is characteristic for him of modern sci
ence. He looks to uncover other possibilities for the essence of
science: to answer how the essence of science can be projective
without simply collapsing into idealism.
In the 1930s, Heidegger describes the essence of science as
research. He argues that the transition from the ancient experi
ence of nature to that of Galileo and Newton is the move from
a realism in which qJ'lJOL£, nature, is a priori-that is, prior to
thought-to an idealism in which the a priori formulation of a
hypothesis precedes the investigation of nature. His particular
interest is the Cartesian establishing of certainty on the cogito
that is paradigmatic of representational thinking, such that
knowledge in modernity has its foundation in the thinking sub
ject rather than in the thing known. This thesis is particularly
significant as a critique of modem science, since the claim to
certainty on the part of scientists surn as Newton and Bacon
takes much of its force from the empirical nature of experimen
tal science. The analysis of the essence of science as research
leads Heidegger to argue that the experimental method is a set-
INTRODUCTION 7
ting up of nature on the basis of an a priori conception from

which the appeal to the empirical is derivative. During this tran
sitional phase, his developing insight into the essence of science
as projective is that the projection at work in science sets up not
only the realm of beings to be investigated, but also the episte
mic criteria that determine what counts as knowledge in science.
In his later writings, Heidegger argues that the essence of sci
ence lies in the essence of technology. In a nutshell, he holds
that the tripartite division of the history of Western thought so
pervasive in his work-that is, the division into ancient, medie
val, and modem epochs--culminates in modernity as the epoch
of science and technology. He argues that technology is essen
tially a reformulation of the essence of science. Since Being and
Time, Heidegger has argued that modem science projects an un
derstanding onto nature. In that understanding, nature consists
in spatiotemporally extended bodies subject to efficient causes.
In 1940 he teaches that Aristotle held rather that nature is teleo
logical. Final, much more so than efficient, causes are crucial to
understanding nature in Aristotle's Physics. Only once nature
has been rendered devoid of final causes-that is, devoid of end
and purpose-by the modem scientific confinement to efficient
causes, is nature available ideologically for appropriation to
human ends and purposes in technology. Accordingly, the re
vealing of nature as a standing-reserve at the disposal of human
being that is the essence of technology, is made possible by mod
em science.
Heidegger's ongoing critique of science is accordingly an ac
count of the resolution of modernity into technology. It is a
novel expression of what it might mean to be postrnodern which
goes beyond a metaphysics of subjectivity to other possibilities
for thinking and being. Heidegger recognizes that modem sci
ence is the historical, Western expression of the human desire to
know. But he escapes the problem of cultural relativism that
haunts post-Kuhnian philosophy of science by thinking it more
deeply than the notion of worldview permits. He holds that
modem science is a destiny; that is, it is definitive of a historical
epoch in which being and human being unfold together in a
metaphysics of subjectivity. There are other possibilities for
knowledge in Heidegger's view. For example, the ancient inter-
8 INTRODUCTION
pretation of being as qJ1JOL� reveals new beginnings latent in the

epoch of science and technology, since that epoch can trace its
origin to the ancient Greek world. Beyond representation lie
thinking (Denken) and reflection (Besinnung).
By dividing Heidegger's analysis of the essence of science into
an early, a transitional, and a late period, I will show not that
there are several-and especially not two--Heideggers, but
rather precisely that his work is an ongoing development. For
indeed, these three periods in his thinking are bound together
as an analysis of modem science and an uncovering of other
possibilities for understanding nature. The role of representa
tion in modem science-that is, the question of how scientific
projection determines its object-is the decisive factor that un
derlies each account. I will trace the development of his thinking
about science in five chapters. The remainder of this introduc
tion first outlines the movement that binds these five chapters
together and then summarizes the internal logic of each chapter.
In the first chapter, I explore the relation between metaphys
ics, mathematics, and science. I show how Heidegger rejects
Kant's idealism as the basis on which to understand science. The
next chapter lays out his argument that modem science is bound
by the experimental method to a subjective metaphysics of rep
resentation. The third chapter explores his disillusionment with
the university as the housing of the sciences and his questioning
of the value of knowledge. The fourth chapter reads Heidegger
on ancient science. I argue that the loss Heidegger sees in Plato
and Aristotle of a pre-Socratic insight into q)'UOL�, nature, pro
vides him with a place for rethinking the essence of science in
terms of possibilities that lie outside modem science. The final
chapter analyzes Heidegger's account of the relation between
science and technology in order to interpret his claim that the
essence of science lies in the essence of technology. I conclude
with a brief comment on quantum theory in which I make sense
of Heidegger's denial that quantum physics is essentially differ
ent from Newtonian physics.
The first of the following chapters is an explication of Heideg
ger's early analysis of modem science, by which I mean his
thinking in the years from 1916 to the mid-1930s. During these
years Heidegger maintains, on the one hand (e.g., in Being and
INTRODUCTION 9
Time), that the essence of science is the mathematical projection

of nature, and on the other hand (e.g., in Basic Problems of Phe
nomenology), that metaphysics is the science of being. The latter
thesis becomes for Heidegger problematic as he attempts to
ground the sciences in metaphysics in Kantian style. His account
of metaphysics is very much tied up in his reading of Kant's
Critique of Pure Reason. Having looked at this text several times
already, he asks in 1935 in Die Frage nach dem Ding why it was
both possible and necessary for Kant to write such a critique. At
precisely the point in the course where he raises this question
explicitly, he turns from Kant to Galileo and Newton. Kant's text
is directed exactly at securing the certainty of Newton's physics
through the synthetic a priori nature of Euclidean geometry. Yet
Heidegger's analysis of the mathematical in modem science cuts
more deeply than the claim that Newton's physics is mathemati
cal insofar as it uses Euclidean geometry to describe nature.
Rather, Heidegger finds in the mathematical the a priori projec
tion of certainty. He concludes that science entails a binding to
gether of a metaphysics and an epistemology; that is, he shows
that modem science entails an a priori stance toward what can
be known. He explores this stance by looking to the scientific
method itself. Hence he turns from a consideration of metaphys
ics as a science to the sciences themselves.
The pivot by means of which Heidegger makes this tum is the
experiment. Accordingly, the next chapter looks to the logic of
scientific development and methodology. I read Heidegger as
arguing that the empirical is not the experiential as qtltELQla was
for Aristotle, and that the experimental method is a mathemati
cal idealism. I raise three specific issues surrounding the experi
ment and locate Heidegger's treatment of these issues in the
analytic debate. First, crucial experiments: is a single experimen
tal result enough to prove or overturn a theory? Heidegger an
swers that it is. Second, the theory-Ioadedness of observation:
does the informing of fact by theory preclude realism? Heideg
ger holds that it does not, but he displaces the debate. And third,
representation in modem science: how does science represent its
objects? Heidegger argues that it does so mathematically, but he
radically revises that term. These issues lay a basis for Heideg
ger's later critique of technology in their treatment of represen-
10 INTRODUCTION
tation. Furthermore, they serve to explicate his claim that the

essence of science is research, and to show that his central con
cerns are thematic in contemporary analytic philosophy of sci
ence.
The chapter on science in the institution investigates the Be
triebscharakter of science. It is an account of Heidegger's view of
the role of the sciences in the university, and of his analysis of
the university as the housing of the sciences. His vision is that
the German university, grounded in the essence of science, can
serve to guide the historical destiny of human being. Since Hei
degger holds that human being is definitively constituted as in
quirer, and he takes modem human being to inquire first and
foremost as scientist, he envisions the university as the institu
tion in which human being realizes itself in the modem epoch.
His disillusionment with that vision comes with the realization
that, whereas he calls for a renewal of science for the sake of
the sciences themselves in their service of human being and the
history of being, the Nazi call for a renewal of the sciences is
toward their own political ends in shaping the destiny of the
German people. What little I have to say about Heidegger's
involvement with National Socialism is found in this chapter.
The next chapter treats Heidegger's view of ancient science. I
focus first on Heidegger's uncovering of being as <pUOL�, nature,
for the pre-Socratics, and then on the impact of Aristotle's anal
ogy of being on this earlier experience of nature. In Heidegger's
account, Aristotle narrowed the ancient conception of nature by
maintaining that <pUOL� is one way of being among others. None
theless, he sees in Aristotle a glimmer of the pre-Socratic insight.
This is Aristotle's distinction between <pUOL� and "tEXVT], between
nature and artifact, that has subsequently been lost in an under
standing of nature by analogy to artifact. The emergence of
modem science is therefore for Heidegger the culmination of a
narrowing conception of nature that began with Aristotle. He
reads Aristotle's analogy of being by way of actuality and poten
tiality, well beyond Brentano's analysis by way of the categories.
His novel reading of the analogy thinks the difference between
nature and artifact in Aristotle. The latter holds that things in
nature move---that is, realize their end-of their own accord. An
acorn, for example, moves toward its fulfillment as an oak tree
INTRODUCTION 11
on the basis of an internal drive. An artifact, however, requires

something outside itself to bring it to fulfillment: an artist. This
distinction echoes, Heidegger argues, the pre-Socratic under
standing of being as q)1JOL�, since it is as nature that being first
and foremost comes to presence. Aristotle's understanding of
nature as form and matter, however, despite the priority he as
signs to form, opens up the possibility of understanding nature
by analogy to artifact. As the human artisan imposes form onto
matter in the creative act, so nature can be understood as having
a creator. Things in nature can be experienced as artifacts of di
vine origin. This possibility of understanding nature is for Hei
degger decisive to the subsequent history of the West. He reads
Aristotle's Physics to rethink nature as more than an analogue of
the artifact.
In the final chapter I turn to the question of the relation be
tween modem science and technology and substantiate my ar
gument that the ancient distinction between q)1JOL� and 'tEXV1] is
not sustained in the modem epoch. In 1966, in a letter to Profes
sor Schrynemakers, Heidegger suggests three sets of questions
to the participants of a symposium on the influence of his think
ing. The first is the question posed in Being and Time of the mean
ing of being, whether that question has been taken up, if it is
possible to do so, and how it characterizes his relation to the
Western tradition of thinking. The second is the question of the
limits of Being and Time, what an account of the epochs of being
accomplishes as an interpretation of the age of technology. The
third raises the issue of the relation of being to modem science.
Heidegger hopes the symposium will work out one of these
questions. I suggest that these three questions are different for
mulations of the same issue that cannot be worked out sepa
rately. Being, science, and technology are bound together in a
critique of modernity.
Ten years later, in 1976, Heidegger formulates the question
of science and technology as one question: "Is modem natural
science the foundation of modem technology-as is sup
posed-or is it, for its part, already the basic form of technologi
cal thinking, the determining fore-conception and incessant
incursion of technological representation into the realized and
organized machinations of modem technology?" (MNST 3). In
12 INTRODUCTION
Heidegger's analysis, modem science is not simply the founda

tion of technology, but rather the basic form of technological
thinking. His insight is that what was originally for the Greeks
a difference so radical as to preclude identity through analogy
is in modernity an unsustainable distinction. Hence Heidegger's
claim that the essence of science lies in the essence of technology.
I trace his account of the relation between the two and show
how he understands the essence of technology to have arisen out
of the essence of modem science. For modem science moves
much like ancient "tEXVT]: the scientist begins with an idea which
is then imposed onto nature.
I close with a short comment on Heidegger's view of quantum
theory in which I argue that he recognizes no significant distinc
tion between Newtonian physics and quantum mechanics. Al
though Heidegger understands the difference between the
mathematics of each, he holds that definitive of Newtonian
physics is its projection of nature as a coherence of forces calcu
lable in advance. Quantum physics shares this projection in Hei
degger's account. I use Bell's inequalities to assess Heidegger's
analysis of quantum physics in order to ask whether his view
holds beyond the science of his day into more recent develop
ments in quantum theory.
It is impossible to pursue Heidegger's philosophy of science
without encountering the questions of metaphysics, technology,
and representational thinking. This is not because Heidegger's
account of science is derivative upon these other issues, but
rather because his developing views on science underlie these
issues that are so Significant to his thought. Although a substan
tial body of literature has developed in recent years on the ques
tion of Heidegger's analysis of science, no text to date has
systematically explored its place in his thinking. Griinder's
claim that the problem of science pervades Heidegger's writings
continues to hold true beyond 1956 when Griinder made it. I
show that the question of science is foundationally informative
of Heidegger's work and is basic to a novel and coherent, sys
tematic account of his thinking, as well as a contribution to phi
losophy of science.
This reading of Heidegger is radical. It cuts to the root of his
thinking, for I argue that what are taken to be Heidegger's many
INTRODUCTION 13
and significant contributions to philosophy-that is, his over

coming of metaphysics, his rereading of the ancients, his critique
of technology and representational thinking, his vision and revi
sion of language, truth and thinking-have at their core an in
quiry into science that drove his thinking for sixty years. I am
not arguing for a new reading of a few texts, or for adjustments
and refinements of existing readings of Heidegger. Rather, I am
bringing to light a new basis on which to interpret his work as a
whole. I am not suggesting that there do not exist already in
sightful and important interpretations of his work. Heidegger
may be right that "Every thinker thinks one only thought" (WeT
50/WHD 58), but the richness of the history of philosophy
speaks to the multiple possibilities for envisioning such a
thought. I read Heidegger's thought as a philosophy of science.
1
Metaphysics, Mathematics,
and Science
HEIDEGGER'S ACCOUNT of science can be concisely expressed by

the thesis that modem natural science consists in the mathemati
cal projection of nature. This view is evident as early as 1916 in
"Der Zeitbegriff in der Geschichtswissenschaft," where he dis
tinguishes history from natural science on the basis of the projec
tion of the time concept in each. It is explicit in §69 of Being and
Time, where his analysis of the theoretical attitude echoes the
account he gives of Galileo in 1916 and takes up again in 1935.
The end of Heidegger's early view of science is evident in that
1935 text, Die Frage nach dem Ding, as well as in Introduction to
Metaphysics. In Die Frage nach dem Ding, Heidegger does not re
linquish the idea that science is the mathematical projection of
nature, but he has untangled that thesis from a second thesis
central to his early view: that metaphysics is itself a science.
Heidegger's philosophy of science from 1916 to the mid-1930s
cannot be understood apart from his account of metaphysics as
science. Explication of this early view entails laying out his ac
count of the relation between metaphysics and natural science.
Heidegger begins by taking metaphysics to ground the sciences.
He does not remain satisfied with this view, but rather eventu
ally determines the relation between metaphysics and science as
the mathematical. For Heidegger, the mathematical is that which
is known beforehand and brought to experience by the under
standing. In Being and Time and in Basic Problems of Phenomenol
ogy, he begins his inquiry into the question of being with the
ontic fact that any understanding of beings entails a prior projec
tion of being. In Basic Problems of Phenomenology, the object of
fundamental ontology as Heidegger envisions it is being, and
the task is the investigation of being in order to secure the sci
ences in their regional ontology.
METAPHYSICS, MATHEMATICS, AND SCIENCE 15
Regional ontology is the condition for the possibility of any

science. Heidegger argues in Basic Problems of Phenomenology that
all non-philosophical sciences, that is, the positive sciences,
"have as their theme some being or beings, and indeed in such
a way that they are in every case antecedently given as beings to
those sciences. They are posited by them in advance" (BPP 13/
GP 17). Sciences are positive in the sense that they posit their
realm of objects in a regional ontology. Regional ontology is the
determination of the subject area of a science by projection of
what Heidegger calls, in Being and Time, "basic concepts" (BT
29/529). By projecting a basic concept, the scientist establishes
a realm of possible objects of inquiry, a "world" in Heidegger's
second of the four senses of that term in Being and Time (BT 93/
52 64-65). Heidegger suggests that the movement of the sci
ences happens when their basic concepts "undergo more or less
radical revision" (BT 29/529), much as Thomas Kuhn argues
that sciences move through paradigm shifts during crises. In The
Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics in 1929-30, Heidegger de
scribes such a situation with respect to the life sciences. Biology,
he argues, confronts the task of developing "an entirely new
projection of the objects of its enquiry" (FCM 188/GM 278).
In Being and Time, Heidegger argues that the basic concepts of
a science are transparent to it, as Kuhn holds in his historical
analysis that paradigms shifts come from within the sciences
themselves. In the 1929-30 lectures, however, the situation is not
quite so simple. Heidegger describes a circular interrelatedness
between metaphysicS and science. The proposition that ex
presses the presupposition essential to, in Heidegger's example,
zoology, does not come from zoology, yet it cannot be "eluci
dated independently of zoology either" (FCM 187/GM 276).
What is this interrelatedness? Heidegger argues that ordinary
understanding finds such circularity objectionable, and he in
sists that the movement is not dialectic. Later, throughout sev
eral texts but especially in "Science and Reflection," Heidegger
will argue that no science has access to its own essence; he calls
a science's basic concept "das Unumgiingliche" (SR 177IVA 60),
that which cannot be gotten around. No science can raise the
question of the projection of the being of its objects that makes
it possible. Yet the move to this blindness on the part of the sci-
'
16 HEIDEGGER S PIDLOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
ences--called "one-sidedness" in What Is Called Thinking?-and

hence to the problem of whence comes critical thinking of sci
ence is a development in Heidegger's thinking. In Being and Time
and Basic Problems of Phenomenology, Heidegger holds that phe
nomenology is the method of scientific philosophy that can raise
precisely the question of the grounding of the sciences in their a
priori projection of being.
In Being and Time, Heidegger uses phenomenology as the
method for raising the question of being. Both this text and Basic
Problems of Phenomenology explore temporality as fundamental
to the constitution of Dasein, and both texts are aborted projects.
In §69 of Being and Time, Heidegger analyzes the shift in under
standing from everyday, concernful dealings to the theoretical
attitude. He is interested in the change in understanding being
that the theoretical attitude involves. As in Basic Problems of Phe
nomenology, Heidegger holds in Being and Time that an under
standing of being underwrites the sciences, and his interest is in
laying this understanding bare. Hence the theses that philoso
phy is a science and that science is the mathematical projection
of nature are entwined in Heidegger's phenomenology: scien
tific philosophy raises the question of the projection of being at
work in the sciences. That is to say, philosophy is a science for
Heidegger insofar as it is metaphysics, and metaphysics unfolds
in 1927 in two tasks: first, Being and Time is an attempt at an
analytic of Dasein; and second, Basic Problems of Phenomenology
is an attempt at grounding the sciences.
In 1928, these two tasks coincide in the self-undermining of
metaphysics. Heidegger argues in The Metaphysical Foundations
of Logic that the concept of metaphYSics consists in fundamental
ontology and metontology (MFL IS8/MAL 202). He introduces
metontology to characterize the recoil (Umschlag) at the heart of
fundamental ontology in which ontology turns back on itself by
placing into question the very notion of questioning. In W illiam
McNeill's reading of this obscure moment of recoil, Dasein as
questioner is unsettled. McNeill argues (1992:76) that the shift
(Umschlag) Heidegger describes in §69 of Being and Time, which
he attempts to analyze again in Basic Problems of Phenomenology,
is this very turning into metontology in which ontology recoils
upon itself, and that this moment of recoil is found again in the
interpretation of Antigone in Introduction to Metaphysics. In the

former two texts, argues McNeill, the withdrawal of the meaning
of being is so radical that the possibility of thematizing the pro
jection of beings as a whole is "far from assured" (1992:77). In
Introduction to Metaphysics, the question of being is displaced by
the withdrawal of being which prevails as being's appearance
in beings: "because such withdrawal prevails precisely as the
appearing of being in beings, being can no longer be thought of
as the 'earlier,' the apriori ground of beings" (McNeill 1992:78).
The year 1935 is therefore a crucial one in Heidegger's thinking.
The thesis that has driven his inquiry into being through Being
and Time and Basic Problems of Phenomenology, that being is an a
priori project, stands in conflict with the regional ontologies of
the sciences. For the apophantic moment in which beings are
uncovered is the withdrawal of being, not its presencing for
thinking.
McNeill's reading of metontology can be applied to the ten
sion at the heart of the entanglement of scientific philosophy
with the sciences understood as the mathematical projection of
nature. When the a priori projection of being becomes problem
atic because it is a withdrawal and not a presence, the projection
of being at work in the regional ontology of science becomes
likewise awkward. If phenomenological inquiry with being as
its object is no longer possible, since the a priori nature of such
an understanding of being has been undermined, then the ques
tion of what metaphysical assumptions underwrite science be
comes not only sensible but also demanded: if being's
withdrawal precludes its aprioricity, then on what basis can the
sciences be taken to have a metaphysical grounding? It is pre
cisely this question that Heidegger asks in Die Frage nach dem
Ding, and which he answers with the notion of the mathemat
ical.
Accordingly, the two theses that Heidegger holds until the
1930s with respect to science-that philosophy is itself scientific
and that science is the mathematical projection of nature-are
entangled insofar as he takes the task of scientific philosophy to
be the investigation of being as a means for establishing the re
gional ontologies of the sciences on sure ground. The possibility
of such an investigation is undermined by the realization that
'
18 HEIDEGGER S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
the projection of the being of beings is simultaneously a with

drawal of being. Hence Heidegger is drawn to the question of
the metaphysical ground of the sciences, an investigation he un
dertakes in Die Frage nach dem Ding by uncovering the metaphys
ics of modem science at work in Galileo and Newton and
quintessentially formulated in Descartes's foundation of the sci
ences upon the self-certainty of the knowing subject.
Heidegger's move from philosophy as science to the question
of the sciences themselves can be thought through by tracing
the separation of the two theses that characterize his early view.
Heidegger gives up the thesis that philosophy is scientific, and
subsequently goes on to rethink the thesis that science is the
mathematical projection of nature. He does not simply tum from
metaphysics and thereby come to science. Rather, his thinking is
driven by the question of being, and I argue that the failure of
his attempt to give the sciences a metaphysical grounding is at
the heart of his tum away from metaphysics.
To examine Heidegger's thesis that philosophy is itself a
science, one must read that thesis against the background of
Husserl's conception of rigorously scientific philosophy: phe
nomenology. Joseph Kockelmans (1985) has given an extensive
treatment of the Hegelian and Husserlian background against
which Heidegger's thinking of science comes about. Rather than
repeat that work, I will point only to the question of philosophy
as rigorous science. Heidegger repudiates Husserl's epoche and
prefers to make ontology central rather than bracket it. For Hei
degger argues that whereas ontic sciences proceed on the basis
of a regional ontology, taking as object some realm of being,
scientific philosophy (i.e., ontology) takes as its object being it
self. His break with Husser!, despite the apparent ambivalence
he shows toward Husserl in 1925 in History of the Concept of Time,
is his insistence that ontology is precisely the issue at stake if
philosophy is to be properly scientific.
It is the history of ontology that Heidegger wishes to destruct
ure in Being and Time, and it is ontology that he names as scien
tific philosophy in Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Yet these
texts lead Heidegger to the question, what is metaphysics? Hei
degger's reading of Husserl leads him to Kant and away from
the claim that ontology is the science that has being as its object,
to the claim that being is not an object at all. In his entanglement

with Kant, Heidegger fails to distinguish the pure from the a
priori in the first Critique. Hence when Heidegger appeals to the
notion of certainty in modem science, he calls that certainty
mathematical rather than a priori.
Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, situated between the in
quiries into ontology and the 1929 address on metaphysics, is
the text wherein Heidegger makes the shift from ontology to
metaphysics. Heidegger holds, under the influence of Husserl,
that philosophy is a science; and against Husser!, that scientific
philosophy is ontology. The latter claim pushes Heidegger back
to Kant, wherein he confronts metaphysics. It is Heidegger's
overcoming of Kant that constitutes as a single move his aban
donment of the claim that philosophy is itself a science and his
abandonment of metaphysics. That move is the insight in Kant
and the Problem of Metaphysics that philosophy cannot provide a
ground for the sciences. Philosophy as science had always been
intended by Heidegger to do exactly that, and hence in discard
ing that task he discards the thesis that philosophy is a science.
Having worked through the history of philosophy as science,
Heidegger is drawn to the sciences. In 1929, in The Fundamental
Concepts of Metaphysics, he thematizes the life sciences, specifi
cally biology and zoology; and in 1935, in Die Frage nach dem
Ding, he treats explicitly the physics of Galileo and Newton. In
the claim that science consists in the mathematical projection of
nature, Heidegger considers science in the narrow sense of natu
ral science. He examines Galileo's free-fall experiment and New
ton's first law of motion as a rethinking of the mathematical. On
the basis of a radical interpretation, Heidegger proposes that the
mathematical is the metaphysical moment of modem science.
My strategy is therefore straightforward. I look at how philos
ophy as rigorous science is different in Heidegger's account
from Husserl's, and then assess Heidegger's reading of Kant on
metaphysics and the a priori. This will bring me directly to the
notion of the mathematical in Heidegger, and I will examine
the thesis that physics consists in the mathematical projection of
nature in Heidegger's analyses of Galileo and Newton. A con
cluding section on metaphysics and the mathematical will lay
the groundwork for Heidegger's subsequent philosophy of sci-
20 HElDEGGER'S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
ence. Hence this chapter shows how Heidegger moves from phi
losophy as science to philosophy of science.
HUSSERL: PHILOSOPHY As RIGOROUS SCIENCE
In 1925, Heidegger argues that it was Husserl who founded sci

entific philosophy as phenomenology in his Logical Investigations
(HeT 24/ PG2 30). In Being and Time, Heidegger acknowledges
several debts to Husserl. He dedicates the book to him and ap
propriates his maxim of phenomenology, "To the things them
selves" (BT 58/52 34). In a footnote, he says that Husserl
"enabled us to understand once more the meaning of any genu
ine philosophical empiricism" (BT 490, n. x/52 50, Anm. x). In
another note, he attributes to Husserl the temporal interpreta
tion of metaphysics as presence that he himself intends to inves
tigate as an exploration of the ecstatical unity of Dasein (BT 498,
n. xxiii/52 363, Anm. xxiii), but which remained unpublished.
He further claims that Husserl's Logical Investigations prepared
the ground for Being and Time, since it was therein that phenom
enology first emerged (BT 62/52 38).
Yet Heidegger rejects Husserl's phenomenology by arguing
that what is essential in phenomenology is not its actuality as a
philosophical movement. "Higher than actuality stands possibil
ity" (BT 63/52 38), and it is the possibility of phenomenology
that Heidegger wishes to seize upon. When he distinguishes his
project from anthropology, he cites Husserl's "Philosophy as
Rigorous Science" for the recognition that a person is not a thing
(BT 73, n. v / 52 47-48), that is, Dasein is not simply present-at
hand. Yet when he argues that the limitation of the anthropologi
cal inquiry is that "the cogitationes are either left ontologicaliy
undetermined, or get tacitly assumed as something 'self-evi
dently' 'given' whose 'Being' is not to be questioned" (BT 75/
52 49), he must be referring to Husserl. In Basic Problems of Phe
nomenology, Heidegger locates this criticism of Husserl-that he
fails to question being-in the epoche.
Heidegger did not allow the text of his 1927 lecture course on
phenomenology to be published until 1975, when it appeared as
Volume 24 of the Gesamtausgabe. The explicit acknowledgment
of Husserlian phenomenology found in Being and Time is not

evident in Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Yet the introduction
appears to have been cribbed from Husser!'s contribution to the
first volume of Logos in 1911, "Philosophy as R igorous Science."
Here Husser! distinguishes phenomenology as scientific philos
ophy from Weltanschauung philosophy, precisely the distinction
at work in Heidegger's introduction to Basic Problems of Phenome
nology.
Husser! argues in "Philosophy as Rigorous Science" for a phi
losophy that is scientific, rather than either naturalism or Weltan
schauung philosophy. Naturalism in his account naturalizes
consciousness and ideas on the basis of empirical science. The
naturalist, Husser! claims, seeks to lay out the natural laws of
thinking and "believes that through natural science and through
a philosophy based on the same science the goal has for the most
part been attained" (PRS 169). Like contemporary cognitive sci
ence, naturalism looks for laws of nature to describe thought.
But, criticizes Husser!, this position is self-refuting since it be
gins with a theoretical absurdity. Since it binds itself to empirical
science, which deals only in bodies, and consciousness is not a
body, Husser! sees implicit in naturalism the preclusion of the
very thing it seeks to investigate. Insofar as contemporary cogni
tive science looks to the brain to explain the mind, it is suscepti
ble to the same criticism. Husser! suggests "a phenomenology
of consciousness as opposed to a natural science about con
sciousness" (PRS 173).
This phenomenology investigates the intentional correlates of
consciousness and hence clarifies all fundamental kinds of objec
tivities. It pursues the relation between consciousness and being
not as the relation between mind and bodies but rather as the
relation between subjective consciousness and intentional ob
jects within consciousness. Hence it is related to psychology, but
whereas psychology concerns itself with empirical conscious
ness, phenomenology in Husser!'s sense deals with pure con
sciousness, that is, essences and essential relations. It "makes no
use of the existential positing of nature" (PRS 183) but seeks to
investigate what the psychic is. Psychology, on the other hand,
begins with a supposition of the psychic, and hence Husser! calls
absurd its hope to "give scientific value to the designation of the
'
psychical" (PRS 184). Hence Husserl's philosophy as rigorous

science can be neither naturalism nor psychology.
Furthermore, Husserl is not arguing for Weltanschauung phi
losophy. The latter seeks the wisdom of the age, he claims, that
"according to the situation of the time, harmoniously satisfies
both intellect and feeling" (PRS 194). Scientific philosophy, on
the other hand, is impersonal and requires not wisdom but theo
retical talent by means of which it "increases a treasure of eter
nal validities" (PRS 195). It bears the stamp of eternity, and
hence it "alone is capable of providing a foundation for a philos
ophy of spirit" (PRS 189). Indeed, this is what scientific philoso
phy is about in Husserl's view: it is radical and foundational, a
science of true beginnings, of origins, and it "must not rest until
it has attained its own absolutely clear beginnings" (PRS 196) .
Husserl envisions this philosophy as a scientific critique of rea
son that has a rigorous method of proceeding and which pro
vides a sure foundation both for itself and for cultural practices
like the sciences.
Likewise, Heidegger rejects worldview philosophy as inade
quately radical in Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Like Husser!,
he finds that worldview philosophy is limited by its belonging
to "the particular contemporary Dasein at any given time" (BPP
6/GP 7). It arises for a particular factical Dasein. Although Hei
degger is interested precisely in the scientific construction of a
worldview, his philosophy "must define what in general consti
tutes the structure of a worldview" (BPP lO/GP 13). Hence that
philosophy is not directed at the formation of a particular world
view, but nonetheless remains at the foundation of worldview
formation. Accordingly, Heidegger's phenomenology is, like
Husserl's, an alternative to Weltanschauung philosophy. But Hei
degger's conception of phenomenology is fundamentally at
odds with Husserl's.
For both Heidegger and Husser!, phenomenology is a method,
and for each it begins with a reduction. Yet their reductions
move in opposite directions. Husserl turns away from the ques
tion of being. He is prepared, at §148 to §150 of Ideas, for exam
ple, to take up the questions of formal and regional ontology.
But he disregards the question of being by suggesting that for
his inquiry, fantasies such as "winged horses, white ravens,
golden mountains, and the like" (Hussed 1983:356/Ideen 310)

serve just as well as examples of physical objects as things in
actual experience. Hussed is interested in physical objects as in
tentional correlates of consciousness and not as bodies consti
tuted outside of consciousness. Subsequently, he claims at §59
of Cartesian Meditations that the task of an ontology of the real
wodd is, though necessary, not philosophical, and at §60 of the
same text that the results of his inquiry are metaphysical only as
"anything but metaphysics in the customary sense" (1960:139;
1950:166). Hussed's concern is meaning, not being. And indeed,
Heidegger repudiates Hussed in 1929 precisely for his idealistic
epistemology, for failing to "ask the question about the being
constituted as consciousness" (MFL 133/MAL 167).
Whereas Hussed's epoche is the bracketing of ontology, for
Heidegger "phenomenological reduction means leading phe
nomenological vision back from the apprehension of a being . . .
to the understanding of the being of this being" (BPP 21/GP 29).
Heidegger's reduction is precisely to the question of being. It is
first a negative move away from the particular being, and second
a positive construction of being that brings it into view "in a free
projection" (BPP 22/ GP 29). This projection is free in that it does
not reduce being by making it accessible as a being. These two
basic components of Heidegger's method, combined with the
destruction of traditional use of concepts as the third, are "phi
losophy as science, . . . the concept of phenomenological investi
gation" (BPP 23/GP 31). Phenomenology is for Heidegger the
scientific method of ontology, and he therefore rejects Hussed's
phenomenology, which begins by precluding the question of
being.
Heidegger's criticism of Hussed here leads him directly to
Kant, and indeed Heidegger's focal criticism of Hussed is that
he is neo-Kantian. He charges Hussed with following Kant in
taking existence to mean extantness (BPP 28/GP 36), and later
with using Descartes's distinction between res cogitans and res
extensa in order to characterize subjectivity (BPP 124-25/GP
175-76). Hence Hussed's separation of beings into subjectivity
and objectivity presses the question of the unity of being.
Yet, as Hofstadter notes in the introduction to his translation,
Heidegger chooses Kant, not Hussed, "as the most suitable rep-
24 '
HEIDEGGER S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
resentative of the problem" (BPP xvi). Heidegger has already

argued in 1925, in History of the Concept of Time, that the Marburg
school misinterprets Kant by appropriating him to psychology,
that is, by reading him as "working out the constitutive mo
ments of knowledge in the form of a science of consciousness"
(HCT 16/PGZ 18). For Heidegger, reading Kant is an opportu
nity to think his work as metaphysics rather than epistemology,
and to retrieve a "philosophy of science" (HCT 16/PGZ 18), as
he called it in 1925, that is obscured by Husserlian psychologistic
subjectivism.
In his investigation into the thesis of logic, the "is" of the cop
ula, Heidegger commends Husserl for bringing logic to light.
But he "did not succeed in conceiving logic philosophically"
(BPP 178/GP 253), rather tending to develop it as a separate
science in the conceptual schemata of neo-Kantianism. Heideg
ger takes such preoccupation with propositional logic in ques
tioning truth and being to be a "principal criterion of neo
Kantianism" (BPP 201/GP 286) and argues that it was Husserl
who first drew the distinction between making a judgment and
its factual content that makes such an approach possible. Hus
serl is accordingly not only neo-Kantian for Heidegger, but fur
ther, a basis for neo-Kantianism. Hence Heidegger's treatment
of Husserl in Basic Problems of Phenomenology brings him face-to
face with Kant.
Indeed, in his rejection of worldview philosophy, Heidegger
pinpoints the entry of the word "Weltanschauung" into philoso
phy in Kant's Critique of Judgment. Here it means "a beholding
of the world as simple apprehension of nature in the broadest
sense" (BPP 4/GP 6). He says that this usage dies out, but he
attempts to retrieve something of it by appealing to Kant's dis
tinction between the academic and cosmic concepts of philoso
phy. The latter investigates the end of human reason, that for
the sake of which reason is what it is, while the former is "the
whole of all the formal and material fundamental concepts and
principles of rational knowledge" (BPP 8/GP 10). This gets at
the distinction Heidegger wants to draw between scientific and
worldview philosophy, since in making his distinction Kant
brings the question of the end of human reason to the center of
the question of philosophy. But it is an inadequate distinction
for Heidegger, since philosophy in the cosmic sense does not

have as its task the question of the development of a worldview,
and Heidegger's inquiry, though not directed at the formation of
a particular worldview, is aimed at the foundation of worldview
formation.
Accordingly, Heidegger does not set his task in the early years
differently from Husserl's vision of his task. Both seek to investi
gate what is foundational and hence prior to a worldview, and
both resist naturalism, psychology, and the entrenchment of
philosophy in a worldview. Yet the two are in fundamental dis
agreement about what the scientific philosophy is that pursues
their chosen task. Each calls his method phenomenology, but
whereas for Husser! that means the radical investigation of con
sciousness and not being, for Heidegger it means precisely the
question of being. So formulated, Heidegger's phenomenology
leads him from Husser! back to Kant.
KANT AND METAPHYSICS: GROUNDING SCIENCE
Heidegger's ear!y view of the sciences is colored by his commit

ment to metaphysics, which is for him philosophy proper be
cause he holds that metaphysics is itself a science: the science of
being. Basic Problems of Phenomenology operates within a tension
in which metaphysics understood as ontology is a science, yet
thoroughly distinct in Heidegger's view from the sciences. He
separates them on the basis that the sciences are positive, that is,
they work with some realm of beings whose being is posited.
Metaphysics, however, has as its object being rather than a par
ticular realm of beings. Whereas sciences proceed on the basis
of regional ontology, scientific philosophy is fundamental on
tology.
In 1929, two years after Being and Time, Kant and the Problem of
Metaphysics was published. This text begins the separation of
philosophy and the sciences that will serve as the basis for Hei
degger's critique of representational thinking. His abandonment
of metaphysics as the science of being and his later critique of
the sciences both arise from a tension in his reading of Kant: on
the one hand, ontology is the science of being; on the other hand,
'
it is not a positive science. This cmoQLa dissolves in the claim that

being is not an object of cognition. But therefore philosophical
thinking cannot be for Heidegger a positive science. His inter
pretation of Kant plays a key role in his thinking on the relation
between and subsequent separation of metaphysics and science.
In Being and Time, Heidegger distinguishes everyday under
standing from the theoretical attitude. Basic Problems of Phenome
nology aligns ontology with the theoretical attitude since
Heidegger argues that philosophy is itself a science, "the science
of being" (BPP Ilff. /GP 15). Ontology is so scientific that "the
expression 'scientific philosophy' contains a pleonasm" (BPP 4/
GP 4). Heidegger's concern in Basic Problems of Phenomenology is
to show that scientific philosophy is ontology, and thereby to
retrieve the question of being from its history. Yet ontology occu
pies the ambiguous position here that, though a science, it is
distinguished from the positive sciences. The difference between
the positive sciences and ontology is that whereas positive sci
ences "deal with that which is, with beings . . . with specific
domains, for instance, nature" (BPP 13/GP 17), philosophy has
being as its object. The positive sciences are grounded in re
gional ontology and are only possible on the basis of that prior
understanding of being. The task of ontology is precisely the
inquiry into that prior understanding.
Heidegger rejects ontotheology in his ubiquitous claim that
being is not itself a being. In both Basic Problems of Phenomenology
and Being and Time, he attributes to Kant the thesis that "being
is not a real predicate" (BPP 27ff./GP 35; BT 127/5Z 94). In the
latter text, he explains that this claim means exactly that being is
not accessible as an entity (BT 127/5Z 94; d. BT 23/5Z 4). In the
former, he explains further that the claim that being is not a real
predicate means "that something like existence does not belong
to the determinateness of a concept at all" (BPP 32/GP 42). The
distinction at work here between existence and reality is one he
draws from Kant.
Heidegger argues that reality for Kant is synonymous with
Leibniz's term possibilitas. Realities are "the what-contents of
possible things in general without regard to whether or not they
are actual" (BPP 34/GP 45). Reality belongs to the category of
quality, whereas existence belongs to the category of modality.
'
For, argues Heidegger, extantness belongs to an existent thing

whether it is perceived or not, since it is only on the basis of a
prior extantness that a thing can be perceived (BPP 49, 70ff. /GP
66, 98-99). Extantness is a sufficient but not necessary condition
for being perceived. Accordingly, Heidegger objects that "posi
tion in the sense of positedness is not the being of beings . . .
rather, it is at most the
how of being apprehended of something
posited"(BPP 49 /GP 49). Kant's account of being falls short.
Although in 1925, in History of the Concept of Time, Heidegger
saw the possibility of a retrieval of Kant away from epistemology
and toward metaphysics, and the promise in Kant of a treatment
of the question of being, in 1927 he finds the latter hope disap
pointed.
Yet Kant's metaphysics is the location Heidegger chooses to
begin his laying bare of the basic problems of phenomenology.
For Kant's claim that existence is added synthetically to the con
cept is food for thought about being. In fact, Kant's synthetic a
priori cannot but be intriguing to the thinker who argues in
Being and Time that the understanding which discloses entities in
their possibility has a projective fore-structure that understands
being (BT 192-93/5Z 151). Heidegger asks whether simply to
say that this "fore" is "a priori" is to conceive adequately of its
character. And he finds that it is not, for the a priori project is of
meaning, which characterizes Dasein, and he instead wishes "to
make the scientific theme secure by working out these fore
structures in terms of the things themselves" (BT 195/5Z 153).
In other words, the inquiry of Being and Time is scientific insofar
as it investigates not transcendental subjectivity, but rather the
question of being.
Hence the eventual abandonment of the project of Being and
Time. As long as Heidegger undertakes his journey around the
hermeneutic circle as an analytic of Dasein, he will remain in an
idealist metaphysics. But he is not yet ready to give up the at
tempt to retrieve philosophy from that history of metaphysics
as idealism. Instead, he goes at the problem differently in Basic
Problems of Phenomenology. He seeks still a scientific philosophy
for which the basic issue is the question of being, but in this text
he explores the relation between ontology and the sciences. The
positive sciences provide Heidegger with a different access to
the question of the projection of being, since each positive sci

ence is grounded in a regional ontology, precisely such a projec
tion. Hence the grounding of the positive sciences is a perfect
location for scrutinizing the a priori nature of understanding in
which being is that a priori.
Early in Basic Problems of Phenomenology, Heidegger raises the
question of being as a problem of the a priori (BPP 20/GP 27).
Being is always prior to beings in understanding. It is not prior
in the sense of clock time, but in the sense that "it is implicit in
the basic constitution of the Dasein itself that, in existing, the
Dasein also already understands the mode of being of the ex
tant" (BPP 71 /GP 100). Likewise, in Being and Time, Heidegger
notes the a priori nature of being in a world for Dasein (BT 144/
5Z 110; d. BT 249/5Z 206). Furthermore, in Basic Problems of
Phenomenology, he comes back to the question of the a priori in
his closing statement. Plato is "the discoverer of the a priori"
(BPP 326 /GP 463-64) who expresses that discovery in his doc
(BPP 326/
trine that "learning itself is nothing but recollection"
GP 464-65). Demythologizing this claim, Heidegger interprets it
to mean that "being has the character of the prius which the
human being, who is familiar first and foremost with beings, has
forgotten" (BPP 326 /GP 465). Liberation from Plato's cave is
precisely the retrieval of the a priori (i.e., being) from this obliv
ion in forgottenness. What is at stake in Basic Problems of Phenom
enology is how being stands as an a priori in the ontological
difference.
On this basis, Heidegger argues that there is a twofold possi
bility of objectivity and therefore two possible types of science:
"objectification of beings as positive science; objectification of
being as Temporal or transcendental science" (BPP 327/GP 466).
That is, there are positive sciences whose grounds are laid in
regional ontologies, the objectification of beings, and there is in
Heidegger's account a further science that objectifies being yet
is not grounded in a regional ontology. This is the science of
being, and it is not positive for Heidegger. It does not posit
being, but rather seeks to explain "why the ontological determi
nations of being have the character of apriority" (BPP 325/GP
462) by means of an inquiry into the temporality of the under
standing of being.
'
Hence under Heidegger's reading, Kant, rather than denying

the possibility of metaphysics, "is in search precisely of a scien
tific metaphysics, a scientific ontology" (BPP 30/GP 39). Yet in
that reading, Kant's search fails. Kant speaks of the concept of
being, but in Der einzig miigliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstra
tion des Daseins Gottes (5.78) he declares it an unanalyzable con
cept. The suggestion "that the concept of 'Being' is indefinable"
(BT 23/52 4) is one of the three presuppositions against which
Heidegger argues for the necessity of raising the question of
being in the opening pages of Being and Time. The meaning of
being is not eliminated as a question by the indefinability of
the concept. The latter shows, rather, that this question must be
faced.
Kant never faces it, argues Heidegger in Basic Problems of Phe
nomenology, since he does not go beyond understanding being
as position to the analysis called for by the indefinability of the
concept. Likewise, Heidegger argues in Being and Time that Kant
failed to achieve insight into the problem of temporality because
"he altogether neglected the problem of Being . . . [and] failed to
provide an ontology with Dasein as its theme" (BT 45/52 24).
Heidegger does recognize that the problems of a theory of
knowledge and of the question of being are related. He argues
that attempts to solve the problem of reality "in ways which arc
just 'epistemological' '' (BT 252/52 208) show that the problem,
as ontological, must be taken back to an existential analytic of
Dasein. But Heidegger's call to an analytic of Dasein toward a
renewed metaphysics is a question of emphasis and a shift away
from neo-Kantian interpretations. That is, it is an attempt to do
ontology by means of an inquiry into human understanding that
does not reduce the issue to idealism.
Heidegger sees himself in Being and Time and Basic Problems of
Phenomenology as a revisionist. He is undertaking the Kantian
task of grounding knowledge, but revising that task to achieve
it successfully through an analysis of temporality. Kant's Coper
nican revolution can be truly revolutionary-in fact, scientific
for Heidegger only as an analytic of Dasein that does not lose
sight of the question of being. Basic Problems of Phenomenology is
then for Heidegger, as was Being and Time, an attempt to retrieve
the question of ontology from its collapse into epistemology
through an analytic of Dasein. He reads Kant as undertaking

also precisely that task, but failing in that he does not see beyond
being as position. Heidegger of course fails also insofar as both
these texts remain incomplete. He undertakes the task again in
Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. Once again he locates his
inquiry in the relation between philosophy and the sciences, spe
cifically, metaphysics and physics. The development of Heideg
ger's thinking from the earlier two attempts is that now he
denies that relation is one of ground, and on this basis he argues
that his inquiry is into being, not knowledge.
Heidegger argues in 1929 in Kant and the Problem ofMetaphysics
that there is a specific sense in which Kant's first Critique is not
about knowledge. That is to say, "ontology in no way refers pri
marily to the laying of the ground for the positive sciences"
(KPM 8/ KM 12), but rather serves a "higher interest" of reason.
This claim is a shift in Heidegger's thinking. It is a rejection of
the Husserlian thesis that philosophy is a rigorous science in the
sense that its primary task is a securing of the epistemological
foundation of the sciences. Heidegger argues in 1929, as he has
consistently argued before, that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is
to be read as a ground-laying of the problem of metaphysics, not
as a question of epistemology. He again takes exception to neo
Kantian readings of the Critique as a theory of knowledge. But
for the first time he voices his discomfort with the neo-Kantians
as the suggestion that the relation between metaphysics and the
sciences is not one of ground. The question of being is for Kant,
he argues, rather a transcendental inquiry. It is formulated on
the assumption that objects must conform to our knowledge
(KPM 8/KM 12-13). The issue is not What must things be like
such that we can know them?, but What are the structures of
knowledge to which objects must conform in order to be
known? This is taken as Kant's Copernican revolution precisely
in that it rewrites the question of knowledge as the question of
the constitution of the transcendental subject rather than as the
question of the constitution of things.
But, Heidegger argues, Kant's inquiry does not shake the tra
ditional account of truth as correspondence. Rather, foreshad
owing "On the Essence of Truth," Heidegger argues that Kant's
inquiry "actually presupposes it, indeed even grounds it for the
'
first time" (KPM 8/ KM 13), by showing that ontic truth can only
achieve such correspondence if the being as a being is already
apparent in its being, that is, on the basis of ontological truth.
Kant's thinking is not revolutionary for Heidegger because it
shifts the focus of the question of truth to the subject. Yet Hei
degger sees in Kant's Copernican revolution the forcing of the
question of ontology. He says the year before that reading an
epistemological intent in Kant as a Copernican revolution is a
misunderstanding (MFL 142/MAL 179). For Heidegger reads
Kant as turning back the question of knowledge to its ground in
the pre-understanding of being that makes any knowledge of
particular beings possible (KPM l1 /KM 17).
Accordingly, the knowledge of beings that is the sciences, for
which an object is given in its being beforehand in a regional
ontology, is exactly what Heidegger does not wish to pursue
and does not see pursued in Kant's first Critique. Heidegger's
claim that the purpose of the Critique is not primarily to ground
the positive sciences is in essence the argument that ontology is
not Simply propaedeutic to the positive sciences. In 1929 Heideg
ger is concerned to distinguish ontology from the positive sci
ences, that is, metaphysics from physics, as he was in Basic
Problems of Phenomenology. In 1929 metaphysics is taken as
ground-laying for the sciences, but ground-laying is now under
stood as "elucidation of the essence of comporting toward be
ings in which this essence shows itself in itself so that all
assertions about it become provable on the basis of it" (KPM 7/
KM 10). Metaphysics establishes a comportment toward beings
on the basis of which hypotheses can be proven. This change in
view came about the year before. In fact, in 1928 Heidegger ar
gued, contrary to his earlier view, that ontology is not a science.
In 1928 Heidegger gave the lecture course that is published
under the title The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic. Here he
thought through the conjunction of the idea of being with the
idea of ground. He argues that the problem of ground is also
the central problem of logic (MFL 117/ MAL 144-45). But for
Heidegger, "logic is nothing other than the metaphysics of
truth" (MFL 213/ MAL 275). Truth is already thought in this text
as the presence of being that makes possible the assertion and
its correspondence. Ground is thus understood by Heidegger in
terms of Dasein's transcendence. Because Dasein transcends, it

is free to think toward ends and reasons, hence to ask, why?
Heidegger formulates ground as "essence, cause, truth or argu
ment, intention" (MFL lIS/MAL 143). In taking beings as their
object, the positive sciences obviously then inquire into grounds.
But what of their ground? Heidegger argues that ontology
that is, the question of beings as a whole-is not "a summary
ontic in the sense of a general science that empirically assembles
the results of the individual sciences" (MFL 157/ MAL 199-200).
One cannot simply combine the regional ontologies of the sci
ences to get at ontology. Accordingly, Heidegger argues for the
first time, in what for him is a radical change from his earlier
view, that "nonsensical at bottom is the expression 'scientific
philosophy,' because philosophy is prior to all science, and can
be so only because it is already, in an eminent sense, what 'sci
ence' can be only in a derived sense" (MFL ISO/MAL 199-231).
In his supplement, Heidegger again explicitly rejects the thesis
that philosophy is a science. His claim is that in order to ground
the sciences, philosophy must be something quite different from
them. The thesis that philosophy is a science is given up pre
cisely in order to argue that the task of philosophy, albeit not its
only or primary task, is the grounding of the sciences.
In Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, when Heidegger again
takes up the question of the metaphysical grounding of the sci
ences, he argues that metaphysics lays the ground for the sci
ences by establishing a comportment toward beings that is
secure in its own truth. The possibility of such comporting lies
in the method of the natural sciences, upon which, according to
Kant, "a light broke. . . . They realized that reason has insight
only into what it produces itself according to its own design"
(CPR Bxiii; KPM 7/KM 10). Heidegger interprets this observa
tion as the recognition of a preliminary understanding of being
at work in the sciences, and he focuses on the fact that it is being
that is understood rather than on the a priori nature of such
understanding. Since what makes the sciences possible is their
preliminary understanding of being, ontology stands in relation
to the sciences. Regional ontologies, not fundamental ontology,
ground the sciences. Fundamental ontology is an inquiry into
34 '
Dasein, as, for example, in Being and Time. A regional ontology,

and not metaphysics, grounds physics in Heidegger's account.
For, he argues, the relation between the two is such that one
only comes to metaphysics through physics. Heidegger quotes
Heinze on metaphysics: "It is a science that is, so to speak, out
side of the field of physics, which lies on the other side of it"
(KPM 4/ KM 7). Metaphysics is meta precisely in that it is beyond
physics, not prior to it. One does not, as the history of science
shows, have first to do ontology to make scientific investigation
possible. In Being and Time Heidegger argued that the sciences
cannot and should not wait for philosophy to do its ontological
work before they proceed (BT 76/5Z 51). He argued there that
the task of philosophy is not one of grounding, but of recapitulat
ing ontic discovery in greater ontological transparency. The in
sight that reason can be certain only of what it itself projects is
an indication of a "fundamental conditional connection between
ontic experience and ontological knowledge" (KPM 7/KM 12).
One comes to the problem of fundamental ontology only when
the sciences have done their work such that a pre1iminary under
standing of being is evident. Metaphysics understood as funda
mental ontology cannot ground the sciences because it
necessarily follows upon them.
Yet neither is metaphysics grounded in physics in Heidegger's
account. Mathematical natural science is exhausted at the point
at which a pre1iminary understanding of being is uncovered.
The connection between ontic experience and ontological
knowledge does not solve the problem of the pre1iminary under
standing of being, but rather only points to it (KPM 7/ KM 12).
To proceed with the task of laying a ground for metaphysics, the
inner possibility of ontology must be shown. This could hardly
be construed as the task of the positive sciences. In Heidegger's
account, then, in 1925, the sciences do not ground metaphysics
any more than metaphysics grounds them. Hence Heidegger ex
plicitly separates scientific philosophy from the positive sciences
radically in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics.
This is the sense for Heidegger in which Kant's first Critique is
not about knowledge (KPM l1/KM 17). It is rather a ground
laying for metaphysics. Heidegger understands !-lETa Ta qJUOLXU
as "the title of a fundamental philosophical difficulty" (KPM 4/
KM 7). Under Aristotle's much earlier analysis, Heidegger sug

gests, a doubling is uncovered in metaphysics. On the one hand,
it is knowledge of beings as beings; on the other hand, it is
knowledge about the region of beings from which being as a
whole determines itself. This doubling is reflected in a division
of metaphysics into metaphysica generalis, which is knowledge
of beings in general, and metaphysica specialis, knowledge of the
principal divisions of the former, that is, God, nature, and hu
mankind.
An inquiry into metaphysica specialis is brought to the question
of what makes possible such ontic knowledge, that is, knowl
edge about particular beings, whether supreme, natural, or
human. The fundamental philosophical difficulty that is meta
physics consists in the fact that a being is always encountered
with a previous understanding of its being. This preliminary un
derstanding of being, questioned in metaphysica generalis, makes
metaphysica specialis possible. The inquiry into metaphysica spe
cialis is thus led back to metaphysica generalis, which is in the
broadest sense the problem of ontological knowledge.
On this basis, Heidegger argues that "transcendental knowl
edge does not investigate the being itself, but rather the possibil
ity of the preliminary understanding of Being" (KPM lO/KM
16). In Heidegger's account, Kant's inquiry in the first Critique is
not simply a theory of experience or a theory of knowledge, but
rather a laying of the groundwork for the problem of metaphys
ics that is ontology. Kant's text "signifies . . . the working out of
a complete determination of the 'whole contour' and the 'whole
internal, articular structure' of ontology" (KPM l1 /KM 16).
What is at stake under Heidegger's reading of the Critique of
Pure Reason is the inner possibility of ontology.
The task Heidegger envisions for Kant's text is to secure the
possibility of questioning being, the a priori in knowledge.
"How are synthetic a priori judgments possible?" is the question
Heidegger acknowledges explicitly as that for the whole sake of
which the Critique is undertaken (KPM 10/KM 15). But Heideg
ger has dislocated Kant's question "How are synthetic a priori
judgments possible?" from transcendental subjectivity, that is,
from neo-Kantian accounts, and relocated it in ontology. What,
KM 7). Under Aristotle's much earlier analysis, Heidegger sug

gests, a doubling is uncovered in metaphysics. On the one hand,
it is knowledge of beings as beings; on the other hand, it is
knowledge about the region of beings from which being as a
whole determines itself. This doubling is reflected in a division
of metaphysics into metaphysica generalis, which is knowledge
of beings in general, and metaphysica specialis, knowledge of the
principal divisions of the former, that is, God, nature, and hu
mankind.
An inquiry into metaphysica specialis is brought to the question
of what makes possible such ontic knowledge, that is, knowl
edge about particular beings, whether supreme, natural, or
human. The fundamental philosophical difficulty that is meta
physics consists in the fact that a being is always encountered
with a previous understanding of its being. This preliminary un
derstanding of being, questioned in metaphysica generalis, makes
metaphysica specialis possible. The inquiry into metaphysica spe
cialis is thus led back to metaphysica generalis, which is in the
broadest sense the problem of ontological knowledge.
On this basis, Heidegger argues that "transcendental knowl
edge does not investigate the being itself, but rather the possibil
ity of the preliminary understanding of Being" (KPM lO/KM
16). In Heidegger's account, Kant's inquiry in the first Critique is
not simply a theory of experience or a theory of knowledge, but
rather a laying of the groundwork for the problem of metaphys
ics that is ontology. Kant's text "signifies . . . the working out of
a complete determination of the 'whole contour' and the 'whole
internal, articular structure' of ontology" (KPM l1 /KM 16).
What is at stake under Heidegger's reading of the Critique of
Pure Reason is the inner possibility of ontology.
The task Heidegger envisions for Kant's text is to secure the
possibility of questioning being, the a priori in knowledge.
"How are synthetic a priori judgments possible?" is the question
Heidegger acknowledges explicitly as that for the whole sake of
which the Critique is undertaken (KPM 10/KM 15). But Heideg
ger has dislocated Kant's question "How are synthetic a priori
judgments possible?" from transcendental subjectivity, that is,
from neo-Kantian accounts, and relocated it in ontology. What,
36 '
then, of that question? How are synthetic a priori judgments

possible in Heidegger's account?
SYNTHETIC A PRIORI JUDGMENTS
In Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Heidegger finds many

senses of "synthetic" at work in the first Critique. Initially, he
defines the synthetic nature of judgments in a twofold sense:
"first, as judgments in general [which synthesize-i.e., con
nect-subject and predicate]; and second, insofar as the legiti
macy of the 'connection' (synthesis) of the representation is
'brought forth' (synthesis) from the being itself with which the
judgment is concerned" (KPM 10/KM 15). These are the senses
in which synthetic a posteriori judgments are synthetic. There
is, however, a further sense of "synthetic" at work in synthetic a
priori judgments. Because it is a priori, a synthetic a priori judg
ment "should bring forth something about the being which was
not derived experientially from it" (KPM lO/KM 15).
These three senses of "synthesis" are complicated by a further
distinction of synthesis into three kinds: veritative, predicative,
and apophantic (KPM 19/ KM 29). Veritative synthesis is a medi
ation between thinking and its object by intuition which makes
judgments true or evident and is recognizable as the second of
the syntheses defined earlier. In veritative synthesis lies also the
predicative synthesis: the unification of various representations
into a single concept. Predicative synthesis did not appear in the
earlier account. Although the name suggests it is the synthesis
of predicate and subject, it is defined here differently, and here
Heidegger calls that synthesis of subject and predicate apophan
tic. In yet a further synthesis (one could call it a meta-synthesis),
predicative and apophantic synthesis are "joined together into a
structural unity of syntheses" (KPM 19/ KM 29). Furthermore,
the thrust of Heidegger's reading of Kant is that Kant's insight
in the first Critique is that sensibility and understanding are syn
thesized by imagination, which is not simply another faculty
among the three but rather the basis for their structural unity.
Now Heidegger's reading becomes interesting, rather than
simply an explOSion of "synthesis" into more senses than one
can keep clear. Heidegger explicates in Section 31 the difference

between the A and B editions of the first Critique. He argues that
in the former Kant makes his insight into imagination as the
synthesis of intuition and understanding, an insight that shows
how understanding is inherently finite through its inseparability
from possible experience, its bond to intuition. But, argues Hei
degger, in the B edition Kant shrank back from that insight and
instead gave priority to the understanding. As "pure reason as
reason drew him increasingly under its spell" (KPM 115/KM
168), Kant shrank back from the idea that sensibility constituted
the essence of reason insofar as the synthesis of imagination ren
ders a structural unity of sensibility and understanding. Heideg
ger accuses Kant of being unable to stomach his own insight into
the finitude of human understanding and therefore of giving
logic primacy in his B edition. Heidegger rejects the "already
long-established" (KPM 116/KM 170) reading of the two edi
tions as a move from a psychological interpretation to a logical
one by suggesting that the more exclusive orientation to pure
reason of the B edition is, in fact, more psychological than the
earlier account.
Heidegger argues that Kant fell back from his insight into
imagination as the unity of a pure, sensible reason because his
inquiry into the subjectivity of the subject led into "darkness . . .
the abyss of metaphysics" (KPM 146/KM 214-15). In this in
quiry, "the manner of questioning regarding human beings be
comes questionable" (KPM 146/KM 214). The manner of
questioning leads into anthropology. The question, What is
being?, asked by means of the subjectivity of the subject, unveils
the more original question: "What does Being mean, which is al
ready understood in advance in every question?" (KPM 152/KM
223). The latter question is anthropological because it poses the
question of being via the nature of human being as questioner.
What the anthropological question asks about is the possibil
ity of comprehending what is always already understood. The Cri
tique undermines itself by uncovering the finitude of Dasein, for
the A edition, under Heidegger's reading, uncovers as necessary
for understanding what it seeks to show is possible. This is the
sense of synthesis that is crucial to Heidegger's inquiry: ontolog
ical synthesis, the synthesis of being and the object of thought in
'
the prior understanding of being that is present in all human

understanding. Kant's turn from anthropology to logic in the
move from the A to the B edition is, in Heidegger's view, an
attempt to remedy this collapse of the question of being into the
finitude of human understanding. But the second edition, as a
preference for the synthetic power of understanding over imagi
nation, is a move in the wrong direction.
1his is to say that Heidegger is dissatisfied with Kant's Coper
nican revolution. Kant was unable to sustain the analytic of Da
sein requisite for the grounding of metaphysics. And Heidegger
himself attempts to retrieve the ground-laying of metaphysics in
such an inquiry. He does this by retrieving the insight that the
question of being is the finitude of human understanding. He
rethinks the Critique into the terminology of Being and Time and
concludes that "in the ground of its essence Dasein holds itself
into the Nothing" (KPM 162/KM 238). 1his is Dasein's anxiety,
the basic disposition that places the thinker before the nothing,
and presumably this anxiety is expressed by Kant precisely in
his falling back from the question of human finitude and appeal
ing to the understanding over intuition.
In the same year he published Kant and the Problem of Meta
physics, Heidegger gave the lecture What Is Metaphysics? In this
lecture the question of the nothing and a shrinking back before
that question in anxiety are explored, albeit not as an inquiry
into Kant. Here Heidegger is drawn back to the question of the
relation between metaphysics and the sciences, but unlike in his
earlier texts, Heidegger no longer argues that metaphysics is
propaedeutic to the sciences. Rather, he suggests that its func
tion with respect to the sciences is unification and guidance. In
the technical organization of the universities, he argues, "the
practical establishment of goals by each discipline provides the
only meaningful source of unity" (WM 96/W 104). But, he adds,
the root of the sciences has therein atrophied. The sciences want
to know nothing of the nothing in spite of the fact that "scientific
existence is possible only if in advance it holds itself out into the
nothing" (WM 1 1 1 / W 121). Rather, the sciences lose themselves
in beings, a move Heidegger will later call, in "On the Essence
of Truth," errancy, the insistent holding fast to beings and the
inessential. Hence "man goes wrong as regards the essential
genuineness of his standards" (ET 135/W 195-96). Likewise, in

What Is Metaphysics? Heidegger suggests that the question of
metaphysics is, "Why are there beings at all, and not rather
nothing?" (WM 112/W 122). Since metaphysics asks about the
nothing, into which the sciences hold themselves out, "Only if
science exists on the base of metaphysics can it advance further
in its essential task, which is not to amass and classify bits of
knowledge but to disclose in ever-renewed fashion the entire
region of truth in nature and history" (WM l11/W 121). The
relation between the sciences and metaphysics goes deeper than
it did for Heidegger in his earlier accounts. Metaphysics is not
simply a ground for the sciences, but, as the inquiry into their
root, has a guiding function to perform. If science determines
the existence of modern Dasein, then its guidance from the mere
amassing of information to knowledge is a crucial function that
the sciences cannot perform themselves. For the sciences are a
shrinking back in anxiety from the very thing Kant shrank be
fore: the nothing.
Heidegger, however, in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics,
holds fast in the face of such anxiety and pursues the question of
the finitude of human understanding. He finds there the "what
always already was" (KPM 164/KM 240), evident in the history
of metaphysics as early as the ancients in their metaphysics of
presence. Being has always had an alreadiness, its a priori, and
for Heidegger this is the synthesis at stake in the ground-laying
of metaphysics. It is what he calls ontological synthesis, the prior
understanding of being that makes all questioning and under
standing possible. But the "earlier" at work here has nothing to
do with time if time is taken in the common sense of sequential
moments measured by clocks. Rather, time is to be understood
in a more fundamental sense, as the horizon of understanding
constitutive of Dasein.
That is to say, the retrieval of Kant's insight in the A edition
of the Critique is exactly the task Heidegger understands himself
to have undertaken in Being and Time. But having done the
groundwork necessary to the question of being, both in Being
and Time and now again in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics,
neither text then undertakes the question. The former was never
completed, and the latter simply ends with a citation from Aris
totle's Metaphysics 7.1, the question of what being is. Heidegger
40 '
HEIDEGGER S PIDLOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
has argued that the ground for this question (i.e., metaphysics)
is precisely Kant's question, "How are synthetic a priori judg
ments possible?"-and read that question as, "How is being al
ways understood a priori?" But no answer is forthcoming.
Heidegger takes up Kant's account of synthetic a priori judg
ments again in the lecture course from 1935-36 published as Die
Frage nach dem Ding. Heidegger explains here the background
against which Kant makes the claim that there are synthetic a
priori judgments (FD 129-31). In the tradition, analytic judg
ments were always taken to be a priori, whereas synthetic judg
ments were a posteriori. Kant's account of the difference
between synthetic and analytic judgments is consistent with this
history, for Kant argues that while analytic judgments fail to go
beyond the concept in question, synthetic judgments are syn
thetic precisely in that they add something beyond what is con
tained in the concept. This is a straightforward reading of the
first Critique (A6-7/B10-11). Synthetic judgments are what Kant
calls "ampliative" in that they bring to a concept something
extra.
The "something extra" of synthetic judgments was accord
ingly taken to entail that such judgments are a posteriori, for if
the source of this "something extra" is not the concept, then
it must be the thing encountered in experience. Only analytic
judgments could be a priori, since they do not exceed the con
cept, and synthetic judgments were taken to be a posteriori,
since they add to the concept what is not already there and
hence require experience for their verification. Kant's task is to
break that correlation in order to show that synthetic a priori
judgments are possible.
Heidegger argues that the "something extra" of synthetic
judgments is the object (Gegenstand) (FD 142). As he argued in
Basic Problems of Phenomenology that, for Kant, being is position
as a relation between an object and thought, so he argues again
here that synthesis is the relation between an object and a con
cept that is an "alongsideness" (Beistellen) (FD 142). He asks not
simply, "How are synthetic a priori judgments possible?", but,
"How are they necessary?" He answers that they are necessary
for the possibility of human knowledge as experience (FD 132).
U knowledge had no "something extra," it would be knowledge
only of reason itself and not of what is other to reason, the object
which the thinker understands as alongside but precisely other
to the thinker. He takes this point to be precisely the thrust of
Kant's highest principle of synthetic knowledge: that the condi
tions for the possibility of experience are at the same time the
conditions for the possibility of the objects of experience (FD
143).
Heidegger argues that to understand this highest principle of
synthetic judgments is not just to understand Kant's text as a
book, but is to master the starting point of historical Dasein
which cannot be avoided, skipped, or in any other way denied
(FD 143). But, he claims, this principle must be brought to an
appropriate transformation for delivery into the future. This
appropriate transformation is recognition of the between
(Zwischen). Die Frage nach dem Ding concludes with the claim that
the highest principle of synthetic judgments-that the condi
tions for the possibility of experience are at the same time the
conditions for the possibility of the objectivity of the objects of
experience-points to what moves between human being and
thing. Kant's question concerning the thing is tied up with the
question of human being, since knowledge takes place precisely
between the two.
THE THING AND COPERNICAN REVOLUTION
Die Frage nach dem Ding is then precisely the kind of retrieval
Heidegger called for earlier, that of a grounding of metaphysics
in the finitude of human understanding. But Heidegger reads
Kant here with an openness not earlier evident. Rather than at
tempt to adapt the Critique into the project and terminology of
Being and Time, this text seeks to explore what Kant's thought
makes possible in the history of metaphysics. Kant opens up a
dimension between thinker and thing in which to raise the ques
tion of being. Metaphysics need neither confine itself to a naive
inquiry into the nature of things nor collapse into idealism in an
entanglement with subjectivity.
Heidegger concludes in Introduction to Metaphysics that the a
priori was originally for the Greeks being as q)1J<JL�, nature.
42 '
<l>UOL� is not experienced free of empirical admixture, but is pre

cisely what is experienced as empirical content. Accordingly,
Heidegger could not have raised the question of being without
a long struggle with Kant. That struggle began as an analytic of
Dasein and hence as a transcendental inquiry in the Kantian
sense: an inquiry into the structures of understanding. Yet Hei
degger's reading of Kant is complicated and tedious, as much
because Heidegger must dig deeply into the assumptions that
inform his thinking in order to retrieve the question of being
from its forgottenness in idealism, as because in his reading of
Kant, it has been a struggle to confine Kant to metaphysics
rather than epistemology.
Heidegger's reading of Kant contains an ongoing tension. On
the one hand, Heidegger rejects neo-Kantian accounts, espe
cially the Marburg school, and his aim is to retrieve Kant from
their reading. On the other hand, Kant is not to be retrieved as
misread. He is simply too committed to psychologistic subjectiv
ism and idealism by the transition in his thinking from the A to
the B edition of the first Critique. Heidegger wants to make both
claims: Kant has been misread, and his project fails. For Heideg
ger, the Critique of Pure Reason is an exercise in metaphysics, but
one that fails to avoid the trap of idealism. Heidegger's existen
tial analytic of Dasein is an attempt to achieve the aim of the first
Critique. Being and Time grounds and limits the sciences
by showing that the theoretical attitude is a modification of
everyday understanding, and it shows how synthetic a priori
judgments are possible by investigating the structure of under
standing. Heidegger's attempt to undertake Kant's project more
successfully is in a sense an attempt at the Kantian Copernican
revolution without entrapment in idealism.
In 1938, however, Marjorie Grene argued that Heidegger's
thinking is no Copernican revolution. She argues that there is
simply nothing revolutionary in it (Grene 1976:39), and agrees
with Camap's analysis (1931) of What Is Metaphysics?-that Hei
degger's arguments "depend to a large extent on syntactical
misconstructions" (Grene 1976:45). Expressions such as "world
worlds" or "nothing nothings," she argues, are meaningless. For
her, Heidegger fails in his attempt to write the Kantian Coperni
can revolution more successfully.
In 1967, Charles Sherover described Kant's Copernican revo

lution as the insight "that all knowledge of the particular things
in our field of cognitive vision, is dependent on the prerequisite
for something to be, to be knowable, for us" (1967:561), precisely
the formulation of Kant's Copernican revolution that Heidegger
rejects. Sherover described Heidegger's work as a move from
Kant's philosophy to ontology, whereas the move to ontology is
what Heidegger attributes to Kant. Sherover read Heidegger not
as a return to Aristotle's thinking but as a continuation of Kant's
thinking. While Heidegger has remained faithful to the Kantian
problematic of transcendental subjectivity, his "aim has been the
unification of [human being] with the world as it appears to
[one], the unification of [human being's] structure in order to
account for the coherence of human experience" (1967:572). In
Sherover's account, Heidegger's thinking is implicitly a Coperni
can revolution in exactly the sense in which Heidegger sees such
a thing in Kant. Unlike Grene, Sherover takes Heidegger to be
successfully revisionist of Kant.
In 1971, George Vick argued that Heidegger's philosophy is a
new Copernican revolution that stands "to overturn the
commonsense and linguistic structures on which depend alike
the earlier Kantian 'revolution' and most philosophy since"
(1971:630). Kant made the subject the measure of truth, whereas
Heidegger seeks to make apprehension constitutive of human
being. Vick takes Heidegger as not simply revisionist but as a
radical revolutionary, novel in his account of knowledge.
Whereas Grene saw such expressions as "world worlds" or
"nothing nothings" as meaningless, Vick viewed the parallel
construction of his own coinage, "manifestation manifests," as a
call for a new syntax to express the radical meaning contained
therein. While Grene attacked Heidegger as an arrogant poseur,
Sherover supported Heidegger's response to the Kantian prob
lematic, and Vick lauded the "radically different syntax"
(1971:630) implied by Heidegger's work. Grene wrote on the
basis of Being and Time and lectures given in 1931 and 1932. Sher
over's preoccupation was almost exclusively with Kant and the
Problem of Metaphysics. Vick focused on Introduction to Metaphys
ics. Heidegger is or is not a revolutionary or non-sensical thinker
'
depending upon which texts one chooses as focus and how one
chooses to read them.
Certainly, taking the later of these texts as a culmination of
Heidegger's view on the question of transcendental subjectivity,
it is clear that Heidegger separates the transcendental from the
subject. He explains in Introduction to Metaphysics that insofar as
Being and Time is an exposition of a transcendental horizon, "the
'transcendental' there intended is not that of the subjective con
sciousness; rather, it defines itself in terms of the existential-ec
static temporality of human Dasein" (1M 18/EM 14). Likewise,
at §l1(a) of The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, Heidegger re
fuses to read transcendence for Kant as psychologistic. Rather,
it is based on "the immediate relation a subject has to the being
itself" (MFL 164/MAL 210). In fact, argues Heidegger, transcen
dence is being-in-the-world. His aim is to extricate the question
of being from its entanglement in subjectivity by arguing that
being is prior to understanding.
Heidegger's reading of Kant allows him to do precisely that.
In his reading of the A edition of the Critique, Heidegger argues
that in the ontological synthesis of imagination, the finitude of
human understanding is not a collapse into subjectivity and ide
alism but rather the very condition for the possibility of knowl
edge of things. If philosophical Copernican revolution is a move
from metaphysics to epistemology, from the question of the
thing to the question of knowledge, then Heidegger does not
achieve it, for to do so would be to fall into idealism. If, however,
the revolution takes up the question of human understanding in
the relation between the thinker and the thing, then Heidegger
does achieve it. But then Marjorie Grene is right: Heidegger's
thinking is not novel, for it is simply an exposition of Kant, a
retrieval of the first Critique from neo-Kantian interpretations.
The metaphor of Copernican revolution has become, however,
a strange way to describe Kant. Copernicus's revolutionary in
sight is that human being is not central to the universe. The neo
Kantian commitment to idealism is precisely the reverse in that
idealism puts human consciousness at the center of all that is
known. Yet Heidegger's insight into Kant on imagination is pre
cisely such a revolution, for it culminates in a rejection of ideal
ism in the claim made in 1935 in Introduction to Metaphysics and
again in the Beitrage, that for the Greeks being is <:pUOL�. This
claim is a location of the question of the human understanding
of being precisely in the relation between thinking and the
things it thinks about. And it is a Copernican revolution in the
sense that, by rejecting idealism, it removes human being from
the center of the issue and places the thing there instead.
In 1938, in §111 of the Beitrage, Heidegger argues that being
was <:pUOL� for the Greeks and prior to any understanding. Tran
sitional to this text are Introduction to Metaphysics and Heideg
ger's reading of Kant entitled Die Frage nach dem Ding, both from
1935. In Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger dispenses with
the term "ontology," which marks the traditional doctrine of
taking the question of the thing to be a branch in a philosophical
system. There is an alternative: "we can also take the word 'on
tology' in the 'broadest sense,' . . . [which) Signifies the endeavor
to make being manifest itself, and to do so by way of the ques
tion 'how does it stand with being?' (and not only with the es
sent as such)" (1M 41/EM 31). The terms "ontology" and
"ontological" should be abandoned, argues Heidegger, since
this question has been rejected by the schools of academic phi
losophy, which "strive for an 'ontology' in the traditional sense"
(1M 41/EM 31). The purpose is not to set up a traditional ontol
ogy, or to criticize the mistakes of the tradition, but to reestablish
a historical relation to being. Heidegger therefore asks in Intro
duction to Metaphysics whether philosophy and metaphysics are
historical sciences capable of such a task. His answer is that they
"are not sciences at all" (1M 43/EM 33). In fact, it is only philoso
phy, "as distinguished from all science" (1M 44/EM 33), that can
determine a fundamental relation to history in which that rela
tion itself is historical. Heidegger's rejection of neo-Kantianism
has led him to reject the thesis that philosophy is a science.
Yet as long as Heidegger raises the question of being as a ques
tion of human understanding-specifically, as the a priori pro
jected in scientific understanding-he cannot extricate the
question of being from the history of idealism, from Kant's a
priori. If being is taken as a concept, metaphysics remains em
broiled in the web of transcendental subjectivity in which con
cepts are to be found. That Being and Time and Basic Problems
of Phenomenology were never completed is not symptomatic of
46 '
Heidegger's failure, but of his eventual insight that being is not

simply prior in human understanding, but rather prior to human
understanding.
In What Is Called Thinking? Heidegger argues that Kant's claim
that being is among the almost unanalyzable concepts is justified
only if one assumes that being can be grasped by a concept
(WCT 179/WHD 167). What counted as evidence in The Basic
Problems of Phenomenology that ontology is a misunderstood sci
ence, because its object is for Kant the concept of being reduced
to unanalyzability by the tradition of metaphysics (BPP 4/GP
60), stands as evidence almost thirty years later that being is
unanalyzable because it is not a concept (WCT 179/WHD 167).
To be grasped as a concept is to be an object of cognition, that
is, represented. Accordingly, What Is Called Thinking? is a cri
tique of representational thinking and thereby a critique of the
sciences, for which representation of an object is definitive. Hei
degger argues that beings could not appear as objects unless the
being of beings first prevailed (WCT 234/WHD 142), as he has
always held. But his later work is predicated on the insight that
being cannot be represented and analyzed as beings can. He has
by 1952 given up his commitment to metaphysics and aban
doned the assumption that being can be grasped as a concept.
Philosophy is therefore not a science in Heidegger's later view,
such that he suggests in What Is Called Thinking? that philosophy
take as its model not the sciences, but ancient tEXVT] (WCT 22/
WHD 10).
Die Frage nach dem Ding is the first instance wherein Heidegger
takes up the question of metaphysics as a historical question
without an explicit intention to extricate the question from its
history through a destruction. Dissatisfied with the attempted
destructions found in Being and Time, Basic Problems of Phenome
nology, and Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Heidegger ap
proaches metaphysics in What Is Metaphysics? and Introduction
to Metaphysics as an explicitly nonhistorical inquiry, wherein he
prefers instead to pursue a specific question: "Why are there
beings at all, and not rather nothing?" What Is Metaphysics? con
cludes by introducing this question, and the lectures in the sum
mer semester of 1935 begin with it. By 1935 Heidegger has given
up the thesis that philosophy is a science. When he raises the
question of metaphysics in the winter semester of 1935-36 in Die

Frage nach dem Ding, he undertakes the question of the thing as
explicitly historical, but no longer as scientific.
Heidegger's reading of Kant in his 1935-36 lecture course
stands in marked contrast to his earlier accounts. It is here that
Heidegger makes his final break with Kant, precisely because he
has abandoned the thesis that philosophy is a science. This move
arises out of Heidegger's critique of Kant. Yet it does not bring
him directly to his later account of thinking. Before he asks
about the task of thinking at the end of philosophy, he raises
questions about the sciences. The attempt to establish philoso
phy as science leads Heidegger to the sciences themselves, that
is, the history of physics. The issue that draws him there is the a
priori.
THE A PRIORI
What interested Heidegger about Kant, he read as ontology. He

sought to take up Kant's question "How are synthetic a priori
judgments possible?" as an ontological inquiry. Thus he read
the question as "How is it possible that in any inquiry, being is
always already understood?" He took "synthetic" to mean that
being is brought to, not uncovered in, experience. Aprioricity he
understood as the "alreadiness" of being. His fascination with
being is accordingly located in the fact that being is found in
experience only because it is first brought to it. Hence being be
longs neither to things nor to thought but to the relation between
the two; it is prior to both understanding and its object.
Heidegger has always taken investigation of aprioricity to be
fundamental to philosophy. In Being and Time he claims that a
priori analysis of scientific disciplines is what he is after, and he
adds in a footnote that " 'A-priorism' is the method of every
scientific philosophy which understands itself" (BT 490/5Z 50,
n. x). In Basic Problems of Phenomenology he cites the second task
of phenomenology as the clearing up of the meaning of this a
priori. He wants to understand how being belongs to beings a
priori, that is, how being always belongs to beings yet is prior to
their experience. Yet Heidegger never quite cleared up the mean-
48 '
HEIDEGGER S PffiLOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
ing of the a priori, for he missed Kant's separation of the a priori

from the pure.
Kant argued that there are judgments that have empirical con
tent but are not dependent on experience. Indeed, the task of the
Critique oj Pure Reason was precisely to rupture the correlation
between analytic and a priori judgments on the one hand, and
synthetic a posteriori judgments on the other. Kant sets up this
rupture by distinguishing the a priori from the pure. Judgments
are pure for Kant "when there is no admixture of anything em
pirical" (B3). A "pure" representation is one "in which there is
nothing that belongs to sensation" (A20/B34). A priori judg
ments, on the other hand, Kant does not characterize solely in
terms of whether or not they have empirical content. Rather, ne
cessity and universality are the hallmarks of aprioricity for him,
such that he claims that when one is found, the other need not
be proven because they always belong together (B4). At B3 Kant
gives the example of the judgment "every alteration has its
cause" as a priori but not pure, "because alteration is a concept
which can be derived only from experience." At A9/B13 he ex
plains further, using a similar example, "Everything which hap
pens has its cause," by asking how it is that the understanding
finds support for this claim when the predicate (cause) is foreign
to the concept (everything which happens), yet considered con
nected to it.
Kant answers that the source of this connection cannot be ex
perience "because the suggested principle has connected the
second representation with the first, not only with greater uni
versality, but also with the character of necessity, and therefore
completely a priori" (A9/B13). A posteriori judgments never
contain such epistemic certitude, since there could always be
some possible experience that would show them to be false. For
instance, in claiming " All swans are white," one can never be
absolutely certain that there is not some black swan somewhere
that has simply not been encountered. That everything has a
cause, however, carries an epistemic force that the understand
ing takes to be universal such that it could not be any other way.
It thus follows for Kant that all pure judgments are a priori,
for their freedom from the empirical gives them universality and
necessity; but it does not follow that all a priori judgments are
pure. Some a priori judgments have empirical content, even

though they are not founded on experience. Accordingly, the a
priori for Kant is not simply prior to experience, but rather car
ries a certainty, the certainty of universality and necessity. This
is precisely Kant's point in arguing that there are synthetic a
priori judgments, and that the laws of Newton's physics are ex
actly such claims. He seeks to show that Newtonian physics in
volves judgments that are not analytic, but nonetheless certain.
In Heidegger's reading, what is added to the concept in a syn
thetic judgment is a relation between the concept and the thing.
Being is the synthetic a priori in that it brings to the concept
what is not contained in it already, and it does so with a logical
priority in experience. Herein lies Heidegger struggle with
being, which he has himself positioned neither in the concept
nor in experience. In thinking through Kant's account of
synthetic a priori judgments, Heidegger has always been preoc
cupied with their synthetic nature. In Basic Problems of Phenome
nology, for example, the thrust of his analysis of Kant was the
synthesis of being with an object that positions that object in
actuality. Hence he read Kant's metaphysics as committed to
being as position. And the discussions of the a priori in Die Frage
nach dem Ding revert quickly to consideration of the synthetic
moment in which being is projected onto things, rather than
sticking with the a priori, for Heidegger's claim, evident as early
as Being and Time, that being is always already understood, col
lapses this "alreadiness" of being with the synthesis of being
and object. SynthesiS and aprioricity come together in Heideg
ger's understanding that being is projected, that it is found in
things because it is placed there by the thinker.
Accordingly, Heidegger's claim that a synthetic a priori judg
ment "should bring forth something about the being which was
not derived experientially from it" (KPM 10/KM 15) fails to ac
knowledge Kant's distinction between a priori and pure. He rec
ognizes that Kant's a priori coincides precisely with what he
wants to say about being: it pertains to beings without being
experientially derived. Yet Heidegger neglects the episternic cer
tainty that is definitive for Kant of a priori judgments. He con
flates the pure and the a priori in his reading of Kant.
The cause of this conflation in Heidegger's assessment of Kant
50 '
is his preference for the A edition of the first Critique. The exam
ple "every alteration has a cause," which Kant used to distin
guish a priori from pure, appears there only once, yet twice in
the B edition, at A9/B13 and at B3. Elsewhere where the text is
common to both editions and Kant defines the pure, at All/
B24 and A20/B34, he uses it interchangeably with the a priori.
Heidegger clearly understands in Kilnt and the Problem of Meta
physics that the A edition argues for the inseparability of sensa
tion and understanding, while the B edition prioritizes reason in
its freedom from sensation. Hence it makes perfect sense that
Kant's emphasis on the pure would become apparent in the B
edition, and that Heidegger would miss it. After ail, what he is
interested in is precisely how being is a priori, but hardly pure,
since it must for Heidegger belong to beings. He attempts there
fore to retrieve the a priori from pure reason, and in doing so he
fails to see the definitive characteristic of the a priori for Kant.
What he takes Kant to mean by "a priori," Kant in fact conveys
by "pure." Since purity and aprioricity often go hand in hand,
this oversight would have little impact on many readers of Kant
who might fail prey to it. But the consequences are severe for
Heidegger, for he is intent on the question of being, and what is
pure can never figure in the question of being. Rather, since the
pure contains "no admixture of anything empirical" (B3), it is
bound to transcendental idealism.
Hence when Heidegger wishes in Die Frage nach dem Ding to
pursue the question of what is already given and therefore cer
tain in any knowledge, he does not do so on the basis of Kant's
a priori. Rather he turns to the Greeks and the mathematical,
despite the fact that Kant is the subject of the course and that the
Kantian a priori is the obvious candidate for such a discussion.
Heidegger intends the mathematical to do exactly the job Kant
assigned to the a priori. As the a priori carried the epistemic
force of certainty for Kant, so the mathematical entails the cer
tainty of givenness in Heidegger's analysis. Accordingly, Theo
dore Kisiel (1973) is right to identify the mathematical in
Heidegger with the Kantian a priori. Yet Heidegger himself did
not see this. He looks not to Kant but to the ancients to raise the
issue of epistemic certitude, and he raises that issue not as the
question of the a priori, but as the question of the mathematical.
MATHEMATICAL PROJECTION: GALILEO AND NEWTON
John Sallis understands Heidegger's mathematical in terms of

Kant's a priori, as does Theodore Kisiel, insofar as it means what
is projected by the understanding onto things, that is, insofar as
the mathematical is prior to experience (Sallis 1970:145ff.). Yet if
Heidegger intends merely that the mathematical is projective,
then his phrase "the mathematical projection of nature" is re
dundant. Heidegger wants more out of the mathematical than
simply that it is projective. For Heidegger, the mathematical pro
jection of nature determines both beings and knowledge.
In Die Frage nach dem Ding, Heidegger tackles the question of
what is modem science, as opposed to ancient. He argues that
the claims that modem science is factual, that it is experimental,
and that it is a measuring science are inadequate to distinguish
it from ancient science, for these claims do not capture the fun
damental feature that rules and determines the movement of
modem science. This fundamental feature is its "manner of
working with the things and the metaphysical projection of the
thingness of the things" (MSMM 249/FD 52). This feature is,
according to Heidegger, the mathematical.
Heidegger argues that modem science is not mathematical
simply by virtue of the fact that it is calculative and uses num
bers. He notes the modem preoccupation with the calculable
and reckonable. But, Heidegger argues, the mathematical is not
exhausted by numbers. Rather, calculation is a particular form
of the mathematical that has come to dominance because num
bers are its most familiar form (MSMM 253/FD 58). He suggests
that the Greek understanding of "tel �ae��U"ta, in which the
modem mathematical has its etymological root, was much
broader. Which Greeks Heidegger is referring to here, he does
not say. The ensuing discussion, however, echoes Plato's Meno.
Heidegger suggests that for the Greeks, a thing could be
known in different respects: insofar as it is self-moving ("tel
q)"UOLXU), insofar as it is made by people ("tel :rtOL01J�eva), insofar
as it can be in use ("tel XQ��U"ta), insofar as one can have anything
to do with it at all ("tel :rtQuy�a"ta), and insofar as it is learnable
and teachable ("tel �ae��a"ta) (MSMM 250/FD 53-54). The
mathematical is learnable and teachable because it is what about
52 '
HEIDEGGER S PIDLOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
the thing is already known: "The J!uOiuwtu are the things insofar
as we take cognizance of them as what we already know them
to be in advance, the body as bodily, the plant-like of the plant,
the animal-like of the animal, the thingness of the thing, and so
on" (MSMM 251/FD 56). The mathematical is the basis on
which we encounter things as already given. It is "the funda
mental presupposition of the knowledge [Grundvoraussetzung
des Wissens] of things" (MSMM 254/FD 58).
For Heidegger, a number is an instance of the mathematical.
He argues early in Die Frage nach dem Ding that although a num
ber-5, for example---can be called a thing in some sense (FD 3),
it is not a thing in the narrow sense of what is graspable and
visible (FD 4-5). It is not a spatiotemporally extended body.
Rather, it is brought to the thing by the understanding. Numbers
are found in things not because they are already there, but be
cause the understanding brings them to things as an aspect that
can be known about the thing. Numbers therefore carry episte
mic certainty insofar as they are found in experience by being
first projected there. Reason is certain of its own creation. Hei
degger means by the mathematical not just what is projective,
but also what carries epistemic force. His phrase "the mathemat
ical projection of nature" can be read as "the epistemically cer
tain projection of nature." He is interested in showing how
nature is projected in modem physics as something about which
certainty can be had. Later, in "The Age of the World Picture"
Heidegger will call this projection of certainty "rigor" (AWP
119/H 79) and once more appeal to what to. J!uOT)J!UtU meant for
the again unspecified Greeks. The rigor of science is exactitude,
numerical precision.
The relation between things and numbers as one of epistemic
force clearly holds in the case of measurement. Things are mea
surable insofar as they stand in time and space. But a clock,
which measures time, cannot tell or show one what time is. This
point is made both in Die Frage nach dem Ding (FD 17) and in
Basic Problems of Phenomenology, where Heidegger argues that
clock usage-that is, measurement of time-is possible only be
cause of an original having of time (BPP 245/GP 347-48). Hei
degger argues that we assign time to clocks. The measurement
of time is "a modification from the primary comportment
toward time as guiding oneself according to it" (BPP 258/GP 365).

Because things stand in space and time, they can be measured.
That mathematics is numerical and calculative is derivative from
its originary meaning as "tCt J.Lu8iU.ta"tu, the respect in which cer
tainty can be established concerning things.
In Die Frage nach dem Ding, Heidegger characterizes the es
sence of the mathematical in its modem formulation by looking
to Galileo and Newton. His early conception of science is in fact
framed by two readings of Galileo, this one from 1935-36, and
"Der Zeitbegriff in der Geschichtswissenschaft" from 1916. In
both texts, Heidegger construes the essence of science as the
mathematical projection of nature. In the earlier one he uses Gal
ileo's formula for the acceleration of bodies in free-fall as the
definitive example of the projection of the grounding concepts
(time and space) of natural science (ZG 415-33). In Die Frage
nach dem Ding he uses Galileo's free-fall experiment and New
ton's law of inertia to raise the question of the justification and
limits of the mathematicaL
These two analyses of modem science are remarkably similar.
In both cases what is noted is the projection of space and time,
and therefore also of things, as uniform and homogenous. But
the significance of these texts remains obscure unless read
against the discussion of the theoretical attitude at §69 of Being
and Time. There, the mathematical projection of nature is the
hallmark of the modem scientific, theoretical attitude. The de
velopment of Heidegger's account of the mathematical essence
of modem science can be laid out over these three texts.
In "Der Zeitbegriff in der Geschichtswissenschaft," Heideg
ger's intent is to distinguish physics from history on the basis of
the projection of the time concept at work in each. He argues
that the mathematical projection in Galileo's free-fall experiment
is of the concepts of space and time. Space is understood as
"endless, each space-point equal to any other, likewise each di
rection to any other.'" Time also "has become a homogenous
positional order-a scale, a parameter."2 Space and time in mod-
1 "unendlich, jeder Raumpunkt mit jedem gleichwertig, desgleichen jede
Richtung mit jeder anderen" (ZG 422).

2 "ist zu einer homogenen Stellenordnung geworden, zur Skala, zum Param
eter" (ZG 424).

54 '
HEIDEGGER S PlflLOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
em science are a coordinate system in which objects are located.

From CaWean physics on, then, the "object of physics-we can
now say, in brief-is the lawfulness of motion.'" CaWeo is ac
cordingly the origin of modem physics for Heidegger in that
thereafter, "physics strives towards equations, in which are laid
down the most general, lawlike relations with regard to the
processes in the relevant areas [of physics].'" CaWeo's experi
ment in free-fall is decisive for modem science in the sense that
he establishes physics as the search for laws of nature.
Heidegger argues that this distinctive character of modem sci
ence comes about on the basis of a difference in method between
the ancients and the moderns:
The old contemplation of nature would have proceeded with the
problem of fall such that it would have tried through observation
of individual cases of falling phenomena to bring out what was
now common in all cases, in order then starting from here to draw
conclusions about the essence of falling. Galileo does not start
with the observation of individual falling phenomena, on the con
trary with a general assumption (hypothesis) which goes: bodies
fall-robbed of their support-so that their velocity increases pro
portional to time (v = g . t), that is, bodies fall in uniformly accel
erated motion.'
Whereas Aristotle proceeded by making generalizations on the

basis of a series of observations, CaWeo's method is instead to
hypothesize a universal law. He makes an assumption, and then
seeks its validation in experimentation. Heidegger develops this
3 "Gegenstand der Physik ist-so konnen wir jetzt kurz sagen-die Geset
zlichkeit der Bewegung" (ZG 421).

' ''strebt rlie Physik nach Gleichungen, in denen allgemeinste gesetzliche Be
ziehungen beztiglich der Vorgiinge auf den betreffenden Gebieten niedergelegt
sind" (ZG 420).
' ''Die alte Naturbetrachtung ware bei dem Fallproblem so vorgegangen,
daIS sie durch Beobachtung einzelner Faile von Fallerscheinungen herauszu
bringen versucht hatte, was denn nun allen Fallerscheinungen gemeinsam sei,
urn dann von hier aus auf das Wesen des Falles zu schlielSen. Galilei setzt nicht
mit der Beobachtung von einzelnen Pallerscheinungen ein, sondem mit einer
allgemein Annahme (Hypothese), rlie lautet: rlie Korper fallen-ihrer Unter
lage beraubt-so, daB ihre Geschwindigkeit proportional der Zeit wachst (v =
g • t), d.h. die Korper fallen in gleichma/Sig beschleunigter Bewegung" (ZG
419).
view in Being and Time by exploring its metaphysical conse

quences.
Heidegger argues at §69(b) of Being and Time that the theoreti
cal attitude is a changeover in the projection of being at work in
concernful dealings. He claims that the only way entities can be
discovered is by prior projection of their state of being. What is
significant about the theoretical attitude is not that it relies on
mathematics, in the ordinary sense of calculation, and hence
achieves a precision and exactness, or that the facts which it ex
poses hold for every knower (BT 414/5Z 362). That is to say, the
significance of the theoretical attitude is not to be uncovered on
the basis of the precision of mathematics, or as a Kantian analy
sis of the universality of transcendental subjectivity. Rather,
what is decisive is the way in which theoretical understanding
projects the being of nature.
In concernful dealings, where Dasein first has a world, things
are constituted by the context of equipmentality and their
involvement. In the theoretical attitude, such involvement does
not belong to beings. Rather, a thing is encountered as "an entity
with 'mass' . . . a corporeal Thing subject to the law of gravity"
(BT 412/5Z 361). Whereas in concernful dealings, nature is pro
jected in its readiness-to-hand, in the theoretical attitude the
being of nature is projected in another way. In the theoretical
attitude, nature consists in bodies that are governed by the laws
of physics.
Heidegger argues, as he did in "Der Zeitbegriff in der Gesch
ichtswissenschaft," that in modem scientific projection, place
"becomes a matter of indifference . . . a spatio-temporal position,
a 'world-point,' which is in no way distinguished from any
other" (BT 413/5Z 361-62). But in Being and Time he deepens
that insight. He argues that a thing's relation to its place changes
in the theoretical attitude. The law of gravity holds for all beings
regardless of their place, and hence no thing has any special
place by which it can be distinguished from other things. The
theoretical attitude homogenizes not just space and time but also
the bodies that are the objects of physicS. It homogenizes the
objects of physics by projecting their thinghood alike. For it is
the thinghood of things that is understood beforehand in the
theoretical attitude.
'
56 HEIDEGGER S PillLOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
It is on the basis of this prior projection of thinghood that

"entities are disclosed in their possibility" (BT 192/52 151) by
the theoretical understanding. In the theoretical attitude, a thing
is projected in its possibility as a spatiotemporally extended
body constrained by laws such as the law of gravity. A hammer,
for example, when not used circumspectly as a tool, regarded in
the theoretical attitude as an entity with mass, is looked at in a
new way, "as a corporeal Thing subject to the law of gravity"
(BT 412/52 361). The thingness of the thing is its extension in
space and time. The genesis of modem science lies in its revision
of the thinghood of the things investigated by physics. Hence the
genesis of modem science is precisely a metaphysical moment.
In the 1916 text, Heidegger found modem physics to be meth
odologically distinct from ancient in that Galileo investigates
laws of nature that are determined a priori. Here in Being and
Time, he recognizes the metaphysical implications of this lawful
ness of nature. The homogenization of space and time, and
therefore of the bodies taken as object, has implications for the
being of the beings investigated. In Die Frage nach dem Ding, Hei
degger develops this account further by determining that meta
physical moment as the mathematical.
In Die Frage nach dem Ding Heidegger repeats his claim that
the projection of space and time in modem science entails a ho
mogenization of things. The thinghood of things consists in their
bodily occupation of and movement between spatiotemporal co
ordinates. Heidegger observes that when Galileo argues that the
difference in time it takes two bodies to fall is due to the air's
resistance, not the inner nature of the bodies, he is understand
ing all bodies to be alike: "All determinations of bodies have one
basic blueprint, according to which the natural process is noth
ing but the space-time determination of the motion of points of
mass" (MSMM 267/FD 71). Modem physics is the study of bod
ies in motion. It is this homogenization of the objects of physics
that makes it possible to construe their behavior according to
universal laws.
Since both Galileo and Newton investigate physics in terms of
universal laws, Heidegger recognizes in this text no significant
distinction here between them, except insofar as Newton gives
explicit formulation to what was implicit in Galileo's physics.
Heidegger tTanslates Newton's Latin: "Every body continues in

its state of rest, or uniform motion in a stTaight line, unless it is
compelled to change that state by force impressed upon it"
(MSMM 256/FD 60; cf. Newton 1960:13; Thayer 1953:25). And
he argues that Newton's First Law of Motion, the law of inertia,
was discovered by Galileo, who, however, "applied it only in his
last works and did not even express it as such" (MSMM 256/ FD
61). He quotes from Galileo's Discorsi (giving no more precise
reference): "I think of a body thrown on a horizontal plane and
every obstacle excluded. This results in what has been given a
detailed account in another place, that the motion of the body
over this plane would be uniform and perpetual if the plane
were extended infinitely" (MSMM 266-67/FD 70), and consid
ers this the antecedent of Newton's law.
There is an explicit claim in Galileo's Two New Sciences that is
very similar to Newton's law: "we may remark that any velocity
once imparted to a moving body will be rigidly maintained as
long as the external causes of acceleration or retardation are re
moved" (1914:243). For Galileo, however, this claim is not the
point at stake. He explains that the perpetual motion here al
luded to is only possible on a horizontal plane, since any inclina
tion of the plane would be an external (i.e., external to the
moving thing) cause of acceleration or retardation. This claim is
therefore supportive to a corollary of his beliefs about falling
bodies.
That motion is determined in Galileo's primitive formulation
and thematically by Newton on the basis of external force is,
however, decisive for modem science. Heidegger contTasts the
modem mathematical projection of nature with Aristotle's view.
For Aristotle, "ouva!-tL�, the capacity for [a body's] motion, lies
in the nature of the body itself" (MSMM 261/FD 66). Fiery
things move upward, toward the heavens, and earthly things
move downward, toward the center. Heavenly motion is circular
and complete, whereas earthly motion is incomplete because it
does not achieve the perfection of the circle. There are for Aris
totle different kinds of motion based on different kinds of things.
In modem science, on the other hand, nature is projected differ
ently: "Nature is no longer the inner principle out of which the
motion of the body follows; rather, nature is the mode of the
58 '
variety of the changing relative positions of bodies, the manner

in which they are present in space and time, which themselves
are domains of possible positional orders and determinations of
order and have no special traits anywhere" (MSMM 264/FD 68).
This is the case, according to Heidegger, in the physics of both
Galileo and Newton, whose law of inertia is about every body
and makes no distinction between the motion of different kinds
of bodies.
On the basis of this analysis of Galilean and Newtonian phys
ics, Heidegger summarizes the mathematical essence of modem
science in six points. First, it is "a project of thingness which,
as it were, skips over the things" (MSMM 267-68/FD 71). The
mathematical projection of nature establishes the domain of
physics as the realm of moving bodies. This determination of
the thingness of things "skips over" the things by approaching
them on the basis of a prior understanding. There is no opportu
nity for things to speak for themselves, that is, to show them
selves other than as bodies in motion. Hence modem science
proceeds on the basis of a metaphysical projection into which it
is not the task of that science to inquire. Later in several texts,
but especially in "Science and Reflection" and What Is Called
Thinking?, Heidegger will argue that such self-critique is impos
sible for the sciences.
The second point is that the essence of the mathematical is
axiomatic. The mathematical project posits beforehand "that
which things are taken as, what and how they are to be evalu
ated" (MSMM 268/FD 71). Heidegger argues that the Greek
word for such conceptualization and evaluation was aSLoOl and
that such anticipatory determinations and assertions were called
aSUl>Ilm:a. This is why Newton's laws of motion are entitled
"Axiomata." His axioms are fundamental propositions that set
things up in advance upon their foundation as things. The next
three points follow from the fact that the essence of the mathe
matical in modem science is axiomatic. First, insofar as modem
science is axiomatic, the essence of things is anticipated and their
structure and relation to other things are sketched in advance in
the mathematical project. Second, the axiomatic project recons
trues nature as "the realm of the uniform space-time context
of motion" (MSMM 268/FD 71). Third, such an axiomatically
determined realm of nature requires an appropriate mode of ac

cess for the things within it.
Heidegger argues that because modem science is mathemati
cal in this sense of axiomatic, things are now no more than what
they are prefigured to show themselves as within the realm of
nature. They show themselves "only in the relations of places
and time points and in the measures of mass and working
forces" (MSMM 268/FD 72). Accordingly, the project deter
mines the experience of things by establishing the conditions
under which nature can provide answers to questions. Rather
than looking to ordinary experience for such answers, the mod
em scientist therefore looks to the experiment.
The sixth and final point summarizing the essence of the
mathematical is that numerical measurement becomes possible
and in fact requisite in the mathematical projection of nature.
Modem science is necessarily mathematical in the ordinary, nar
row sense of calculative and numerical because it is mathemati
cal in Heidegger's broader sense. Because the project entails a
uniformity among bodies, in which all alike are governed by
relations of space, time, and motion, "a universal uniform mea
sure [is required] as an essential determinant of things" (MSMM
269/ FD 72). Only on the basis of the mathematical projection of
nature, suggests Heidegger, does Descartes develop analytical
geometry, Newton, infinitesimal calculus, and Leibniz, simulta
neously, differential calculus.
The narrow sense of the mathematical, and even much of
modem mathematics, is derivative for Heidegger from his
broader sense of 1:(1 l-luST)l-lm:u. Modem science is mathemati
cal-that is, calculative--in a way it never could have been for
Aristotle, because the essence of modem science is the mathe
matical projection of nature. Accordingly, Heidegger argues in
1938 in "The Age of the World Picture"; "If we come across
three apples on the table, we recognize that there are three of
them. But the number three, threeness, we already know. This
means that number is something mathematical. Only because
numbers represent, as it were, the most striking of always-al
ready-knowns, and thus offer the most familiar instance of the
mathematical, is 'mathematical' promptly reserved as a name
for the numerical" (AWP 118-19/H 78). The mathematical is
'
wh at is al ready known beforeh and in any understanding.

Therefore it is a commitment to wh at counts as knowledge.
On th e basis of h is account of th e math ematical, Heidegger
reads th e directive over th e door of Plato's Academy: "aYEUl!LE
'tQT]'t oC; !LT]bEi.C; ELaL'tUl!" This is not th e order th at only th ose wh o
know geometry in the sense of knowing certain rel ations be
tween lines and figures can enter th e Academy. Rath er, Heideg
ger reads it as the cl aim th at only th ose wh o know th e
math ematical in its originary sense may enter. Only th ose wh o
h ave grasped " th e fundamental condition for th e proper possi
bil ity of knowing" (MSMM 254/ FD 58) have a pl ace in the Acad
emy. This condition for th e possibility of knowing is " th e
knowledge o f th e fundamental presuppositions o f all knowl
edge and th e position we take based on such knowl edge"
(MSMM 254/ FD 58). P ut more simpl y, knowledge is conditional
upon its explicit foundation and awareness of its limits. In th is
sense, th e h istory of metaph ysics bel ongs to th e math emati cal .
METAPHYSICS AND THE MATHEMATICAL
In Die Frage nach dem Ding, th e h istory of modem metaph ysics is

so tied up with ph ysics forHeidegger th at h e l ooks to th e h istory
of science precisely with th e intention of understandin g modem
metaph ysics. It is wh en he wants to understand " th e possibility
and necessity of such a th ing as Kant's Critique of Pure Reason"·
(FD 50) th at he turns to G al ileo and N ewton. He explores mod
em metaph ysics by tryin g to bring to l igh t the essential feature
of modem knowledge as it is evident in ph ysics. Indeed, th e
cl aims Heidegger makes in Being and Time about th e sh ift from
concemful dealings to th e th eoretical attitude of ph ysics can be
understood as exactly an anal ysis of th e h istorical devel opment
of modem physics.
Heidegger describes the transition from concem ful dealin gs
to th e th eoretical attitude as a sh ift in wh ich th e understanding
of bein g ch anges over at §69(b) . At §16 he discusses how th e
• "die Moglichkeit und Notwendigkeit von so etwas wie Kants »Kritik der
reinen Vermmft«" (FD 50).
worldly character of the environment announces itself by way

of conspicuousness, obtrusiveness, and obstinacy, the modes of
concern in which what is ready-to-hand is brought to the fore as
present-at-hand, in which utility becomes thinghood. It seems
in both these places that the changeover from concemful deal
ings to the theoretical attitude belongs to individual Dasein.
Yet at §69(b), this move is not characterized as a transition in
the attitude of individual Dasein so much as a moment in the
history of science. Heidegger explores the theoretical attitude as
"the rise of mathematical physics" (BT 413/52 362). This ambi
guity, whether the move to the theoretical attitude is to be un
derstood as made by an individual or as a moment in the history
of science, can be resolved by simply answering that it is both.
The definitive moments of the history of science take place in the
thinking of individual scientists. Given Heidegger's treatment of
Galileo as definitively characteristic of modem science in the
texts from 1916 and 1935, Galileo is for Heidegger, although con
spicuously absent from §69(b) of Being and Time, precisely the
individual scientist in whose thinking mathematical physics first
arose. Accordingly, the historical rise of modem physics is for
Heidegger not just a moment in the history of physics, but also
a moment in the history of metaphysics. In Die Frage nach dem
Ding he develops this insight into the relation between physics
and metaphysics by pinpointing the mathematical.
Heidegger argues that "modem natural science, modem
mathematics, and modem metaphysics sprang from the same
root of the mathematical in the broader sense" (MSMM 272-73/
FD 75). Because metaphysics reaches the farthest, to beings as a
whole, and the deepest into the being of beings as such, it is
metaphysics that must inquire into its mathematical basis. The
locus Heidegger chooses for this inquiry is the beginning of
modem philosophy in Descartes.
Heidegger tells a story about Descartes that he calls "at best
. . . only a bad novel" (MSMM 274/FD 77). In this account, Des
cartes liberated philosophy from the disgraceful petrification of
academic knowledge which failed to concern human being or
illuminate reality. Through a process of doubt, Descartes even
tually came to the indubitable foundation of the ego cogito, for
doubting has the doubter as its condition. This is the insight that
'
a theory of the world must follow upon a theory of knowledge:

that philosophy begins with reflection upon knowledge and its
possibility. Accordingly, epistemology became through Des
cartes the foundation of philosophy.
Heidegger has a different story to tell. He argues that Des
cartes's central work is Meditationes de prima philosophia and that
prima philosophia is the :rtQUrtl] tpLAoootpla of Aristotle. Such first
philosophy says nothing about a theory of knowledge but con
cerns rather the being of beings. As he argued that Kant was a
metaphysician and not an epistemologist, so Heidegger argues
in 1935 that Descartes's inquiry is metaphysical rather than epis
temological. For what Descartes doubts, he suggests, is precisely
the being of beings. Descartes's work came about in a time when
"mathematics had already been emerging more and more as the
foundation of thought and was pressing toward clarity"
(MSMM 275/FD 77). Knowledge has in Descartes's day, Heideg
ger holds, a sure foundation in mathematics, and it is rather
being that is in doubt.
Heidegger therefore reads Descartes's method of doubting as
not in the least bit skeptical. Rather, it comes about in a time
of passion to clarify and show the fundaments of knowledge.
Heidegger interprets this passion as the will of the mathematical
"to explicate itself as the standard of all thought and to establish
the rules which thereby arise" (MSMM 275/FD 78). Descartes's
Meditations are a "reflection upon the fundamental meaning of
the mathematical" (MSMM 275/FD 78) that concern the totality
of beings and knowledge thereof. Hence they are necessarily a
reflection upon metaphysics in Heidegger's sense of the mathe
matical. They are an argument to ground the being of beings in
certainty.
Heidegger looks for further evidence of his reading of Des
cartes in an unfinished, early work published posthumously, Re
gulae ad directionem ingenii. In this work, mathematics submits
itself to its own essence in order to become "the measure of the
enquiring mind" (MSMM 276/FD 78). The essence of the mathe
matical is the fundamental presupposition of knowledge, and in
this text Descartes enunciates the rules of thinking. This is the
sense in which, for Heidegger, Descartes submits the mathemat
ical to its own essence. It is here, Heidegger argues, that Des-
cartes coins the modem concept of science, for he "grasps the

idea of a scientia universalis, to which everything must be di
rected and ordered as the one authoritative science" (MSMM
276/FD 78). This is the mathematical in the sense of mathesis
universalis.
If the mathematical in this sense is to ground knowledge, it
requires the formulation of special axioms that must be abso
lutely certain and that must determine in advance the thingness
of things. Descartes is thus in search of "the very first and high
est basic principle for the Being of beings in general" (MSMM
278/FD 80). As a truly mathematical principle, it must require
no further ground, that is, it must be self-grounding. Descartes's
cogito ergo sum is precisely this principle.
Accordingly, the foundation of modem science is the subjec
tivity of the subject. Heidegger makes the connection between
modem science and metaphysics on the basis of the mathemati
cal. For in his view, the "question about the thing is now an
chored in pure reason, i.e., in the mathematical unfolding of its
principles" (MSMM 282/FD 83). The mathematical provides a
bridge by means of which metaphysical assumptions find their
expression in science. Assumptions about the object of science
are not separated from the question of the possibility of knowl
edge in the modem epoch. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is there
fore the necessary formulation of the question of the thing in
that epoch.
CONCLUSION
In his early writings, prior to "The Age of the World Picture,"

Heidegger consistently maintains that the essence of science is
the mathematical projection of nature. This point is entangled,
however, in his further argument that philosophy is itself a sci
ence. He first takes metaphysics as science to ground the positive
sciences, since it is the task of metaphysics to show how a re
gional ontology is possible. By 1929 he holds that the task of
metaphysics is not the grounding of science in regional ontology,
but rather the establishing of goals for the sciences to give them
a meaningful unity. In 1935 the question of regional ontology
'
and of meaningfulness come together in Heidegger's insight that

the meaningfulness of physics lies precisely in its projection of
the being of beings, in its mathematical projection of nature.
Rather than suggesting that metaphysics has a critical task to
perform in scrutinizing science, he argues that modem science is
in its mathematical essence precisely metaphysical. Metaphysics
is no longer a science for Heidegger so much as a determining
aspect of modem physics. Heidegger disentangles the claim that
philosophy is a science from the claim that science is the mathe
matical projection of nature such that he rethinks the relations
among metaphysics, physics, and mathematics in a way that will
prove crucial to his later account of technology. Only under
standing his early view of physics so developed makes it possible
to understand his later view of both phYSics and technology.
Accordingly, Heidegger's early account of physics as science
is a view that develops over a twenty-year period. It begins in
1916 when he notes that Galileo projects space and time as
uniform and homogeneous and determines the lawfulness of
motion on that basis. It develops in Being and Time when he rec
ognizes that this projection is a metaphysical determination of
beings, a projection of the being of the beings under inquiry.
And it culminates in Die Frage nach dem Ding when he argues
that modem science is metaphysical insofar as its determination
of its object brings with it a mathematical grounding of knowl
edge. Heidegger's later account of technology, that it is not just
a collection of equipment but rather a truth, a way of revealing,
would not be possible without the development of his account
of science in these early years, for it is in these years that Heideg
ger sees that the mathematical projection of nature at work in
physics is not just a methodology but a metaphysics.
In Heidegger's later view, philosophy's task is to think being,
which it cannot do scientifically; and the essence of science lies
in the essence of technology. The mathematical projection of na
ture remains in this later account of science, but the question of
the essence of science is reformulated. The ground upon which
this reformulation becomes necessary is Heidegger's tum from
the question of philosophy as science to the sciences themselves.
That turning point has been laid out as an inquiry into Galileo
and Newton. Heidegger develops it further by looking to the
scientific method: experimentation.
2
Experiment and
Representation
THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE is c onc ern ed in l arge part with the

logic and epistemol ogy of sc ientific theory and prac tic e. Heideg
ger is c ertainl y a philosopher of sc ienc e in this sense, for his
analysis of the experimental method is an ongoi ng c onsideration
of the epistemologic al assumptions underl yi ng sc ientific ratio
nal ity, as wel l as a historic al acc ount of the prac tic e of sc ienc e
by Gal ileo and N ewton in c ontrast to A ristotle. In the 1930s,
Heidegger' s anal ysis of the experimental method is the begin
ni ng of his c ritique of representational thinkin g, for the c ul mi
nating question he poses is that of the role of mathematic al
representation in sc ienc e. He unc overs a metaphysic s of subjec
tivity in whic h the c ertainty of the experimental method is
founded upon the self- assertion of the thinkin g subjec t. Experi
mentati on is therefore underwritten in Heidegger's acc ount by
an epistemology seeking the c larity a nd disti nc tness of subjec
tive representations, a C artesian l ogic that sec ures in suc h repre
sentations truths from whic h other truths can foll ow.
S ir Karl Popper (1959) argues that the logic of sc ientific devel
opment is not one of verific ation, not one of establ ishin g c ert ain
ties and sec uring truths, but of the falsific ati on of hypotheses.
Kuhn (1970) mai ntains that the history of sc ienc e c onsists in
shi fts between inc ommensurabl e paradigms, from, for example,
P tolemy'S geoc entric universe to C opernican hel ioc entrism. T he
history of sc ienc e ca nnot be c onsidered c umul ative under
Kuhn's acc oun t, sinc e there is no l ogic al c onti nuity throughout
suc h a shift. L akatos (1970) defends the notion of progress
against the K uhnian view by arguing that rational rec onstruc
tion of paradigm shifts is possibl e. F eyerabend (1975) c laims that
" anythin g goes, " that is, sc ientific progress best takes pl ac e
when c onfl ic ting or i nc ommensurabl e paradigms c oexist in the-
'
oretical anarchism. In fact, he suggests, the history of science is

filled with idiosyncratic and irrational moments, such that the
logic and rationality held essential to science are more myth
than truth.
Heidegger, unlike these analytics, is not strictly interested in
the history of science. Rather, his concern is with the history of
being, and with human being as the location of such a history.
He thinks that history as a sequence of three epochs: the ancient,
the medieval, and the modem. The latter is determined by sci
ence, as the Greeks were by philosophy and the medievals by
religion. Heidegger's work in the 1930s on the experimental
method will move him toward this conclusion. Hence his contri
bution to the history and philosophy of science is not an analysis
of the epochal history of science, but rather of the epochs of
being. His analysis of experimentation shows that representa
tional thinking, definitive of modernity, is first and foremost
found in scientific method. For this reason, Heidegger is inter
ested in the differences between ancient and modem science;
that is, he treats the history of science in order to think the place
of science in modernity and not as a historian of science. Unlike
the analytics, whose aim is an analysis of science itself, Heideg
ger seeks to understand science toward a further end. He lays
bare the role of science in determining modernity in the West.
Heidegger's conception of the logic and epistemology of sci
entific theory and practice is not easily positioned in relation to
the analytic tradition. Whereas the analytics uncover a logic
within the history and practice of science, for Heidegger science
is part of a larger logic. The logic by which he reads the history
of science is ultimately a historical dialectic, despite his explicit
repudiation of dialectic in, for example, his 1928 lecture course,
The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. There he argues that
"all dialectic in philosophy is only the expression of an embar
rassment" (FCM 187/GM 276), but in 1940 he will argue that
Aristotle is decisive for what emerges in modem metaphysics as
the collapse of science and technology. I will lay out Heidegger's
reading of Aristotle in the penultimate chapter of this book, and
I will argue in the final chapter that for Heidegger, the history
of the West is the history of the collapse of what were for Aris
totle clearly demarcated branches of knowledge. Theoretical and
EXPERIMENT AND REPRESENTATION 67
productive knowledge merge in the common essence of modem

science and technology. This is a picture in which the history
of the West is reduced to a reconciliation within knowledge, a
reconciliation for which negative dialectic is now called, if other
possibilities for human knowledge are to be opened.
There are also for Heidegger smaller moments of dialectic in
the history of the West. I will examine these moments more
closely in a chapter on ancient science, for the accounts Heideg
ger gives of Plato and Aristotle are the clearest examples of a
logic of dialectic at work in the history of human knowledge of
nature. Heidegger argues in Introduction to Metaphysics that Plato
is a pivotal figure, both preserving and irretrievably changing
pre-Socratic insight into being. When Plato interprets being as
'L&Ea (IM 180ff./ EM 137f£.), he preserves the pre-Socratic notion
of being as presence, but abolishes being as (jllJ OL�, such that the
stability of the l:&Ea over and against the transience of (jruau; con
tains the origin of the medieval distinction between existentia
and essentia (1M 181/EM 138). Plato reconciles being with idea in
essence, a synthesis out of which existence emerges as antithesis.
Heidegger argues in 1940 that Aristotle's Physics is a similarly
destructive and preservative moment in the history of the West,
preserving an echo of the pre-Socratic experience of being, while
planting the seed that will flower as the distinction between na
ture and spirit (BCP 224/W 243). Aristotle is the site of the origi
nal reconciliation of nature and production that determines a
common essence for science and technology in modernity.
Hence it is not clear whether Plato or Aristotle is to be read as
the crucial figure in the transformation of the ancient into the
medieval epoch. For indeed, an account of the relation between
Plato's and Aristotle's thinking is sorely lacking in Heidegger's
work. In the 1930s Heidegger seems to have been looking for an
account of that transformation. He attempted to find it in Plato
in "Plato's Doctrine of Truth" and Introduction to Metaphysics,
but he subsequently located the end of ancient metaphysics in
Aristotle. Heidegger reads the history of being as a sequence of
epochs-the ancient, the medieval, and the modem-which are
radically distinct, yet bound inextricably to prior epochs by a
logic of intellectual history.
Science, as part of that history, falls into the same tripartite
68 '
epochal division, yet it also plays a special role only beginning

to be visible to Heidegger in the 1930s. In this decade, he ac
knowledge the significance of physics in ancient thought. He
argues in 1935, in Introduction to Metaphysics, that CPU<JL�, nature,
the object of physics, is the original determination of being for
the pre-Socratics. Physics is not just a discipline within a taxon
omy of knowledge, but informative of the pre-Socratic experi
ence of being. Furthermore, it is in 1938, in "The Age of the
World Picture," that Heidegger first sees that science is decisive
for the modem epoch insofar as representational thinking in
forms modernity. The experiment is the 1:6lto� wherein Heideg
ger develops the latter thesis.
On the one hand, then, Heidegger can be aligned with Kuhn:
there are epochs in the history of science which are radically
distinct. On the other hand, Heidegger's continual retrieval of
Greek concepts as a strategy for understanding the modem
demonstrates his Lakatosian commitment to the intelligibility
and rationality of shifts between epochs. Accordingly, Heideg
ger could not be aligned with Feyerabend, despite their shared
nostalgia for the Greeks. Feyerabend argues that science is not
as rational as has been supposed, whereas Heidegger's intent
with respect to science is to investigate it as the yardstick of ra
tionality in modernity, that is, as the paradigm of representa
tional thinking. Unlike the analytics, Heidegger is not concerned
with whether or not science is rational, for he holds that science
is the determination of rationality for the modems. In analytic
terms, then, he is an anti-realist.
In 1938 Heidegger argues that the modem epoch is the age of
the world as picture, that is, that representational thinking is the
hallmark of modernity. Furthermore, he argues in the Beitrnge
that representational thinking is a condition for the possibility
of the experimental method. I will expose those theses within
these and other of his writings, but also support the stronger
interpretation of Heidegger's position: modem science is not just
symptomatic of, but rather essential to and informative of, the
modem epoch. Indeed, Heidegger's account of representation in
experimentation points to Descartes as the origin of the meta
physics of modem subjectivity, and hence of representation.
Descartes's method in philosophy, as he himself points out in
the preface to his Meditations on First Philosophy, is borrowed

from the sciences, where it has been for him successful (Des
cartes 1986:4). The sciences set the standard for truth and knowl
edge in modernity. Heidegger is, then, preoccupied with the
sciences not in order to understand better their logic and devel
opment, but in order better to understand the rationality of the
modem epoch.
Hence it can be argued, with Father Richardson (1968:511),
that Heidegger is not a philosopher of science, since his interest
in science is on the way to analysis of the history of being. Yet it
can also be argued, with Karlfried Griinder, that issues of sci
ence pervade Heidegger's writings (1963:18). Heidegger is in
tensely preoccupied with questions of scientific practice and
theory, with its logic and epistemological assumptions and con
sequences, for he reads science as the determining ground of
the metaphysical epoch of nihilism. This argument will come to
fruition in the Nietzsche volumes. In the 1930s, on the way to that
argument, Heidegger continues to develop his earlier concep
tion of modem science by looking to the experimental method.
Heidegger's conception of science is traceable back to his earli
est work, that is, to his clear if superficial commitment to scien
tific realism explicit in 1912 in his discussion of the problem of
realism in modem philosophy, and to his interest in 1916 in con
trasting Aristotle's scientific methodology with Galileo's. In the
earlier text, Heidegger argues that philosophy must be able to
answer the question of realism, since the sciences are so success
ful. His assumption is that the success of the sciences depends
upon the truthfulness of their account of physical reality. In
1916, however, he argues that modem science is projective. This
thesis is typical of anti-realism. Is Heidegger, then, a realist or
an anti-realist? I argue that he does not reduce to the either/ or
of realism and anti-realism, for he holds that the experiment is
projective in its understanding, yet that it gets at truths about
physical reality.
Heidegger's view that the essence of science lies in the mathe
matical projection of nature was first evident in 1916 in "Der
Zeitbegriff in der Geschichtswissenschaft." Here he considers
the projection of the concept of time in the physics of Aristotle
and Galileo in contrast to time in the historical sciences. Using
'
Galileo's law of free-fall acceleration, he characterizes modem

science as the a priori formulation of hypotheses which are then
tested in experimentation. TIUs account is based on the popular
view of the scientific method. It is naively misconceived in that
Newton describes himself as working in the reverse order: he
experimented in order to uncover phenomena which he general
ized by induction into universal law. Yet it is some twenty years
until Heidegger will cite Newton's Principia on method (MSMM
259/FD 63).
In Being and Time the account is more sophisticated than it was
in 1916. Heidegger argues in §69 that more than the time concept
is projected onto nature in the theoretical attitude: the projection
of the being of beings gives the theoretical attitude its stance.
Anticipating the analytic debate about the theory-loadedness of
observation, Heidegger suggests in §69(b) of Being and Time that
only in the light of such a projection of the being of beings can a
fact be found and set up for an experiment. There are no bare
facts without a prior ontological commitment. Heidegger's ac
count has developed since 1916, but he holds fast to the question
of the role of the mathematical projection of nature in the sci
ences. In fact, it is in the decade following Being and Time that he
first develops this question.
Heidegger develops the question by contextualizing it in a dis
cussion of the experimental method. The focal texts are Die Frage
nach dem Ding, the Beitriige, and "The Age of the World Picture."
Three particular issues, all of which revolve around the question
of the projective nature of the scientific method, can be traced
throughout these texts. First, how is nature projected in the sci
entific method such that certainty can come from a single experi
mental result? That a single result can be decisive is a point
made in the Beitriige.' Analytic philosophy of science has raised
the same issue as the question of the crucial experiment. I use
the Michelson-Morley experiment, which disproves the aether
hypothesis, by way of a case study, to see whether Heidegger's
claim that a condition for the possibility of the modem experi
ment is the decisiveness of a single result is justified.
' All translations from this text are my own, with the generous guidance,
assistance, and advice of Will McNeill. The original will be given in footnotes.
Second, the Beitriige raises the question of the experiment by

drawing a distinction between empirical evidence and ordinary
experience. nus is not a new issue to Heidegger. He first sepa
rates the empirical evidence of the experiment from experience
in Die Frage nach dem Ding, where he suggests that Galileo and
Newton argue against the evidence of experience (MSMM
265-66/FD 69) . In the Beitriige he asks whether observation in
experiment creates or observes the phenomena at issue. In "The
Age of the World Picture" he argues that research in physics
stipulates in advance "that which must henceforth . . . be nature"
(AWP 1 1 9 /H 78). Is nature thus investigated discovered or cre
ated as an object of knowledge?
For analytic philosophers of science, this problem takes the
form of the worry that the theory-loadedness of observation
brings a threat of vicious circularity: the theory may determine
what counts as the facts, which in tum support the theory. Hei
degger's answer in "The Age of the World Picture" is that sci
ence does not necessarily create phantasms in its account of
nature. But, Heidegger argues (and still maintains in 1954 in
"Science and Reflection"), in establishing its sphere of objects,
science determines the real within reductive limitations. Hence
Heidegger treads a middle ground within the realist/ anti-realist
debate in which theoretical entities are to be taken either literally
or as fictional. He holds that science does not make up but rather
sets up its object.
TIUrd, I address the question of representation in science inso
far as that representation is mathematical. In the Beitriige, the
question of calculation is brought into Heidegger's account of
the mathematical nature of modem science. Whereas pre
viously, in Die Frage nach dem Ding, Heidegger redefined the
mathematical to mean the a priori (MSMM 251-53/FD 56-58),
in the Beitriige he asks about the numerical aspect of science. The
calculative representation of nature is also an issue in "The Age
of the World Picture," where Heidegger rethinks the mathemati
cal projection of nature by arguing that the rigor of mathemati
cal, physical science is exactitude. It is on the basis of the
conclusions about representation drawn in this text that he will
later argue that the essence of science is to be found in the es
sence of technology. Accordingly, the work Heidegger does on
'
representation and the scientific method in the 1930s is founda

tional to his later critique of technology.
These issues demonstrate three things. First, that Heidegger's
analysis of the experiment is a study of the logic and epistemol
ogy of science in the traditional sense of philosophy of science.
Second, that his account of science can be put into dialogue with
the analytic tradition of the philosophy of science. And third,
that the experiment is the bridge by means of which Heidegger
moves from his early analysis of the essence of science as the
mathematical projection of nature to his later analysis of the es
sence of science as the essence of technology.
Accordingly, the experiment plays a more significant role in
Heidegger's analysis of modem science than may be readily ap
parent. He claims, after all, in 1935 that the fact that modem
science is experimental is inadequate to distinguish it from an
cient and medieval science (MSMM 248/FD 51-52), and that to
call modem science experimental is to miss its fundamental fea
ture (MSMM 249/FD 52). He goes on to identify the fundamen
tal feature of modem science as the mathematical. It is only
through Heidegger's analysis of the mathematical, at work in his
ongoing conception of science as the mathematical projection of
nature, that his account of the role of the experiment in modem
science can be grasped. For the experiment, it seems, is an ap
peal to the facts. It ensures in experience, as Kant's first Critique
demanded, what reason adduces. Heidegger argues, however,
that the experimental method is a projection of a priori concep
tions onto nature, rather than observation and experience.
This is Heidegger's insight into the scientific method in the
1930s: experimentation is a methodological idealism. It begins
with an idea to which nature is then confined. Hence the experi
ment is mathematical in the strong sense Heidegger develops in
Die Frage nach dem Ding. When he says in those lectures that the
experiment is not a fundamental feature of modem science, he
is denying that experimentation establishes modem science as
the science of facts in contrast to medieval superstition. He will
go on to argue that the fundamental feature of modem science
is the mathematical, which means that it is projective (MSMM
251-53/FD 56-57). When this text is read in conjunction with
those written three years later, the Beitriige and "The Age of the
World Picture," it is clear that the projective essence of modem

science lies in its experimental method. Nature is conceived and
represented in the experiment.
CRUCIAL EXPERIMENTS
Some twelve years after Galileo's death, and sixty years after
the event supposedly took place, Viviani recorded that Galileo
climbed the tower of Pisa and let fall two objects. This moment
began modem science, it is commonly believed, by establishing
the revolutionary experimental method. It is odd that such a
groundbreaking event took so long to be mentioned in print; so
odd, in fact, that Favaro, chief editor of the National Edition of
Galileo's works, suggests that it must be true, despite the lack of
remark in the literature of the time, because Viviani must have
heard it from Galileo himself. Lane Cooper suggests rather that
the story is a myth (1935:13ff.). Ernest Moody argues further that
even if the event did take place, "we may be assured on the
incontestable authority of Galileo himself that its physical mean
ing was totally different from that which is ascribed to it by the
tradition of our physics books" (1951:163).
Galileo does refer twice in De Motu, written while he was at
Pisa between 1589 and 1592 but unpublished until the late eigh
teenth century, to experiments involving throwing spheres from
towers (1960:31, n. 12; 107). Both references are strange in that
Galileo describes how, when two weights are thrown simultane
ously from a height, the lighter initially descends ahead of the
heavier, which then catches up and passes the lighter. His expla
nation is that the heavier must overcome more inertia to begin its
descent. That the heavier should initially descend more slowly
is so unexpected a claim that presumably its source must be
observation. Yet this evidence that Galileo performed the experi
ment is not conclusive. At this point in De Motu, Galileo inserts
a marginal note: "Borrius, part 3. ch. 12" (1960:106, n. 2). Borri
taught at Pisa while Galileo was a student there, and in his De
Motu Gravium et Levium he describes throwing weights from his
window with the result that the lighter descended more quickly.
He explains this observation along the lines of Galileo's later
'
reasoning. It could very well be that rather than performing the

experiment himself, Galileo borrowed the account from Borri.
Whether or not Galileo actually performed the experiment
seems, however, irrelevant. Borri did similar experiments, and
Simon Stevin of Bruges claims in 1605 that he and John Grotius
had long before performed experiments involving dropping
weights thirty feet (Cooper 1935:14). Renieri actually dropped
weights from the tower of Pisa in 1641, which he reported to
Galileo as part of an exchange of correspondence that makes
no mention of Galileo's performing similar experiments (Cooper
1935:30). Such experiments clearly took place in Galileo's day.
That Galileo has been recorded as the daring groundbreaker
perhaps says more about Galileo's personality and reputation
than it does about the history of science. For, if the story is a
myth, then it is a founding myth, and Galileo is its hero. He
founds modern science by the radical introduction of a novel
method.
The hallmark of modern science is precisely that method: ex
perimentation. Experimentation is a break with the medieval,
scholastic tradition. It is a turn toward nature to uncover truths
that can be used toward practical ends. In 1620 in the Great In
stauration, the introduction to his Novum Organum, Francis
Bacon called for science to "conquer [vincitur] nature in action"
(1980:21). For him, that conquest was the noblest work of natural
philosophy, over and against the merely speculative science of
the ancients. He seeks "the true ends of knowledge," which are
"the benefit and use of life" (1980:16). In the Novum Organum he
classified the many different kinds of experiments that set the
active scientist apart from the contemplative spectator. The suc
cess Bacon anticipated for the experimental method is evidently
reached in technological achievements that have only in recent
years succumbed to criticism-environmental, social, and other
wise.
Later in the seventeenth century, in his Principia, Newton pre
sented his theory of gravity as established by the scientific
method. He writes to Oldenburg that his theory was evinced
to him "not by deducing it only from a confusion of contrary
suppositions, but by deriving it from experiments concluding
positively and directly" (Thayer 1953:7). He deduces proposi-
tions from phenomena uncovered in experimentation, and then

makes them general by induction. This method seems sound,
for it is arguable that there has never been a more successful
theory than Newton's theory of gravity. Indeed, the scientific
method, however several its formulations, has again and again
proven itself successful in the human understanding and con
quest of nature.
Accordingly, it is not surprising that when Heidegger turns in
the 1930s from the question of philosophy as science to the sci
ences themselves, experimentation is the pivotal issue. The Gali
lean founding myth of modem science shows not so much that
bodies of different weight fall at the same rate as that the experi
ment is methodologically decisive for modem science. Not only
is experimentation definitively modem, but the story of Galileo
and the tower indicates that a single experimental result can be
adequate to establish or overturn a hypothesis. In Galileo's case,
the toss from the tower overturns a belief apparently held by
Aristotle. Scholars of the sixteenth century took Aristotle to hold
that rate of free-fall is proportional to weight, and Galileo's he
roic audacity is his refusal to accept this traditional view of his
superiors in favor of the evidence of his eyes. One only has to
see once that a ten-pound weight does not fall the same distance
as a one-pound weight falls in one-tenth the time. What is sig
nificantly new with Galileo is not so much a belief as it is a
method. Although Heidegger was in 1916 ignorant of Newton's
account of method, for there is a step of generalization to hy
pothesis from several observed instances, his reading of Galileo
is filtered by the common conception of that method. In 1935
Heidegger reads Newton on method in Die Frage nach dmz Ding,
and his concerns about the experiment lie elsewhere. He is inter
ested in the conditions for the possibility of the experiment in
modem science.
In the Beitriige, Heidegger cites "the conditions for the possi
bility of the modem experiment": "1. the mathematical projec
tion of nature, objectivity, representedness; 2. the transformation
of the essence of reality from essentiality to individuality. Only
under this prerequisite can an individual result claim strength of
'
ground and proof of validity.'" The first condition is the claim

that experimentation is not possible until nature has already
been projected as representable numerically. The second is the
claim that whereas ancient methodology involved generalizing
about essences on the basis of experience and thus could not
proceed with but a single instance, modern science establishes
its evidence on the basis of an individual experimental result.
I will return to the first condition below. Here I wish to under
stand and evaluate the second condition for the possibility of the
modern experiment. Is Heidegger's claim that experiments are
not repeated? Or that repeatability validates the already successful
result? Can a single experimental result carry the weight Hei
degger attributes to it? For indeed, repeatability is a criterion of
success in experimentation. Heidegger's analysis appears
wrongheaded from the start, since repeatability and the validity
of a single result are not consistent demands to make upon the
experiment. I show that in fact repeatability and decisiveness for
a single result are only superficially inconsistent, and really two
sides of the same coin: realism.
Repeatability as such a criterion has been a focal issue in the
analytic tradition of the philosophy of science. Analytic philoso
phers of science question repeatability in a different context than
that in which Heidegger makes his claim for the decisiveness of
a single result. Ian Hacking, for example, is interested in the
logic of scientific practice, while Heidegger is thinking through
in a much more abstract way the logic of scientific ideology.
Now it is certainly the case that the analytic focus on the practice
of science has brought more insight into the genesis, develop
ment, and logic of the sciences than abstract considerations of
ideology. Indeed, Paul Feyerabend has shown that the gap be
tween ideology and practice in the sciences is large, and perni
cious (1975:295-309). Yet it cannot be denied that the impact of
the sciences on their larger social context is as much a result of
2 "Grundbedingungen der Moglichkeit des neuzeitlichen Experimentes: l .
der mathematische Entwurf der Natur, Gegenstandlichkeit, Vor-gestelltheit; 2.

die Umwancllung des Wesen der Wirklichkeit von der Wesenheit zur Einzeln
heit. Nur unter dieser Voraussetzung kann ein Einze/ergebnis Begriindungsk
raft und Bewahrung beanspruchen" (Beitrage 164).
beliefs about science as of its actual practice. By putting Heideg

ger's analysis of the ideology of modem science against Hack
ing's practically based account of repeatability, and against
Duhem's and Lakatos's denial that there are single decisive ex
periments in the history of science, I use Heidegger's account
to resolve an apparent discrepancy in the analytic tradition of
philosophy of science. That discrepancy lies in the fact that what
are called crucial experiments are not necessarily accepted by
the scientific community before many repetitions. To begin,
then, does the criterion of repeatability for successful experi
ments undermine Heidegger's claim that a single experimental
result can be decisive?
Ian Hacking suggests that talk of repeatability is misleading,
since much repetition happens by way of improving experi
ments. Relying on the "paradoxical generalization . . . that most
experiments don't work most of the time" (1983:230), he sug
gests that repetition is a way of learning when experiments are
working, or, more importantly, an attempt "to produce a more
stable, less noisy version of the phenomenon" (1983:231). Exper
imental science is difficult, argues Hacking, because the phe
nomena are difficult to produce as stable. Repetition can be a
case of advancing technically beyond earlier versions of the ex
periment, as repetition of the experiment to test the Bell inequal
ity in quantum physics has been. This experiment involves
separating particles that have interacted, the further apart the
better, and then measuring their spin. Repetition has produced
technically superior versions of what was originally a thought
experiment. One recent version, performed by Dr. Nicolas Gisin
at the University of Geneva in July 1997, is noteworthy in that
the photons were measured ten kilometers apart, whereas previ
ous versions covered distances of one hundred meters or less.
The original reason the Royal Society demanded repeatability
was to conduce honesty and discourage the fudging of results.
Once this concern is satisfied, however, repeatability does seem
a strange criterion of success for an experiment. Is it a more than
trivial demand scientifically? Newton made it a rule of reason
ing that his experimental results could be generalized univer
sally (Thayer 1953:3); having established experimental evidence
of his hypotheses, he brought that knowledge a priori to further
'
78 HEIDEGGER S PlflLOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
objects without needing experimental evidence to understand

them. Indeed, he claims explicitly that he requires "the proof of
but one experiment" (Thayer 1953:4) in order to conclude that
bodies are infinitely divisible. Given that an experiment estab
lishes controlled conditions within which results can be pre
dicted, it seems, to borrow a metaphor, that repeatability as a
criterion of success is much like buying several copies of a news
paper in order to see if the first one is true.
Yet the historical fact is that significant experiments regularly
get done officially more than once. The experiment described
above, for example, which pits quantum physics against local
realism by means of the Bell inequality, was performed at least
seven times between 1972 and 1976 alone. Not all those repeti
tions are cases of different scientists wishing to see for them
selves. John Clauser at the University of California at Berkeley
did it officially twice (d'Espagnat 1979:166). Against Heidegger's
claim that an individual result can claim validity, and Newton's
claim that the proof of but one experiment is adequate to sup
port a universal hypothesis, the question must be asked: Why
have the results of Significant experiments in the history of sci
ence failed to get accepted without multiple repetition?
This question has been taken up in philosophy of science as
the debate concerning "crucial experiments." Such experiments
produce the Single experimental result that Heidegger argues
has the strength of proof in modem science. The term comes
from Francis Bacon, who included in his taxonomy of experi
mentation in the Novum Organum what he called Instantiae
crucis. This expression means literally "instances of crossroads"
and describes experiments that are crucial in the sense that they
are decisive in choosing between competing theories. Whether
or not there are such experiments is a matter of debate, however.
Heidegger argues in the Beitriige not only the weaker claim that
such experiments exist, but also the stronger claim that their
possibility in principle is a condition for the modem scientific
method.
Pierre Duhem denies that there are crucial experiments in
physics. He argues that the scientist tests not an isolated hypoth
esis but groups of hypotheses. In response to a result that was
not predicted, the scientist must revise, replace, or abandon at
least one of those hypotheses, but "the experiment does not des
ignate which one should be changed" (1954:187). Likewise, Irnre
Lakatos rejects crucial experiments because there is no "instant
rationality" (1970:154). Within a scientific research program, ex
periments that decide between similar versions of a theory are
common. But a research program is defeated only "with long
hindsight" (1970:173). Science advances by means of painstaking
and thorough labor, not sudden, theory-shattering experimental
results. Science is simply not that transparent to scientists, ar
gues Lakatos. Only long after the fact is it possible to see what
was significant, what pedestrian, in the progress of knowledge.
Hacking argues against Lakatos's view, suggesting that in a
crucial experiment one can see at the time that one is at a cross
roads. "Crucial experiment" is perhaps too strong a term, he
qualifies, but nonetheless, some kinds of experimental result
"serve as benchmarks, permanent facts about phenomena which
any future theory must accommodate, and which, in conjunction
with compatible theoretical benchmarks, pretty permanently
force us in one direction" (1983:254). The Michelson-Morley ex
periment produced just such a result, and is in fact the standard
case study of a crucial experiment in the debate among analytic
philosophers of science. It is an experiment designed to test the
hypothesis that a subluminiferous aether permeates all space.
The truth of the matter is that the Michelson-Morley experi
ment was not a onetime affair. It was first performed in 1881.
The most famous version was in 1887. Michelson did the experi
ment five times, the last in 1925, and it has been done officially
many times since. Do the many instances of this experiment,
decisive for subsequent science, count as evidence against the
crucial experiment, and thus also threaten Heidegger's claim
that the individual result can "claim strength of ground and
proof of validity"?
The idea of an all-pervading aether was long-standing and
embedded in several other theories. Thomas Young's wave the
ory of light and G. G. Stokes's account of astronomical aberra
tion, for example, depended upon it. Further corroboration
seemed evident in Maxwell's combining of electromagnetism
with the theory of light, and in Hertz's work on radio waves.
Lakatos describes a logic of discovery in which a scientific re-
'
search program consists of a "hard core" surrounded by a pro

tective belt of auxiliary hypotheses (1970:133). The latter bear
the brunt of adjustment when evidence contrary to the theory
becomes apparent. The aether hypothesis was truly hard core.
In the late nineteenth century, Albert Michelson devised an ex
periment to test it. The experiment can be outlined quite briefly.3
Michelson split a beam of light using a half-silvered mirror
such that half the rays were sent in the direction of the earth's
motion, half at right angles to it. What he wanted to do was
measure the motion of the earth relative to the aether on the
basis of the interference effect of the reunited rays. The aether
should have a drag effect on one beam of light, and the resulting
velocities once recombined would produce a phase change evi
dent in an interference effect.
The experiment produced a negative result: there was no in
terference. Hence, concluded Michelson, there is no stationary
subluminiferous aether. He did not think that his experiment
failed because it gave a negative result. Rather, in publishing his
results, he expressed no doubt that the experiment was entirely
successful. He concluded strongly: "The interpretation of these
results is that there is no displacement of the interference bands.
The result of the hypothesis of a stationary ether is thus shown
to be incorrect, and the necessary conclusion follows that the
hypothesis is erroneous" (1881:128). He further takes his results
as contradictory to Stokes's explanation of astronomical aberra
tion, and thus allows his experiment to topple two, albeit inter
related, theories. Why, then, was the experiment performed
repeatedly by Michelson, both with and without Morley, and by
others?
One reason was suggested by Hacking: to improve the experi
ment technically. It was a difficult experiment to perform. In the
original experiment, Michelson had to leave the city and float
his equipment in vats of mercury to escape interfering vibra
tions. Horses passing the building were enough to disturb the
experiment. Repetition can be, as Hacking points out, a way of
3 Cf. Hacking 1983:254-61; see also Michelson 1881 and Resnik 1968:chapter
1 .5-7 for an account of the experiment and attempts to preserve aether through
adding additional hypotheses.
improving the experiment, yet that is not the case here. Michel
son had what he considered an adequate and satisfactory ar
rangement of the apparatus before he published his results. And
despite the availability of the technology to improve experimen
tal conditions beyond any question, the experiment continued
to be repeated well into this century. Repeating experiments may
be about producing more stable, less noisy phenomena, or it
may be an indication that equipment is the first thing at which to
point the finger when awkward results are produced. Awkward
results like the negative result of Michelson-Morley threaten
hypotheses that have a history of success in a research program
and that rightly should not be thrown over too quickly. To aban
don a core hypothesis is to open a hole at the center of a group
of theories that may fall down without its support.
Indeed, one reason the experiment was so often repeated was
a reluctance on the part of the scientific community to relinquish
the aether theory, which had done quite well as a theory for so
long and figured prominently in other theories. Scientists resist
giving up such hard-core hypotheses because to do so threatens
other elements in a coherence of theory. This means, however,
that it was not the case that the experiment was repeated be
cause it was not yet clear that it was decisive. It did not become
decisive through repetition. Rather, the experiment was redone
precisely because its decisive nature was already recognized and re
sisted.
Kuhn argues likewise that crucial experiments are recognized
for their decisiveness, but he suggests that they do not in fact
illuminate scientists' decision-making processes, except as a ve
hicle for illustrating criteria of choice. "By the time they were
performed," he argues, meaning Foucault's pendulum, Caven
dish's demonstration of gravitational attraction, and Fizeau's
measurement of the relative speed of sound in air and water,
"no scientist still needed to be convinced of the validity of the
theory their outcome is now used to demonstrate" (1977:327).
Crucial experiments are, he suggests, pedagogical tools that
demonstrate criteria of choice long after the choices have been
made. They would only be relevant to theory choice if they pro
duced an unexpected result. It is certainly the case, however,
that the Michelson-Morley experiment produced such an unex-
'
pected result. As a crucial experiment, it does precisely what

Kuhn denies crucial experiments do: it provides a decisive, if
unexpected, result.
Heidegger's claim that an individual result is decisive is con
sistent with the ongoing repetition of the Michelson-Morley ex
periment. Its individual result has the strength of proof. That a
phase change should be detectable is the principle on which the
experiment succeeds, even if that success is a negative result.
Michelson-Morley was a starting point for Einstein's special rel
ativity long before people stopped repeating the experiment.
Michelson's result only became accepted when there were other
means available-for example, relativity theory-to explain
things for which the aether hypothesis had previously ac
counted. Refusal to accept Michelson's results in 1881 without
resistance is more a reflection of human nature than it is of ad
herence to the criterion of repeatability for experiments. Per
fectly good explanations are simply difficult to give up when
they lose their perfection, until better explanations come along.
Heidegger can accordingly be used to reconcile the fact that
experiments are intended to have decisive results with the fact
that their decisiveness does not prevent their repetition from
being more than triviaL If Michelson-Morley is a crucial experi
ment, it is not because it decides between competing theories.
One could say that there are two theories: one, that there is a
stationary subluminiferous aether permeating all space; the
other, that there is not. But this analysis is at best ad hoc and at
worst triviaL Rather, there is a single fact at stake at a crossroads
where one way holds to that fact and the other way does not. The
fact of a luminiferous aether topples in the single experiment of
1881. It simply takes several decades before the scientific com
munity will relinquish such a powerful explanatory tooL If cru
cial experiments are "instances of crossroads," then Michelson
Morley shows that they are decisive in pointing out which ways
are blind alleys. Michelson-Morley falsifies the hypothesis of
subluminiferous aether decisively; it proves no positive thesis.
Is it the case, however, that crucial experiments can have a
positive function-that is, are there experiments that do not just
topple a theory, but that decisively establish a competing theory?
Modem science has as its founding myth Galileo's free-fall ex-
periment, which is considered decisive between the Aristotelian

and modem worldviews. It would seem that if there ever were
a crucial experiment, Galileo's free-fall experiment would be it.
Yet it seems unlikely that it was ever performed. As a founding
myth, however, it is completely consistent with the scientific
strategy of taking truth from a single result rather than from
generalization over multiple instances. The myth founds a meth
odology in which a single production of an observed result can
topple a theory.
Heidegger claims in the Beitriige that a condition for the possi
bility of the modem experiment is a transition of the essence of
reality from essentiality to individuality. In Being and Time he
claims that in the theoretical attitude, the "understanding of
Being . . . has changed over" (BT 412/52 361). This claim can
easily be understood as referring to the gestalt switch on the part
of the individual scientist. Or the claim can be read historically
by means of the Beitriige, which I have situated in the context of
the analytic debate about crucial experiments. To take Heidegger
to be saying that modem science is committed ideologically to
the crucial experiment (i.e., to the effectiveness in principle of a
single result) is to use analytic philosophy of science to read the
transition described in §69 of Being and Time as historicaL There
Heidegger claims to have left hanging the "question of the gene
sis of theoretical behavior" (BT 412/52 360). If this point is taken
on the basis of the Beitriige as historical rather than existential
(i.e., as concerning the history of science and not the conscious
ness of the scientist), then the question of the genesis of theoreti
cal behavior can be answered: a condition for the possibility of
the experimental method is precisely the transformation of the
experience of reality from essentiality to individuality.
Reality is no longer experienced as essences, knowledge of
which requires several instances; rather, it can be experienced
decisively in a single experimental result on the basis of a priori
formulation of hypotheses. Michelson-Morley is a crucial experi
ment exemplifying precisely the decisiveness of a single result.
Indeed, more than a theory is thrown over by the toss from the
tower. A cosmology falls. And, more significantly, a new way of
doing science supplants previous methodologies. Galileo's free
fall experiment is methodologically crucial. It rejects the specula-
'
tive metaphysics of medieval science in favor of the empirical

evidence of experience. Or does it? Heidegger argues that the
experiment does not in fact rely on the evidence of experience.
The contrast between Aristotle's method and the modem experi
ment is central to the distinction Heidegger draws between ordi
nary experience and the empirical evidence of experimentation.
Experience is simply not the same thing for Aristotle and for the
experimental physicist.
EXPERIMENT AND EXPERIENCE
Heidegger argues in §78 of the Beitriige that the experiment does

not take its validity and force of proof from ordinary, everyday
experience. Rather, it constructs empirical findings outside the
realm of such experience. Indeed, were the quotidian an ade
quate forum for scientific proof, one would not need a laboratory
in which to experiment. In Die Frage nach dem Ding, Heidegger
argues the stronger thesis that the experiment argues against ex
perience (MSMM 265-66/FD 69). He comes to these claims
through a long-standing inquiry into the differences between
Aristotle's physics and Galleo's. The focal contrast he uncovers
is that Aristotle's physics takes its evidence from experience,
Galileo's from the empirical. The distinction between experience
and the empirical is a Heideggerian innovation that warrants
careful attention. It flies in the face of a scientific ideology that
collapses the two in the experiment by taking the empirical re
sults of experimentation to be precisely proof in experience.
Aristotle is renowned as a realist, and Heidegger himself ar
gues as early as 1916 that Aristotle's method is to generalize on
the basis of experience (ZG 419). Yet Aristotle did not experi
ment. Why not? Because he lacked the right technology? He
could surely have come up with two weights and a height from
which to throw them. The modem experiment is different from
any test Aristotle may have performed in that his explanations
in terms of essences, generalized over many instances, are re
placed by the observation of single instances that can support or
undermine a hypothesis which is held by the scientist in ad-
vance. Experimentation is not central to Aristotle's method be

cause he does not proceed on the basis of such hypotheses.
The experimental method is peculiarly modem. As such, it
establishes a novel experience of nature for the scientist. Moody
speculates that "the most decisive factor in Galileo's achieve
ments in physics" (1951:414) may have been the "ideal of axio
matic formulation of a physical theory, in which the physical
postulates involved in the theory are made fully explicit, and
their consequences derived by rigorous mathematical deduc
tion" (1951:413). What's new with Galileo's science is the scien
tific method, not insofar as it is experimental, but in that it
entails the formulation of a priori hypotheses whose conse
quences can be mathematically derived. Moody argues that Gal
ileo took the ideal of a mathematically demonstrated dynamics
from Archimedes (1951:413). His method has its roots not in Ar
istotle's realism, but in mathematical idealism. For the modem
scientist, reality no longer consists of essences whose nature can
be generalized over several experiences, but rather in entities
that can be thoroughly described mathematically. Indeed, in
modem science the ideal world of mathematics overlays physi
cal reality unproblematically, until quantum theorists raise the
question of physical interpretation of their mathematical for
malism.
Heidegger argues in the Beitrage that the experiment is an ar
gumentum ex re that develops against the argumentum ex verbo of
the Middle Ages. In the same year, in "The Age of the World
Picture," he claims that when Bacon demands the experiment,
he wants "the argumentum ex re instead of the argumentum ex
verbo" (AWP 122/H 82). For the latter the ground of certainty is
divine revelation, the question is one of interpretation of author
ity, and the cardinal rule is that against contradiction (Beitrage
162-63). The medieval preoccupation with textual interpretation
is replaced in modem science by a concern for the phenomena.
One can easily construe this shift as a move toward realism, a
tum from word to world, as indeed the shift from Aristotle's
Ef1:7tELQla to medieval doctrina was the reverse move, from world
to word. Indeed, Moody argues that one must "concede a
healthy measure of Platonist and Alexandrian character to the
western medieval tradition" (1951:389). That is, medieval science
'
is determined by the abstract and generalized terms in which a

problem is formulated, rather than by the commonsense empiri
cism of Aristotle. But, Heidegger argues, the transition from
medieval doctrina to modem science, though a move away from
the word, is not a return to the world of experience.
The question of the relation and difference between ancient
and modem science is not new to Heidegger in the Beitriige. He
1916 in "Der Zeitbegriff in der Geschichts
raised it originally in
wissenschaft," and returned to it twenty years later in Die Frage
nach dem Ding. He observed in 1916 that the modem scientific
method of testing an a priori and universal law stands in opposi
tion to Aristotle's method of generalization on the basis of expe
rience. But, whereas Heidegger read the difference between
Galileo and Aristotle as methodological in 1916, twenty year
later he does not locate the difference between Newton and Aris
totle in methodology.
In 1935 Heidegger argues that for both Newton and Aristotle,
the process of knowledge comes to a halt in the phenomenon
experienced, in the thing known. He lifts this methodological
principle out of Newton's Principia, Book ill, and he cites Regulae
IV: "In experimental philosophy we are to look upon proposi
tions inferred by general induction from phenomena as accurate
or very nearly true, notwithstanding contrary hypotheses that
may be imagined, till such times as other phenomena occur, by
which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to excep
tions" (MSMM 259/ FD 63). Newton's method is an appeal to the
phenomenon that holds a proposition to be true until contrary
evidence is uncovered. Hence it is compatible with Aristotle's
method in that both look to the phenomenon as the final arbiter
of scientific knowledge.
The difference between Heidegger's views in 1916 and in 1935
does not arise, however, because he views Galileo and Newton
as methodologically distinct. Rather, it is his own thinking that
has changed. Heidegger notes in 1935 that both Newton and
Galileo argue against the evidence of ordinary experience. When
dropped from the tower of Pisa, a lead weight does in fact fall
faster than a feather. Galileo's task is precisely to account for
that difference such that his law of uniform acceleration can be
held valid. He achieves this end by appealing to something that
is not itself visible: the air's resistance (MSMM 266/FD 69). Like
wise, Newton's law of inertia applies to something that does not
exist: a body not impressed by any external force. There is no
such body (MSMM 265/FD 69). Although modem science ap
peals to the empirical in the experiment, it does not in fact ap
peal to ordinary experience. Rather, it appeals to an isolated,
controllable empirical situation. Modem science returns to the
empirical only insofar as it separates the empirical from ordi
nary experience.
Heidegger's claim that the empirical is distinct from ordinary
experience is in accord with Bacon's proposal of the experimen
tal method. Bacon based his method precisely on this difference,
arguing that "sense fails in two ways" (1980:24): by rendering
either no information or false information. The purpose of ex
periment was precisely to rectify the senses. Rather than use the
senses to judge nature, he suggested that "the office of the sense
shall be only to judge of the experiment, and that the experiment
itself shall judge of the thing" (1980:24). The empirical data pro
duced in an experiment are different-better, in fact-than ordi
nary experience.
The argument that the experiment is a separation of the em
pirical from ordinary experience can be found in the analytic
tradition of philosophy of science some fifty years after Heideg
ger first made it in Die Frage nach dem Ding. Ian Hacking argues
that experiments do not observe so much as they "create, pro
duce, refine and stabilize phenomena" (1983:230)-phenomena
that are not plentifully available in nature. He is not suggesting
that experiments create phenomena that exist nowhere else, but
rather that they produce phenomena that are easier to work with
than their counterparts in nature. At least that seems to be the
claim. But his analysis, despite its regular focus on examples
from quantum physics, overlooks the fact that many experi
ments produce phenomena not found in experience outside the
laboratory. In what sense does an experimental scientist produce
what she or he examines?
Thomas Kuhn argues in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
that science works on the basis of paradigms. The latter are
much like what Heidegger called ''basic concepts" (BT 29/ SZ 9):
the structures that demarcate and fix the area of subject matter
'
of a science. Heidegger claims that the real movement of the

sciences takes place when these basic concepts undergo radical
revision; Kuhn calls such radical revision "scientific revolution."
Kuhn argues that paradigms do not create data so much as they
determine what gets picked out as the data and how it is orga
nized. We may wish to say that "after a revolution scientists are
responding to a different world" (Kuhn 1970:1 1 1). But, using
Dalton as an example, Kuhn argues that really a new paradigm
is "an index to a quite different aspect of nature's regularity"
(Kuhn 1970:130). A revolution in science is a gestalt switch, after
which different features of reality appear for the scientist as the
observable data. Hence different paradigms are incommensura
ble. They have different data, rather than common data upon
which they disagree.
Accordingly, whereas Hacking holds that experiments repro
duce phenomena, Kuhn argues that paradigms determine selec
tion of what count as phenomena. Hacking is a realist in
Representing and Intervening: he holds that experiments produce
as more stable phenomena what could otherwise be found in
nature. Experiments in particle physics do not fit this account
quite so neatly. Not only has realism been further undermined
in quantum theory by the Bell inequality, but even the most
committed quantum realist surely would not suggest that one
could meet quantum particles in ordinary experience. Kuhn's
position is more subtle: scientists looking at the same world
through different paradigms simply don't see the same data.
What about Heidegger? Does his claim in Die Frage nach dern
Ding that experimentation is a separation of the empirical from
ordinary experience commit him to holding that the experiment
creates reality?
The earliest piece in Heidegger's Gesamtausgabe is called "Das
Realitatsproblem in der modemen Philosophie." In this 1912
text, Heidegger's inclination is readily toward realism. He rejects
a Husserlian philosophy of immanent consciousness and phe
nomenalism on the grounds that a rejection of both these posi
tions makes the establishing and determination of realism
possible.' Heidegger is committed to realism at this early point
• "Mit der Zuriickweisung des Konscientialismus und Phiinomenalismus
sind Setzung und Bestimmung von Realitaten als moglich dargetan" ("Realitat
sproblem" 11).
in his life for two reasons. First, because the "healthy realism"
of empirical, natural science has produced such "dazzling re
sults" that science stands as an "irrefutable, epoch-making
fact."s Second, he believes that the "establishing of a conscious
ness-transcendent reality is above all demanded through the fact
that one and the same object is directly communicable to differ
ent individuals."· The success of the sciences and the intersub
jective availability of objects lead Heidegger to want to ground
the validity of scientific realism philosophically.
Accordingly, he asks whether first an establishing (Setzung),
and second a determination (Bestimmung), of the real are possi
ble. He answers that an establishing of the real is possible only
on the basis of both thinking and sensation. Neither alone can
suffice to establish the existence of an outer world (der Auflen
welt) ("Realitatsproblem" 13). And he further suggests that the
determination of the real-that is, the determination of the na
ture of the outer world above and beyond the establishing of
its' existence-is in fact the goal of the sciences themselves.' He
suggests that the history of science shows movement toward this
goal unambiguously.s Hence Heidegger holds as early as 1912
that the relation between philosophy and the sciences is such
that the assumption of realism by the latter can be validated by
the former.
But Heidegger's early realism is a naive realism. His interest
in and concern with the sciences is an unreflective commitment
to their success, of which he will only later begin to be critical.
Finding evidence of consciousness-transcendent objects on the
basis of their intersubjective availability, and in large part
through an account of nerves and physiology, is a position only
possible on the basis of realist assumptions. It is Heidegger's
5 "gesunden Realismus . . . glanzenden Erfolge . . . unabweisbare, epochema
chende Tatbestand" ("Realitatsproblem" 3-4).

' ''Die Setzung von bewuiltseinstranszendenten Realitaten wird vor allem
durch die Tatsache gefordert, daB ein und dasselbe Objekt verschiedenen In
dividuen urunittelbar kommuikabel ist" ("Realitatsproblem" 12).
7 "Eine vollgiiltige, adequate Bestimmung der gesetzten Realitaten wird fur
die Realwissenschaften ein ideales Ziel bleiben" (Realitatsproblem" 14).
8 "Neben dem materialen Fortschritt weist die Geschichte der Wissenschaf
ten unzweideutig ein Vorwartsdrangen in der normalen Bestimmung der Ob

jekte auf" ("Realitatsproblem" 14).
'
faith in science that leads him to reject Kant's attempt to ground

physics in phenomenalism as inadequate.
The struggle to secure the sciences on the foundation of meta
physics remains the cornerstone of Heidegger's philosophical
inquiry until Being and Time. Heidegger begins with a commit
ment to realism because of the success of the sciences, and hence
he can give realism immanent critique. Yet he also begins very
much under the influence of transcendental idealism, which he
also thinks critically from within. This is the background out of
which his analysis of experimentation emerges. His critique of
the experiment is not that it creates its objects ex nihilo. Nor is he
any longer a naive realist, however. He has come to a position
that can no longer be characterized in term of realism and ideal
ism. The complexity and subtlety of his position consists in his
insight that the experiment is a separation of the empirical from
experience.
In the Beitriige, Heidegger comes back to the question of the
separation of experience and the empirical in the experiment.
He notes that experimentation is a return in some sense to Aris
totle's Ef.ll'tELQla. If the origin of modernity is to be traced back to
the Middle Ages, it must be further traced back to Aristotle's
interest in the empiricaL On this basis he criticizes Walther Ger
lach's argument-albeit cryptically, in "Theorie und Experiment
in der exacten W issenschaft"-that modem science had already
begun already in the Middle Ages: "If already [begun], then
back to the origin of this medieval 'modernity': Aristotle's
Ef.ll'tELQla."9 I interpret him to mean that modem science has
more in common with Aristotle than with medieval doctrina.
Heidegger's view, like that of Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions, is that the history of science moves forward with
radical breaks. Yet, like Lakatos, Heidegger believes that a
thoughtful analysis can make rational sense of such radical
breaks. Indeed, for Heidegger the logic at work in the progress
of science is dialectical more than anything else. Epochal trans
formations are Aujhebungen, in which something is cast off and
something maintained, something abolished and something
9 "Wenn schon, dann zurtick auf die QueUe dieser mitteialterlichen »Mod
emitiit«: Aristoteies, EJmEt.Qla" (Beitritge 164).

raised up. Therefore no epoch is for Heidegger free of its history.

Something of Aristotle's E!lJtELQla remains in modernity in the
experiment. Medieval doctrina is radically different from both
ancient science and modem science. A trace of Aristotle's
EI!1tELQla remains in what distinguishes modem science radi
cally from medieval doctrina: the experimental method.
In Heidegger's view, the experiment belongs in modem sci
ence because the latter can only establish its certainty through
experience. He argues that "in order that the concept of scientific
experiment in the sense of the modem science of today can be
provided with adequate certainty, it needs a view through the
steps and ways of experience, in which context belongs the ex
periment."l0 The experiment brings the assurance of experience
to results. Yet one should be wary of finding experience in the
experiment, even etymologically. The etymological connection
does not guarantee that the earlier words contain anything like
the modem experiment: "The long history of the word (and that
is at the same time of the thing), that sounds with the name
'experiment: should not encourage that in addition there, where
experimentum and experiri and experientia are found, now also
already knowledge of the 'experiment' of today [is found), or
even just the immediately prior preliminary stages."" There is
something essentially different to be found in the modem exper
iment: the intent to order by means of a lawlike hypothesis.
In §77 of the Beitriige, Heidegger raises the question of the ex
periment as a method of gathering knowledge. He argues that
there are two possibilities for the collection of information on
the basis of the preconception at work in experimentation. One
is "an indiscriminate collection of observations merely on the
basis of their interminable diversity and conspicuousness."12
\0 "Urn dem Begriff des wissenschaftlichen Experimentes im 5inne der heuti

gen, neuzeitlichen Wissenschaft die hinreichende Bestimmtheit verschaffen zu
konnen, bedarf es eines Durchblicks durch die 5tufen und Weisen des »Erfah
rens«, in deren Zusammenhang das » Experiment« gehort" (Beitriige 159).
11
"Die lange Geschichte des Wortes (und d. h. zugleich der Sache) das mit
dem Namen »experiment« anklingt, dad nicht dazu verleiten, dort, wo experi
mentum und experiri und experientia vorkommen, nun auch schon die Kennt
nis des heutigen » Experimentes« oder auch nur die unmittelbaren Vorstufen
dazu finden zu wollen" (Beitriige 159).
" "eine wahllose Ansammlung von Beobachtungen lediglich auf Grund
ihrer unabsehbaren Mannigfaltigkeit und Auffalligkeit" (Beitriige 161).
'
The second is "a collection with the intention of an order in

which [the) principle is still not at all taken from the observed
objects."'3 The latter emphasizes regularity and is an anticipa
tion of the imposition of a rule, that is, of a constant recurrence
in the same conditions.
What the understanding brings to things and therefore finds
there, Heidegger called in 1935 "the mathematical." The mathe
matical is for him not simply the numerical. Rather, it is under
stood in contrast to the empirical insofar as the mathematical
has its source in the thinker rather than experience. The number
3, for example, is found in things only because it is first brought
to things by the understanding (MSMM 252-63/FD 57-58). Ac
cordingly, the claim that the ordering principle is "not at all
taken from the observed objects" is the claim that the ordering
principle is placed there by the scientist.
The intent upon a rule is what, according to Heidegger, deter
mines objectivity beforehand in a given area of science." The
experiment is in fact only possible where an area of objectivity
is determined that sticks to rules, that is, which exhibits measur
able regularities. This is the sense in which the experiment is
mathematical for Heidegger: a hypothesis is formulated before
hand of the regularities nature will exhibit under experimenta
tion. Only because it is mathematical in this broader sense does
modem science have what Heidegger calls, in "The Age of the
World Picture," the rigor of exactitude. He suggests there that
mathematical research into nature is not exact because it calcu
lates with precision; rather, "it must calculate in this way be
cause its adherence to its object-sphere has the character of
exactitude" (AWP 120/H 79). Its prior projection of its object as
reckonable gives sense to the rigor of precision.
In the Beitriige, Heidegger argues that the experiment is neces
sary to modem science precisely because physics "is mathemati
cal (not empirical), therefore is it necessarily experimental in the
sense of the measuring experiment."1S The mathematical projec-
13 "eine Sammlung in der Absicht auf eine Ordnung, deren »Prinzip« noch
gar rticht aus den beobachteten Gegenstanden entnommen ist" (Beitrage 161) .
.. "dall iiberhaupt das Regelhafte und nur dieses das Gegenstandliche in
seinem Bereich im voraus bestimmt" (Beitrage 162).
15 "Wei! die neuzeitliche »Wissenschaft« (Physik) mathematisch (rticht em-
tion of nature is, he claims, "precisely the prerequisite for the

necessity and possibility of the 'experiment' as measuring."!6
Later he argues that because modem science is exact, therefore
the experiment (Beitriige 166). The experimental method is cru
cial to modem science, Heidegger is arguing, because modem
science demands precision. It is mathematical in the narrow
sense of using measurement and calculation because it projects
nature as reckonable. Nature is projected as something that will
demonstrate regularities, regularities that can be predicted pre
cisely and measured.
Across several texts from the second half of the decade follow
ing Being and Time, then, Heidegger holds that measurement in
experimental methodology is definitive of modem science. Yet
he acknowledges as early as 1916, in "Der Zeitbegriff in der
Geschichtswissenschaft" (418, n. 1), that experimentation as a
methodology was known before the modem epoch. In 1935, in
Die Frage nach dem Ding, he is prepared to distinguish the mod
em experiment from older versions. In making the distinction,
"what matters is not the experiment as such in the wide sense
of testing through observation but the manner of setting up the
test and the intent with which it is undertaken and in which it is
grounded" (MSMM 248/FD 52). What is this difference in the
manner of setting up the test and its intent?
Heidegger noted in 1916 that a difference between ancient nat
ural philosophy and modem natural science is that the former
"searched for the metaphysical essence and hidden causes aris
ing in immediate actuality."17 This is the sense in which Aristotle
is an empiricist. He generalizes on the basis of observations, and
therefore his account of natural phenomena begins with experi
ence. But he does not begin with the experiment, which sets up
the test in a different way and with a different intent than the
pirisch) ist, deshalb ist sie notwendig experimentell im Sinne des messenden Ex
perimentes" (Beitrage 163).
16 "Gerade der Entwurf der Natur im mathematischen Sinne ist die Vorausset
zung fur die Notwendigkeit und Moglichkeit des »Experimentes« als des mes
senden" (Beitrage 163).
11 "
suchte das metaphysische Wesen der in der unmittelbaren Wirklichkeit
sich aufdrangenden Erscheinungen und deren verborgene Ursache zu erfor
schen" (ZG 418-19).
'
ancient reliance on experience: the modem intent is to appeal to

the empirical under controlled conditions.
By the 1930s Heidegger has thought explicitly the difference
between experience and experiment. In Die Frage nach dem Ding
he laid the difference out as a contrast between Aristotle on the
one hand and Galileo and Newton on the other. In the Beitriige
he argues that it is "without the pursuit of the history of the
word, that the issue concerning a development of experience
and of the empirical is sketched toward a preparation of a de
limiting of the essence of the experiment."'· The essence of the
experiment is to be found in the relation between experience and
the empirical, not in etymology. Etymology points to continuit
ies, and Heidegger wants to point to discontinuities. What, then,
are those discontinuities?
In "The Age of the World Picture," originally read as a lecture
in 1938, Heidegger describes Aristotle as the first empirical sci
entist: "To be sure, it was Aristotle who first understood what
Ef.LltELQla (experientia) means: the observation of things them
selves, their qualities and modifications under changing condi
tions, and consequently the knowledge of the way in which
things as a rule behave" (AWP 121/H 80-81). Experience is that
which happens to one without one's doing, argues Heidegger.
Aristotle understood this. Observation in his sense is different
from what it is in the research experiment, and would be even if
Aristotle's observations had worked with numbers, measure
ments, apparatus, and equipment.
For what is essential to the research experiment is missing in
Aristotle's method: "Experiment begins with the laying down of
a law as a basis" (AWP 121/H 81). As Heidegger already knew
in 1916, Aristotle generalizes the fact from observation. But mod
em science comes to experience after the fact, as it were, since
its fore-structure entails a universal law which the scientist then
investigates in the ongoing activity of research. This ongoing
research is what Kuhn called "normal science," in opposition to
revolutionary science, in which a paradigm is overthrown in
18
"Es sei hier, ohne historischen Verfolg der Wortgeschichte, der Sache nach
eine Stufenfolge des » Erfahrens« und des »Empirischen« aufgezeichnet zur
Vorbereitung einer Wesensumgrenzung des »Experimentes«" (Beitriige 159-
60).
favor of a new one. The modem experimental method entails

observation, but observation follows behind and is determined
by theory. This arrangement precludes the possibility of inter
pretation according to the Aristotelian model Heidegger charac
terizes, in which the phenomena themselves are the basis for
generalization.
Likewise in the Beitriige, Heidegger argues that the modem
scientific experiment is more than the "looking around" of Aris
totle's style of observation. As a going toward something (Zu
gehen auf etwas) and a testing (Erprabung), the experience gained
through experiment is already what he calls a seeking (Ges
uchtes). Experience has in this account a kind of "letting be"
reminiscent of the maxim of phenomenology Heidegger
proclaimed in §7 of Being and Time that an active seeking does
-
not, since it risks overdetermination. The modem scientist pur

sues (verfalgt) the encounter with the thing. Scientific observa
tion is not simply an inspection but a determination of the
conditions under which a thing is encountered precisely
through interventions (Eingriffe). In the experiment, "we provide
ourselves with definite experiences through definite interven
tions and under application of definite conditions of a more pre
cise seeing and determination."'· The word used here, Eingriff
shares its root with the German Begriff meaning "concept." Both
German words are derived from greifen, which means to grasp
or lay hold of. The experiment is an active laying hold of its
object through intervention rather than a passive, in the sense of
non-interventionist, observing of how things behave when left to
themselves. The magnifying glass and the microscope are exam
ples Heidegger gives of such adaptation of the conditions of ob
servation. But the decisive factor in the modem experiment is
not the apparatus as such. It is the placing of the question, that
is, the concept of nature (Beitriige 166). It is the way nature is
projected such that it makes sense to adapt the conditions of
observation through intervention. Indeed, that experiments in
tervene is a central thesis in Hacking's book, Representing and
Intervening.
19 "verschaffen wir uns bestinunte Erfahrungen durch bestinunte Eingriffe
und unter Anwendung bestinunter Bedingungen des genaueren Sehens und

Bestinunens" (Beitrage 160).
'
Accordingly, the modem experiment stands not only in oppo

sition to the (medieval) argumentum ex verbo and (ancient) specu
lative thinking, but in opposition to simple experience itself.20
The distinction between modem science and medieval doctrina
is not therefore a contrast of observation and experiment against
words, opinions, and authorities, but rather of projection and
intervention against description, grasping, and discovery with
out a predetermining concept.21 Likewise, the contrast between
ancient and modem science is between experience as observa
tion and the empirical as determined by the intervening of
experimentation. In both cases, the contrast is between herme
neutic openness and a determining preconception.
VIOLENCE
This distinction is not as simple as it sounds, however. It has

never been made clear in Heidegger's work what it would mean
for an act of interpretation to be "open." The argument of "On
the Essence of Truth" hinges on a discussion of freedom in
which the latter is "letting beings be," "das Seinlassen von
Seiendem" (BW 127/W 188). The account is of truth as uncon
cealment, for which Heidegger uses the Greek term a"T)eELU,
such that the interpretation of beings that is ontic truth is deriva
tive from their originary unconcealment. The point is to ac
knowledge beings in that unconcealment as what makes the
truth of correspondence possible.
Likewise, in §7(c) of Being and Time the reader is presented
with the slogan "To the things themselves!" as the maxim of
phenomenology which is explained as the call "to let that which
shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows
itself from itself " (BT 58/5Z 34). It is not entirely clear what
20
"Jetzt das Experiment nicht mehr nur gegen bioSes argumentum ex verba
und gegen »5pekulation«, sondem gegen alles bloSe experiri" (Beitrage 163).
Cf. "Jetzt das Experiment gegen das experiri" (Beitrage 164).
21
"Jetzt der Unterschied nicht mehr gegen blojJes Reden und Zusammensetzen
von Meinungen, »Autoritaten« tiber einen 5achverhalt, sondeTn gegen nur Besch
reiben und Aufnehmen und Feststellen, was sich bietet, ohne den bestimmten,
das Vorgehen vorzeichnenden Vorgriff" (Beitrage 166).
this means, but evidently natural science is the home of such a

phenomenology. For it is when Heidegger comes to his discus
sion of natural science in §69(b) of Being and Time that he says
his preliminary conception of phenomenology "will be devel
oped for the first time" (BT 408/52 357). Despite the fact that
phenomenology is for Heidegger explicitly a method for philos
ophy, for an existential analytic of Dasein, nonetheless it is in
his discussion of the theoretical attitude that he himself sees his
conception of phenomenology being developed. This indicates a
naivete about science in Being and Time. Heidegger holds in 1927
that the sciences treat their object, beings, while letting those
beings be. I have shown that by 1938 he holds no such view:
experimentation does not let beings be at all.
Yet that Heidegger in 1927 understands his account of science
to be the place where his conception of phenomenology will be
developed for the first time is a clear indication that the question
of science is central rather than peripheral to his thinking. Of
course he takes phenomenology to be scientific philosophy dur
ing these early years, so it could be the case that he here connects
phenomenology to science on that basis rather than taking "sci
ence" to mean natural science. Yet his subsequent discussion at
§69(b) is explicitly of the mathematical projection of nature in
natural science. Phenomenology is to be developed in the con
text of natural science, not in the context of philosophy as a sci
ence. Heidegger is doing ontology in Being and Time according
to his conception of the phenomenological method. But his dis
cussion turns to natural science in §69 because he holds that the
sciences are phenomenological: he sees the theoretical attitude
as a disinterested interruption of concemful dealings. He will
later find himself wrong on this point, both through the Nazi
appropriation of scientific knowledge and through its appropri
ation toward human ends in technology.
Indeed, Heidegger chooses natural science as the place to de
velop a phenomenology of "letting beings be" because he con
strues scientific research as a modification of everyday
circumspective concern. In everyday circumspective concern,
things appear in the context of equipmentality as ready-to-hand.
In the theoretical attitude, however, entities are stripped of that
readiness-to-hand and appear instead as present-at-hand: they
'
are discovered " 'merely' by looking at them" (BT 402/52 351).

The theoretical attitude is free of the interpretive fore-structure
essential to everyday understanding, which is characterized by
fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception (BT 191/52 150).
Heidegger in Being and Time seems to hold that natural science
is phenomenological in the sense that it can be hermeneutically
open: it engages in non-interventionist observation, rather than
setting up its object on the basis of a prior determination. The
description in the Beitriige of Aristotle's method of pursuing sci
ence is of just such a "looking around."
Yet in Being and Time, Heidegger was already aware of the
hermeneutic nature of experimentation. The evidence appealed
to in support of a theory through experimentation ("the facts")
is hermeneutically determined: "Only 'in the light' of a Nature
which has been projected in this fashion can anything like a
'fact' be found and set up for an experiment regulated and de
limited in terms of this projection. The 'grounding' of 'factual
science' was possible only because the researchers understood
that in principle there are no 'bare facts' " (BT 414/52 362). John
Caputo argues that this insight "is one of the most significant
points of contact between Heidegger and the recent rereading of
the history and philosophy of science. There are no facts except
within the pre-given horizon which enables them to appear in
the first place" (1986:52). Indeed, both Heidegger and more re
cent philosophers of science have had to come to terms with the
fact that the price paid for the self-grounding of the sciences is a
hermeneutic circularity.
Yet this circularity is not necessarily vicious in the sense that
the things uncovered in experimentation need be phantasms, al
though fictitious entities can readily be found in the history of
science. Caloric and phlogiston are the most popularly cited ex
amples. Nor does this circularity entail necessarily that false
hypotheses can be contrived to be true, although the first place
the scientist looks to place the blame in a failed experiment is
often the laboratory equipment rather than the inadequacy or
falsity of the theory. Rather, hermeneutic circularity is a limita
tion on understanding, for in the closure of the hermeneutic cir
cle of objectivity it may well seem that beings are in fact nothing
more than objects, that nature is nothing more than a coherence
of forces that can be reckoned, calculated, and arranged to be

have in a predictable manner.
Accordingly, while it may be the case for Heidegger that Aris
totle's inquiry into nature was phenomenological in the sense
that it did not impose a fore-conception onto the things it inves
tigated, but drew rather its conception from them, Heidegger
cannot continue to maintain the thesis that modem science is
phenomenological, that it lets beings be rather than determining
them by prior conception. His subsequent work on the experi
mental method develops what appears as a tension in Being and
Time: on the one hand, Heidegger claims that the theoretical atti
tude is the place to develop phenomenology; on the other hand,
the theoretical attitude simply shifts circumspective concern to
the mathematical projection of nature. Heidegger fails to see in
Being and Time that the shift to the theoretical attitude is not itself
interest-free, that theory is not value-neutral.
It is, however, in Being and Time that Heidegger argues that no
understanding is possible without some kind of fore-structure.
Nature is accessible to the modem scientist only as mathemati
cally projected in objectivity. In §80 of the Beitrage, Heidegger
develops that thesis to argue further that there is not even de
scription without interpretation, since something is interpreted
as color, or as sound, or as large, for example, in description. Yet
this circularity is the hermeneutic nature of any understanding.
It is not necessarily hermeneutic violence which would preclude
that the thing known play a role in that knowledge by overdeter
mining the thing in an a priori conception. The necessary fore
structure of any understanding is not the hermeneutic violence
at work in experimentation in Heidegger's account.
Another sense of violence is to be found in What Is Metaphys
ics? and Introduction to Metaphysics, both texts that are subse
quent to Being and Time. In the former, Heidegger considers
human being's pursuit of science: "In this 'pursuit' nothing less
transpires than the irruption by one being called 'man' into the
whole of beings, indeed in such a way that in and through this
irruption beings break open and show what they are and how
they are" (WM 97/ W 105). Here interpretive violence is the vio
lent bursting of human being into the whole of beings, the very
condition for understanding beings. Science is a rupture for Hei-
'
degger in which beings are exposed as what and how they are.
Hermeneutic violence and phenomenology are reconciled in
that Heidegger holds that an act of conceptual rupture is needed
to make scientific investigation possible.
Likewise, Heidegger's account of 1tOAElwc:; in Introduction to
Metaphysics is of such a rupture that opens up a world. He con
siders Heraclitus's Fragment 53, in which Heraclitus says that
1tOAEf-WC:; is the father and king of all. Heidegger translates the
fragment from Greek as "Auseinandersetzung ist allem (Anwes
enden) zwar Erzeuger (der aufgehen laBt), allem aber (auch)
waltender Bewahrer. Sie laBt namlich die einen als Gotter er
scheinen, die anderen als Menschen, die einen stellt sich her
(aus) als Knechte, die anderen aber als Freie" (EM 47). Manheim
translates Heidegger's translation into English as "Conflict is for
all (that is present) the creator that causes to emerge, but (also)
for all the dominant preseIVer. For it makes some to appear as
gods, others as men; it creates (shows) some as slaves, others as
freemen" (1M 61-62). Robinson renders the fragment in a more
standard translation as "War is father of all, and king of all. He
renders some gods, others men; he makes some slaves, others
free" (1987:37). Heidegger has in his translation a very specific
purpose. He reads Heraclitus not as commenting on war in the
ordinary sense, but as suggesting that the struggle that opens a
world for human understanding determines both human being
and the beings that appear in that world.
Heidegger argues that in this fragment 1tOAEIWC:; "is not a mere
assault on something already there"; rather, it "constitutes
unity, it is a binding-together" (1M 62/EM 47). IIoAEfwc:; is not a
forcing apart so much as it is a collecting together of the being
into its unity in being. The struggle that opens a world makes
visible beings in their being, for beings are only encountered in
Heidegger's account within a world. Here too a kind of violence
is the condition for understanding, but it is not a violent assault
on beings so much as it is the ground of their possibility for that
understanding. The struggle to open a world is not an assault,
but in the case of scientific understanding it is preparatory to an
assault. For the question of the violence of scientific understand
ing is not exhausted by this account of 1tOAEfWC:;.
A third sense of violence can be found in Die Frage nach dem
Ding. Here Heidegger argues that there was for Aristotle a dis
tinction between what is "natural and [what is] against nature,
i.e. violent" (MSMM 264/FD 68). This difference has disap
peared in Newton's doctrine of motion. Heidegger argues that
for Aristotle, violence (�la) consists in making something do
what goes against its nature, that is, what it would not do ac
cording to its own nature. It is, for example, in the nature of
rocks to move toward the center of the earth. To throw a rock
upward is violent in this sense. Indeed, Aristotle distinguishes
at Physics 5.6.230a32 what happens as a result of natural neces
sity from what happens violently.
Heidegger's claim is that since for Newton "force [is] only a
measure of the change of motion and is no longer special in
kind" (MSMM 264/FD 68), the Greek distinction between natu
ral and violent motion can no longer be drawn in Newton's
physics. The implication of this argument is that there is an in
herent tendency to violence in modern science which itself re
mains concealed. The separation Heidegger draws in the Beitriige
between ordinary experience and the empirical nature of the
modern experiment also implies that the experiment is violent
in the sense of �la. The experiment seeks its object by constrain
ing it to behave in ways it in fact would not when left to itself.
Indeed, an experiment is performed in a laboratory precisely
because one attempts to establish the conditions under which a
thing will behave in a certain way, a way in which it would not
behave outside those determined conditions.
The problem of falling bodies, for example, is central to mod
ern physics. But, as Lane Cooper points out, "Aristotle in his
writings on physics never once used the word 'fall' in relation to
speed" (1935:14). It does not occur at all in De Cae/a, and appears
in the Physics as an example of the term "automatic" (197b30-
32). IIi.:rtTELv, to fall, and its nominal form, JtT&OL�, are terms Ar
istotle uses in grammar, logic, and mathematics. Applying
Heidegger's insights to the question of why this is the case, Aris
totle's lack of interest in the physics of falling bodies is due to
the fact that bodies simply do not fall regularly enough to make
free-fall an issue. Aristotle is more interested in how they do
regularly behave-for example, growth. Experience does not
present him with the problem of free-fall. That free-fall is a cen-
'
102 HEIDEGGER S PillLOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
tral issue in modem physics is evidence for Heidegger's claim

that its concepts are formulated a priori rather than generalized
from experience. The scientific method, based on the principles
and qualities of bodies formulated a priori-that is, prior to the
empirical evidence of experiment-is an establishing a priori of
what questions it makes sense to ask. Aristotle's questions re
spond to experience. Galileo's are formulated prior to experi
ence and then established by demonstration. Galileo's science is
accordingly not phenomenologicaL It does not let beings be, but
manipulates them, not just in answering its questions, but in
asking them.
There are, then, three senses of violence to be found in Hei
degger's account of science. The first is hermeneutic violence, in
which any understanding must impose structures upon the ob
ject it seeks to understand. Modem science is violent in this
sense, not just because it imposes an interpretive structure nec
essary even for description, but because it imposes on nature an
objectivity that determines it as obeying laws formulated a pri
ori. Second, science is a violent rupture into the whole of beings
that makes beings available for human inquiry. In this sense sci
ence is definitive for modernity as the way the modem world is
first and foremost opened up. Third, modem science is violent
in the sense of �la. It forces nature to behave in ways it would
not when left to itself. Indeed, Bacon himself tells us in his Great
Instauration, in which he propounds his experimental method,
that he intends that method as "a history not only of nature free
and at large . . . but much more of nature under constraint and
vexed; that is to say, when by art and the hand of man she is
forced out of her natural state, and squeezed and moulded"
(1980:27). Modem science is violent in all three senses in Heideg
ger's account.
In a lecture read to a small group in 1954, "Science and Re
flection," Heidegger argues that there is a possibility for science
other than violence. He traces the word "theory" to the Greek
eEWQELV. 0EWQELV can thus be understood as "to look attentively
on the outward appearance wherein what presences becomes
visible and, through such sight-seeing-to linger with it" (SR
163/VA 48), or, alternately, as "the beholding that watches over
truth" (SR 165/VA 49). Modem truth has its roots in a respectful
viewing, Heidegger argues, and there is a shadow of the earlier

meaning of 8EWgELV in the modem "theory." What this alterna
tive means for modem science is less than clear, however.In the
Rektoratsrede, and again in 1937 in "Die Bedrohung der Wissen
schaft," Heidegger spoke of breaking down departmental barri
ers and bringing to the sciences a meaningful unity. In 1955, in
"Science and Reflection," he does not make this idea more con
crete. Yet it seems that the alternative to modem scientific the
ory-that is, reflection-must entail the unity of knowledge over
and against its fragmentation, since his tracing of the history
of "theory" points explicitly to the dividing of knowledge into
specialized disciplines.
Heidegger argues that the modem term has been handed
down through the Roman conternplari. The core of this word,
templurn, comes from the Greek "tEf.tVELV, which means to cut or
divide: "In 8Ewg[a transformed into conternplatio there comes to
the fore the impulse, already prepared in Greek thinking, of a
looking-at that sunders and compartmentalizes" (SR 1661VA
50-51). Theory entails an aggressive division of beings into spe
cialized objects. Specialization brings together the various senses
of violence at work in Heidegger's account of science. The prior
determination of its object, which sets apart a specialized sci
ence, establishes the hermeneutic circle within which that sci
ence proceeds. Specialization is a rupture that opens a world in
which beings are visible in their being. And, furthermore, spe
cialization determines the object of a science that can then be
interrogated under controlled conditions.
Heidegger uses Betrachtung to translate the Latin conternplatio,
and Lovitt uses "observation" to translate Betrachtung. Heideg
ger asks what this observation is. Trachten is from the Latin tract
are, which can be translated into English as "to deal with, to
treat," or "to consider, discuss," but can also mean "to maul."
Heidegger translates tractare with bearbeiten: "to manipulate, to
work over or refine" (SR 167 I VA 51). Thus Heidegger under
stands observation as "an entrapping and securing refining of
the real" (SR 167 IVA 51-52). As Edward Ballard puts it, Heideg
ger "interprets his definition [of science] to mean that a science
of facts acquires its object by 'working it over' until it can be
viewed as present and 'real' '' (1971:42). Heidegger holds that
104 '
scientific observation sets upon its object when it sets it apart in

specialized, experimental science.
Samuel Weber rightly points to the discussion of technology
in "The Question Concerning Technology" to show, on the basis
of Heidegger's use of "nachstellen," that Heidegger character
izes the human relation to nature as one of pursuit and hunting
down (1989:981). The technology essay was published in the
same year the lecture "Science and Reflection" was given, and it
is my contention that Heidegger's account of technology arises
from his thinking about science. For I have shown that his ac
count of science as a setting up and entrapment of nature is evi
dent in his thinking in the 1930s, some twenty years prior to the
critique of technology, in the discussion of �la in Die Frage nach
dem Ding and in his critique of the experiment in the Beitriige. In
Heidegger's view, the experiment is a setup. It is violent in that
it sets beings up to behave in ways they would not when left to
themselves.
SETIING Up THE REAL: EXACT SCIENCE
Philosophers of science in the analytic tradition have shared Hei

degger's concern that science is a setup. Here the debate takes
the form of the worry that observation is theory-loaded. The
term "theory-loaded" was coined by N. R. Hanson in his Pat
terns of Discovery in 1958. He intended to establish a historicist
approach to science, and his point was more about language
usage than about the ensuing problem of realism. Nonetheless,
philosophers of science recognized the implications of his argu
ment: that there is no such thing as observation free of theoreti
cal import. This is a problem for the realist in that, if the scientist
does not encounter an object uncontaminated by the projection
of theory, then the entities that figure in the theory may not be
real at all but merely theoretical constructs. Accordingly, such
theories may not be true in the sense of accurately describing
physical reality.
Joseph Kockelmans offers a Heideggerian solution to the
problem of truth in the sciences. He argues that "one can say
legitimately that scientific claims made on the basis of univer-
sally accepted theories and adequatel y supported by the rele

vant scientific empirical evidence are indeed true" (1986:22). His
poin t is that, viewed from the perspective of the scientific con
ceptual framework, the state of affairs is how it is claimed to
be in the theory, reg ardless of how theory- laden the empirical
evidence is. His account shows how cl osely Heidegg er's account
of truth compares with what Hil ary P utnam wil l later call, in
Representing and Reality, internal real ism: within a conceptual
scheme, the entities tha t figure in that scheme are real . B ut that,
of course, is precisel y the probl em: scientific theories are sup
posed to describe reg ularities in nature, not g round consistent
fantasies. T he concern about observation is that even observation
statements may be hermeneuticall y suspect, much as Heidegg er
pointed out about description in §80 of the Beitriige.
Ian Hacking's response to th is concern in Representing and In
tervening is worth sing ling out because the position he advances
is similar to Heidegger's anal ysis. B oth rej ect the view that ob
servation is disin terested, and both focus their critique of science
on representation. Hacking arg ues that observation can not be
theory- loaded in a way that compromises all observation, be
cause " [ there] have been important observations in the history
of science, wh ich have in cluded no theoretical assumptions at
all" (1983:176), such as Herschel's discovery of radiant heat. S im
ilarl y, Heidegger arg ues in the Beitriige that a naive description
is more certain than an ex act ex periment because a description
requires l ess theory (Beitriige 166). Furthermore, arg ues Hacking,
it may be the case that technicians, who neither know nor under
stand the theory, are better at reading resul ts than scientists
(1983:179). B eing g ood at observing is being g ood at noticing
th ings, not being adept at the theoretical manipul ation of dubi
ous data.
In response to the question of the origin of two ideas, real ity
and representation, Hacking arg ues, "T here may be more truth
in the averag e a priori fantasy about the human min d than in the
supposedly disinterested observations and mathematical model
building of cognitive science" (1983:131), in an astute collapse of
cognitive psycholog y with the problem that theories may just be
g ood stories, that is, fictions told with an ulterior motive. C ogni
tive psycholog y may be just such a story. Hacking takes reality
'
to be "just a byproduct of an anthropological fact," where "anthro

pology" means "the bogus nineteenth-century science of
'Man' " (1983:131). Advancing a theory not of Homo faber, but of
Homo depictor, Hacking argues that people make representations
and that theories are representations. It is only when theories
begin to compete that worries about what is real come into play
(1983:139).
Reality is therefore for Hacking an idea that comes about in a
particular tradition of thought, but nonetheless a good idea for
a place to do experiments, and "our notions of reality are
formed from our ability to change the world" (1983:146). Philos
ophy can "catch up to three centuries of our own past" when it
recognizes that reality as representation and reality as interven
tion mesh together in modem science, which is "the adventure
of the interlocking of representing and intervening" (1983:146).
For Hacking, things are not necessarily real because they figure
in experiments as theoretical entities. But, when things can be
used to achieve some other end, then they are reaL
For example, electrons are not necessarily real when predic
tions about them turn out right, because of the underdetermina
tion of theory by evidence. Results can show that a certain
explanation containing some entity is wrong; but when results
support an account, there could still be some other account, the
true one, in which the theoretical entity does not figure at all.
But if the scientist can use some entity to do something, this
control speaks to the reality of the entity. With electrons, for
example, "if you can spray them, then they are real" (Hacking
1983:22-23); that is, in an experiment on quarks, if electrons can
be sprayed to affect the charge of a large drop of niobium, then
electrons, but not necessarily quarks, have a secure status as reaL
They have been set up.
Heidegger's realism is evident in what "Science and Reflec
tion" adds to the thinking on experimentation in the Beitrage. He
too takes exception to the modem idea that science is disinter
ested, that "it does not encroach upon the real in order to change
it" (SR 167 IVA 52). But what for Hacking is simply a good basis
for being a realist contains for Heidegger a further worry. Exper
imentation-"intervention," as Hacking calls it-is in Heideg
ger's view an encroachment. Science encroaches upon the real,
not by making it up, but by setting it up. Heidegger's worry, like

Hacking's, is not that experiments simply construct reality ex
nihilo such that theories are merely stories about fictitious enti
ties. The experiment has access to the real, but science sets up
the real to show itself in a certain and limited way: objectively.
As object, the real appears and is represented by the scientist
as a coherence of forces to be reckoned in advance. The real is
constrained in modem science to "exhibit itself as an interacting
network, i.e., in surveyable series of related causes" (SR 168/
VA 52). The real is the object that can be reckoned and secured,
precisely in the way Hacking describes the securing of the elec
tron as real in the experiment on quarks.
Hacking's analysis is consistent with Heidegger's. In modem
science, the real is put at the disposal of human being. But Hei
degger's point is criticaL The fact that modem science puts na
ture at the disposal of human being does not mean for
Heidegger that herein we have a ground on which to claim suc
cess in our scientific results, that science actually does describe
nature accurately. For Heidegger, physics is an encroachment in
that "nature has in advance to set itself in place for the entrapp
ing securing that science, as theory, accomplishes" (SR 172-73/
VA 57). The picture painted in science is reductive and never
complete. Scientific representation "is never able to encompass
the coming to presence of nature; for the objectness of nature is,
antecedently, only one way in which nature exhibits itself" (SR
174/VA 58). Science as research is the forcible confinement of
beings in objecthood.
Heidegger's argument in Die Frage nach dem Ding, the Beitriige,
"The Age of the World Picture," and "Science and Reflection" is
that the experiment forces beings to behave in a way they would
not when left to themselves: as objects. In this sense, it is violent.
The "new assault upon reality" (MSMM 275/FD 77) which Hei
degger attributes to Descartes's age in Die Frage nach dem Ding
goes beyond the rupture described in What Is Metaphysics? and
Introduction to Metaphysics. The scientific reduction of things to
objects opens a world, as Heidegger argues in the latter two
texts. Here "world" should be taken in the second sense laid out
in Being and Time: in the sense that there is, for example, a
"world of a mathematician" (BT93/SZ 64-65). A realm of possi-
'
ble objects is defined in a regional ontology. But further, in Hei

degger's view, this opening of a world in modem science is an
assault upon reality that confines beings reductively to such a
world. This assault is the reduction of nature to calculability.
In 1943 Heidegger added a postscript to What Is Metaphysics?
He argued here that calculation is the culprit in the modem as
sault upon reality: "Calculation uses everything that 'is' as units
of computation, in advance, and, in the computation, uses up its
stock of units . . . it is of the prime essence of calculation, and
not merely in its results, to assert what-is only in the form of
something that can be arranged and used up. Calculative
thought places itself under compulsion to master everything in
the logical terms of its procedure" (WMp 357/W 309). The es
sence of calculation is, for Heidegger, anticipating his later cri
tique of technology, the will to master everything as something
that can be calculated. In Heidegger's analysis, modem science
is violent in its demand that all beings can be accounted for in
exactitude.
Harold Alderman argues in "Heidegger's Critique of Science
and Technology" that technology and science are possible in a
way that does not simply assault nature aggressively. He sug
gests that the problem is not that they are calculative but rather
"their insistent and aggressive spirit" (1978:50). For Heidegger,
however, this aggressive spirit is not incidental to calculation but
at its essence. The problem of a benign alternative is hinted at
throughout his discussion of phenomenology in Being and Time,
in the enigmatic "saving-power" that remains so opaque in
"The Question Concerning Technology," and in the equally un
fleshed-out notion of Besinnung in "Science and Reflection." Hei
degger's call for thinking gives that thinking a scanty account.
Indeed, his readers are only now beginning to think through the
possibilities, witnessed by the 1997 volume of Heidegger Studies
entitled The Critical Threshold for Thinking at the End of Philosophy.
An alternative would entail a clear understanding of how scien
tific theory and practice are violent. I have laid out already three
senses in which experimental science is violent. Mathematical,
calculative science is violent in all three ways. It imposes struc
tures on beings in order to understand them. This impOSition of
structure is a rupture, an opening up of a world as a basis for
understanding. It reckons on the basis of experiments that track

the behavior of beings in artificial situations. Calculation is fur
ther violent in a fourth way in Heidegger's account. He argues
in "The Age of the World Picture" that calculation represents
beings reductively as objects.
Heidegger begins his account of science in "The Age of the
World Picture" as he has often done: with a contrast between
ancient and modem natural science. Specifically, he suggests
that we cannot construe Aristotle's doctrine that light bodies
strive upward as false in the light of Galileo's doctrine of falling
bodies. The latter is not true in some sense in which the former
would be false. Each is an interpretation that rests on a different
interpretation of beings, and thus a different approach to the
questioning of natural events. Nor can we speak of Galileo's sci
ence as an advance any more than we would consider Shake
speare's poetry more advanced than that of Aeschylus (AWP
117/H 77). Likewise, one of the more controversial points im
plied by Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions is that progress
in science is a meaningless notion. A new paradigm is not a
revision or improvement of existing theory but is rather incom
mensurable with the old paradigm. Given the radicalness of a
shift, science cannot be construed as cumulative, and therefore
talk of progress loses its meaning. Heidegger questions the no
tion of progress in science in order to say that it is "impossible
to say that the modem understanding of whatever is, is more
correct than that of the Greeks" (AWP 117/ H 77).
Other philosophers of science are horrified by the loss of the
notion of progress in the history of science. Lakatos, for example,
takes it as his task to oppose the notion of paradigm shift, prefer
ring instead "rational reconstructions" (1970:177-80). If para
digms are ways in which reality is mapped, then Lakatos's
rational reconstructions map the route from the old map to the
new one. The necessity for rational reconstruction arises because
Lakatos does not want to concede that the history of science is
itself irrational. Heidegger agrees with Kuhn that the notion of
progress is useless for comparative evaluation of the correctness
of hypotheses across epochs. Yet he need not hold that Kuhn's
view precludes the rationality of science; rather, it implies that
'
the very meaning of "rationality" can undergo epochal transfor

mation.
Accordingly, Heidegger asks what, if not this notion of prog
ress, distinguishes modern science from ancient. The former is
exact, whereas ancient E1tLO't�ftT] was not. But, argues Heidegger,
"Greek science was never exact, precisely because, in keeping
with its essence, it could not be exact and did not need to be
exact. Hence it makes no sense whatever to suppose that modern
science is more exact than that of antiquity" (AWP 117/H 77).
The essence of Greek science is not herein further elucidated, but
Heidegger's point remains clear: exactitude is unique to modern
science and thus serves as no measuring rod for comparison
with ancient science.
This idea is not new to Heidegger. He argued in 1929 in What
Is Metaphysics? that science is no more rigorous than history,
even though its rigor has the character of exactness (WM 96/ W
104). He there understood the scientist as researcher. In 1938 he
formulates this idea more strongly by arguing that what distin
guishes modern science is that "the essence of what we today
call science is research" (AWP 118/H 77). He argues that the
essence of research consists in "the fact that knowing establishes
itself as a procedure within some realm of what is, in nature or
in history" (AWP 118/H 77). The fundamental event in research
is the opening up of an object-sphere by means of projection. A
research area is defined-that is, both opened up and de
limited-by such projection of the "what" of an area of study.
For example, "the corporeality of bodies, the vegetable character
of plants, the animality of animals, the humanness of man"
(AWP 118/ H 78) are projections that determine the objects stud
ied in physics, botany, zoology, and anthropology, respectively.
Accordingly, in modern physics a ground plan of nature is
projected: nature is "the self-contained system of motion of units
of mass related spatiotemporally" (AWP 119/ H 78). Such a pro
jection determines in advance the way in which knowledge re
lates itself to its objects. This relation which binds knowing to
known, Heidegger calls "rigor" (AWP 118/H 79). The rigor of
scientific research is exactitude. On the basis of its rigor, science
can be contrasted with historiography. The latter projects a
ground plan of history in such a way that it binds itself to its
objects through source criticism. History gets at its objects

through its sources: "Because historiography as research proj
ects and objectifies the past in the sense of an explicable and
surveyable nexus of actions and consequences, it requires source
criticism as its instrument of objectification" (AWP 123/H 83).
Correspondingly, physics proceeds by means of the experiment.
It objectifies bodies in their corporeality, and thus it binds itself
to its objects with the rigor of exactitude. Because physics has as
its object spatiotemporally extended bodies, it concerns itself
with extension, with the quantifiable properties of those bodies.
Accordingly, Heidegger argues that scientific research into na
ture is not exact because it calculates with precision; rather, it
must calculate with precision because its rigorous demand as
research is for exactitude (AWP 119-20/H 79).
Calculation is accordingly a necessary part of the projection of
nature in mathematical physics. Heidegger's insight is to point
out the relation between the two senses in which science is math
ematical, an insight he previously laid out in Die Frage nach dem
Ding. The broader sense is that science is projective; the nar
rower sense is that it relies upon mathematics. In Heidegger's
account, science is quantitative-that is, experiments measure
and scientists calculate-because science is mathematical in the
broader sense, rather than it being the case that science is mathe
matical in the sense of projective because it measures. Science
does not project because it measures; rather, it measures because
it projects nature as quantifiable. Likewise, science is not essen
tially research because it performs experiments; rather, the con
verse is true: "experiment first becomes possible where and only
where the knowledge of nature has been transformed into re
search" (AWP 121/H 80). The medieval scholar is replaced by
the research scientist in the modem epoch because knowledge
has been transformed into research (AWP 125/H 85). Research
in science is the investigation into the quantifiable properties of
bodies.
In research, then, in Heidegger's view, there is a prior deter
mination of what counts as an object for a particular science. For
example, in the case of physics the scientific method has a prior
ity over nature, for physics as a specialized science entails the
determination in advance of what nature is. Nature is repre-
112 '
HEIDEGGER S PffiLOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
sented beforehand and, "being calculated in advance, . . . [is] 'set

in place' " (AWP 127/ H 87). It is, as Heidegger puts it in "The
Question Concerning Technology," represented before research
begins as "a coherence of forces calculable in advance" (QCT
21 / VA 25). According to Heidegger, this conception of nature
underwrites modem physics.
Such representation was thought in Basic Problems of Phenome
nology as the genesis of a science through the establishing of
a regional ontology. Subsequent analysis has taken that line of
thinking further to explore how nature is represented in modem
physics. The representation that grounds modem science is ob
jectification, and for Heidegger objectification changes the very
nature of representation itself.
REPRESENTATION
Heidegger gives an extensive definition of representation in an

appendix to "The Age of the World Picture":
To represent means here: of oneself to set something before one
self and to make secure what has been set in place, as something
set in place. This making secure must be a calculating, for calcula
bility alone guarantees being certain in advance, and firmly and
constantly, of that which is to be represented. Representing is no
longer the apprehending of that which presences, within whose
unconcealrnent apprehending itself belongs, belongs indeed as a
unique kind of presencing toward that which presences that is
unconcealed. Representing is no longer a self-unconcealing for,
. . . but is a laying hold and grasping of. . . . What presences does
not hold sway, but rather assault rules . . . . Representing is mak-
ing-stand-over-against, an objectifying that goes forward and
masters. (AWP Appendix 9, 149-S0/H 108)
Modem science is not phenomenological: it does not let beings

be and allow them to reveal themselves as they are. Rather, the
experiment sets upon, lays hold of, controls, and masters nature.
Hence Heidegger argues that the "fundamental event of the
modem age is the conquest of the world as picture" (AWP 134/
H 94).
Modem representing is in this sense different from Greek ap-
prehending. The Greek thinker apprehends what is, but for the
modem researcher, "to represent [vor-stellen] means to bring
what is present at hand [das Vor-handene] before oneself as some
thing standing over against, to relate it to oneself, to the one
representing it, and to force it back into this relationship to one
self as the normative realm" (AWP 131/H 91). Beings as objects
must conform to the requirements of the modem researching
mind. Likewise, Heidegger argued earlier in "On the Essence of
Truth" that propositional truth is possible only on the basis of
the adequacy of the thing to the intellect (adaequatio rei ad intel
lecturn) rather than the adequacy of the intellect to its object (ad
aequatio intellectus ad rem) (BW 120/W 181). In this sense, human
being places itself in the scientific, experimental picture in prece
dence over whatever is. The transcendental tum is the threat of
representational thinking to nature.
For this "setting before" is an objectification in representation
that secures for the researcher a certainty with respect to the
objects so represented. Representation is complicit in science as
research, for the representation of nature as a calculable coher
ence of forces determines the rigor of science as exactitude. The
representation of the objects of science determines the object
sphere of each specialized science and the certainty with which
those objects are known. Heidegger argues that science becomes
research "when and only when truth has been transformed into
the certainty of representation" (AWP 127/H 87).
This certainty of representation is secured, Heidegger argues,
and subsequently demanded by Cartesian metaphysics, in
which that which is, is defined as the objectness of representing
(AWP 127/H 87). There is no truth for Descartes about the exter
nal world-that is, the world of nature which includes even the
bodily subject-until the subject has first secured itself in the
cogito. In such an account, truth lies in the certainty of the sub
ject's representation of its object. That is to say, truth is taken to
be the correspondence of subject and object in representation.
Representational certainty in modem science is attained in the
experiment, for experimentation is precisely the method by
which science represents: "To set up an experiment means to
represent or conceive [vorstellen] the conditions under which a
specific series of motions can be made susceptible of being fol-
'
lowed in its necessary progression, i. e. , of being controlled in

ad vance by calculation" ( AWP 121/ H 81). T he experiment repre
sents by establishing a measurable picture of the movements of
a thing, geometrically, as in G alileo's Two New Sciences, or statis
tically, as in quantum theory.
In §80 of the Beitriige Heid egger ask s whether the experiment
d etermines a thing as a such and such, or whether it d etermines
a relation, specifically a cause- effect relation. He ask s further
whether this cause- effect relation alread y d etermines quantita
tively, as an " if so much- then so much (wenn so viel---dann so
vie/)" (Beitriige 165) relation. U nd er the account offered in "The
A ge of the World P icture," the answer is that the experiment
d oes d etermine a quantitative causal relation. To k now remains
to k now the cause, as it was for A ristotle, but " cause" is con
strued here, as is motion, much more narrowly than in A ristot
le's account. T he cause is efficient, and the motion is a change of
place in N ewtonian mechanics. To be able to pred ict measurable
results successfully is to und erstand and control causes.
Heid egger has alread y argued in Die Frage nach dern Ding that
all d eterminations of bod ies in mod ern science have one basic
blueprint, accord ing to which the natural process is nothing but
the d etermination in space and tim e of the motion of points of
mass ( MSMM 267/FD 71). In Introduction to Metaphysics he ar
gued that " appearance in the large sense of the epipha ny of a
world , is now the d emonstrable visibility of things present at
hand " (1M 63).22 These two claims come together in "T he A ge of
the World P icture" in Heid egger's argument that the mod ern
world is opened on the basis of the scientific d etermination of
things as quantifiable objects, that is, bod ies in motion. In Hei
d egger's analysis, the scientific representation of beings is the
key to the mod ern world as picture.
Heid egger cannot accept the id ea that a med ieval world pic
ture changed into a mod ern one. Nor could the world be as pic
ture for the G reeks. He claims that " the fact that the world
becomes picture at all is what d istinguishes the essence of the
22 I have used my own translation here, since Manheim's terminology is not
clear out of context. The German reads: "Erscheinen im grossen 5inne der
Epiphanie einer Welt, wird jetzt zur herzeigbaren 5ichtbarkeit vorhandener
Dinge" (EM 48).
modem age [der Neuzeit]" (AWP 130/H 90). But, argues Heideg
ger, the world as picture has its origin in Plato's dlio<;: "that the
beingness of whatever is, is defined for Plato as dlio<; [aspect,
view] is the presupposition, destined far in advance and long
ruling indirectly in concealment, for the world's having to be
come picture" (AWP 131/H 91). The dlio<; is transformed in the
history of thought into the idea. In the precedence of the idea
over its object, the aspect or view a thing reveals of itself ceases
to belong to the thing as U:TtOXELf.tEVOV.
Heidegger defines U:TtOxElf.tEVOV as "that-which-lies-before,
which, as ground, gathers everything onto itself" (AWP 128/H
88). Originally, Heidegger suggests, this gathering was consti
tuted by the unity of the thing under inquiry. The subject was
the thing under question and had no special relation to human
being or the "I" of Cartesian subjectivity. In the modem age,
however, human being becomes the subject and the ground of
the synthetic unity of the object in Descartes's assertion of the ego
cogito as the ground of knowledge. That human being becomes
subject and the thing object are simultaneous events for Heideg
ger (AWP 133, 151/H 93, 109).
The essence of the modem epoch is, for Heidegger, the world
picture. It is not a picture of the world, but "the world conceived
and grasped as picture" (AWP 129/H 89). For everything that is,
is only to the extent that human being sets it up and represents
it, that is, only to the extent that it is picturable. Likewise, what
is not available to be represented in experiment, simply is not
for science. Silvio Vietta recounts: "While I was still in school
Heidegger took me along on a walk and explained to me in per
ceiving the colors of one of the branches hanging over a garden
fence, the tendency of modem science and especially physics to
resolve its object into abstract measurements, here the frequency
of light waves"23 (1977:234). Color is as light waves for the scien
tist. Other possibilities, such as those for the artist or the person
strolling along a country lane, do not exist in the scientist's
23 "Noch wahrend meiner Schulzeit nahm Heidegger mich einmal auf einen
Spaziergang mit und eriauterte mir an der Wahrnehmung der Farben eines
iiber einen Gartenzaun hiniiberhangenden Zweiges die Tendenz modemer
Naturwissenschaft und insbesondere der Physik, ihren Gegenstand in abs
trakte Messgrossen, hier die Frequenzwerte der Lichtwellen, aufzulosen."
'
shrunken world. This limited view of color is not an isolated

interpretation of a tree, but rather part of an interpretation of an
entire world. Vietta's example is pertinent not only to show how
modern scientists pursue their science on the basis of a represen
tation of nature, for the scientific representation of beings is deci
sive for the modern age in Heidegger's account.
Against that ground, against the world as picture, Heidegger
argues that what is "does not come into being at all through
the fact that [human being] first looks upon it, in the sense of a
representing" (AWP 131/H 90). The thing is in being before
human being makes it into an object of understanding. Heideg
ger argues in Introduction to Metaphysics that qn)OU; is much
richer than the modern concept of nature, that it was, in fact,
being itself for the Greeks. He makes a similar point in the Bei
triige, where he suggests that qnJOL� is the a priori, for it is that
which is earliest and first in coming to presence.2' <PUOL� is prior
to experience. He argues that the a priori came to belong to the
subject by means of Plato's LOW. With the 'Low, the a priori
becomes the perceptio and accordingly the ego percipio that is allo
cated to the subject. Hence it comes to precedence in representa
tion.25 But there is something prior to subjective representation.
Heidegger's point throughout the 1930s is that being is prior to
understanding.
Accordingly, scientific representation produces only illusory
control of nature. Research calls beings into account according
to the extent that they can be "put at the disposal of representa
tion" (AWP 126/H 86). But there is more to CPUOL�, the original
Greek interpretation of what is of its own accord, than there is
to the modern interpretation of nature as object. Likewise,
Heidegger implies, there is more to nature than the modern con
ception acknowledges. There are not just beings that are repre
sented by the human subject. There is also being.
But being cannot be set up and mastered as a picture. Being
cannot be represented. Heidegger noted the difficulty of pictur-
24 "Das FrOheste, Erst-Anwesende, die Anwesung ist die 'Il1JliL<; selbst" (Bei
triige 222).
25 "Das Apriori wandelt sich mit der WEa zur perceptio, d.h. das Apriori wird
dem ego percipio und damit dem »5ubjekt« zugewiesen; es kommt zur Vorgan
gigkeit des Vor-steIlens" (Beitriige 223).
ing being in the early pages of Basic Problems of Phenomenology

(BPP 13/GP 18). In his later years, in What Is Called Thinking?, he
holds to his claim that being cannot be grasped as a concept: "If
we stop for a moment and attempt, directly and precisely and
without subterfuge, to represent in our minds what the terms
'being' and 'to be' state, we find that such an examination has
nothing to hold onto" (WCT 225/WHD 137). The German for
"concept" is Begriff from greijen, meaning to grasp or lay hold
of. Heidegger's argument that being is not a concept is the claim
that an examination of being has nothing to hold onto. Being
cannot be set up and mastered as a picture, a representation.
Hence its forgottenness in the age of the world picture. And
hence in particular its forgottenness in modern science: the ex
perimental method, so successful in physics, is useless in meta
physics. For beings can be set up in an experiment, but being
cannot.
CONCLUSION
Heidegger's critique of the experimental method is therefore sig

nificant for both the analytic and the Continental traditions of
philosophy. It promises a bridge to the analytic tradition, a
bridge that is long overdue across a distinction that is more of a
hindrance than an asset to contemporary thinkers. I have
pointed to some of the places where connections can be forged,
both to treat concerns from Heidegger in analytic terms and to
respond to analytic philosophy of science with a Heideggerian
view.
Furthermore, Heidegger's critique of experimentation proves
foundational to his later critique of the modern epoch. His cri
tique of technology would not corne into being without the ac
count of representational thinking he gives in the context of the
experimental method in science. Heidegger's treatment of the
experiment reveals that the modern epoch, in its determination
by representation, is determined by science. Modern science is
not just one aspect of the modern age among others, but rather
the basis from which Heidegger brings the modern epoch as a
whole to light critically in "The Age of the World Picture." For
'
representational thinking, which underwrites modernity, has its

genesis in the scientific method. Modem science is not just
symptomatic of the age of representation. That is to say, it is not
the case that representation informs modem science because it
informs modernity and modem science is therein located.
Rather, modem science determines the modem epoch as the age
of representation. The experiment is the "t()Jto<; where Heidegger
develops his account of representational thinking that stands at
the basis of his critique of modernity.
3
Science in the Institution
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO is to be found Massey College,

a residence housing about sixty graduate students, with three
rooms set aside for the Canadian Institute of Theoretical Astro
physics. At breakfast, residents regularly meet physicists of in
ternational repute or postdoctoral fellows. Among the latter, a
common worry is expressed: when the one-year postdoc runs
out, "Should I take a job teaching high school physics, with al
most no prestige, not much of money, and no future in research?
Or should I take a well-paid, prestigious research job working
for the American military?" What happens to knowledge when
scientists face such a choice? Who decides the direction and
focus of research?
The Nazi appropriation of the German university toward po
litical ends presented academics of that day with such a di
lemma. Heidegger's analysis of science in the institution is a
developing critique of the university when it is thus appro
priated. In his account, the sciences stand at the core of the mod
em university, and the latter is a place in which to unify
knowledge and evaluate it by asking the question, What is worth
knowing? Heidegger's eye-opening experience as rector in Frei
burg disillusioned him with respect to the possibility of raising
such a question within the academy. He objected to the political
appropriation of the university and its conversion into profes
sional schools. And he witnessed his university in the 1930s
powerless to resist its appropriation to a political program.
Heidegger's involvement with the Nazis began with his elec
tion to the post of rector of the university in Freiburg. His infa
mous Rectoral Address upon assuming that position is central
to his critique of the Betriebscharakter of the sciences in the uni
versity. Accordingly, there are ethical and political reasons for
coming to grips with the question of science in the institution in
Heidegger's thinking. But I do not intend to contribute to the
'
burgeoning body of literature prompted by Farias's condemna

tion of Heidegger in 1987. Hugo Ott, Karsten Harries, Luc Ferry
and Alain Renault, Richard Wolin, Julian Young, GUnther Neske
and Emil Kettering, Pascal David, Thomas Sheehan, and Ernst
Nolte, to name but a few, have established the debate concerning
the historical, ethical, and political consequences of Heidegger's
Nazism, and I leave the implications of his critique of the univer
sity in the context of his Nazism to them. My concern is rather
to understand Heidegger's conception of the place and role of
the sciences in the university. I intend to show that for Heideg
ger, the sciences are a human destiny realized as nihilism in the
fate of the university.
The texts that must be read to lay bare Heidegger's view of
the sciences in the university are Wiult Is Metaphysics? and the
Rektoratsrede. In both, Heidegger attributes to the university a
role in human destiny. He suggests that the university can over
come the fragmentation of knowledge into particular disciplines
by asking what it is valuable to know. If this question, What
is worth knowing?, is set up as a context in which to interpret
Heidegger on nihilism, then the sciences are central to his cri
tique of modernity and his suggestion of an alternative task and
conception for thinking. Heidegger's analysis of science in the
institution thus raises the question that will drive his later
thought, while underscoring his political naIvete with respect to
the task and power of the university.
First, I trace Heidegger's account of the nothing. In Being and
Time and Basic Problems oj Phenomenology, Heidegger argues that
the nothing is at the core of Dasein. Since this core is Dasein's
temporality, his readings of Hegel and Aristotle on time in these
texts are crucial moments in understanding the connection for
Heidegger between the sciences and the nothing in the very
structure of human understanding. The nothing is for Heidegger
both the possibility of ontology, in that Dasein's temporality
opens the question of being, and the condition for the possibility
of the ontic sciences.
Subsequent to Being and Time and Basic Problems oj Phenome
nology, Heidegger argues in What Is Metaphysics? that the sci
ences are a project erected in the face of the nothing. With the
intent of shedding new light on Heidegger's account of nihilism
SCIENCE IN THE INSTITUTION 121
by reading it with respect to the sciences, I show that Heidegger

takes the sciences to be a human destiny and that this destiny is
nihilism. This line of thought culminates in his treatment of ni
hilism in the Nietzsche lectures. Here nihilism is read not just as
a philosophical position in modernity, but rather a destiny that
began with Plato. This account is absurdly reductionist of the
history of philosophy, yet it contains the analysis that is the basis
for Heidegger's later critique of modernity, for his various previ
ous destructions and reconstructions of the history of philoso
phy are superseded here by a single broad sketch of that history.
The significance of this sketch is not as an account of the history
of philosophy. Rather, it lies in the fact that in these lectures
Heidegger first comes to the question of technology, and it is
this vision of quintessentially modem nihilism that sets the stage
for his analysis of the poverty of representational thinking.
Sandwiched between the earlier treatments of the nothing and
the later discussion of nihilism are to be found Heidegger's
claims about the sciences institutionalized in the university.
Against the background of the nothing and nihilism, I examine
what Heidegger says about the university in What Is Metaphys
ics? and the Rektoratsrede: the task of the university is to unify
the sciences in order to ask what it is valuable to know. By 1937
Heidegger is disillusioned and no longer sees the university as
the place to raise the question of what is worth knowing, yet
this question stays with him and remains for him a question
of reflection upon the sciences. I conclude by arguing that an
alternative possibility to the nihilism of representational think
ing-an alternative that grows in Heidegger's work to an explicit
call for thinking and reflection, and which is recognized among
his readers as the possibility of thinking beyond the confines
of the history of metaphysics-is for Heidegger, insofar as he
explains it at all, possible only through and as reflection upon
the sciences.
The significance of Heidegger's critique of institutionalized
science to his philosophy of science is his insight that the sci
ences are not value-free. In Being and Time he argued in §69 that
the movement to the theoretical attitude is a move away from
the involvement of readiness-to-hand, that the scientific object
is freed in its objectivity from concemful dealings. Heidegger's
'
critique of the university renders it impossible to hold that scien

tific objectivity is free of social, political, and historical interests.
His philosophy of science owes its critique of representational
thinking in large part to his resistance to the notion of objectivity
in the sciences. In 1927 he accepted the objectivity of the sciences
easily. Beginning in 1929, his critique of institutionalized science
in the face of the political appropriation of the university con
tains the insight that the sciences are a politically and historically
situated hermeneutic project rather than the interest-free pursuit
of objectivity.
Heidegger argues in What Is Metaphysics? that the university
is determined by science. He suggests that this is because science
has become the passion that determines the existence, in a com
munity of researchers, teachers, and students, of those who at
tend his address (WM 96/ W 103). There are two points that must
be made about this claim. First, Heidegger here envisions sci
ence not as simply an existential project, that is, not as the under
standing of particular, individual Dasein that was described in
§69 of Being and Time as switching over from concemful dealings
to the theoretical attitude. Rather, he takes scientific understand
ing to constitute and in turn be constituted by a community of
thinkers.
Imre Lakatos claims likewise that science progresses in "re
search programs" (1970:132), communities of scientists, rather
than through the work of individual scientists. Thomas Kuhn
argues that paradigms provide "membership in the particular
scientific community with which [the scientist] will later prac
tice" (1962:110). Science is not the project of an individual scien
tist so much as of a community of researchers. For Lakatos this
insight is significant for his claims about the historical character
of science (1970:120), and likewise for Kuhn it is the basis for a
historical analysis of science. Patrick Heelan goes so far as to
argue that contemporary problems in quantum physics cannot
be solved without an adequate philosophical understanding ac
knowledging social and historical processes and requiring "a
perspective of the kind provided by Heidegger" (1995:581), a
perspective in which science is understood to take place in a
historically and politically situated community. Although I can
not readily accept that every quantum measurement is "a social
and historical intervention" (Heelan 1995:581)---since it seems to

me a fallacy to draw such a conclusion from the fact that quan
tum theory is itself a historically situated project, and nor do I
hold that theoretical problems in quantum physics can necessar
ily be solved by historical analysis-nonetheless acknowledg
ment of the hermeneutic nature of science, of the fact that
science is a communal project not free from a basis in history, is
an insight whose impact is not yet complete. Enlightenment and
positivistic ideals of transhistorical truth have been superseded
by, for example, the feminist analyses of Sandra Harding's
standpoint theory, and Nancy Tuana. They argue not just that
gender has an impact on the history of science, but also that the
history of science is gender-biased (d. Harding 1991:28ff.; Tuana
1989:147ff.). Heidegger's hermeneutic account of truth, evident
as early as §44 of Being and Time and explicit in "On the Essence
of Truth," conduces a sense of the historical and political situat
edness of the science. It is not surprising, then, that Heidegger
recognized that science happens in a community of researchers
in 1929 when he claimed that science determines the existence
of his audience in a community. That the sciences and the uni
versity are socially, politically, and historically situated is, in
fact, the basis for Heidegger's critique of the university.
Second, Heidegger understands the university in terms of the
sciences, not the humanities where he himself teaches. This
seems a much different view from his later claims about the im
potence of the sciences (SR 176/VA 60), and the claim made re
peatedly in What Is Called Thinking? that "science does not
think." In the latter text, however, this claim is made against
the background that "most thought-provoking in our thought
provoking time is that we are still not thinking" (WCT 4/WHD
2). It is not just science which does not think here, but an unspec
ified "we." I read that "we" as "we academics." The later Hei
degger is disillusioned not just with the sciences, compared to
his view of their significance and power in 1929, but also with
the university. I suggest that for Heidegger the sciences and the
university remain inextricably tied, for the university is the
home of knowledge in modernity, and the sciences are para
digmatic and determinative for that knowledge. Heidegger gives
priority in the university to the sciences in 1929 because by 1929
'
his insight that the sciences are definitive of modernity is incip

ient.
THE NOTHING
Heidegger argues that reflection on the fact that the university is

determined by science uncovers a controversy: the controversy
of the nothing. The question of the nothing arises because "sci
entific existence is possible only if in advance it holds itself out
into the nothing" (WM 111/W 121). The sciences always take a
particular realm of being as their object, and therefore they deal
only with beings and want to know nothing of the nothing. As
Heidegger puts it in 1935, one "who wishes truly to speak about
nothing must of necessity become unscientific" (1M 25/EM 19-
20), for nothingness remains inaccessible to science. To proceed
with a science, one must assume its object in a denial of nothing
ness. Nonetheless, reflection on the sciences comes to the ques
tion of the nothing (WM 98/W 106). The university, in its essence
as science, is founded on the nothing. What sense can be made
of this claim?
Heidegger offers three propositions to illuminate the existence
of the thinker in the university, whom he calls "the scientific
man (der wissenschaftliche Mensch)":
That to which the relation to the world refers are beings them
selves-and nothing besides.
That from which every attitude takes its guidance are beings
themselves-and nothing further.
That with which the scientific confrontation . . . occurs are be-
ings themselves-and beyond that nothing. (WM 97/W 105)
The sciences are such that beyond, further, and besides the be
ings they investigate, there is nothing. Knowledge questions be
ings in opposition to the nothing, and, further, is grounded in
that very opposition. For it is only in the face of the nothing that
one wonders about beings and questions them.
For, Heidegger argues, the human pursuit of science is "the
irruption of one being called 'man' into the whole of beings . . .
in such a way that in and through this irruption beings break
open and show what they are and how they are" (WM 97/W
105). He has already held in Being and Time that human being
has an understanding of being which grounds it existentially. In
Basic Problems of Phenomenology he expressed this claim as the
thesis that human being stands in the ontological difference, that
is, the difference between being and beings. Here, in What Is
Metaphysics?, Heidegger claims that beyond beings, there is
nothing. This claim stands in marked contrast to his earlier claim
that beyond beings, there is being.
In 1929 Heidegger has taken to heart the Hegelian proposition
that "Pure Being and pure Nothing are therefore the same" (qtd.
at WM 1l0/W 120). The nothing, he suggests, belongs to the
being of beings such that the problem of being is not so much
expressed in the old proposition that ex nihil nihilo fit (nothing
comes from nothing) as in the proposition that ex nihilo omne ens
qua ens fit (from nothing comes every being as a being). The cen
tral question of metaphysics is then for Heidegger in 1929, "Why
are there beings at all, and why not rather nothing?" (WM 112/
W 122). This question is so central for him that he poses it in
1935 in Introduction to Metaphysics as the fundamental question
of metaphysics.
Heidegger has long been critical of accounts of the nothing
that take it to be derivative. In Basic Problems of Phenomenology
he criticizes Kant for taking negation to be the opposite of reality
(BPP 35/GP 47). He argues that the Kantian thesis that being is
not a real predicate renders possible a positive determination of
being only as position. Heidegger wishes to read the question of
being more deeply than the claim that "perception and absolute
position are the sole character of actuality" (BPP 47/GP 64). He
further objects to the logical conception that a negative judgment
is derivative upon a positive one, arguing that such interpreta
tions of the copula suffer a want of radical inquiry (BPP 201ff./
GP 286). In both cases the complaint is the same: interpreting
negation as determined primordially by affirmation, the nothing
as derivative upon being, forecloses upon the inquiry into being.
Heidegger calls instead for a radical inquiry. There is, he sug
gests, a deeper sense of the nothing. In both Basic Problems of
Phenomenology and Being and Time, he uncovers the nothing in
the constitution of Dasein itself. In the former text he argues
126 '
that negation can only be taken as derivative upon affirmation

because absence is a modification of presence. He does not in
tend to make presence prior to absence when he calls the latter
a modification of the former, but rather to suggest that absence
and presence belong together at the core of Dasein's under
standing of being. This is only possible, he argues, through Da
sein's temporality (BPP 311 /GP 442).
In Basic Problems of Phenomenology, reading Aristotle's treatise
on time at Physics 4.10-14, Heidegger quotes Aristotle's claim
that time is the "number of a motion with respect to the prior
and the posterior" (Phys 4.11.219b1). Time is for Aristotle contin
uous, and within that continuity the "now" functions not as a
discrete moment of some particular duration, but as the demar
cation of the past from the future. Accordingly, Aristotle holds
that the "now" is not time, but rather an attribute of time. Hence
Heidegger claims that time is for Aristotle horizonal in nature:
"time is this, namely, something counted which shows itself in
and for regard to the before and after in motion or, in short,
something counted in connection with motion as encountered in
the horizon of earlier and later" (BPP 235/GP 353). Indeed, for
Aristotle, time is a measure of motion, which always happens in
the present. The latter, as the "now," serves to distinguish the
past from the future.
If time is then a manifold of "nows," it is a manifold of non
existent nows, that is, of the no-longer-now of the past which is
prior, and the not-yet-now of the future which is posterior (BPP
247/GP 349). Most of the nows that make up the manifold of
time are non-existent. Accordingly, "time . . . has two arms
which it stretches out in different directions of non-being" (BPP
233/GP 331). It is this reading of Aristotle on time that begins
Heidegger's account of the nothing at the core of Dasein, for
Aristotle's definition of time gets at Dasein's temporality, which
stretches horizontally between past and future.
What is described in Aristotle's account of time is therefore
more originary in Heidegger's view than the common concep
tion of time that is found in clock usage. Aristotle's account of
time is certainly historically prior to clock usage. But Heidegger
is more interested in a logical priority: time in the common sense
of what is measured by clocks is derivative upon the more ori-
ginary experience of time which is Dasein's temporality. Dasein

has time, Heidegger argues, in the following sense: Dasein takes
time into account in its daily activities. It projects itself into a
future. For instance, Heidegger explains, when he looks at his
watch during the lecture, it is to see how much time is left until
the scheduled end at nine o'clock. Reckoning time with a clock
is "a modification from the primary comportment toward time
as guiding oneself according to it" (BPP 258/GP 365). One can
guide oneself according to time by using a clock only because
time is the horizon from which Dasein understands being. Tem
porality is the basis for understanding time in clock usage be
cause temporality is what makes any understanding at all
possible.
Furthermore, clock usage gives temporality a publicness. Here
Heidegger finds something to time that he claims Aristotle and
the tradition of philosophy have overlooked (BPP 262/GP 370).
Time has "the character of significance" (BPP 262/GP 370) in a
sense Heidegger says he already had in view in another context,
by which I take it he intends Being and Time, where significance
is described in much the same terms and is also said to make up
the structure of the world (BT 120/52 87) and to be the ontologi
cal condition of language (BT 121/52 87). Significance is the "to
tality of relations of the in-order-to, for-the-sake-of, for-that
purpose, to-that-end" (BPP 262/GP 370). This feature of time,
significance, characterizes, he argues, the world as world in gen
eral, and hence, although time is originally as temporality con
stitutive of Dasein, it is reckoned as world-time. Temporality,
then, as a horizon from the no-longer of the past to the not-yet
of the future, is fundamental to Dasein's being in a world and to
its being with others publicly.
Heidegger argues in Basic Problems of Phenomenology that it is
only on the basis of Dasein's temporality that Dasein can find
something missing. Dasein's being has as its essential character
istic transcendence, Heidegger argues, its overstepping and
going beyond that makes Dasein "exactly not the immanent"
(BPP 299/GP 425). Transcendence means to understand oneself
from a world, to exist beyond the here and now of the present,
to be already outside oneself among other beings. Dasein is in a
world only because Dasein anticipates a future and, in doing so,
'
stands outside itself. Hence the ecstatic nature of temporality,

from the Latin ex, meaning "out of," and sto, stare, stiti, statum,
meaning "to stand." The nothing that is Dasein's temporality is
constitutive of Dasein's very existence.
Heidegger argues late in Basic Problems of Phenomenology that
Hegel is "on the track of a fundamental truth when he says that
being and nothing are identical, that is, belong together" (BPP
31l-12/GP 443). This brief reference to Hegel is less than en
lightening, and only makes sense if both being and the nothing
are understood to be at the core of Dasein in its temporality.
That the nothing is at the core of Dasein is abundantly clear from
Basic Problems of Phenomenology. But how is it the case that being
is also at the core of Dasein such that being and nothing can be
taken to belong together?
In Being and Time, Heidegger argues that the nothing is consti
tutive of Dasein's temporality, and hence of Dasein, in a further
sense. He argues that in anxiety, Dasein "finds itself face to face
with the 'nothing' of the possible impossibility of its existence"
(BT 310/52 266). Being-towards-death is precisely this anxiety.
Later he says that anxiety in the face of the nothing "unveils the
nullity by which Dasein, in its very basis, is defined" (BT 356/52
308). This nullity is faced authentically in anticipatory resolute
ness, that is, in Dasein's unflinching thinking toward its own
death. Hence Heidegger answers "Certainly" to the question,
"does not anxiety get constituted by a future?" (BT 393/52 343).
Anxiety, and therefore authenticity too, is temporal and experi
enced through Dasein's self-aware finitude, that is, through its
absolutely certain yet thoroughly indefinite death. The nothing
ness at Dasein's core is its own potential nonbeing. But in au
thenticity lies for Dasein also the possibility of the question of
being.
In its temporality, then, Dasein encounters its own finitude, in
the face of which it experiences anxiety. In §82 of Being and Time,
Heidegger explicates Hegel's interpretation of time by arguing
that for Hegel time is experienced fundamentally as the possibil
ity of one's own nonbeing. He sees Hegel as making much the
same move he did himself earlier in Being and Time when he
argued that the nullity by which Dasein is defined in its very
basis is as thrownness toward death (BT 356/52 308). Dasein's
temporality is both its authenticity, its being toward its own

death that makes inquiry into the question of being possible, and
its anxiety, in the face of which it loses itself among beings in
the sciences. According to Debra Bergoffen's Lacanian account,
the scientific passion for knowledge is an Oedipal response to
the nothing, that is, "the emptiness of the Thing" (1995:575). In
deed, Heidegger argues in 1929 that the sciences institutional
ized in the university are made possible by their opposition to
the nothing.
Hence temporality singles out Dasein as the one who stands
in the ontological difference: the difference between being and
beings. Being is not a being: it is the nothing in the face of which
Dasein holds itself out in a stance toward beings. The sciences,
Heidegger argues in What Is Metaphysics?, are precisely such a
taking of a stance toward beings. The nothing is at the very core
of Dasein's temporality and is the condition for the possibility
of understanding. Against the background of his interpretation
of Aristotle and Hegel on time in Being and Time and Basic Prob
lems of Phenomenology, Heidegger makes the claim in What Is
Metaphysics? that the sciences hold themselves out into the
nothing.
Accordingly, the nothing at the core of Dasein has both onto
logical and ontic significance. At the very heart of Dasein's exis
tence is the possibility of ontology in that Dasein's own
possibility of nonbeing is its authenticity, its access to the ques
tion of being. At the same time, however, Dasein's existence is
inseparable from what Heidegger calls, in "On the Essence of
Truth," insistence, its preoccupation with beings that is manifest
as the ontic sciences. The nothing constitutes Dasein's temporal
ity pivotally: Dasein can embrace the nothing in the question of
being, or flee the nothing by busying itself with the sciences.
Heidegger maintains explicitly in What Is Metaphysics? that
only because the nothing is manifest in the ground of Dasein can
the strangeness of beings overwhelm human being (WM l11 / W
121). I n Being and Time Heidegger spoke of this strangeness as
an uncanniness: Dasein is unheimlich, thrown into the world as
the "not-at-home" (BT 321/5Z 276-77). Dasein calls silently to
being in the face of its own anxiety of being-towards-death. In
Dasein's everyday existence, argues Heidegger, this uncanniness
'
130 HEIDEGGER S PllLOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
is covered up. It is only the silent call of being, which Dasein

calls to itself, that retrieves Dasein to authentic existence, that is,
to the question of being. In Being and Time Heidegger argues that
Dasein flees in the face of the anxiety of encountering the noth
ing, that this fleeing is not a turning away so much as a turning
thither "towards entities within-the-world by absorbing itself in
them" (BT 230/52 186).
In What Is Metaphysics? Heidegger suggests that Dasein loses
itself among beings in pursuing the sciences, and that only the
exploration of the sciences that uncovers the nothing upon
which they are founded comes to this strangeness. This strange
ness evokes wonder, he argues, such that then the "why?" looms
before human being, which responds by inquiring into grounds
(WM 1 1 1 / W 121)-but as a metaphysician, not as a scientist. The
possibility of ontology and the possibility of the ontic sciences
are interruptions of each other. Each can only be pursued to the
exclusion of the other. Here, in What Is Metaphysics?, lies the ori
gin of the claim of which Heidegger will later make so much:
there are questions that the sciences cannot ask, questions about
their own being. The sciences investigate some realm of beings
at the expense of the question of their own regional ontology.
Evidence that Heidegger's claim about the impotence of any
science with respect to itself has its origin in What Is Metaphysics?
is to be found at the end of the essay. Heidegger appeals there
to the Hegelian thesis that being and nothing are the same. On
tology is therefore precluded by the sciences in their exclusion
of the question of the nothing. Heidegger argues explicitly from
early in What Is Metaphysics? that the sciences wish to know
nothing of the nothing, and instead turn toward beings. As
human beings, "we usually lose ourselves altogether among be
ings in a certain way" (WM 106/W 116), a movement he will
call "erring" (ET 135/W 196) in "On the Essence of Truth." The
sciences, he holds in What Is Metaphysics?, are precisely such a
way in which we lose ourselves among beings.
In 1929, then, the sciences are for Heidegger a human project
set up in opposition to the nothing. On the one hand, the noth
ing is what makes scientific inquiry possible, as it is the source
of Dasein's existence as inquirer; on the other hand, the sciences
are Dasein's refusal to face the nothing as the question of being
in its preference for inquiry into beings. Accordingly, Heideg

ger's interest in science in 1929 is accounted for by the fact that
he sees reflection on the sciences as the route to the question of
being. Since the sciences are the way in which modem human
being loses itself among beings, they are precisely what must be
thought through to reach the question of the nothing that is
being. The route to ontology is the thoughtful recognition of its
preclusion by the sciences.
Yet how is this vision of science one which scientists would
take seriously? Those best equipped for the reflection suggested
by Heidegger may not readily agree that they are driven to their
inquiry as a means to flee to beings in response to the anxiety of
facing the nothing. Heidegger is claiming to have a deeper ac
count of the sciences than scientists theInselves, a psychologistic
account in which he attributes to the scientist a false conscious
ness, an unconscious response to the fear of death and the noth
ingness it implies to human existence.
Against such criticism, however, Heidegger has a bigger pic
ture in view. He is not so much interested in the psychology of
the individual scientist as he is in the human project of knowing
manifest as the sciences in his contemporary university. Indeed,
in a later analysis of Nietzsche he suggests that in the age of the
devaluation of all values, "the need to establish a truth concern
ing beings simply grows more pronounced" (N 3:204/NII 248).
The story he tells in What Is Metaphysics? about the sciences and
the nothing is not the story of any particular scientist, but the
story of the destiny of nihilism. By reading the claims made
about destiny, in both What Is Metaphysics? and the Rektoratsrede
four years later, against the accounts of destiny found earlier in
Being and Time and later in the Nietzsche lectures, this story of
nihilism as human destiny can be told.
DESTINY AS NIHILISM
Aristotle maintained in the opening line of the Metaphysics that

all human beings by nature desire knowledge (980a22). Like
wise, Heidegger argues in Being and Time that Dasein has inquiry
as a mode of its being (BT 26-27/SZ 7). In fact, he takes Dasein
'
to be "ontically distinguished by the fact that, in its very Being,

that Being is an issue for it" (BT 32/5Z 12), and that this having
its own being as an issue is a constitutive state of Dasein. Dasein
is essentially that being which inquires, particularly into its own
being.
Yet he argues at exactly that point in Being and Time that "Sci
entific research is not the only manner of Being which this entity
can have, nor is it the one which lies closest" (BT 32/5Z 11). The
sciences are for Heidegger in Being and Time simply one possible
kind of inquiry for human being. Only two years later, in What
Is Metaphysics?, Heidegger treats the university as the institu
tionalized expression of the human desire to know. The sciences
housed in the university have become for him more than simply
a possible way for human being to manifest its nature as in
quirer. Science is no longer for Heidegger in 1929 what it was in
1927. It is not one way among others in which human being
realizes its essence as inquirer. Rather, it is the essential determi
nation of what it means to be a knower in the modem epoch. It
is a destiny.
The issue of destiny first appeared in Heidegger's thought in
Being and Time in his account of facticity. Dasein's facticity is that
its existence is for it a fact. It understands its being as present
at-hand. Yet its presence-at-hand is different from the presence
at-hand of other things in the world. For this facticity "implies
that an entity 'within the world' has Being-in-the-world in such
a way that it can understand itself as bound up in its 'destiny'
[Geschick] with the Being of those entities which it encounters
within its own world" (BT 82/5Z 56). Dasein's existence is dif
ferent from the being of other things in the world. Dasein is
constituted by being-in-the-world, by finding itself always al
ready thrown in among and involved with beings. Dasein is sin
gled out as the being that is so involved with other beings. How
is this a destiny?
Dasein is the being which definitively questions its own being.
Its essential tendency is to be the inquirer (BT 27/ 5Z 7). In Intro
duction to Metaphysics, Heidegger calls questioning "a funda
mental human force [ursprilngliche Macht]" (1M 6/EM 5). It is
through self-inquiry that Dasein comes to the question of being.
Heidegger's strategy for getting at the question of being in Being
and Time is the hermeneutic circle from a particular being, Da

sein, to being. The destiny of human being is for Heidegger its
historical situation in an epoch of the history of being.
In §74 of Being and Time, Heidegger draws a distinction be
tween Dasein's destiny (Geschick) and the fate (5chicksal) of indi
vidual Dasein. He explicates Dasein's fate in its connection with
the fate of other Dasein (BT 435-37/52 384-85). Dasein's fate
lies in its historizing, in its giving itself over to a tradition that it
both inherits and chooses. Once Dasein understands that its
being is essentially a being with others, "its historizing is a co
historizing and is determinative for it as destiny [Geschick]" (BT
436/52 384). But, Heidegger argues, this destiny is not a putting
together of individual fates. Rather, individual fates "have al
ready been guided in advance" (BT 436/52 384) by that destiny.
The question of being, whether asked or neglected, is for Hei
degger a destiny that determines the existence of any particular
Dasein. That destiny (Geschick) is a sending, playing on schicken,
"to send," from being. Dasein's destiny is the history of being,
and its fate is its location within that history. The history of being
is a destiny of being to which human being is in Heidegger's
account essential. In "On Time and Being," that destiny is de
scribed as neither accidental nor necessary, but historical, for the
destiny of being is the history of being that unfolds in a sequence
of epochs (On Time and Being 9).
This notion of destiny is behind Heidegger's account of the
university at issue in What Is Metaphysics?, for in Heidegger's
view the fate of the researcher in the modem university is
guided by destiny, is determined within an epoch of the history
of being. Dasein as inquirer questions itself, and it questions
other beings. Its destiny in modernity is tied to that of other
beings which it determines for questioning as objects of science.
The destiny of beings in modernity is to be the objects of scien
tific research in the context of the university, and the destiny of
Dasein as knower is research. Heidegger makes explicit that the
essence of science is research in "The Age of the World Picture"
in 1938. This is the sense in which Heidegger argues in What Is
Metaphysics? that "only because we can enquire and ground is
the destiny of our existence placed in the hands of the re
searcher" (WM l11/W 121). Yet how this destiny is a nihilism,
'
despite its entanglement with the nothing in Dasein's flight

away from the nothing toward objects of science, does not be
come explicit for Heidegger until the Nietzsche lectures. It is
there that he connects the nothing at the core of Dasein to nihil
ism as destiny. For in 1940 he argues on the basis of reading
Nietzsche that the history of being is the history of nihilism.
In the lecture course entitled "European Nihilism," Heidegger
argues that the nothing at the heart of being and human being
goes much deeper than the superficial analyses of his day con
ceive. He suggests that his contemporaries do not wish to see
the concealed essential connection between being and time as a
destiny of nihilism, because to do so would be "to admit that
the foundations on which they continue to build one form of
metaphysics after another are no foundations at all" (N 4:163/NII
195). Nietzsche, Heidegger argues, understands a deeper sense
of nihilism, one in which nihilism is a history. This nihilism
"constitutes the essence of Western history because it co-deter
mines the lawfulness of the fundamental metaphysical positions
and their relationships" (N 4:53/NII 79). It is not the cause of the
decline of values in modem Europe, but rather the inner logic of
that decline. For European nihilism "is not simply one historical
movement among others [but] the fundamental impulse of our
history" (N 4:74/NII 100). It is not peculiar to modernity, Hei
degger argues, but rather belongs always and essentially to the
history of metaphysics. Yet it has a formulation that is peculiar
to modernity.
That history begins for Heidegger with Plato. He suggests that
the essence of nihilism is concealed in Plato and that it comes
completely to appearance in Nietzsche. Plato began that history
when he thought "the aya60v as tl)ea, as the idea of ideas" (N
4:168/NII 201). Heidegger reads this move by Plato as the first
moment in a history of valuative thinking whereby Plato inter
prets aya60v to mean "the suitable, what is good for something
and itself makes something else worthwhile . . . . Being comes to
be what makes a being fit to be a being" (N 4:169/NII 201). Such
valuative thinking conceals nihilism, Heidegger argues, in that
the fulfillment of such thinking puts into question the notion of
value itself: the devaluation of the uppermost values and the call
for their revaluation by Nietzsche is the culmination of a history
of metaphysics as valuative thinking. Hence Plato took a deci

sive step for the history of metaphysics in Heidegger's account.
Heidegger traces valuative thinking through Descartes and
Kant to argue that Nietzsche's call for the revaluation of all val
ues is the unfolding of the innermost possibility of metaphysics.
Nietzsche is the culmination and fulfillment of the history of
metaphysics for Heidegger, for Nietzsche's claim that truth is a
necessary fiction brings nihilism to a new stage: "outright disbe
lief in anything like a meta physical world" (N 4:34/NII 58). The
-
supersensuous world can no longer be appealed to in the face of

the valuelessness of the world of becoming, and that world of
becoming shows itself to be the only reality. The uppermost val
ues are devalued, and being is revealed as an empty concept.
Yet if being is, as Heidegger maintained in Being and Time,
the most universal and hence the emptiest concept, Heidegger
himself resists an interpretation of being such that it is an empty
and huge receptacle, arguing instead that "Being is what is emp
tiest and at the same time it is abundance" (N 4:192/NII 224).
This is how Hegel's thesis that being is nothing was read by
Heidegger in 1929 as the thesis ex nihilo omne ens qua ens fit. Being
is the nothing from which every being takes its being. This thesis
has come to its most explicit culmination in "European Ni
hilism."
Nietzsche's thinking is therefore for Heidegger the fulfillm ent
of the history of metaphysics that began with Plato. The history
of the West is the history of metaphysics, and of metaphysics as
nihilism at that. Between 1944 and 1946 Heidegger filled this
account out in a lecture not published until 1961, "Nihilism as
Determined by the History of Being." He argues explicitly here
that "Metaphysics as metaphysics is nihilism proper" (N 4:205/NII
309). And he traces the path of metaphysics to its formulation in Leib
niz as the question that Heidegger took in What Is Metaphysics? and
Introduction to Metaphysics to be basic: "Why are there beings at
all, and why not rather nothing?" (N 4:208/NII 313). This central
question of metaphysics hinges on holding that beyond beings,
there is only nothing. Heidegger has held fast since Being and
Time and Basic Problems of Phenomenology to the Hegelian thesis
that being is nothing, but now he is interested in that thesis as
the history of being. Rather than simply conceding the thesis, he
'
is now concerned with an irrunanent critique of metaphysics as

a history in which there is essentially nothing to being itself.
In this history, being is absent. It stays away, withdraws. And
metaphysics fails to see this withdrawal of being. Hence the his
tory of metaphysics is for Heidegger a double omission. First,
the withdrawal of being; second, the omission of the thinking of
this withdrawal from the history of metaphysics (N 4:219/NII
324-25). For this withdrawal cannot be thought from within
metaphysics itself. Heidegger argues that since there is nothing
to being for metaphysical thought, the "very path into the experi
ence of the essence of nihilism is therefore barred to metaphysics" (N
4:220/NII 326). U this text is read against What Is Metaphysics?,
where the destiny of Dasein in modernity is as researcher, while
beings are researched as objects of science, Heidegger is arguing
in 1940 that modern science is a destiny of metaphysics upon
which metaphysics is powerless to reflect, as he suggested in
1929 that the sciences are incapable of self-reflection.
In "European Nihilism," as in Being and Time, Heidegger talks
of the homelessness of historical human being within beings as
a whole (N 4:248/NII 358). In the latter he suggested that Dasein
is "fascinated by . . . its naked uncanniness [UnheimlichkeitJ" (BT
394/5Z 344), which, from an existential-ontological point of
view, is the "more primordial phenomenon" (BT 234/5Z 189)
than being-in-a-world. It is in such uncanniness that Dasein un
derstands that authenticity and inauthenticity are possibilities
for it, and ultimately that Dasein is "the caller of the call of con
science" (BT 321/ 5Z 276). Put less obscurely, in uncanniness lies
Dasein's possibility of thinking the question of being, of doing
metaphysics, under the account of Being and Time.
Likewise, here in the mid-1940s Heidegger argues that there
is a possibility for human being other than homelessness among
beings. Being needs human being as its abode (N 4:244/NII 354).
Also in 1946, he wrote to Jean Beaufret that "Language is the
house of being. In its home man dwells" (BW 193/W 313). For
Heidegger, the truth of being can unfold for human being, even
in its default. But he speaks of a danger, the danger of what he
calls the nonessence of nihilism, in which the omission of being
from metaphysics remains concealed "in the age of the darken
ing of beings, our age of confusion, of violence and despair in
human culture, of disruption and impotence of willing" (N

4:245/NII 355). This is the nihilism diagnosed by Heidegger's
contemporaries that he sees as superficial. Against that nihilism,
the nihilism Heidegger has described as the history of being is
precisely the possibility of thinking the nothing of being as its
withdrawal. Heidegger's nihilism is thoughtful, but it stands
outside the history of metaphysics.
Heidegger privileges his own position as thinker. Capable of
immanent critique but not confined to the metaphysics of his
epoch, he takes himself to have a destiny that reaches beyond
the fate of the researcher. Yet Heidegger himself will experience
the tension between fate and destiny, the confinement of the
thinker within history, precisely in his administrative involve
ment in the university. The Betriebscharakter of the sciences
within the university is their politicization in a destiny Heideg
ger will experience as not just human, but also peculiarly Ger
man, as not philosophical, metaphysical, or even nihilistic, but
simply bureaucratic. The insights to which Heidegger privileged
himself have not overcome the effect of his Nazism on his recep
tion as a thinker. He is as much a victim as a product of his time.
Nor can the withdrawal of being be reached from within any
science. Heidegger concludes "European Nihilism" by arguing
that such a thinking of the withdrawal of being "is neither
grounded on science nor can it ever find its way by setting itself
off against science" (N 4:249/NII 359-60). Any thinking that
thinks nihilism as the destiny of human being in modernity
must for Heidegger be radically different from the sciences, for
the sciences are nihilism's concealment. They are nihilistic for
Heidegger in the same way as for Nietzsche, who is immersed
in the history of metaphysics. They take as their object what is
empirically available for study, that is, the world of becoming
and not some supersensuous world of being. The sciences are
too busy with beings to see past them to nihilism. Hence Heideg
ger claims that in his "today," his historical epoch, "indifference
to Being in the midst of the greatest passion for beings testifies
to the thoroughly metaphysical character of the age" (N 4:195/
NIl 228). That great passion for beings has been thought again
and again in Heidegger's work in the domination of the sciences
in this age. In "On the Essence of Truth," Heidegger called Da-
'
sein insistent: it "holds fast to what is offered by beings" (ET

135/W 196). The sciences are exactly such insistence. They are
the human form of knowing in modernity that not only mani
fests the withdrawal of being by occupying itself with beings,
but that also overlooks that very withdrawal in favor of the cer
tainty of scientific knowledge.
In the modem epoch the scientific object is complicit in the
default of being. The unconcealment of beings that is scientific
study goes hand in hand with the concealing of being and its
forgottenness. Beings are revealed and held fast in the modem
epoch as the objects of science. This is why Heidegger looks to
the history of science in Die Frage nach dem Ding to understand
why it was possible and necessary for Kant to write his first
Critique (FD 50), and why Heidegger singles out science from
the five essential phenomena of the modem age as the ground
from which the essence of the modem age is to be apprehended
(AWP 117/H 76). The sciences are not just one cultural phenom
enon among others, but rather are the realization of Dasein's
essential possibility as knower in modernity. And hence the sci
ences are the realization of the intertwined destiny of being, be
ings, and human being as nihilism. Within that destiny,
Heidegger envisions a task for the university.
In What Is Metaphysics?, Heidegger holds that the university is
the structure that holds the specialized sciences together in their
determination and pursuit of their object. Since knowledge is
housed in the university, and science determines the university
in Heidegger's view, the knowledge that questions beings in
modernity is in his view scientific. Hence "our contemporary
existence [is] determined by science" (WM 98/W 106). And thus
Heidegger's contention is that "the destiny of our existence [is]
placed in the hands of the researcher" (WM 111/W 121). Not
because some researcher holds the destiny of human being in
her or his hand, but because knowledge itself has become re
search in the university. This situation of the sciences in the uni
versity sets a task before the university in Heidegger's view. The
sciences are a human destiny, and the task that Heidegger envi
sions for the university is that of bringing the sciences a mean
ingful unity.
Heidegger questions how the university serves the function of
unifying the sciences. The sciences are held together by a techni

cal organization in the university. Their unificatory function has
atrophied, Heidegger says, to a merely superficial technical or
ganization. There can be a deeper unity: "the only meaningful
source of unity [is] . . . the practical establishment of goals by
each discipline" (WM 96/W 104). Heidegger does not see this
task as one of only internal concern to the institution. Rather,
science and its institution have an obligation that extends be
yond the walls of the university. For the question of the scientific
essence of the university is for Heidegger, I have argued, the
question of human destiny.
Heidegger holds that the university is in a position of service,
which "evolves in such a way as to become the ground of the
possibility of a proper though limited leadership in the whole of
human existence" (WM 97/W 104-5). The university can suc
cumb to its fate by housing the sciences in a meaningless and
endless technical organization of disciplines, or it can function
by providing a place for the unified pursuit of knowledge to
fulfil the destiny of Dasein, the inquirer. The university can lead
human existence in Heidegger's account because it is a place of
knowledge. He holds that knowledge has become fragmentary
and meaningless insofar as the individual disciplines have lost
any goal that would tie them together meaningfully. His call in
1929 is to reestablish that unity of purpose such that the univer
sity can guide human destiny.
SELF-AsSERTION: KNOWING VERSUS AMASSING INFORMATION
Heidegger argues again in the Rektoratsrede of 1933 that the uni

versity has the task of providing leadership and direction to the
community wherein it exists. Whereas Lakatos and Kuhn argue
that science takes places in a community of researchers, Feyera
bend argues further that the scientific community exists in a
larger community and is under obligation to that larger group
(1975:307). Heidegger argues likewise in 1933 that science exists
''for us and through us" (SA 471 /SU 11). Despite the absolutely
unclear scope and reference of the "us," it is clear through the
Rectoral Address that Heidegger is considering the question of
140 HEIDEGGER'S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
science in its relation to the larger community, beyond the uni

versity's walls. He asks under what conditions science can exist
if it is to be 'jor us and through us," and he answers that it can
only exist "if we again place ourselves under the power of the
beginning of our spiritual-historical being [DaseinJ" (SA 471/SU
11). This beginning i s Greek philosophy.
Heidegger does not change his mind on this point. From 1933
onward his thinking is permeated by a nostalgia for the Greeks.
This nostalgia is not merely sentimentalism, however, but is
based on the view that the Greeks are the origin of the intellec
tual history of the West. Heidegger still claims in "Science and
Reflection" that modem knowing "needs the Greek knowing in
order to become, over against it, another kind of knowing" (SR
157/VA 43). He sees science as a destiny of being as early as
1929, but it is in the Rectoral Address that he points to the origin
of that destiny in Greek thinking. The overcoming of the frag
mentation of modem science into specialized disciplines is only
possible when its coming to be is understood. There will be no
change, progress, or alternative to modem science, in Heideg
ger's view, until its essence is made clear in a dialogue with
ancient thinking. For the origin of modem knowing lies in the
Greek experience of knowledge, which cannot be overcome until
it is thought through.
In Heidegger's account, it is in Greek philosophy that human
being first stood up to the totality of what is. He argues in 1933
that "[all] science is philosophy, whether it knows and wills
it-or not. All science remains bound to that beginning of phi
losophy" (SA 472/SU 11). Heidegger's intent with this claim is
not to blur the distinction between philosophy and the sciences,
as he did with his earlier argument in The Basic Problems of Phe
nomenology that philosophy is a science. Rather, his point is that
the sciences and philosophy both have their beginning in ancient
Greek thinking. The sciences are philosophy for Heidegger in
the sense that Greek thinking, which in its origin made no dis
tinction between philosophy and science, is the beginning of
both what is known in modernity as philosophy and what has
come to be the sciences.
There are, Heidegger argues, two distinguishing properties of
the original Greek essence of science that must be regained if
modern science is to live up to its task of leadership in human

destiny. The first characteristic of science to be retrieved from
Greek thinking is the acknowledgment of the impotence of
knowledge, that "all knowing about things has always already
been delivered over to overpowering fate and fails before it" (SA
472/SU 11). This is the fate of human being to become re
searcher and to lose her-or himself in research rather than ques
tioning its end, for no science is capable of questioning its own
essence. Its essence is what Heidegger will later call, in "Science
and Reflection," das Unumgiingliche, that which is not to be got
ten around (SR 175ff. / VA 60). For example, no experiment in
physics can show what physics is; nor can what mathematics is
itself be calculated. The essence of a science is inaccessible from
within that science. To regain the Greek sense of the impotence
of knowledge would be to recognize that knowledge needs a
purposive guidance that no science can give itself.
The second of the two distinguishing properties to be re
trieved from the Greeks is questioning as the highest form of
knowing, rather than Simply as a transitional step that immedi
ately gives way to an answer. The pursuit of theoretical knowl
edge is for Heidegger an activity, and presumably the point at
stake in calling for a retrieval of this property of the Greek es
sence of science is the recognition that knowing is something
that human being does first and foremost. Knowing is an activ
ity distinct from the mere collection of information. In fact, Hei
degger argues that without the retrieval of these two points from
the Greek account of knowledge, science serves "to further a
mere progress of information" (SA 474/SU 13) rather than a
genuine knowing. He contrasts knowing in this sense with the
mere amassing of information by the sciences.
This contrast between knowing and the meaningless collec
tion of information appears in one form or another in many
other places in Heidegger's work. In "The Turning" he contrasts
thinking with mere wanting to know (QCT 42/K 71-72). In "The
Question Concerning Technology" the contrast is between
"catching sight of what comes to presence in technology . . .
[and] merely staring at the technological" (QCT 32/VA 36). Even
observations, Heidegger suggests in the Beitriige, can be gathered
on the basis of their interminable diversity and conspicuousness;
or they can be collected according to an ordering principle (Bei

trage 161). In "The Age of the World Picture," Heidegger distin
guishes ongoing activity from mere busyness, which it can
nonetheless become: "Ongoing activity becomes mere busyness
whenever, in the pursuing of its methodology, it no longer keeps
itself open on the basis of an ever-new accomplishing of its pro
jection-plan, but only leaves that plan behind itself as a given;
never again confirms and verifies its own self-accumulating re
sults and the calculation of them, but simply chases after such
results and calculations" (AWP Appendix 2, 138/H 97). An in
herent danger in ongoing research is that the scientist will cease
to question the projection and method that ground some object
sphere, instead simply collecting results. Ongoing activity con
tinually runs the risk of becoming mere industriousness, as in,
for example, Kuhn's "normal science." What makes science as
research capable of enduring is, in Heidegger's account, pre
cisely the forgetting of the distinction between ongoing activity
and mere busyness such that the scientist remains uncritical of
the science itself. Specialization and the meaningless binding to
gether of the sciences on an institutional basis alone conduce
precisely a preoccupation with results that remains uncritical. A
year before Heidegger gave this analysis in "The Age of the
World Picture," he described just such a preoccupation with the
superficial, a blind reckoning and frenzy of explanations (BdW
16) in the German university. It would seem, then, that the uni
versity of Heidegger's day has fallen into precisely this danger
of allowing research to become busyness.
In the third of the Nietzsche volumes, Heidegger makes this
contrast in terms of two possibilities for the sciences: "The sci
ences can take shape in the direction of an increasingly compre
hensive and secure mastery of objects, can arrange their mode of
procedure accordingly and find satisfaction in that. Yet at the
same time the sciences can develop as genuine knowledge and on
that basis set for themselves the limits of what it is scientifically
valuable to know" (N 3:42/NI 469). It is here that the alternative
that the university can offer can be given a concrete account.
Rather than providing the sciences with a superficial, technical
organization, the university can provide them with an organiza
tion in which researchers can determine what it is valuable to
know. In 1929 Heidegger argues that the essential task of science

is "not to amass and classify bits of knowledge but to disclose
in an ever-renewed fashion the entire region of truth in nature
and history" (WM l 1 1 / W 121). Providing evaluation of and di
rection for knowledge by asking what it is valuable to know
would be precisely to perform such a decisive task for human
destiny if that destiny is taken, as Heidegger takes it, as the des
tiny of knowledge to become scientific research in the university.
Science is political in Heidegger's account in the sense that its
direction and worth are to be determined in the context of the
1t6A.L�. Rather than providing an almost monastic withdrawal
from life and its activities, the university, Heidegger holds, be
longs to life. He is calling in the Rektoratsrede, as he did in 1929,
for a knowing on the part of the university that he later calls "for
the Greeks, �lo� eEWQT]LLX.6�, the life of beholding, [which] is,
especially in its purest form as thinking, the highest doing"
(QCT 164/VA 48). Reflection, this "purest form of thinking," is
not simply theorizing, but the highest activity. The German uni
versity of 1933 remains unable, in Heidegger's view, to engage
in such activity, to draw the distinction between knowing and
the mere collecting of information, until it retrieves this Greek
insight.
What Heidegger wants to retrieve science from in 1933 is spe
cialization. He argues that questioning understood as the high
est form of knowing "shatters the division of the sciences into
rigidly separated specialties, carries them back from their end
less and aimless dispersal into isolated fields and comers, and
exposes science once again to the fertility and the blessing be
stowed by all the world-shaping powers of human-historical
being [Dasein]" (SA 474/SU 13). The purpose of overcoming the
division of knowledge into fragmentary specialties and disci
plines is to bind the sciences together into a science that is an
authentic knowing rather than simply a directionless gathering
of information. He sees the sciences as obligated not only to ob
jectivity but also to the larger spiritual-historical world of the
community outside the university. For the sake of binding the
sciences together into meaningful knowledge, Heidegger calls
for spiritual legislation by the faculty, and he asks that the spe
cialized sciences submit to that legislation in order to tear down
departmental barriers and overcome "what lets professional

training lose itself in what is stale and counterfeit" (SA 478/SU
17). He is after the essence of science as a retrieval of knowledge
from the mere amassing of information on the part of fragmen
tary disciplines for the sake of training professionals. Hence he
argues that knowledge does not serve the professions; rather,
"the professions effect and administer that highest and essential
knowledge of the people concerning its entire being" (SA 477/
S U 16).
Heidegger's claims about the role of the university in human
destiny arise, then, not, as J. S. Porter recently suggested, because
"Heidegger sought philosopher-king status in service to his Fiih
rer" (1998:D10), but precisely because he attributes to the uni
versity the highest authority and social responsibility in
determining the function and direction of knowledge. He is in
terested in an academy that determines human destiny on the
basis of its own paternalistic authority and not that of a govern
ment or military.
Accordingly, what is worth knowing for Heidegger is not sim
ply what has immediate practical application in technology for
the sake of utility. In 1941, in the lecture course entitled Basic
Concepts, Heidegger takes up this question of the claim (Ansp
ruch) on humanity to which humanity must attend (BC 3/G 4).
He argues that there are two claims upon human being, the
claim of needs and requirement and the claim upon the essence
of historical human being. Human being responds to what is
needed and has utility, or to what can be done without. In re
sponse to the second claim, human being "does not calculate
under the compulsion of utility and from the unrest of consump
tion" (BC 4/G 5). It is only in the domain of the second claim,
the exhortation (An-sprechung) to human being to attend to what
can be done without, that Heidegger suggests a "realm" (Reich)
can be founded (BC 4-5/G 5). This claim is the claim upon
human being from being. It is the exhortation to stand in the
ontological difference and reflect upon being. The task of the
university that Heidegger envisions is the realization of the full
essence of science in precisely that sense. He wishes the univer
sity to respond to this claim rather than the claims of utility.
In confirmation of this reading, Heidegger argues in the Der
Spiegel interview of September 1966, not published until after
his death ten years later, that the Rektoratsrede was an argument
against the devaluation of science in favor of the practical needs
of the people. He sees himself as having argued that a new
meaning for the university could come out of reflection on the
tradition of Western European thought. He did argue so in the
Rektoratsrede (SA 470/SU 9). In 1966 he says that what was
needed was "above all a discussion of the relationship between
philosophy and the sciences, for the technical and practical suc
cesses of the sciences make thinking in the sense of philosophy
appear today to be more and more superfluous" ("Only a
God . . . " 283). Echoing his claims against utility in 1941, he is
calling here for a different kind of thinking, one that does not
take philosophy to be superfluous in the face of the practical
success of the sciences.
In his 1945 retrospective essay on the rectorate, "Facts and
Thoughts," written shortly after the collapse of National Social
ism and first published in a bilingual French-German edition of
the Rektoratsrede in 1982, Heidegger suggests again that he
wanted to ground the sciences in the experience of the essential
region of their subject matter (FT 487/ SU 27). He argues that
"reflection on the realm to which science belongs by its essence,
reflection that also confronts that essence, must take place in
every science if that 'science' is not to be without knowing" (FT
489/SU 29). For the sciences to achieve knowledge meaning
fully, questions about the essence of science must be raised. He
explains the Rektoratsrede as the argument that "by returning to
the essence of truth itself instead of persisting in a technical or
ganization-institutional pseudo-unity, [the university] was to re
cover the primordial living unity that joins those who question
and those who know" (FT 482/SU 22). Thus he saw his task as
rector of Freiburg University to be the retrieval of knowledge
from its fragmentation under a superficial organization, a return
to a living unity of questioner and knower. What is common to
and clear in What Is Metaphysics? and the Rektoratsrede is that
Heidegger sees himself as offering the university an alternative
to its superficial organization into specialized disciplines.
Likewise, in "Facts and Thoughts" Heidegger argues that
there is a danger in the old view, that is, the commitment to
specialty. He became rector, he suggests, with the hope of pro
viding the inner self-collection of the people with a measure (FT
146 HEIDEGGER' S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
483/SU 23), and I take it he means here that his intention was to
achieve a meaningful unity of the knowledge in the university.
But no such hope was realized: the address "had been spoken
into the wind and was forgotten the day after the inaugural cele
bration" (FT 493/SU 34). No colleagues discussed it with him.
Rather, the university was to become split into professional
schools (FT 494/SU 35). He describes the experience of the rec
torate as "a sign of the metaphysical state of the essence of sci
ence, a science that can no longer be influenced by attempts at
its renewal" (FT 4971SU 39). In other words, his time as rector
of Freiburg University showed that his hope for the retrieval of
science had failed.
There are therefore adequate grounds to believe that Heideg
ger objected to the Nazi appropriation of the university into the
service of the people. His concern is the larger destiny of being
and human being rather than global conquest. There is a sense
in which he sees the university in the service of humanity, but
this sense is not one in which he envisions the university in the
service of the German people. Rather, he sees the university as
the locus for a turning to reflection on being that would retrieve
for knowledge a meaningfulness. That his vision for the univer
sity is distinct from the Nazi vision is further evident in his at
tack on the notion of worldview.
Heidegger attacks the notion of worldview originally in Basic
Problems of Phenomenology, where he argues that philosophy
must be scientific rather than worldview philosophy. He says
that the notion of a worldview first appeared in Kant's Critique
of Judgment, where it was "a beholding of the world as simple
apprehension of nature in the broadest sense" (BPP 4/CP 5-6).
Schelling shifted the meaning from sense-perception to intelli
gence, Heidegger argues, such that "the meaning we are familiar
with today [is] a self-realized, productive as well as conscious
way of apprehending and interpreting the universe of beings"
(BPP S/CP 6). After citing several usages of the term, Heidegger
concludes that "what is meant by this term is not only a concep
tion of the contexture of natural things but at the same time an
interpretation of the sense and purpose of the human Dasein"
(BPP S/CP 7). The notion of worldview is for Heidegger an ac
tive understanding rather than a passive apprehension. It impli
cates both beings and human being in a world.
Following Robert Bernasconi's analysis, then, to say with Hei

degger that he had answered the question of the relation be
tween philosophy and worldview would no doubt be to say too
much. But Heidegger displaces the opposition between scientific
philosophy and worldview philosophy in such a way that a
place is found for ethics whereby it is no longer simply subordi
nated to ontology and so reduced to some kind of supplement or
appendage (Bernasconi 1988:54). Heidegger's treatment in Basic
Problems ofPhenomenology of the question whether philosophy is
worldview or scientific is an early stirring of the answer he will
give to Jean Beaufret in 1946 when the latter asks about the rela
tion between ethics and ontology. Heidegger answers in "Letter
on Humanism" that ontology is always already an ethical move
ment (BW 234-35/ W 356).
Indeed, Heidegger argues in Basic Problems of Phenomenology
that positing-that is, the positing of a being which is-is the
essence of a worldview. Sciences are positive because they relate
positively to beings in this way. Since philosophy does not relate
positively to beings, but instead to being, philosophy cannot be
worldview philosophy (BPP lO-ll/GP 15). As a worldview is
ontical, so philosophy is ontologicaL It would seem, then, that
Heidegger's insistence on a separation of philosophy and world
view in 1929 is at the same time a conjunction of the sciences and
worldview. The positive sciences are in this account precisely at
the essence of worldview. This is the second sense of "world"
in the four given in Being and Time, in which the world of the
mathematician "signifies the realm of possible objects of mathe
matics" (BT 93/52 64-65). The positive sciences are ontical in
that they begin with a regional ontology that is a setting up of a
worldview.
But less than ten years later, Heidegger is no longer prepared
to support the conjunction of the sciences and worldview as a
sufficient account of the sciences. His thinking on theory as a
human activity has brought him to the conclusion that the sci
ences are part of, and not a withdrawal from, life. They are not
a theoretical pursuit free of practical interests, goals, and con
cerns. Indeed, by 1937 Heidegger will recognize through the
Nazi appropriation of the university that the sciences determine
their world within the world of his third account in Being and
Time: the world " 'wherein' a factical Dasein as such can be said
to 'live' " (BT 93/52 65). He will corne to understand the situa
tion of the sciences within the larger political realm of his day as
posing a political threat.
But Heidegger has not yet made this critical move in 1933. In
1933 the specialization of the sciences means for him that the
sciences succumb to errancy. He evaluates the sciences not in
terms of their truth or falsity, but on other grounds. Maria Lu
gones and Elizabeth Spelman offer a feminist evaluation of the
ory in which they likewise claim that a theory is not just the kind
of thing that can be true or false. They suggest that theories can
be true, but also bad insofar as they are, for example, "useless,
arrogant, disrespectful, ignorant, ethno-centric, imperialistic"
(1993:26). Decisions need to be made about what it is valuable
and worthwhile to know versus what is useless, arrogant, and
so forth, if science is to be directed. For Lugones and Spelman,
however, the threat is not just that unevaluated theory is a mean
ingless collection of information, but that it can be imperialist
and, in short, dangerous. Heidegger holds that the university is
the place where science can be evaluated and directed, but in
1933 his interest is still intellectually innocent. His concern is to
guard science against errancy, not its use as a tool of domination
or oppression. By 1937 that has changed.
THE THREAT OF SCIENCE
In 1937, Heidegger read a paper entitled "Die Bedrohung der

Wissenschaft" ("The Threat to Science"), published in 1991, to
the Faculty of Natural Science and Medicine at Freiburg Univer
sity. In this text he again attacks the notion of worldview, but
here specifically in the context of the Nazi account of science and
their program for the university. Just as worldview was inade
quate to philosophy understood as science in the analysis given
in Basic Problems oj Phenomenology, so here it is inadequate in
the case of science in general. For Heidegger maintains that an
account of science on the basis of the notion of worldview blocks
the possibility of science itself. In 1937 worldview is central to
the threat to science he lays bare. That threat is the National

Socialist appropriation of the sciences and the university.
The idea that science is grounded in a worldview is simply
inadequate in Heidegger's analysis. The notion of worldview
gets, he claims, at nothing essential in science.' If science is car
ried by a worldview and is nothing in itself, he asks, then what
does this ground carry-that is, for what is it a ground?2 He
argues that the beliefs that science is valid in itself, happy to
have a worldview behind it, or that a worldview grounds a sci
ence that is valid only for that worldview, are both confused
(verworren) conceptions that make neither science nor worldview
clear in their relation to each other. If science is not able to work
as law-making and opening with respect to the essence of truth,
then it has no more meaning as intellectual power and becomes
instead a technology (Technik) of knowing and the training in
different techniques (Techniken) and practices.3 I suggest that for
science to work as law-making and opening with respect to the
essence of truth, a decision must be made as to what is worth
researching.
In his retrospective essay on the · rectorate, "Facts and
Thoughts," Heidegger speaks of an incompatibility between his
philosophy and the National Socialist worldview. He claims that
"a rift separated the National Socialist conception of university
and science from [his] own, which could not be bridged" (FT
497/ SU 38). In the Der Spiegel interview he says that in the lectures
on Nietzsche, anyone "with ears to hear heard in these lectures
a confrontation with National Socialism" ("Only a God . . . "
274). Those lectures, from 1936 to 1940, conclude with an attack
on metaphysics as worldview. What distinguishes the latter is
that in metaphysics as worldview "the differentiation of Being
and beings which sustains metaphysics itself essentially and
necessarily remains an unquestioned matter, a matter of indif-
1 "Man gibt Weltanschauung zu, aber halt sie fur die Wissenschaft an sich
nicht wesentlich" (BdW 16).

2 "Aber wenn das, was getragen werden sol1, nichts ist in sich, was sol1 dann
der Grund denn tragen und wozu Grund sein?" (BdW 16).
3 "Wenn die 'Wissenschaft' nicht in der Hinsicht der Wesenswahrheit geset
zgebend und ertiffnend zu wirken vermag, hat sie keinen Sinn als geistige
Macht; sie wird eine Technik des Kennens und der Abrichtung in den verschie
denen Techniken und Practiken" (BdW 22).
ference" (N 4:196/NII 229). In 1937 Heidegger connects world

view explicitly with the Nazi program for the university and the
renewal of the sciences.
Against the Nazi program for a renewal of science in the ser
vice of the people as part of the German worldview, there is a
need for a renewal of science in Heidegger's view also. Yet in
spite of this agreement that renewal is called for, Heidegger ar
gues that a National Socialist worldview should not be brought
to bear on science.' He sees the manufacture of fertilizer and
grenades as proof of the fact that science stands in the service of
the people, but objects that such production does not do any
thing for science or for the people, as a historical knowing would
and could do.5 He objects vehemently to the Nazi program of a
new science because it deals in worldviews which stand in the
way of the desire to question. He argues that "the balance be
tween science as pure theory and science as world-view has . . .
above all prevented all powers of willing questions,'" and it
glosses over the confusion surrounding the possibility of a new
beginning and a change. He is critical of the Nazi appropriation
of science and the university for the people, which he sees as an
abolition of philosophy for the sake of popularity, and a world
historical suicide.'
The criticism of science and worldview in this text is clearly
politically directed. The text is reminiscent of What Is Metaphys
ics? and the Rektoratsrede, where Heidegger's concern is the role
of science in the university, and of the university in the cultural
life of Germany. But by 1937, "the dreaded picture that Heideg
ger saw," as Patrick Heelan puts it, was "that science was and
would remain essentially a form of social control unless it were
, "Soli 'die' nationalsozialistische Weltanschauung auf 'die' Wissenschaft an

gewendet werden?" (BdW 16).
5 "DaB sie " die Wissenschaft« in den Dienst des Volkes stellen, ist richtig.
Das gilt von der Herstellung der Diingemittel und der Granaten ebenso! Nur
ist damit ja nicht bewiesen, daB sie irgend etwas fur »die Wissenschaft«, und
d.h. fur das Yolk als ein geschichtlich wissendes tun und tun k6nnen" (BdW
27).
6 "der Ausgleich hat . . . vor aIlem aile Krafte des Fragenwollens unterbun
den" (BdW 24).

7 "Die Deutschen bei der Abschaffung der Philosophie-in Absicht auf die
Gewinnung des v6lkischen Wesens!-weltgeschichtlicher Selbstmord" (BdW
27).
able to discover or recover its 'saving power' " (1995:586). Hei

degger has lost his faith in the university as a cultural-political
leader and a source of renewal and change. He continues to
hold, as late as the text "Science and Reflection," that the sci
ences offer the possibility of an alternative to the mere amassing
of information, that they offer human being the possibility of
knowing in a definitively human sense, of reflection (Besinnung),
but he gives up the idea that the university is the institution
within which the sciences can fulfill this role. He argues instead
that the university is at an end, neither luckily nor unluckily, but
rather necessarily, in that a new beginning is now possible."
Heidegger calls for this new beginning against the Nazi call in
which the power of the sciences unified into an institution can
be appropriated. He suggests that the university is not under
obligation to wider ends and uses, but rather that science has its
real creativity in having to do with knowledge itself.' Under
stood on this basis, science has nothing to do with the German
university contemporary to Heidegger. Once it is politically ap
propriated, the university can serve no creative function with
respect to knowledge itself. Heidegger's demands for the uni
versity thus fall into a tension that he is unable ever to resolve.
On the one hand, the sciences institutionalized in the university
should serve the people; on the other hand, there is danger in
their serving the state. Heidegger does not answer how the uni
versity can serve the one and not the other. But he retains his
call for a renewal of science, while abandoning the idea that the
university is the place for his vision of science to become a re
ality.
Heidegger has realized that the saving power of the university
with respect to historical destiny carries the danger of political
appropriation. For if the threat of science is that it can be used
as a tool for social control, likewise the threat is to science itself,
8 "Es ist weder ein Ungliick noch ein Gliick, dall die Universitiit zu Ende ist,
sondem nur eine Notwendigkeit und eine lang vorbereitete; heute wird ihr
nur eine verbesserte Gelegenheit gegeben, an den Tag zu korrunen" (BdW 25).
9 "An der Universitiit: nicht sich nehmen lassen als die noeh Geduldeten, als die,
die man fur das Weitere noeh braucht und ausnutzt oder mit denen man gele
gentlieh sieh zeigt, sondem als die eigentlieh Schaffenden, die mit der Univers
itiit niehls zu tun haben, aber mit dem Wissen" (BdW 25).
152 HEIDEGGER'S PHIL OSOPHY OF SCIENCE
that science so appropriated to the goals of the state is no longer

science in its fullest sense of definitively human knowing. His
envisioned task for the university culminates in his assumption
of the rectorate in 1933, but his resignation less than a year later
is evidence of the failure of his attempt to retrieve the university
from its fragmentation into specialized disciplines and of the
appropriation of the university by the Nazis. The thrust of "Die
Bedrohung der Wissenschaft" is that the fragmentation of the
sciences, in which specialized disciplines do not unite to think
through and set goals for the sciences, leaves the sciences vulner
able to political appropriation. True to his claim that the univer
sity is at an end, Heidegger ceases to discuss the university, but
he still remains preoccupied with institutionalized science. This
is in fact the theme he pursues when he seeks out the essence of
the modem age in "The Age of the World Picture" soon after his
address to the Faculty of Medicine at Freiburg.
In 1938, in "The Age of the World Picture," Heidegger ques
tions the demarcation of subject area on the part of the sciences
in a way that is different from his earlier complaisance about the
specialization of the sciences. In The Basic Problems of Phenome
nology, he argued that "Historically, the actual partitioning of
domains comes about . . . in conformity with the current re
search problems of the positive sciences" (BPP 13/GP 18). The
uncovering of new research problems brings with it further spe
cialization of the sciences under this earlier account. In "Age
of the World Picture," however, Heidegger does not argue that
research and specialization go hand in hand in modem science,
or that research is the basis for subsequent specialization. Rather
he argues the reverse, that research takes place as a direct conse
quence of specialization.
The move from accepting specialization as a historical fact in
the history of science, much as it appears in the descriptive anal
ysis of §3 of Being and Time, to interpreting it as at the very es
sence of science, as he will in What Is Called Thinking?, is very
much under way here in "The Age of the World Picture." For
Heidegger argues in 1938 that science is essentially an ongoing
activity of research that is thus capable of being institutionalized
under specialized disciplines. Specialization makes research
pOSSible, which in tum makes the organization of disCiplines
in the university possible. Accordingly, Heidegger argues that

"institutions are necessary because science, intrinsically as re
search, has the character of on-going activity" (AWP 124/ H 83-
84). Heidegger, however, having ceased to specify the university
as the institution that houses science, offers no alternative.
Instead of pursuing the question of the organization of the
sciences, and their bureaucratic arrangement in the university,
Heidegger moves to the issue of ideology, that is, to representa
tion and the construction of the thinking subject as scientist. He
argues that to do experimental science is "to get into the picture
. . . to set whatever is, itself, in place before oneself just in the
way that it stands with it, and to have it fixedly before oneself as
set up in this way" (AWP 129/H 89). The representation stands
before the scientist with a being at its focus, a being set up in
certain conditions that map out a system. The specialization of
the sciences entails representations that, in placing nature into
the picture, also place the scientist "into the picture." Heideg
ger's comments here are about representation in general. Since
the lecture has, however, modem science as its specific focus
(AWP 117/H 76), I apply the arguments directly to the topic.
This "getting into the picture" is much more than just having
a worldview. Continuing the critique of worldview established
in "Die Bedrohung der Wissenschaft," Heidegger argues that
the scientist does not simply grasp a picture of the world in rep
resenting the object of a science. Rather, the scientist is estab
lished in the picture only insofar as "the world is conceived and
grasped as picture" (AWP 129/H 89). Human being can only
have a worldview when the world for it becomes picture. Science
as research "is an absolutely necessary form of this establishing
of self in the world" (AWP 135/H 94). Thus the modem world
is established as a picture in which both the scientist and her or
his object appear.
This establishing of the self in the world is, for Heidegger, one
of the ways the modem age is fulfilled. Fulfillment here entails
the notion of destiny, not in the nationalistic sense, but in the
sense in which the destiny of human being is determined by the
history of being. As the destiny of being is to withdraw in the
unconcealment of beings, so the destiny of human being is a
metaphysics of subjectivity in which human being is itself put

in the picture as the representing subject.
The scientist does not ultimately enter as the individual know
ing subject, however, in Heidegger's account. Heidegger argues
explicitly that he is not talking about a subjectivism in the sense
of individualism. Rather, betraying the fact that he still holds
that science is an activity within a human community, he claims
to be arguing "against individualism and for the community
as the sphere of those goals that govern all achievement and
usefulness" (AWP 133/ H 92-93). The establishing of knowledge
by science is understood by Heidegger not in terms of the indi
vidual scientist, who is dwarfed by the institution, but in terms
of a system (AWP 129/ H 89), an organized institution.
In that system, physics is necessarily experimental insofar as
it pictures its objects as measurable. The institutionalization of
science, necessary because of specialization, is complicit in the
representation of nature in an experiment. What appears in the
experiment is what has been determined as object in specializa
tion. A science determines its particular object, and on the basis
of representing that object devises its experiments. Heidegger
argues later, in "The Question Concerning Technology," that
physics is not experimental because it questions nature using
apparatus, but rather that it questions nature using apparatus
because it is experimental in the sense that it understands nature
as calculable (QCT 21 /VA 25).
Heidegger views the experimental method as representational
in that it proceeds on the basis of a representation of its object.
He does not see institutionalization as Simply a more efficient
way to do science, but rather as essential to the way science de
termines the modem epoch. It is in institutionalized and special
ized science, for which physics is paradigmatic, that the world
first becomes picture such that nature can then be the object of
human control in technology.
In Heidegger's analysis of science and the university, his later
critique of science and technology is incipient. His attitude
toward the university is always critical. He initially sees a possi
bility for a change in the university, a retrieval of the sciences
from debilitation through fragmentation. His entanglement with
the Nazis during his brief time as rector and the years following
demonstrated how naive his early beliefs were. In later years he

continues to hold that no science takes its meaning from within
itself, but he abandons the idea that the university can provide
that source of meaning. Heidegger still sees specialization in an
institutional arrangement as a threat. When science takes the
world as picture, he argues, "an essential decision takes place
regarding what is, in its entirety" (AWP 130/H 89-90). That the
sciences stand in a position of historical decisiveness remains his
claim, both before and after his infamous tum. In fact, the only
real change in Heidegger's account of science and the institution
is his later abstention from political claims about the university.
Heidegger's vision of the university was not that it be appro
priated to the political ends of designing better hand grenades
and researching better fertilizers. Once he experienced the politi
cal appropriation of the university, he continued to hold that a
decision must be made as to what it is valuable to know. Heideg
ger holds, however, that the question of what it is valuable to
know cannot be answered through the ongoing research of spe
cialized diSCiplines. For such disciplines have no access to their
essence, which is precisely the topic at stake. Rather, decisions
are called for about the relation between human being and na
ture; whether, for example, nature is exhausted by human re
source and analysis, or whether weapons technology should be
the largest economic motivation for research in theoretical phys
ics. The questions of being and of human being cannot be sepa
rated in Heidegger's view, and they may tum out to be that
simple, providing the question of being remains open. The laws
of physics do not distinguish the falling apple from the falling
bomb. Heidegger has argued from 1929 until 1937 that the task
of the university is precisely to ask such questions: to evaluate
what is worth knowing.
Yet in the text where the issue of the reevaluation is precisely
the focal issue, that is, in the Nietzsche volumes, the sciences are
given little and passing reference. He mentions them to claim
they are not the solution to the homelessness of modem human
ity, but they escape the thematic critique to which they have
previously been subject. Heidegger holds explicitly in 1929 and
in 1933 that the university has a role to play in human destiny in
that it is the place in which to evaluate what is worth knowing.
And he holds equally explicitly that the sciences are the modem
form of human knowledge. Yet he does not raise the question of
science in his lectures on Nietzsche in 1940. These lectures ad
dress exactly the question of valuative thought. I argue that in
the lecture course of 1940, Heidegger withdraws his attention
from the sciences because his earlier accounts-his call for deci
sion about value in 1929 and 1933-are embroiled in the very
destiny of nihilism these lectures describe. His call for the reeval
uation of what is worth knowing is an expression of his immer
sion in the metaphysics and hence destiny of his age, a valuative
thinking of which he is by 1940 critical. Heidegger is disillu
sioned with respect to his earlier vision, yet he never gives up
the call for reflection upon the sciences.
VALUATIVE THINKING AND DISILLUSIONMENT
Heidegger has in 1940 recognized the sciences as the fulfillrnent

of the destiny of the West as nihilism. He sees the sciences as
inherently metaphysical, and he himself struggles with an over
coming of metaphysics. In an essay written from 1944 to 1946,
"Nihilism as Determined by the History of Being," Heidegger
explains what "overcoming" means: "To overcome signifies: to
bring something under oneself, and at the same to put what is
thus placed under oneself behind one as something that will
henceforth have no determining power. Even if overcoming does
not aim at sheer removal, it remains an attack against some
thing" (N 4:223/NII 330). Leaving out the question of the sci
ences is not therefore to have overcome them, but to experience
their nihilism inauthentically. He suggests that "metaphysics'
utmost entanglement in the inauthenticity of nihilism" (N
4:231 /NII 339) comes to language in the desire to overcome. To
seek to overcome the sciences is to remain entangled in the meta
physical stance toward beings that they embody. Any struggle
over nihilism, he suggests later, whether for or against it, will
decide nothing, but rather "will merely seal the predominance
of the inauthentic in nihilism" (N 4:240/NII 348). Since the des
tiny of being is for Heidegger nihilism, it cannot be overcome.
For to overcome nihilism would be to overcome being, and the
human being who overcomes being is no longer human since

being is a destiny precisely for human being (N 4:223/NII 330).
Hence it cannot be that Heidegger neglects the sciences because
he has overcome the determination of the metaphysics of his
age.
Another answer to the question of the omission of the sciences
from the discussion of nihilism is that the question of the value
of the sciences has already been answered by their application
in and subservience to technology. Heidegger argued in 1940, in
Basic Concepts, that the claim upon human being can be taken as
the claim of utility, or as a claim upon the historical essence of
human being. The latter is what human being can do without,
for it is the question of being and leads to nothing useful. Under
the former, human being "ca1culate[sl under the compulsion of
utility and from the unrest of consumption" (BC 4/G 5). The
human being who responds to this claim has determined what
is valuable to know as that which can be applied in machine
technology. The sciences give way to practical application in
technology when human knowing responds to the claim of util
ity. Heidegger leaves out the question of the sciences when he
analyzes valuative thinking, not because they are inherently
metaphysical in their nihilistic evaluation, but because the
thought is incipient to him that the sciences are already deter
mined on the basis of a valuation: the value of knowledge is its
applicability in technology. The academy is not the place to ask
what it is valuable to know, since this decision has already been
made. Yet Heidegger does not yet see the thesis he will come to
in the 1950s: the essence of science lies in the essence of tech
nology.
Heidegger hence finds in his academy of 1940 that knowledge
is suffering from decay, a degeneration that arises from "chasing
after what is necessary for the most convenient possible arrange
ment of professional training" (BC 12/G 14). The academy is not
a place for knowledge for the sake of knowledge, what Aristotle
called 8EWQLU and under which he classified metaphysics, math
ematics, and the study of nature; rather, it has become a training
gTOund for pTOfessionals, and a research institute to support
technological development.
Indeed, Heidegger suggested seven years earlier, in the Rektor-
atsrede, that students "who have dared to act as men" (SA 476/
SU 16) will no longer permit their bond to the spiritual mission
of the German people, known as "Knowledge Service" (Wissens
dienst), to be "the dull and quick training for a distinguished
profession" (SA 477/SU 16). The Greeks took three centuries
"just to put the question of what knowledge is upon the right
basis and on a secure path" (SA 478/SU 17-18), so Heidegger
does not expect the question of knowledge to be asked and an
swered in one or two semesters. Nonetheless, if the German uni
versity is to establish what Heidegger is herein calling for as an
essence of science, it will do so, he suggests, in a battle of wills
between the faculty and the student body. This battle is the self
examination and assertion of the university. It is a willing of the
essence of the university as science, against its decay into a train
ing ground for the professions.
In "Facts and Thoughts," Heidegger explains that notion of
battle by reference to Heraclitus's Fragment 53 (FT 488/SU 28-
29), a text he also looked to in Introduction to Metaphysics, where
he argues that this struggle is the conflict wherein human being
first stands up to beings as a whole and opens up a world (1M
62/EM 47-48). This struggle could remedy the atmosphere of
confusion in his university, wherein "the most diverse political
power constellations and interest groups intervened in the uni
versity with their claims and demands" (FT 492/SU 32). This
was a different kind of struggle, a struggle for political power, in
which the Ministry of Education struggled to secure an auton
omy against Berlin, professional associations demanded the re
moval of professors they found troublesome (FT 492/ SU 32), and
Heidegger himself struggled against the Nazis' and students'
demands for the posting of the Jewish proclamation ("Only a
God . . . " 269) and for book burnings ("Only a God . . ." 271),
faculty power plays for promotion, and the education minister's
request for the dismissal of Jewish professors, over which Hei
degger subsequently resigned ("Only a God . . . " 273-74). Hei
degger understands these political struggles in opposition to the
struggle he was calling for: "reflection on the ethos that should
govern the pursuit of knowledge and on the essence of teach
ing" (FT 492/SU 32). He loses the administrative and political
battle, and gives up discussion of the task of the university and
its role in the larger human community. But he has come to the
question of ethical and evaluative reflection upon the sciences,
and the question of the relation between science and technology
is now incipient.
CONCLUSION
In the 1930s, Heidegger watches the university become compro

mised by mundane politicization. He finds the university power
less to renew a conception of the sciences that goes deeper than
worldview to a meaningful confrontation with the essence of
human being as knower. It is impotent to raise the question of
what is worth knowing, since its faculty, students, and govern
mental ministry are complicit in its conversion into professional
schools and have already answered that what is worth knowing
is what has immediate application in technology.
It is not clear that the contemporary university is any more
capable of raising such a question than was Heidegger's, nor
that it can resist the function of providing job training to profes
sionals, and appropriation by government toward cultural pro
paganda. The contemporary university faces in fact a double
threat of appropriation: on one side by the state; on the other,
by industry. In 1919 the Twentieth Century Fund was founded
and endowed in New York by Edward Filene as an independent
research foundation to undertake policy studies of economic,
political, and social institutions. In 1984 the fund assembled a
task force chaired by Robert Sproull, president of the University
of Rochester, in order to question whether funding arrange
ments "threaten the independence and the special values of the
university" (Rossant et a1. 1984:v). The "special values" at stake
were the freedom and independence of ideas and information
such that individuals can "pursue knowledge for its own sake"
(Rossant et a1. 1984:3). The report produced by the task force
uncovered that federal funds make up about two-thirds of the
total spent on research in the United States since the 1960s, and
that the era of government support for basic research on cam
puses was ushered in by the successful development of radar
and advanced weapons by university-trained scientists in World
160 HEIDEGGER' S PIDLOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
War II. The report argues that since the remaining third of the
research funds carne from industry, and since corporate ties
"provide useful leverage in dealing with the government" (Ros
sant et aI. 1984:7), corporate support helps preserve the tradi
tional independence of the university.
To what tradition, however, is the Twentieth Century Fund's
report referring? The history of church, government, and corpo
rate involvement in the university renders unclear exactly when
researchers in the university were ever free to pursue "knowl
edge for its own sake," or even what this phrase could mean in
the contemporary academy. Research is today driven by compet
ing interests, those of government, including the military, and
corporations whose concerns are of financial return in the age
of consumer culture. As Ursula Franklin has pointed out, there
"seems to be an increasing crossbreeding and drift towards mo
noculture in our institutions" (1994:10): universities are judged
in market terms and try to act like business enterprises, while
banks speak out on education and the future of research. The
university is itself both a competing interest and a mediator be
tween researchers and their funding sources.
Heidegger holds by 1938 that the university is no longer the
place where it is possible to raise the issues of the ends and value
of knowledge. Reflection upon such questions reveals them as
homeless. They cannot be raised from within the sciences, but
the larger forum of the university also proved inadequate. Such
questions do find a horne in Heidegger's work, but the results
are largely unsatisfying. Heidegger faces bureaucratic issues
about the organization and institutionalization of science in the
1930s, and he recognizes that the sciences are institutionalized
in "research programs," as Lakatos will name them in 1970. But
he leaves these insights to dissipate into claims about the institu
tionalization of science as research. Heidegger has raised, de
spite his unsatisfying treatment of it, what remains a largely
untouched question in philosophy of science: who should deter
mine the goals of the sciences?
For, if Heidegger's talk of the "saving power" of the sciences
was unsatisfying in 1937 in that he does not go on to say what
the saving power of the sciences is, what is saved, and how, then
nonetheless he does not relinquish the issue. But the role of the
sciences in that "saving power" will change for Heidegger upon

reflection. In What Is Called Thinking? he says that thinking is not
practically useful like the sciences (WCT 159/WHD 161), but he
is clear that what is called for is thinking about the sciences. Like
wise in "Science and Reflection," he argues that reflection on the
sciences is needed to get at that "which is worthy of question
ing" (SR 182/VA 66). Whereas in the 1930s Heidegger saw a
worth in the sciences themselves as the location of the defini
tively human desire to know, his questioning of the setting of
goals for the sciences led him to the insight that reflection upon
the sciences is called for, reflection they are incapable of under
taking themselves.
The question of establishing goals for the sciences is now just
as pressing as it was when Heidegger raised it. The phrase
"knowledge for its own sake" is at best unclear. It has its origin
in Aristotle's taxonomy of knowledge, of which three kinds
metaphysics, mathematics, and physics-had neither action nor
production as their goal. Their purpose was simply to become
one with the thing known. In the Rektoratsrede, Heidegger ar
gued for a retrieval of two properties of the original essence of
Greek science: the impotence of knowledge and the value of
questions over answers, without specifying whom he intends by
"the Greeks." I argue that he is suggesting a retrieval of Aristot
le's notion of knowledge for the sake of knowledge. But is his
account of knowledge for its own sake any less unthought, any
less empty and unexplored rhetoric, than it is in the "Report of
the Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on the Commercializa
tion of Scientific Research," for whom it is an unexplained and
seemingly empty intention?
Certainly in the 1930s, Heidegger's consideration of what is
worth knowing comes to the fore as a question in his thought.
In the years to come he will continue to raise this question, not
just as the question of the Betriebscharakter, the institutionaliza
tion and bureaucratization of the sciences, but as an ideological
concern for what is worth knowing. It will remain for him al
ways the question of reflection upon the sciences, and will be
taken as one of his most thought-provoking and significant con
tributions to philosophy: that there is something for thinking at
the end of modernity that is radical in the sense of going to the
very root of both thinking and human being. This possibility is

a new thinking, a deep reflection beyond science and beyond
metaphysics. Heidegger will call it both thinking (Denken) and
reflection (Besinnung). He will come to this possibility through
an analysis of modem science in contrast to ancient science, an
analysis that began for him in 1916 when he contrasted Aristotle
with Galileo.
4
Ancient Science
HEIDEGGER'S ACCOUNT of ancient science is a crucial moment in

his philosophy of science, for it is in Parmenides' and Heracli
tus's understanding of nature that Heidegger sees another possi
bility to the metaphysics of modernity. He interprets the pre
Socratics to hold that being is qJ1)OL�. Accordingly, the represen
tational thinking of modern science stands in marked contrast
to its origin in Greek thought. Heidegger's analysis of science is
thus clarified as a critique of modern science: it is only over and
against ancient science that representation in exact science is the
hallmark of modern science for Heidegger. Differences between
ancient-particularly Aristotelian-and modern thinking have
always figured in Heidegger's work, but it is his analysis of an
cient science from 1935 to 1940 that consolidates those insights
into a reading of the history of the West, and hence into a basis
for critiquing modern science and technology.
On the basis of his vision of the ancient interpretation of q)"UOL�
in Parmenides and Heraclitus, with its last echo in Aristotle, Hei
degger envisions alternative possibilities for being and thinking.
These possibilities underwrite his later call to thinking. That in
sight into ancient qJ1)OL� is a ground upon which an environmen
talist philosophy of nature can be erected that goes well beyond
Heidegger's project itself. For Heidegger's reading of the Greeks
on nature is a two-sided vision: on the one hand, the exposition
of an incipient logic of domination; on the other hand, the possi
bility of another relation to nature. It could be argued that no
environmental phenomenology is free of Heidegger's influence,
but certainly Robert Corrington's ecstatic naturalism has a basis
in Heidegger's early works, Val Plumwood's feminist ecology
draws on Heidegger's analysis of technology, and John Llewel
lyn's environmentalist insights have Heideggerian roots. Yet a
full-fledged Heideggerian eco-logic has still to be written, and
can only be sketched here in broad strokes. His interpretation of
the ancient experience of qJ1JOL£ is a basis for a philosophy of

nature that asks the contemporary thinker to revise our under
standing of nature: nature is not a small part of a human world
filled with technology, to which it can be understood analo
gously, but rather the ground upon which technology is possi
ble, and the basis from which it is derived. Hence Heidegger's
account critically opposes a postmodern obliviousness to what
precedes and exceeds the technological.
Heidegger finds his vision of alternative possibility in Heracli
tus and Parmenides. He first argues in Introduction to Metaphysics
that for these pre-Socratics, being was <pUOL£. He interprets them
according to a metaphysics of presence in which being, truth,
and nature belong together in Myo£ in that Myo£ is a gathering
together into being that only later comes to mean language. In
Heidegger's account, other possibilities were lost. Initially he at
tributes this loss to Plato's decisive influence on Greek thinking;
that is, he argues in 1930, and again in 1935, that Plato subse
quently confines Myo£ to human subjectivity when he interprets
being as toea, and that this move is the origin of truth as correct
ness. Truth as correctness is definitive for Heidegger of the rep
resentational thinking of modem sciences, and hence the
Platonic tum to idealism is crucial to the sciences. Furthermore,
in the Nietzsche volumes Heidegger will locate original nihilism
in Plato's metaphysics, a metaphysics that culminates in Nietz
sche's inversion of the Platonic erection of being and toea in the
Good, that is, in valuative thinking.
In 1940, however, Heidegger locates the decisive tum from the
pre-Socratics in Aristotle. Aristotle is for him a cusp, both echo
ing the pre-Socratic insight into being as <pUOl.£ and analogizing
<pUOL£ to 1:EXVll. Heidegger will subsequently argue that in the
ensuing history of the West, science and technology evolve, that
is, decay into a shared essence. His critique of modem science
and technology is accordingly a historical analysis that holds a
place for both Plato's idealism and Aristotle's realism. It is made
possible by the assessment of Greek philosophy he makes from
1930 to 1940.
To explicate that assessment, I begin with an account of Hei
degger's treatment of truth, particularly in its relation to Myo£.
The analysis starts with his reading of Aristotle from Being and
ANCIENT SCIENCE 165
Time in order to uncover Heidegger's dissatisfaction with locat

ing truth in the assertion. Focusing on Introduction to Metaphys
ics, but treating texts that discuss Myo<; from 1930 to 1944, I
show that in Heidegger's analysis, Heraclitus and Parmenides
understand being as qJUOL<;, and that therefore qJUOL<; is the origi
nal Greek experience of truth. Heidegger here reads Myo<; in
terms of t..EYELV as precisely the laying of qJUOL<; before the
thinker, its appearance for thought. I show how in Heidegger's
account, Plato's idealism transformed Myo<; into language and
reason, which belong not to being but to the thinker. Against
that background, I argue that Heidegger, reading Aristotle's
analogy of being in terms of actuality and potentiality, is a last
echo of the pre-Socratic insight that being is qJUOL<; as well as the
origin of the decay of theoretical physics into technology.
<l>uOL<; As TRUTH
In Being and Time, Heidegger offers a new interpretation of the

traditional Aristotelian claim that the locus of truth is the asser
tion. He argues that the truth of the assertion is derivative upon
unconcealment; that is, the apophantic nature of the assertion
lies in the logically prior revealing of beings. Coupled with a
rejection of transcendental subjectivity, this novel account of
truth provides Heidegger with a basis on which to rethink
Myo<;. He argues in 1935 that in the pre-Socratic experience of
truth, 1-.oyo<; is qJUOL<;, the gathering of a being into being. He
further connects Myo<; with doo<; in the argument that both
terms belong to being, and only to the thinker insofar as the
thinker thinks and talks about beings. The argument culminates
in the claim that for the pre-Socratics, A.6yo<; is &1-.�eeLa in that it
is the truth of being.
Heidegger's analysis of truth begins in Being and Time as a
rejection of the traditional reading of Aristotle, and it brings him
to what he claims is the original Greek experience of truth. In
his account, the Greek experience of nature as truth was prior to
propositional truth and was displaced to human subjectivity by
Plato's interpretation of being as toea. Thus is made possible
truth as correspondence, the traditional account of truth at work
in the sciences. Heidegger's interpretation of truth in antiquity

is accordingly fundamental to his philosophy of science, for he
holds that the original Greek experience of <jl1JOU; is the basis for
the modem experience of truth in the sciences.
In §44 of Being and Time, Heidegger analyzes the connection
between being and truth in Parmenides and Aristotle by divid
ing this task into three parts: to lay bare the ontological founda
tions of the traditional concept of truth; to show how that
concept is derivative from the primordial phenomenon of truth;
and to clarify both what it means that there is truth and the
necessity of the presupposition that there is truth. He character
izes the traditional concept of truth by three theses: "(1) that the
'locus' of truth is assertion Gudgment); (2) that the essence of
truth lies in the 'agreement' of the judgment with its object; (3)
that Aristotle, the father of logic, not only has assigned truth to
the judgment as its primordial locus but has set going the defi
nition of 'truth' as 'agreement' '' (BT 257/ 5Z 214). The theses
boil down to the claim that Aristotle is responsible for establish
ing truth as an assertion's agreement with its object. But Heideg
ger argues that there is another way to read Aristotle on truth.
He reinterprets Aristotle by arguing that propositional truth is
derivative upon a more originary phenomenon.
Certainly at Metaphysics 9.10, Aristotle speaks about truth as
belonging to statements and assertions. And he holds that truth
is agreement, as evident in his claim that "he who thinks that
what is divided is divided, or that what is united is united, is
right; while he whose thought is contrary to the real condition
of the objects is in error" (1051b4-5). Truth unites or separates in
thought what is united or separated in experience, while falsity
unites in thought what is separated in experience, or separates
what is united. In order to have truth, then, thinking must agree
with what it thinks about.
But, Heidegger argues, it is not at all clear what the agreement
of an t6ea content of judgment with a thing means. He suggests
that this relationship of agreement may become clear in the con
text of demonstration. What is demonstrated, however, in the
example of someone with his back to the wall making the true
assertion that "the picture on the wall is hanging askew" (BT
260-61 /5Z 217-18), is simply the "Being-uncovering of the as-
ANCIENT SCIENCE 167
sertion" (BT 261/52 218). That is to say, all that is shown is that
the assertion points to and uncovers some entity as askew. The
assertion is true only on the basis of the entity's showing itself
as askew. Assertion is simply one way of being toward entities
in which entities are revealed. It is apophantic. If there were no
unconcealment of entities, the truth of an assertion would not be
possible. Hence for Heidegger, the phenomenon of truth is only
possible on the basis of being in a world, wherein entities are
revealed to Dasein.
Thus Heidegger argues that the correspondence theory of
truth is derivative from this primordial and original phenome
non of unconcealment. He develops this claim more fully in the
1931 essay "On the Essence of Truth." Heidegger appeals in both
texts to the Greek word commonly translated as "truth":
aA�eELa. The alternative translation he suggests is Unverborgen
heit, which Sallis translates as "unconcealment" in "On the
Essence of Truth," while Macquarrie and Robinson use "unhid
denness" in Being and Time. Heidegger argues that to translate
aA�eELa with Unverborgenheit is to show how Dasein is in the
truth, that is, that Dasein is the being to which entities in the
world are uncovered. Dasein is existentially constituted as the
being who is in the truth.
Dasein can also, however, be in untruth. Heidegger develops
the view over three decades that truth has untruth at its very
essence. In §44(b) of Being and Time, Dasein is in untruth in fall
enness (BT 264/52 221-22). What is uncovered is disguised and
closed off by idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity, wherein beings
show themselves in the mode of semblance. Dasein's falling is
not some accidental feature but rather an essential part of factic
ity: it is "a basic kind of Being which belongs to everydayness"
(BT 219/52 175). Heidegger argues that in Parmenides' poem,
the goddess of Truth offers two pathways precisely to signify
that Dasein stands in both truth and untruth.
In 1930 the belonging together of truth and untruth is thought
in "On the Essence of Truth" as a double concealment. In the
disclosure of particular beings, being is concealed. This conceal
ment of being is itself concealed in errancy, which is the "insis
tent turning toward what is readily available" (BW 135/WW
196), the preoccupation with beings which precludes the ques-
tion of being. This wandering around in beings, which is etymo

logically betrayed by error's root in the Latin erro, errare, is not
"like a ditch into which [human being] occasionally stumbles,"
but rather "belongs to the inner constitution of the Da-sein into
which historical man is admitted" (BW 135-36/WW 196). But
now Heidegger argues that necessity of untruth to Dasein's exis
tence lies in the very relation of being to human being, that is, in
the very nature of understanding. The condition for the possibil
ity of the unconcealment of particular beings is the concealment
of being. Hence Heidegger does not read the " a " of a-AT)e£W as
privative. Concealment is not a privation, but rather is logically
prior to unconcealment. For Heidegger, truth and untruth be
long together fundamentally.
This thesis comes to its fullest expression in "Nihilism as De
termined by the History of Being," written between 1944 and
1946 but first published in 1961. Here Heidegger argues again
that the concealment of being is itself concealed in the uncon
cealment of beings. Hence "Being itself remains unthought,
[and] the unconcealment of beings too remains unthought"
(N 4:212/NII 317). When human being "lapses into beings"
(N 4:233/NII 342), sets them up as object, orders them, and se
cures them as stockpiles, both being and truth defer to beings.
This is not for Heidegger an accident of history, but rather the
destiny of metaphysics. He privileges himself as able to uncover
this destiny, despite its withdrawal from the history of thinking.
In Being and Time, Heidegger offered a novel reading of Aristotle.
In "Nihilism as Determined by the History of Being," he credits
himself with an insight apparently precluded by the history of
metaphysics: he can ask the questions of being and truth. I sug
gest that the latter is contingent upon the former: Heidegger
privileges himself as seeing through the history of metaphysics
precisely because he thinks anew the origin of that history in
Greek thinking.
The idea that the primordial phenomenon of truth is covered
over in the history of metaphysics is not new to Heidegger in
1944. In §44(b) of Being and Time he argues that the history of
metaphysics in its incipience covered up truth. A metaphysics
of presence covers over the primordial phenomenon of truth by
rendering it an agreement of two things present-at-hand: the as-
ANCIENT SCIENCE 169
sertion and the entity under discussion. He suggests that this

way of understanding being was first mastered and developed
as a branch of knowledge by the Greeks. He must here mean
Aristotle, for it was Aristotle who first defined metaphysics as a
branch of knowledge (d. Met 4.1, 6.1). Indeed, Heidegger argues
that "the primordial understanding of truth was simultaneously
alive among [the Greeks] . . .-at least in Aristotle" (BT 268/5Z
225), for Aristotle, rather than simply holding truth to be the
agreement of an assertion with a state of affairs, understands the
derivative nature of propositional truth. He claims for Aristotle
that the "most primordial 'truth' is the 'locus' of assertion; it is
the ontological condition for the possibility that assertions can
be either true or false--that they may uncover or cover things
up" (BT 269/ 5Z 226). In other words, it is only because Aristotle
understands that truth is unconcealment and concealment that
he can take assertions to be paradigmatic and hence explanato
rily effective for truth and falsity.
Aristotle is accordingly an ambiguous figure for Heidegger.
He both establishes and resists truth as propositional, both con
ceals and acknowledges unconcealment. This tension in Aristot
le's metaphysics appears again for Heidegger in 1940 in his
reading of the Physics, where he argues that Aristotle contains
both the last echo of the pre-Socratic insight into q)1JOL� and the
origin of the reduction of q)1JOL� to 1:EXVT] through analogy. But
the significance of Aristotle to Heidegger's thought does not end
here. Heidegger's reading of Aristotle on truth in 1927 already
contains his move away from transcendental subjectivity, and
hence Aristotle presents to Heidegger in 1940 an opportunity to
retrieve something of the history of the thinking of being that is
prior to Plato's idealism. Although Aristotle follows Plato in that
history, his Physics resonate for Heidegger with the pre-Socratic
experience of being as !puaL�.
In Being and Time, Heidegger sees his phenomenological in
vestigations as "veritas transcendentalis" in that their inquiry is
into being, and "Being is the transcendens pure and simple [das
transcendens schlechthinj" (BT 62/5Z 38). The transcendence of
being was the first reason Heidegger gave for the trivialization
and forgottenness of the question of the meaning of being: being
is the most universal concept. It belongs to every being, but lies
170 HEIDEGGER'S PIDLOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
beyond every being, beyond every characteristic a being may

possess, beyond every class and genus. Heidegger intends to re
think the universality of being such that rather than rendering
being the emptiest concept, it is grounds for a retrieval of Aris
totle's analogy of being, that is, for the problem of the unity of
being.
Heidegger's inquiry is transcendental in that he wants to un
cover the question of the meaning of being. And his strategy is
to do so through an investigation of a particular being, Dasein.
But Heidegger rejects a move to transcendental subjectivity. In
§44(c) he resists the ideal subject because it is "a fanciful ideal
ization" (BT 272/52 229). Rather than accepting accounts of the
a priori in terms of a "pure I" or "consciousness in general,"
Heidegger argues that the "Being of truth is connected primor
dially with Dasein" (BT 272/52 230). He holds that Dasein is in
the truth, but he does not want to take the traditional route of
transcendental idealism to explain its being there. In fact, Dasein
is literally for Heidegger precisely such a "being-there," and he
says explicitly in Introduction to Metaphysics that the "transcen
dental" intended in Being and Time "is not that of the subjective
consciousness" (1M 18/EM 14).
In the early 1930s Heidegger twice rejects transcendental sub
jectivism, specifically in the context of truth. In "Plato's Doctrine
of Truth" he argues that "No attempt to ground the essence of
unhiddenness in 'reason,' 'spirit,' 'thinking,' ',,-oyor;,' or in any
kind of 'subjectivity,' can ever rescue the essence of unhid
denness" (Pathmarks 182/W 238). In "On the Essence of Truth"
the crucial move for understanding a,,-ij8ELu is in Section 4, "The
Essence of Freedom." Here Heidegger places the essence of
truth in freedom, but not the freedom of subjectivity; rather,
"freedom now reveals itself as letting beings be" (BW 127/WW
188). Beings reveal themselves to human beings, and freedom
consists in allowing beings to do so. This account of the essence
of freedom echoes the maxim of phenomenology cited in Being
and Time at §7(c): "To the things themselves!" For Heidegger, the
freedom at the essence of truth does not belong to the transcen
dental subject, but rather is the freedom the thinker must allow
to the object of thought if the thinker is to stand in the truth.
This issue of freedom appears again in 1938 in "The Age of
ANCIENT SCIENCE 171
the World Picture." Here Heidegger diagnoses that in modem

thought, which begins with Descartes, freedom belongs to the
transcendental subject. He argues that Descartes's metaphysical
task was "to create the metaphysical foundation for the freeing
of man to freedom as the self-determination that is certain of
itself. That foundation, however, had not only to be itself one
that was certain, but since every standard of measure from any
other sphere was forbidden, it had at the same time to be of such
a kind that through it the essence of the freedom claimed would
be posited as self-certainty" (AWP Appendix 9, 148-49/H 107).
The Cartesian truth is founded on the truth of the indubitable
cogito, and therefore the subject assumes a special role in the
truth. The ego cogito is the basis of truth insofar as all truth is
founded on its self-certainty. The self-certainty of the subject is
not one truth among others, but sets the measure for all truth.
Heidegger's argument for an alternative conception of freedom,
in which it belongs to beings rather than the self-certain subject,
is a rejection of the claim that human being is the source of truth.
Heidegger is again resisting in 1938 the distinctively modem
1935
move to transcendental subjectivity, a move he laid bare in
cogito sum in Die Frage
as Cartesian through an analysis of the
nach dem Ding (FD 76-82/MSMM 273-80). Heidegger reveals
the medieval influence on his thinking by holding that truth is
transcendental not in the modem sense of having its source in
the structure of human understanding, but in the sense of hav
ing its source in being and therefore transcending any particular
being, including Dasein. This is the source of his critical resis
tance to Descartes found in "The Age of the World Picture" and
Die Frage nach dem Ding. It is a rejection of idealism which, Hei
degger argued (in the same year as the latter text), has its roots
!;n changes Plato made to A.6yo<; when he interpreted being as
Lbeu.
Heidegger's rethinking of A.6yo<; is a long-term project. In
Being and Time he argues that A.6yo<; is apophantic. Truth tradi
tionally belongs to A.6yo<; in that it belongs in language, in the
assertion. Aoyo<; is a "mode of making manifest in the sense of
letting something be seen by pointing it out" (BT 56/52 32). In
language, things are pointed out as things, and this apophantic
as-structure is the basis for the synthesis in virtue of which state-
172 HEIDEGGER' S PHILOSOPHY O F SCIENCE
ments are true or false. Heidegger finds this interpretation in

Being and Time of apophantical discourse sufficient "to clarify
the primary function of the f...6yor:," (BT 58/52 34).
The inadequacy of this clarification, however, and the depth
and complexity of the question of f...6yor:, are evidenced by Hei
degger's return to the issue in Introduction to Metaphysics, again
in the lecture course on Aristotle's Physics in 1940, and again in
"Logic" in 1944. The most significant conclusion Heidegger
draws from rethinking f...6yor:, is that qJ1JOLr:, is originally ul:rj6ELU.
This move is tied to his rejection of transcendental idealism, for
he makes it by displacing f...6yor:, from the transcendental subject
to nature. By tracing t..oyor:, back to the verb t..EYELV, Heidegger
argues that nature is where f...6yor:, began in the Greek experience
of being. He first makes this connection in Being and Time, but it
is in Introduction to Metaphysics that the significant development
takes place.
In Being and Time, Heidegger was content to connect f...6yor:, to
{lJtOXEl�Evov through AEYELV. 'YJtoxEl�EVOV is the subject: it "lies
at the bottom of any procedure addressing oneself to it or dis
cussing it" (BT 58/52 34). As subject in the sense of what is
spoken about, it belongs to the subject in the sense of the thinker
who is the speaker. The ambiguity in the word "subject" is ap
parent in this text implicitly. In "The Age of the World Picture"
in 1938, Heidegger argues that "man becomes subject" (AWP
128/H 88) when {lJtOxEl�Evov becomes subiectum. By 1952, when
he gives the lectures that make up What Is Called Thinking?, Hei
degger has explicitly rethought UJtOXEl�Evov such that the sub
ject has been pulled away from transcendence. Here he takes
UJtOXEl�Evov to mean for the Greeks "what lies before us" (WCT
200/WHD 117): it is neither the thinking nor the speaking, but
the thing that figures in and therefore is prior to both. Heidegger
is careful to make explicitly clear that, of such things that lie
before human beings, only a minute fraction is laid down by
human being. In fact, even what human being does create de
pends on the presence of some other being beforehand: the
"stones from which the house is built come from the natural
rock" (WCT 200/WHD 117). Most of what lies before human
being, to be thought and spoken about, is natural, that is, is
qJ1JOLr:,.
ANCIENT SCIENCE 173
In Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger argues that for Par

menides and Heraclitus, A6yo<; and CPUOL<; are the same. Aoyo<;
and CPUOL<; are the same in that A6yo<; is the "steady gathering,
the intrinsic togetherness of the essent, i.e. being" (1M 130/EM
100). Aoyo<; and CPUOL<; are the gathering of a being into being.
Heidegger asks how this can be the case, when A6yo<; means
"word" and "reason," both human capacities and functions,
and says nothing about nature beyond human nature. He looks
to Heraclitus for an answer.
Heidegger interprets Heraclitus's doctrine of the ,,-oyo<; on the
basis of Fragments 1 and 2. He argues that for Heraclitus, A6yo<;
means gathering together into being, and only on this basis can
it mean anything to do with speaking or hearing. <l>uoU; and
,,-oyo<; are the same for Heraclitus (1M 130-31/EM 100), Heideg
ger says, in that both are being. He argues that the tradition has
falsified Heraclitus's doctrine of the A6yo<; and that likewise Par
menides has been misunderstood (IM 136/EM 104). In the case
of Heraclitus, Heidegger argues that Christianity is responsible
for the interpretation of A6yo<; as word, in particular the word of
Christ (IM 126-27/EM 97). In the case of Parmenides, the "fa
miliar German view [Iandltiufige AuffassungJ" (1M 137/EM 105)
reads Parmenides' claim that thinking and being are the same as
an anticipation of idealism. Heidegger wants not to collapse
being into thinking and therefore into subjectivism in interpret
ing Parmenides, but rather to understand A6yo<; in relation to
being. That is, in Heidegger's reading, cpUOU; and A6yo<; have in
both Heraclitus and Parmenides an original unity.
In the lectures from 1940 on Aristotle's Physics, Heidegger
again pulls both doo<; and A.6yo<; away from transcendental ide
alism, precisely as he did earlier for truth. E1oo<; does not mean
originally the 'Low in the mind of the subject in Heidegger's ac
count. Rather, it means what presents itself to be seen, the aspect
or appearance that a thing offers as visible: "E100<; means the
appearance of a thing and of a being in general, but appearance
in the sense of the aspect, the 'looks: the view, 'Low, which it
offers and only can offer because the being has been put forth
into this appearance and, standing in it, becomes present of it
self-in a word, is. "low is 'the seen: but not in the sense that it
becomes such only through man's seeing. Rather, 'Low is what
something visible offers to the seeing, it is that which offers a

view, the sightable" (BCP 249/ W 275). Echoing the account he
gave of phenomena as appearances in §7(a) of Being and Time,
Heidegger is arguing that a thing offers an appearance, but not
in the sense of a seeming. The tow is originally for the Greeks,
he claims, the visible aspect a thing offers, whether or not some
one is there to see it. He connects this reading of doo� to A6yo�
by means of his retrieval of f...f.yf'.Lv.
Heidegger argues that doo� is understood only when one re
alizes the role of a thing's appearance in the thing being what it
is for language. AEYELV means "to bring together into a unity
and to bringforth this unity as gathered, i.e., above all as becom
ing present; thus it means the same as to reveal what was for
merly hidden, to let it be manifest in its becoming-present" (BCP
252/ W 279). A6yo� is precisely this bringing together into a
unity. A thing presents an appearance when it is gathered to
gether into a unified thing that lies before the speaker such that
it can be spoken about as that thing. Laying (t..EYELV) and saying
(A6yo�) belong together, for one speaks about what lies present;
indeed, speaking about something is a way of bringing it to pres
ence. Heidegger has known this since he called language apo
phantic in Being and Time. He retains this insight into the
connection between laying and saying, and in fact repeats it in
lectures as late as 1952 (WCT 200/ WHD 117). Both A6yo� and
t..EYELV belong with doo� in that what lies before the speaker, the
thing spoken about, is present for the speaker in the visible as
pect it proffers.
In 1944 Heidegger gave a lecture course on A6yo� entitled
"Logic." It was never published, but a brief, revised account was
read to the Bremen Club in 1951 and published that same year
in the Festschrift for Hans Jantzen. It is found in Vortriige und Auf
siitze, and appears in translation in Early Greek Thinking under
the title "Logos (Heraclitus, Fragment B 50)." Here Heidegger
argues that A6yo� is the same as &t..�ef'.La: disclosure (EGT 70/
VA 212). He again traces its etymology to f...f.YELV, and again he
asks how something that means to lay can come to mean saying
and talking (EGT 61/VA 200). The answer he gives was incipient
as early as 1926 in his lectures on Heraclitus wherein he ex
plained A6yo� as the principle of beings by connecting it with
ANCIENT SCIENCE 175
AEYELV and UnOXELI!EVOV (Gesarntausgabe, Band 22:59). In 1940 he

argued that "eI<'\o� is genuinely understood as eI<'\o� only when
it appears within the horizon of the immediate statement about
the being" (BCP 250/ W 275). In 1944 the account of Myo� is
explicit against the background of truth as aA�eELa, unconceal
ment, in the argument on the basis of Heraclitus's Fragment B
50 that Myo� is aA�eELa.
A6yo� is, under Heidegger's assessment of the pre-Socratics,
the distinguishing characteristic of human being, but only inso
far as human being stands in relation to being. It is not a prop
erty among others but definitive in that human being is precisely
the one that stands in the truth. It can be so in Heidegger's view
only because Myo� was for the pre-Socratics not just the human
capacity for language or reason, but rather was being as qJ'\JO�.
Heidegger has not simply redefined words in his explanation of
aA�eELa. Rather, he has inscribed eI<'\o�, Myo�, and q:J1JOL� in a
new constellation. His claim is that this constellation of mean
ings is the original Greek experience of truth. That truth is the
unconcealment of what already lies present, that is, of beings as
a whole as q:)'UOL�, and the concealment of that presencing in the
assertion. Traditional truth as correspondence overlooks its
ground in aA�eELa, just as traditional accounts of nature over
look its fundamental significance to human being. For they un
derstand nature as a particular sphere of beings, not as being.
This originary moment in Greek philosophy, in which being,
q:J1JOL�, A6yo�, and aA�eELa are thought together, is, however,
quickly eclipsed in the history of philosophy. In Introduction to
Metaphysics, Heidegger calls Plato "the completion of the begin
ning" (IM 182/EM 139), and in his analysis of nihilism in the
Nietzsche volumes he reads Plato as the beginning of Western
metaphysics. As the beginning of that history, Plato is an end of
the pre-Socratic insight into being as CPUOL� and the interpreta
tion of being as eI<'\o�. Heidegger argues that in this transition
lies the origin of the medieval distinction between essentia and
existentia, since a thing's whatness is more decisive for its being
than its thatness. For being as t<'\ea is a model, an ideal model at
that. Hence 1:0 cpuoLxa are taken as mere copies. This certainly
accords with Plato's account in Book II of the Republic, and Plato
has no place for the study of nature in his education system,
'
since the natural realm is the realm of becorning, whose instabil

ity precludes truth.
A few years prior to Introduction to Metaphysics, in "Plato's
Doctrine of Truth," Heidegger argues that education and truth
belong together in an original and essential unity (Pathmarks
167/W 124). Reading the cave analogy, he interprets the task of
the teacher in Plato's view to be education of the soul in order
that it might properly see. Accordingly, with Plato, "at..Tj8ELa
comes under the yoke of the tow"; it becomes "the correctness
of apprehending and asserting" (Pathmarks 176-77/W 136).
Rather than belonging to beings themselves, Heidegger argues,
truth has thus become a characteristic of human comportment
toward beings. Plato's idealism is for Heidegger subjectivistic.
Likewise in Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger argues that
Plato's interpretation of being as tow is a crucial moment in the
history of being. That moment is "a decline [Abfall] from the first
beginning" (IM 189/EM 144). The decline is the transformation
of q)1Jm� and t..6yo�, decisive not because q)1Jm� becomes charac
terized as tow, but insofar as tow becomes "the sole and deci
sive interpretation of being" (IM 182/ EM 139), an interpretation
again described as a decline, an Abfall. It is a decline into ideal
ism, in which "vision makes the thing" (IM 183/EM 140) such
that vision is more decisive than the thing in constituting its
whatness. Plato is for Heidegger the originary tum to idealism,
which has consequences for truth. Plato transforms truth from
unconcealment into correctness. He is therefore the origin of the
truth that Heidegger will uncover at the essence of representa
tional thinking, that is, at the essence of modem science.
Parmenides has a role in the tum to idealism in Heidegger's
account. His connection of t..6yo� with XQlVELV interprets t..6yo�
in opposition to qnJa�, Heidegger argues, for herein "t..6yo� as
gathering becomes the ground of being-human [Menschsein]"
(IM 174/EM 133). Hence the question of being is inextricably
bound with human being, for "at the very beginning of Western
philosophy it became evident that the question of being neces
sarily embraces the foundations of being-there" (IM 174/EM
l33). There is herein already a trace of the double essence of
being Heidegger will make so much of in the Nietzsche lectures
on nihilism. For it seems that from its beginning in Greek think-
ANCIENT SCIENCE 177
ing, the opening of the possibility of the question of being is

in each case the opening of the possibility of its interpretation
according to transcendental subjectivism. Taken to its fullest ex
treme, that possibility unfolds as the nihilism of representational
thinking at the essence of science and technology.
Aristotle, however, chooses realism over idealism. He is an
ambiguous figure for Heidegger. On the one hand, he is respon
sible for locating truth in the assertion. The movement in which
truth is no longer the event of unconcealment, but has come to
mean "to say something about something," is a transition of
Myor;, from c:pumr;, to language that culminates, Heidegger says,
in "Aristotle's proposition to the effect that Myor;, as statement
is that which can be true or false" (1M 186/EM 1 42). Yet on the
other hand, Aristotle stands, with his strong interest in the sci
ences, especially biology, in marked contrast to Plato's denigra
tion of the sciences. Heidegger has already argued in Being and
Time that Aristotle can be interpreted on truth differently than
he has been traditionally in the history of philosophy. In fact, I
suggest that Heidegger's rethinking of Aristotle on truth in Being
and Time aligns Aristotle with the opening claim of "Letter on
Humanism," that "Language is the house of being," rather than
with the traditional claim that truth belongs to the assertion.
It would seem, then, that there is something to Aristotle on
c:pumr;, that warrants further thought, given the tension between
the rereading of Aristotle on truth and Myor;, found in Being and
Time and the claim made eight years later that he is the culmina
tion of Plato's move to idealism. In "Plato's Doctrine of Truth,"
Heidegger likewise found Aristotle to be ambiguous. On the one
hand, at Metaphysics 9.1O.1051a34 Aristotle thinks truth as the
fundamental trait of beings. On the other hand, he claims at
Metaphysics 6.4.1027b25 that truth and falsity are not in things
but in the intellect (Pathmarks 178/W 138). Heidegger subse
quently turns to Aristotle, and interestingly enough, it is the
Physics to which he moves.
In summary, in the interpretation that Heidegger gives the
pre-Socratics, especially Heraclitus, being is c:pUOLr;,. As early as
1930, Heidegger suggests that when human being first experi
enced unconcealment for the first time by asking what beings
are, then "being as a whole reveals itself as c:pumr;" 'nature,'
which here does not yet mean a particular sphere of beings but
rather beings as such as a whole, specifically in the sense of
emerging presence" (BW 129/WW 189-90). This notion of emer
gence in connection with <pUOU; comes to the fore again in 1935.
In Einfi1hrung in die Metaphysik, Heidegger describes <puOL� as
denoting "self-blossoming emergence (e.g. the blossoming of a
rose), opening up, unfolding, that which manifests itself in such
unfolding and perseveres and endures in it; in short, the realm
of things that emerge and linger on" (1M 14/EM 11). ct>UOL� is
not simply nature under this account, but the power by which
things come to be, by which they are available to be encountered
in their presence for human being. It is in this sense of "phys
ics," the thinking of <pUOL�, that Heidegger claims that " [from]
the very first 'physics' has determined the essence and history of
metaphysics . . . [and that] metaphysics has remained unalter
ably 'physics' " (1M 17/EM 14). Where being is <pUOL�, meta
physics is physics.
In 1969, Karl Lbwith echoed this sense of <pUOL� in a paper
given at a colloquium honoring Heidegger's eightieth birthday.
He asked, "What is nature supposed to be if it is not the one
nature of all beings, whose power of generation permits every
thing which in any way is-thus even man-to proceed from it
and to pass away again?" (1970:310). ct>UOL� in this sense is, how
ever, much more than is denoted by the contemporary word
"nature." For the history of human thinking about nature is for
Heidegger one of reduction, such that "the actual philosophical
force of the Greek word [<pUOU;] is destroyed" (IM 13/EM 10) by
its Romanization into natura.
For nature was being, Heidegger argues, at the beginning of
Western philosophy. He goes on to describe beings in terms of a
metaphysics of presence: "The thing 'sits.' It rests in the mani
festation, i.e. emergence, of its essence. . . . For the Greeks 'being'
basically meant this standing presence" (1M 60-61/EM 46). In
this reading, to be is to be present for thinking and conversation.
What unconceals itself originally and foundationally to all other
experience is <pUOL�. This is Parmenides' point, argues Heideg
ger, in saying that being and apprehension belong together (1M
183/EM 140; d. Parmenides, Fragment 5).
This interpretation of the pre-Socratic constellation of
ANCIENT SCIENCE 179
at..Tj8ELa, t..6yor;, door;, and qJ1Jmr; is the background against

which Heidegger reads Aristotle's Physics in 1940. In "On the
Being and Conception of qJ1Jmr; in Aristotle's Physics, B.1," Hei
degger interprets Aristotle's ouoLa as the focal instance of being
in the Greek sense of t..EYELV, a laying before the speaker of an
appearance, an door; But ouoLa is not qJ1JOLr; for Aristotle, in
.
Heidegger's account. Both are being, but the conception of being

is not the same. For Aristotle, there are many ways a thing can
be said to be. Truth belongs to the assertion-derivatively so,
Heidegger has argued-but it belongs there nonetheless. For
Heraclitus, on the other hand, "<I>umr; is at..Tj 8ELa" (BCP 269/ W
301). On the basis of this account of truth, Heidegger argues in
1940 that QJumr; cannot be understood by analogy with 'tEXVT].
That is to say, in his 1940 lecture course on Aristotle's Physics,
Heidegger explains how Aristotle narrows the pre-Socratic ac
count of QJumr;.
Heidegger argues that the pre-Socratic view has its last echo
in Aristotle. Yet Aristotle also brings about a transition in the
history of being that is decisive for all subsequent metaphysics,
in fact for the subsequent relation between physics and meta
physics. For, if for the pre-Socratics being was QJumr;, and hence
physics and metaphysics know herein no distinction, Aristotle's
account of being in terms of form and matter reduces nature to
an analogue of the artifact. Heidegger looks for an alternative by
giving QJumr; a priority over 'tEXVT] on the basis of Aristotle's ac
count of actuality and potentiality, that is, in terms of one of the
many ways a thing can be said to be according to Aristotle's
analogy of being.
ARISTOTLE'S ANALOGY OF BEING
Heidegger argues in 1940, reading Aristotle's Physics, that the

pre-Socratic interpretation of QJumr; is narrowed in Aristotle's
conception. For Aristotle, Heidegger suggests, QJumr; is ambigu
ous. On the one hand, the pre-Socratic vision is echoed in Aris
totle's claim that QJumr; is that which moves of its own accord.
On the other hand, Aristotle's claim that QJumr; is both form and
matter, with priority given to form, narrows the pre-Socratic
conception and lays the basis for understanding natural things

by analogy to artifacts. The latter are produced by an artist, and
things in nature are simply self-created, or divinely crafted arti
facts.
Heidegger claims, however, that qnJOU; cannot be understood
by analogy with "tEXVT], that is, artifacts. If one interprets Aris
totle in the light of the claim that being is first and foremost
form, then the coming into being of a thing can be construed as
the imposition of form onto matter. Although this is an adequate
account of production, Heidegger argues that the coming into
being of nature distinguishes it in Aristotle's thought from pro
duction. Heidegger lays out an alternative reading of the Physics
by thinking through Aristotle's analogy of being in terms of
actuality and potentiality.
There is a marked difference between this account and the
view Heidegger struggled with in the 1920s and early 1930s.
There he took metaphysics to ground physics. Here, in his ac
count of Aristotle, the demarcation between the two is for Hei
degger more than blurred. In fact, in reading Aristotle's Physics
he argues that "meta-physics is 'physics' " (Bep 223/W 241).
Heidegger's ear is attuned in reading Aristotle to an echo of a
pre-Socratic insight: being is (jJum�. This is the crucial point that
makes Aristotle's analogy of being Significant for Heidegger.
Heidegger's acquaintance with and understanding of Aristot
le's analogy of being goes well beyond Brentano's reading by
way of the categories. Heidegger reads the analogy in 1940 in
terms of actuality and potentiality. Aristotle's taxonomy of
knowledge, in which he distinguishes theory from production,
serves as an initial demarcation of (jJum� from "tEXVT] since they
are ends of different branches of knowledge. Against that back
ground, the Aristotelian distinction between (jJum� and "tEXVT]
can be drawn as a difference between the relation of matter to
form in each. In Heidegger's interpretation of Aristotle, (jJum�
takes a priority over "tEXVT] since that relation is one of appropria
tion in production, but appropriateness in nature. That is, form
and matter belong together necessarily in (jJum�, but incidentally
in "tEXVT].
In Heidegger's analysis, however, the distinction between
(jJum� and "tEXVT] is unsustainable in modernity. In fact, accord-
ANCIENT SCIENCE 181
ing to Heidegger, what were for Aristotle clearly demarcated

branches of knowledge are subsequently collapsed. Modem sci
ence is essentially technological. Heidegger's view of Aristotle's
Physics therefore not only stands on its own as an account of
the early stages of the history of science, but also serves as the
foundation upon which his critique of modem science unfolds.
It is preparatory to that critique. And it hinges upon Heidegger's
reading of Aristotle's analogy of being.
In Aristotle's analogy, one of the many ways a thing can be
said to be is actually or potentially. A further analogy, between
qJ1JOL<; and 'tEJ(VT], is either implied or precluded, Heidegger ar
gues, depending upon how Aristotle's notion of potentiality
that is, the Mvu!!EL ov-is interpreted. Under Heidegger's
reading of the Physics, the potential, matter, stands in a different
relation to actuality in the case of nature and in the case of things
produced. To understand form in all cases as an imposition
upon matter is to preclude interpreting the relation between
matter and form in the case of nature. This relation is one of
necessity. Trees, for example, must be made of wood. To fail to
see that form and matter are inseparable and equally necessary
in nature is to fail to grasp the difference between nature and
artifacts. Aristotle's distinction between theoretical and produc
tive knowledge is based precisely on that difference.
Heidegger's intent in "On the Being and Conception of <l>UOL<;
in Aristotle's Physics B.l" is to show that Aristotle's account of
the many ways in which a thing can be said to be contains both
the possibility of interpretation of <puo\.<; by analogy to 'tEJ(VT] and
the possibility of a different interpretation. Aristotle lists the sev
eral senses in which a thing can be said to be at Metaphysics
6.2.1026a33-bl: "one was seen to be the accidental, and another
the true ('nonbeing' being the false), while besides these there
are the figures of predication (e.g. the 'what,' quality, quantity,
place, time, and any similar meanings which 'being' may have),
and again besides all these there is that which 'is' potentially or
actually." A thing can be said to be accidental, true (or false), by
way of the categories, or finally, actually or potentially. These
are the many ways a thing can be said to be, for Aristotle. They
take their meaning from a focal instance of being: substance.
This is Aristotle's analogy of being.
182 HEIDEGGER'S PIDLOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
An analogy between Ql'lJOL<; and 'tEXVT] is conspicuously absent

from the list. Thus it is apparent that Heidegger has his own
agenda in choosing to lecture on Aristotle's Physics. His intent is
not simply to teach his students to read Aristotle, but to show
how the Stagirite is a founding moment in the history of Western
thought, which subsequently interprets nature by analogy with
production. Yet this is not to say that Heidegger's reading of
Aristotle is superficial or concocted. The move from Aristotle's
many ways a thing can be said to be to Heidegger's claim that
on this basis Ql1JOU; and 'tEXVT] are subsequently understood to be
analogous in the history of Western thought, is a move that re
quires careful explication, the focus of which is the fourth way
in which a thing can be said to be: potentially or actually. For
Heidegger will argue that understanding matter as the potential
onto which an actualizing form is imposed is the basis for the
analogy between CPUOL<; and 'tEXVT].
The Aristotelian problem of the analogy of being is not new
to Heidegger in 1940. According to Thomas Sheehan (1975:87),
it is common knowledge that the analogy, first encountered by
Heidegger in 1907 in reading Brentano's dissertation, On the
Manifold Sense of Being According to Aristotle, served as the driv
ing force behind Being and Time twenty years later. Heidegger
confirms this fact in "The Understanding of Time in Phenome
nology and in the Thinking of the Being-Question" (Southwest
ern Journal of Philosophy 10:210) and in his inaugural address to
the Heidelberg Academy of Science, where he says that the
"quest for the unity in the multiplicity of Being . . . remained,
through many upsets, wanderings, and perplexities, the cease
less impetus for the treatise Being and Time" (Seigfried 1970:4).
The analogy of being was a central issue in Heidegger's philo
sophical development.
Furthermore, in his lectures on Metaphysics 9.1-3 in 1931, Hei
degger's explication of 1tQo<; �v equivocals (AM 26-48, esp. 38-
40) makes it clear that he understands how the analogy of being
works. Aristotle explains at Metaphysics 4.2.1003a34-b1 the
many senses in which a thing can be said to be by analogy with
the many ways a thing can be said to be healthy. One thing is
called healthy because it preserves health, another in that it pro
duces health, another is symptomatic of health, and another be-
ANCIENT SCIENCE 183
cause it is capable of health. Heidegger explains that the

different meanings of "healthy" stand in their difference none
theless in a unity, and he asks what the character of that unity is
(AM 40). All these uses of "healthy" take their meaning from
and refer back to a single thing: health. Their meaning comes by
analogy to this focal instance.
Likewise, Aristotle continues, there are different senses in
which a thing can be said to be medical, but all are relative to
the medical art. One possesses the art, another is naturally
adapted to it, another is a function of it. There are other words
used similarly to these, says Aristotle, and likewise "there are
many senses in which a thing is said to be, but all refer to one
starting-point" (1003b6). All senses in which a thing can be said
to be take their meaning from a focal instance: substance (ouola).
Aristotle makes his point on the way to arguing that there is one
science to investigate being qua being (1003bll-19). That single
science is metaphysics.
Heidegger's discomfort with metaphysics is well evident by
1940. He has ceased to talk of metaphysics as scientific philoso
phy. He does not stand at the incipience of metaphysics, as does
Aristotle, whose interest is precisely in establishing metaphysics
as a science. Rather, Heidegger stands at the end of a problem
atic tradition. He is in 1940 uncomfortable with the analogy of
being that determines the science for Aristotle, for substance
(ouoLa) is not just the focal instance by which all senses in which
a thing can be said to be take their meaning. A quick review of
these senses shows that one of them is by way of the categories,
of which one is the "what." Substance is itself a category. There
fore all the other senses in which a thing can be said to be must
take their meaning from this category. This is to say that potenti
ality and actuality, as well as being in the sense of being true,
have their meaning from the category of substance. Some
twenty-five years after reading Brentano on the subject, Heideg
ger can argue that nineteenth-century thinkers, above all Bren
tano, therefore had a tendency to recognize potentiality and
actuality as categories (AM 45). And he concludes himself that
the analogy of being is the title for the most difficult anoQLa
within which ancient and all subsequent philosophy is enwalled
(AM 46).
'
Several years ago, Father Joseph Owens asked me if Heidegger

read anyone other than Brentano on Aristotle's analogy of being.
It is clear on the basis of Heidegger's lecture course in 1940 on
the Physics that Heidegger did not follow Brentano and read the
analogy solely by way of the categories. Rather, the lecture is
a painstaking reading of the analogy in terms of actuality and
potentiality. It comes out of a long and critical acquaintance with
the analogy on Heidegger's part.
Against that background, the late and unexplained reference
to Aristotle's many ways a thing can be said to be in the 1940
lecture is not as obscure as it at first seems. The lecture is explic
itly about breaking the analogy of <jJ1JOU; to 'tEXVll, and on the
way to that rupture, it is a rethinking of the relation between on
the one side ouola, and on the other, actuality and potentiality.
It is an attempt to raise the question of being by way of <jlUOL<;.
Aristotle's interpretation of <jlUOL� is more systematized than the
pre-Socratic, since <jlUOL� is for him what is studied in natural
science in distinction to other branches of knowledge. What is
under discussion, however, in Heidegger's account is the things,
not the ways of knowing that get at those things. Potentiality
and actuality are that by which <jlUOL� and 'tEXVll are to be sepa
rated in Heidegger's reading. The implications of that separation
concern the possibility of another beginning for thinking beyond
representational thinking. In Heidegger's reading of Aristotle's
analogy of being lies the possibility of a reconception of nature,
an alternative to science and technology, a thinking beyond mo
dernity.
THEORETICAL VERSUS PRODUCTIVE KNOWLEDGE
Heidegger has previously attributed the account he has of <jlUOL�

to "the Greeks." Although he sometimes treats Parmenides,
Heraclitus, and Anaximander explicitly, at other times he refers
to "the Greeks" as if they constitute a unified whole. On the
basis of context it seems that he usually means the pre-Socratics,
but little evidence is available in most instances to pin the term
down any further. The effect of this term is to give Heidegger's
reading of ancient philosophy on occasion the feel of a "once
ANCIENT SCIENCE 185
upon a time" rather than careful and diligent analysis. Where

there is no evidence to do otherwise, one must simply and un
comfortably reproduce his generalization. Heidegger's treat
ment of Aristotle shows, however, that his reductionist
generalizations about "the Greeks" are not always hermeneutic
hand-waving so much as moments of interpretive synthesis aris
ing from years of detailed analysis. His reading of Aristotle is
an example of such sustained interpretation. In 1931 he reads
Metaphysics 9.1-3 in a semester-long course, and in 1940 he does
the same with Physics 2.1.
In this lecture course, the reason Heidegger gives for his inter
est in Aristotle is that the Stagirite is both a culmination and a
foundation in the history of Western philosophy. In the Physics
is found the "first explanation of the Being of (jlUOL£ where the
way of questioning effected a coherence of thought . . . [the ful
fillment and] last echo of the original (and thus supreme)
thoughtful projection of the Being of (jlUOL£ as this is still pre
served for us in the fragments of Anaximander, Heraclitus and
Parmenides" (BCP 224/W 242). Aristotle's interpretation of
(jlUOL£ both captures the pre-Socratic understanding, insofar as
it constitutes a unity, and "sustains and guides all succeeding
interpretations of the Being of 'nature' " (BCP 224/W 243). In
that earlier interpretation, "(jlUOL£ is uATj8ELU, unconcealment"
(BCP 269/W 301). It is truth understood not as the correctness
of a proposition, but as the unconcealment of beings on the basis
of which propositional truth is possible. <!>UOL£ is to be wondered
about, contemplated in j3lo£ 8EWQT]"tLXO£, because, to use Heideg
ger's formulation of the question of metaphysics at the closing
of What Is Metaphysics? and the opening of Introduction to Meta
physics, (jlUOL£ is the source of the beings in the question, "Why
are there beings at all, and not rather nothing?" For it is from
(jlUOL£ that beings, including that being for whom its being is an
issue, first and foremost come into being.
In Heidegger's account of the Greeks, (jlUOL£ is not simply "na
ture" but rather the power by which things come into being and
remain in unconcealment to be encountered by human beings.
In 1935 Heidegger defines it as "the emerging and arising, the
spontaneous unfolding that lingers" (1M 61/EM 47). This read
ing of (jlUOL£ stays with Heidegger such that twenty years later,
ANCIENT SCIENCE 185
upon a time" rather than careful and diligent analysis. Where

there is no evidence to do otherwise, one must simply and un
comfortably reproduce his generalization. Heidegger's treat
ment of Aristotle shows, however, that his reductionist
generalizations about "the Greeks" are not always hermeneutic
hand-waving so much as moments of interpretive synthesis aris
ing from years of detailed analysis. His reading of Aristotle is
an example of such sustained interpretation. In 1931 he reads
Metaphysics 9.1-3 in a semester-long course, and in 1940 he does
the same with Physics 2.1.
In this lecture course, the reason Heidegger gives for his inter
est in Aristotle is that the Stagirite is both a culmination and a
foundation in the history of Western philosophy. In the Physics
is found the "first explanation of the Being of (jlUOL£ where the
way of questioning effected a coherence of thought . . . [the ful
fillment and] last echo of the original (and thus supreme)
thoughtful projection of the Being of (jlUOL£ as this is still pre
served for us in the fragments of Anaximander, Heraclitus and
Parmenides" (BCP 224/W 242). Aristotle's interpretation of
(jlUOL£ both captures the pre-Socratic understanding, insofar as
it constitutes a unity, and "sustains and guides all succeeding
interpretations of the Being of 'nature' " (BCP 224/W 243). In
that earlier interpretation, "(jlUOL£ is uATj8ELU, unconcealment"
(BCP 269/W 301). It is truth understood not as the correctness
of a proposition, but as the unconcealment of beings on the basis
of which propositional truth is possible. <!>UOL£ is to be wondered
about, contemplated in j3lo£ 8EWQT]"tLXO£, because, to use Heideg
ger's formulation of the question of metaphysics at the closing
of What Is Metaphysics? and the opening of Introduction to Meta
physics, (jlUOL£ is the source of the beings in the question, "Why
are there beings at all, and not rather nothing?" For it is from
(jlUOL£ that beings, including that being for whom its being is an
issue, first and foremost come into being.
In Heidegger's account of the Greeks, (jlUOL£ is not simply "na
ture" but rather the power by which things come into being and
remain in unconcealment to be encountered by human beings.
In 1935 Heidegger defines it as "the emerging and arising, the
spontaneous unfolding that lingers" (1M 61/EM 47). This read
ing of (jlUOL£ stays with Heidegger such that twenty years later,
ANCIENT SCIENCE 187
physics as knowledge at all (Cornford 1941:236), since knowl

edge is of the eternal and not of transient TU <pU OL'XU. Heidegger
is accordingly interested in Aristotle's taxonomy of knowledge,
since his analysis of the subsequent history of metaphysics con
cerns the contrast between theoretical and productive knowl
edge.
Aristotle discriminates theoretical, practical, and productive
knowledge on the basis of the end (1£1,.0£) of each. E>eooQLa has
as its end the thing known. It is knowledge for the sake of
knowledge, and seeks only to become one with its object.
I1QU1;L£ is practical knowledge, consisting in ethics and politics,
and has its end in action. TEXVT] is productive knowledge under
which fall, for example, the knowledge of the craftsperson and
the art of the doctor. TEXVT] has its end in the thing produced:
the work. A carpenter produces a house, a doctor, health. Aris
totle makes a further threefold division within 8eooQLu. Since the
end of all 8eooQLu is the thing, the end serves to distinguish its
three branches on the basis of a further distinction between
kinds of things that are known. This strategy of separating
knowledge on the basis of its end also appears in De Anima,
where Aristotle distinguishes intellection from perception on
the basis of the difference between intelligible and sensible ob
jects, and the five senses on the basis of their different objects.
The object of hearing is sound, of sight is color, and so forth. In
the case of the three branches of 8eooQLu, the objects of the
branches differ according to their motion. But motion does not
mean simply change of place for Aristotle. Rather, it means
change in general, including change of place but also growth,
decrease, and qualitative difference, and the special case of gen
eration and destruction.
Aristotle explains at Physics 198a29-31 that "there are three
branches of study, one of things which are incapable of motion,
the second of things in motion, but indestructible, the third of
destructible things." The first branch is metaphysics, and its ob
ject is that which does not move, separate substance. The second
is mathematics, including astronomy, and its objects move, but
not in the sense of generation and destruction. The final branch
of 8eooQLu is the study of nature (<P-UOL£), and natural things move
in all ways. Aristotle claims that the fact that they move must be
taken for granted by physicists, because it "is indeed made plain

by induction" (185a14). They come into being, grow, change
their place and qualities, and eventually are destroyed.
The claim that 1:<1 <puOLxa move entails for Aristotle that living
things cannot be defined without reference to their matter, for
materiality goes hand in hand with motion. <l>UOL£ is analogous
to "snub," for "snub" cannot be defined without reference to
matter (Met 6.1.1025b32-1026a6). What is snub is a concave nose,
whereas concavity itself "is independent of perceptible matter"
(1025b33): its definition does not require mention of a nose. If
something is <pUOL£ for Aristotle, it is in motion, and that means
it must have matter. Thus he claims that "the necessary in na
ture, then, is plainly what we call by the name of matter, and the
changes in it" (Phys 2.9.200a30).
Matter plays therefore a central role in Aristotle's account of
<pUOL£. But it is crucial in understanding that account to see that
Aristotle is not a strict empiricist or materialist in his conception
of natural philosophy. He does not hold that knowledge comes
about through perception alone. Hence he argues (in several
places, most notably De Anima 3.7, Metaphysics 1.1, and Nicoma
chean Ethics 3.2) that animals are not capable of knowledge,
though they perceive. Rather, Aristotle states explicitly in the
Posterior Analytics that knowledge is of the universal, whereas
perception is always of a particular thing (87b27-33). Likewise,
he claims at 71b15 and 73a21 that the object of scientific knowl
edge "cannot be other than it is." Universality brings necessity.
The discussion of scientific knowledge in Book 6 of the Nicoma
chean Ethics confirms that it is of things that are universal
(1140b31-33), that is, necessary, eternal, ungenerated, and im
perishable (1139b23-24). T<1 <puOLxa are of course never eternal;
rather, they are generated and perishable. They are never uni
versal, but always particular, always a "this." Yet knowledge of
1:<1 <puoLxa is universal for Aristotle in that it is knowledge of a
particular thing in a certain respect, that is, in respect of its univer
sality. Aristotle's universal has no separate (from matter) exis
tence: it is never found independently of a "this," a particular
substance. He tells us in the opening chapter of the Metaphysics
that the universal is elicited from several groups of singulars,
that is, from experience (980b25; d. An Post 100a6-9). In experi-
ANCIENT SCIENCE 189
ence, both the skill of the craftsperson and the knowledge of the
student of science have their source (981a1). For in experience
the universal is stabilized within the soul as a single identity.
Scientific knowledge is accordingly of what is necessary, ungen
erated, and imperishable-that is, the universal-in that which
is itself neither necessary nor eternal but constantly changing.
So although Aristotle insists that natural science is knowledge
of that which has matter, he cannot be called a materialist.
Furthermore, Aristotle argues in the Metaphysics that natural
science must fall into one of three classes-practical, productive,
or theoretical-and that it cannot be either of the former two
(1064a19). Natural science is, then, theoretical (102Sb2S), in con
trast to "tEXVTJ, which is productive. The most obvious distinction
between qJ1JOU; and "tEXVTJ is readily discernible in Aristotle's tax
onomy of knowledge. TEXVTJ is a division of knowledge, as are
8EWQLU and JtQul;u;. <l>uou;, on the other hand, is the end, the
object of a particular branch of 8EWQLU; it is the thing under
study.
Yet this difference, between a way of knowing and a thing
known some other way, plays a role in neither Aristotle's nor
Heidegger's account. In The Basic Works of Aristotle, Hardie and
Gaye translate Physics 2.1.193a31 as follows: "For the word 'na
ture' is applied to what is according to nature and the natural in
the same way as 'art' is applied to what is artistic or a work of
art." Heidegger translates this passage his own way: "Just as we
(loosely) call by the name "tEXVTJ those things which are pro
duced in accordance with such a know-how, as well as those
which belong to this kind of being, so also we (loosely) call by
the name qJuou; those things which are in accordance with qJUOL£
and hence belong to beings of this kind" (BCP 2S0/W 276). Hei
degger has added the word "loosely" parenthetically to his
translation. Although one recoils at the thought of a translator
simply adding words to render the desired interpretation of the
text under scrutiny, Heidegger's move here cannot be taken as
cavalier. For indeed, to Aristotle, physics and productive knowl
edge are different ways of knowing precisely in virtue of the fact
that they are directed at differing things. The distinction be
tween knowledge and its object is Simply not as crucial to Aris
totle as to modern philosophers. In fact, for Aristotle, when one
knows, one becomes one with the thing known. Exactly what
that means is unclear, particularly under the influence of a mod
em epistemology in which the knowing subject remains op
posed by the object known: the thing remains other. Aristotle's
explanation is that in knowing one receives the form without
the matter. This is not overly helpful, although in the case of
perception, it is further explained by the analogy of a signet ring
impressing its form but not its matter into wax (De Anima
2.12.424a17-24). In Aristotle's account, knowledge consists in
having the form in the soul, and different kinds of knowledge
do so differently because they have different ends. In fact, that
the form is stabilized in the soul through experience in physics,
whereas in production the artist has the form in the soul prior
to production, is the crucial distinction between q)1Jm� and "tEXVT]
for both Aristotle and Heidegger.
Accordingly, I accept Heidegger's addition of the word
"loosely" to his translation of 193a31 as pedagogical. He is high
lighting Aristotle's point. For when Heidegger, following Aris
totle, uses the terms "tEXVT] and cpua�, he is talking about things
and not kinds of knowledge. What is at stake in Heidegger's
discussion is the distinction between natural things and things
that are produced: it is the difference between things that both
Heidegger and Aristotle wish to elucidate. This is why Aristotle
is the philosopher at stake in Heidegger's account of ancient sci
ence. It is Aristotle whose taxonomy of knowledge makes possi
ble a clear distinction between cpum� and "tEXVT] when he
distinguishes both theoretical and productive knowledge from
practical knowledge. The separation of the applied arts from
practical knowledge-whose end is an action, not a thing
grounds Heidegger's analysis not of knowledge, but of things.
Accordingly, I cannot follow Dennis Schmidt, who argues that
Heidegger is after an economy of production in his 1940 lecture
course on the Physics. Heidegger's intent is not to distinguish
kinds of knowledge. His point is precisely that cpum� cannot be
understood by economies of production, that is, by analogy with
"tEXVT]. Schmidt, reinvesting in an economy of production, is in
terested in a retrieval of ftlftT]m� from representation to repeti
tion. This question of ftlftT]m� is a thoroughly interesting issue,
and to pursue it is a task worth doing; in fact, Schmidt's account
ANCIENT SCIENCE 191
does the job well. Yet, Heidegger's task in 1940 is not to complete
that task. His critique of representational thinking will come in
the 1950s. The reading of Aristotle in 1940 is one of the building
blocks on the basis of which that later critique will be made.
Hence, Schmidt's interest in this text confirms the lectures as a
significant development in Heidegger's thinking toward that
end. But Schmidt mistakes the preparatory for the substantial,
and prematurely reads the incipient as the expressed.
Indeed, Heidegger's explicit purpose in the 1940 lecture is not
a critique of representational thinking, but rather the severing of
an analogy between <pUOL<; and 'tIlXVTj. The basis on which Hei
degger pries apart <pUOL<; and 'tExvTj-that is, things that come to
be from nature and things that are produced-is what is gener
ally known in the English tradition of Aristotelian scholarship
as potentiality.
In "On the Being and Conception of <pUOL<; in Aristotle's Physics

B.1," Heidegger acknowledges that Aristotle's interpretation of
<pUOL<; is drawn in part from Antiphon. Heidegger reads Anti
phon as an idealist who holds that the real is not what is experi
enced (BCP 242-43/W 266-67). We experience sensible things,
but reality consists rather in the four elements prior to their for
mation into things. Things appear when some form is imposed
upon those material elements. Sensible things are, however, per
ishable, and thus are merely transitory appearances in contrast
to the eternal elements. Actuality, that is, what is experienced, is
accordingly illusory in Antiphon's account, whereas the OUVU!!EL
QV, that is, the potential, which consists in unformed matter, is
permanent and thus real. Antiphon takes the OUVU!!EL QV to be
matter that is available to receive the form and thus to be or
dered by its imposition. Under Aristotle's interpretation of the
twofold nature of <pUOL<;, this interpretation of the relation be
tween matter and form also holds.
Heidegger's criticism of Antiphon's view is that it contains "a
misinterpretation of OUVU!!EL QV, which changes this from 'the
appropriated' to something merely 'order-able' and 'on hand' "
(BCP 267 jW 298). This is Thomas Sheehan's translation of Hei

degger's lecture. The translation of das Geeignete as "the appro
priated" is helpful to the reader of Heidegger in that it suggests
a connection with Ereignis, which appears in Heidegger's think
ing in the 1960s as the event of being, and is often translated
as "Appropriation." Yet it is a problematic translation for my
purposes. I wish to retain the notion of appropriateness and
suitability, but I wish also to avoid a certain confusion. The dif
ference between qJ1Jm� and "tEXVT] lies in the different relation
of form to matter in each. The distinction is between what is
appropriate (Le., suitable and proper) and what is appropriated
(Le., borrowed or taken). This distinction cannot be made if das
Geeignete is translated as "the appropriated," for it is here that
appropriateness but not appropriation is called for.
Accordingly, I translate differently the charge against Anti
phon: his view is grounded "in a misinterpretation of the Mva
fleL QV, of the appropriate [des Geeigneten], as a mere thing at
one's disposal and on hand" (W 298). Antiphon's position on
the nature of things has as its basis a construal of the relation
between form and matter that does not acknowledge a differ
ence in that relation for nature versus artifacts. Heidegger's in
tent in his 1940 lecture course is to explicate a different view of
the relation between matter and form in Aristotle's Physics by
means of a different account of potentiality. Under this account
the potential is not simply matter that is on hand or at one's
disposal to be ordered by some form, but rather matter is the
potential that is appropriate to some form. The question of poten
tiality and actuality is inseparable from the question of matter
and form.
Heidegger will use this different account of potentiality to call
for an interpretation of q)"uaL� that does not reduce it to tEXVT] by
analogy. The difference between the criticized interpretation
and the view that Heidegger finds as only an echo in Aristotle is
the difference between a relation of matter and form that is an
imposition or an appropriateness, respectively. Before the ques
tion of what this appropriateness consists in can be answered, a
reading of Aristotle on potentiality and actuality must be laid
out.
Though the role of matter in ql1Jm� is crucial in Aristotle's ac-
ANCIENT SCIENCE 193
count, he assigns to form a priority over matter. Heidegger ana

lyzes this move on the basis of "the basic notion of Western
metaphysics" (BCP 255): EV"tEAEXELU. 'EV"tEAEXELU, commonly
rendered in English as "actuality," is the subject of no little de
bate among scholars. The issue of what "actuality" means is fur
ther complicated by the fact that Aristotle uses EV"tEAEXELU
virtually interchangeably with EVEQYELU. Heidegger separates
the two words perhaps more cleanly than Aristotle did, for he
argues in his lectures on Physics 2.1 that the EQYOV at the core of
EVEQYELU distinguishes the work, what is produced, from EV"tEAE
XELU, which has "tEAO<; at its core. Hence he uses the words to
capture the difference between qJ1JOL<; and "tEXVTJ.
Yet, as George Blair notes, "every single instance of EV"tEAEXELU
has a use of EVEQYELU that exactly parallels it" (1978:110). There
are two words. And further, neither of these words is found in
Greek before Aristotle, contrary to his usual strategy of appro
priating existing words. He must have had a specific purpose
in mind to coin these words. Blair's work on these two words
establishes a basis on which to understand Aristotle's notion of
actuality such that what Heidegger is after for the sister term,
potentiality, can become clear.
'EVEQYELU is the earlier word, first appearing apparently in the
Protrepticus before Aristotle left the Academy, although this is
not an extant text. Blair translates it as "activity" rather than
"actuality" on the basis of etymology. As did Heidegger, Blair
seeks to understand the word by looking to the "work" (EQYOV)
contained within. He suggests that Aristotle uses the word to
stress the idea of "doing" and theorizes that Aristotle intro
duced the word precisely in opposition to Plato's static sense
of form (1978:109). Quite intentionally, Aristotle never defines
EVEQYELU explicitly, stressing instead that it must be grasped by
analogy:
Actuality, then, is the existence of a thing not in the way which
we express by "potentially"; we say that potentially, for instance,
a statue of Hermes is in the block of wood and the half-line is in
the whole, because it might be separated out, and we call even the
man who is not studying a man of science, if he is capable of
studying; the thing that stands in contrast to each of these exists
actually . . . it is as that which is building is to that which is capa-
ble of building, and the waking to the sleeping, and that which is
seeing to that which has its eyes shut but has sight, and that which
has been wrought to the unwrought. Let actuality be defined by
one member of this antithesis, and the potential by the other. (Met
9.6.1048a31-b5)
For the sake of clarity, I offer the following list of potentialities

set against their corresponding actualities:
Potentiality Actuality
block of wood statue of Hermes
half-line line
scientist not studying scientist studying
builder not building builder building
sleeping person person awake
seer with eyes closed seer seeing
the unwrought the wrought
It is pretty clear how the actualities of the scientist studying, the
builder building, the seer seeing, and even the person who is
awake are cases of activities-of "doing," as Blair wishes to un
derstand EVEQYELU. But a statue of Hermes, a line, and something
that has been wrought are actualities that do not give themselves
so easily to a contrast against the static form. Statues, lines, and
things wrought just do not seem to do much. Blair's suggestion
is that Aristotle coined the word EvtEt..EXELU precisely to look
after this problem. For, if EV"tEt..EXELU means "having its end in
side it," as Blair suggests (1978:114), then the actuality of a thing
that does not in fact do much is easier to grasp: "a statue is a
statue when it contains the end ("tEA.O�) of a statue" is perhaps
more apt than "a statue is a statue when it does what statues
do." Yet the explanatory victory here is perhaps Pyrrhic. It is
still unclear how being a statue, a line, or a thing wrought is an
activity.
Furthermore, once Blair has explained why the second word
is introduced, he is faced with the question of why this use of
EvtEA.EXELU is subsequently superseded by EVEQYELU, the earlier
term. For apparently Aristotle introduced the second word only
to discover eventually, by slipping into using EVEQYELU in pre
Cisely the way he intended EvtEt..EXELU, that in fact a thing's hav-
ANCIENT SCIENCE 195
ing its end inside it is a kind of activity. If it is the case that

EVEQY€L<l is activity, and its primary sense movement, as Aris
totle says at Metaphysics 9.3.1D47a31, and that EVEQY€L<l and Evt€A
EX€L<l are not meaningfully distinct for Aristotle, then Heidegger
is right to claim that understanding this "basic notion of meta
physics" depends on understanding Aristotle's concept of mo
tion. In order to say what it means to hold that actuality is an
activity, Heidegger has chosen the only reasonable direction in
which to move his account: motion.
Motion is, however, much more complex in Aristotle's ac
count than the modem word implies. A better word to under
stand all that is carried in Aristotle's account of motion is
"change." In Book 1 of the Physics, Aristotle begins by asking
the number and nature of the first principles of nature. He an
swers that there are two or three principles, depending upon
whether one considers them as composites or simply. Taken as
composites, for example, the unmusical man becomes the musi
cal man. There are two principles, composite in that the sub
stance and its accident are named. Taken simply, the man goes
from being unmusical to being musical. There are three princi
ples: a substance and two contraries. Either way, the model un
derlying the inquiry into nature is one in which some attribute
changes and some substance persists throughout. Generation
and destruction will, then, be special cases of motion for Aris
totle, since they are motions in which a substance comes into
being or passes away, and therefore cannot persist throughout.
Indeed, Heidegger argues that Aristotle excluded YEV€mc;
from his introductory characterization of motion (xLvTtmc;) as
change (f.I€"ta�oA�) at 192b15, because "to it he reserved the task
of marking out the Being of cpume;" (BCP 259/W 288). It is pre
cisely generation that will provide the fulcrum by which Hei
degger will pry cpume; apart from "tEXVTt in Aristotle's thought.
He argues that for Aristotle, cpu me; comes into being and moves
toward its end differently from "tEXVTt, and that this is because
the relation between matter and form is different for each. An
analogy between cpum.c; and "tEXVTt is possible on the basis of An
tiphon's account of motion, but can only be found in Aristotle if
one fails to grasp Aristotle's rejection of Antiphon's account.
According to Heidegger, Antiphon held the difference be-
'
tween motion and rest to be that between the fleeting and the
eternal (BCP 243/ W 266-67). Eternal are the elements, which are
the material substratum of the ever-changing things encoun
tered in experience. But, points out Heidegger, the process of
growth and decay happens without interruption. The substra
tum may be permanent, but that does not distinguish it from the
changeable, because change is also a constant for the Greeks
(BCP 245/W 270).
An alternative interpretation of motion is put forward in Hei
degger's enigmatic claim that the Greeks conceived motion in
terms of rest (BCP 255/W 283): "The purest manifestation of
being-moved is to be sought where rest does not mean the
breaking off and stopping of movement, but rather where being
moved gathers itself up into standing still, and where this ingath
ering, far from excluding being-moved, includes and for the first
time discloses it" (BCP 256/W 284). Rest does not happen when
movement stops, but rather is a fulfillment of being moved. This
is the sense in which for Aristotle having its end in itself is an
activity on the part of a thing. 'EV"tE"-EXELU is an activity that is
also a stillness, a gathering up of movement into an end. The
activity that is movement toward an end does not cease when
that thing reaches its end. The end is a tension that gathers that
very movement together in the thing, and thus includes and dis
closes what that movement is a movement toward. Almost ten
years earlier, in his lectures on 9.1-3 of the Metaphysics, Heideg
ger gave the example of a runner at the starting line immediately
prior to a race in order to explain this notion of a stillness that is
a gathering together into movement. The runner is still, but the
stance and composure of the runner are a gathering together
that can only be dissipated by subsequently running. It is in this
moment of tension in stillness immediately prior to running that
the runner is most clearly actualized (AM 218). True to Aristot
le's refusal to account for EVEgYELU other than in conjunction
with the MVUf.lEL QV, it is by way of the latter that Heidegger has
reached his account of the former.
Heidegger's adeptness with this topic is perhaps due to the
fact that 1940 is not the first time he works with MVUf.lL<; in a
lecture course. The earlier lectures on the Metaphysics from the
summer semester of 1931, from which I took the example of the
ANCIENT SCIENCE 197
runner, deal exclusively with the concept of Mvuf,LL<; xU'!:a XLVT]

OLV. Heidegger deals first with the question of the human power
to create, JtOLT]OL�, but his ultimate concern is with the power of
a thing to move itself, that is, to become what it is in the sense
that an acorn becomes an oak tree. These two senses of "power"
capture precisely the difference at stake in the 1940 lecture
course. For the difference between an artifact and nature is the
difference between what needs an artist to come into being and
what does not. Heidegger will in 1940 pick up the thread of a
thought he previously put down in 1931.
In the third and final section of the lectures on the Metaphysics,
Heidegger deals with Aristotle's rejection of the Megarian thesis
that reality consists not in potentialities but rather only in actual
ities. Heidegger argues that OUVUf,L� is also real: beings can be
potentially. In 1940 he argues that beings can be potentially, but
further, that EVEQYELU and EvtEAEXELU, in contrast to OUVUf,LL�, are
real in a way that is prior. He focuses on Aristotle's claim at
Metaphysics 9.8.1049b5: "actuality is prior to potency." This is
Ross's translation, found in The Basic Works of Aristotle.
Heidegger offers an alternative translation and explanation of
this claim:
EVEQYELU more originally fulfills what pure becoming-present is
insofar as it means the having-itself-in-the-end such as has left
behind all the "not-yet-ness" of [appropriateness] for . . . , or bet
ter, has precisely brought it forth along with it into the realization
of the fulfilled appearance. The basic thesis that Aristotle has put
forth concerning the hierarchy of Ev�EAEXELa and Mvaf.lL<; can be
expressed briefly as follows: EvtEAEXELa is ouoLa "to a greater de
gree" than MVUf.lL, is. EvtEAEXELa fulfills the conditions of Being,
as constantly and of itself becoming present, more fundamentally
than Mvaf.lL<; does. (Bep 258)
�UVUf,L� is always a "not-yet" in that the potential does not ap

pear in unhiddenness the way the actual does. The actual is quite
simply more present than the potential in that the potential is
on the way but not yet present.
Heidegger reads the priority Aristotle assigns EVEQYELU over
the MVUf,LEL OV consistently with Aristotle's claim that "there are
many senses in which a thing may be said to 'be' " (Met 4.2.
1003a32). Heidegger attempts to put those ways into a hierarchi

cal rather than linear relation. His account of the priority of actu
ality is simply his reading that actuality better fulfills the
conditions of substance (oUOLa) than potentiality does. Revealing
a commitment to a metaphysics of presence, Heidegger argues
that the presence of the potential is not the same as the presence
of the actual.
Aristotle's account is about talking about things. It is about
when a thing can be said to be. What is present for language is
ouoLa, often translated as "substance." Heidegger has insisted
that ouoLa be read as "becoming-present" throughout the 1940
lecture course. The understanding of ouoLa herein called for
must be based on the opposition between unhiddenness and
seeming. In fact, Heidegger claims that understanding this dif
ference is "the condition for understanding at all Aristotle's in
terpretation of q)'tJOL�" (BCP 245/W 270).
For Antiphon, a thing is made present in semblance. The real
is matter onto which a form has imposed an appearance that is
a semblance, a passing shape. For Aristotle, on the other hand,
ouoLa is a making present in unhiddenness, in truth. A thing
that appears in unconcealment, that can be spoken about as
what it is, is an appearance, but not a semblance, Heidegger
argues, much as he distinguished appearance from semblance
in §7(a) of Being and Time. To be unhidden is to appear, but not
to seem. It is the unhiddenness of a thing in the stillness that is
EVTEAeXELa that "most perfectly fulfills what ouoLa is: the becom
ing-present in the appearance, constantly and of itself" (BCP
257 /W 286).
Heidegger's claim, then, is that the priority of EVEQYELa and
EVTEAeXELa over Mva�tL� consists in the fact that EVEQYELa and
EVTEA.EXELa fulfill becoming-present (ouoLa) better than MVa!lL�
does. For, consistent with Physics 2.1.193b6-8, "a thing is more
properly said to be what it is when it has attained to fulfillment
than when it exists potentially." A piece of bronze is not called
a statue, other than potentially, until it looks like one. An acorn
can in some sense be called a oak tree, but one says "oak tree"
properly when an oak tree presents itself. Likewise, a collection
of wood, concrete, nails, and rebar can be in some sense called a
house when these things are on the way to becoming a house,
ANCIENT SCIENCE 199
but the completed house, which stands present as a fulfillment

of what a house's appearance (d()o�) is, is more properly called
a house. One talks about a house when the thing being talked
about looks like a house. This is the sense in which the form
(f!oQ(jl�) "is not an ontic property present in matter, but a mode
of Being. . . . [It is1 the act of standing in and placing itself into
the appearance, in general: placing into the appearance" (BCP
250/W 276). The form, then, has a priority with respect to EVEQ
YEUI, for it is the form which governs a being's actuality. And it
does so first and foremost in (jlUOL�, for it is (jlUOL� that this plac
ing into appearance brings itself about. It is in this relation of
form to being that Heidegger sees in Aristotle the possibility of
interpreting (jlUOL� not by reduction to 'tEXV1] by analogy.
Heidegger argued in 1935 in Introduction to Metaphysics that for

"the Greeks . . . (jlUOL� is being itself" (IM 13-14/EM 10-11). In
the 1940 lecture course on Aristotle's Physics he holds to this
interpretation, arguing that for Aristotle, (jlUOU; is ouola: "(jlUOU;
is ouota, beingness-that which distinguishes a being as such;
in a word: Being" (BCP 238/W 260). He suggests further that
the "decisive principle which guides Aristotle's interpretation of
(jlUOL� declares that (jlUOL� must be understood as ouota, a man
ner and mode of becoming-present" (BCP 239/W 261). In the
"beCOming-present" that is ouota, form and matter together
present the thing which can be encountered in experience. Both
'tEXV1] and (jlUOL� are fulfilled in the activity that is EVEQYELa, but
it is only (jlUOL� that moves itself and is always so moving toward
its end. In Heidegger's analysis, (jlUOL� has a priority over 'tEXV1]:
(jlUOL� is definitively Ev'tEAEXELa and definitively ouota. It is the
relation between matter and form that determines this priority.
As Aristotle makes clear in the first chapter of the Metaphysics,
to know is to understand the cause. In the Physics, (jlUOL� is "a
source or cause of being moved or at rest" (192b22-23). And it
is a generative cause, for of things that exist, "some exist by
(jlUOL�, some from other causes" (192b8). TExvT] is precisely an
other such cause. Heidegger notes that these are not efficient
'
causes, for "cause" here does not mean "the manner and mode
in which one thing 'acts on' another" (BCP 227/W 245). Each is
an aQX� but not in the sense of "the starting-point of a push,
which pushes the thing away and leaves it to itself" (BCP 233/
W 254). Rather, q:nJa� and "tEXVT] are generative causes in that
each is a starting point and governing principle from which a
thing comes to be what it is, whether it be a thing in nature such
as a tree, for example, or an artifact such as a house. <l>UOL� and
"tEXVT] are generative causes: they cause yEVWL�. Hence, as aQXaL
they bring into being and determine development.
That is to say, they stand in a special relation to the final cause.
In fact, in the case of both qJUOL� and "tEXVT], the aQX� is also the
final cause ("tEAO�). The end of qJUOL� is qJUOL� in that things that
come from nature move toward other things that are specifically
identical. Things in nature reproduce. Likewise in the case of
"tEXVT], the final cause is the aQX�, for, as put clearly in Parts of
Animals, the final cause "is the reason, and the reason forms the
starting-point, alike in the works of art and in works of nature"
(639b15). The origin of "tEXVT] is the d1\o� in the head of the artist.
The end of "tEXVT] is the thing made in conformity with that d1\o� .
Accordingly, Aristotle claims that "Art indeed consists in the

conception of the result to be produced before its realization in
the material" (640a32; cf. EN 1140a13).
The difference between qJua� and "tEXVT] is that in the case of
qJua�, the aQX� and "tEAO� are qJua� itself. But when something
is produced, it is the thing that is both aQX� and "tEAO�, and not
"tEXVT] itself. A doctor produces health, not medicine, and a
builder produces a house, not carpentry. In some sense, doctors
do produce medicine and builders, carpentry, for they can teach
or learn more about their craft. But they do so toward the further
ends of health and houses, respectively. On the other hand, a
tree comes about from a tree, and tends toward generating other
trees. This difference is tied to the fact that in the case of "tEXVT],
the efficient cause is external to the thing produced. It is the
artist who has the thing in mind before its realization in the
material. Natural things come to be analogously from a moving
cause, but in their case this cause is internal (cf. PA 641b12-16).
The externality of the efficient cause of an artifact has crucial
implications for the relation between matter and form in an arti-
ANCIENT SCIENCE 201
fact versus that relation in a natural thing. Aristotle's claim in

the Physics is that the artist chooses material "with a view to the
function, whereas in the products of nature the matter is there
all along" (194b7-8). The "matter is there all along" in that the
process of growth in which the form shapes the matter is contin
uous. One does not find the matter without or prior to the form.
Trees are always already growing. <l>uOL<; is, as it were, always
on the way to qiUOL�. Accordingly, wood is not incidental to a
tree, which cannot but be of wood. A statue, on the other hand,
is made by a sculptor, not by a statue. The matter is incidental
to the statue, for not only could a statue be made from other
material-bronze, for example---but also wood that is made into
a statue could just as easily have been made into something else,
such as a shield or a house. Form and matter belong together
necessarily in nature, but incidentally in art.
Matter is potentiality in Aristotle's account, but Heidegger's
developed account of potentiality gives him access to a reading
of Aristotle's Physics in which qiUOL<; is not analogous with but
rather prior to 1:EXVT]. His thinking underwent substantial formu
lation in the lectures on the Metaphysics from 1931. Here Heideg
ger uses the traditional translation into German of MVaf.lL�:
Kraft. Kraft is usually rendered into English as "power," and
thus Heidegger's translation is consistent with the English trans
lation of MVaf.lL� as "potentiality." In 1940, however, Heidegger
chooses not Kraft but Eignung and Geeignetheit to translate
MVaf.lL�. Both these words translate comfortably into English as
"suitability" or "appropriateness." Heidegger chooses Eignung
and Geeignetheit, I suggest, because they better capture the dif
ference between the relation of matter to form in qiUOL� and in
1:EXVT]. There is a suitability or appropriateness of wood to trees,
for example, that is different from the appropriation of wood to
a ship, or bronze to a statue.
Because in artifacts there is no necessary relation between
form and matter, an artifact has no tendency to growth and
decay within itself, except insofar as it is made of some natural
material. Wood rots because it is wood, not because of but rather
in spite of the fact that it has been made into a bed. Art does not
destroy the original relation between matter and form; rather,
the tendency of nature toward its own end persists throughout
ANCIENT SCIENCE 203
has a special kind of rest . . . characterized as having-been-com

pleted, having-been-produced, and, on the basis of these deter
minations, as standing-'forth' and lying present before us" (BCP
230/W 250). This is indeed a crucial distinction between qn)OL�
and "tEXVl]. At 9.6 of the Metaphysics, Aristotle distinguishes "mo
tions" (%LvtlaEL�) from "actualities" (EVEQYElu�) on the basis that
the former are incomplete (Cl"tEt..EU;), that is, do not contain their
end ("tEt..O�). The examples he gives of incomplete motions are
the processes of thinning, becoming healthy, learning, walking,
and building. In contrast, he argues, "we see and have seen, un
derstand and have understood, think and have thought"
(1048b23). His point is reflected nicely in the ambiguity of the
English word "end," which means both "goal" and "finish."
Some processes finish when they reach their end, others do not.
Dieting stops when the goal is reached; likewise, building. In
both of these examples, the activity is a means to the goal. But
not so with thinking and seeing: the actualization is the activity.
With artifacts, production is incomplete in the sense that once
the end is reached, production stops. The activity and the actual
ization are not the same. Heidegger, citing 1048b23, uses this
point to distinguish qJ1)OL� from "tEXVl] (BCP 256/W 284).
And I suggest that this is precisely the point Heidegger has
in mind when he reads Physics 2. 1. 192b20. He argues that for
Aristotle, "the issue here is to show that artifacts are what they
are and how they are precisely in the being-moved of production
and thus in the rest of having-been-produced" (BCP 230-31/W
251). Artifacts move-that is, reach their end-differently than
nature. Where the matter is incidental to the shape, as in the case
of an artifact, the shape guides production but does not itself do
the producing (BCP 260-61/W 290). Rather, the artist does.
Hence the artist requires something beforehand: an idea or
model of what is to be made (nuQuoELYflU). If qJ1JOL� required
a nUQuoELYflU, "an animal could not reproduce itself without
mastering the science of its own zoology" (BCP 261/ W 290). De
finitive of "tEXVl] is that the appearance (doo�) of the thing to be
produced precedes its appearance (YEVEOL�) as a thing in that the
idea exists in the mind of the craftsperson prior to production.
Production is the imposition of form on matter. TEXVl] is the
knowledge of how to bring things into being this way. <l>ua�,
on the other hand, is that which comes into being of its own
accord. 1his is for Heidegger the original Greek distinction be
tween qnJoL<; and 1:EXVl'].
In Antiphon's account, however, nature and artifacts are un
derstood in the same terms. Nature is simply a self-making arti
fact. Heidegger's reading of the history of Western metaphysics
is the story of the failure of Antiphon's analogy between qnJOU;
and 1:EXVl'] to break down, the failure of the insight that nature
moves differently from the artifact. According to Heidegger, the
distinction between qnJOL<; and 1:EXVl'] is simply not sustained in
the Western tradition of thought. It is not even sustained in Aris
totle's thinking. For even though Metaphysics 4.1 raises the ques
tion of the being of beings as such in totality, 4.3 gives the same
information about qnJOL<; as the Physics: "<jlUOL<; is one kind of
ouota" (BCP 268/W 299). As one kind of being among others, it
is on a level with those others, such that it can be understood by
analogy. TEXVl'] consists in the imposition of form onto matter,
and <jJUOL<; as a parallel kind of being can be understood as form
imposed on matter. The only difference is that in 1:EXVl'], the artist
imposes the form on the matter, whereas in <jJUOU;, the form is
imposed on the matter by nature.
Heidegger's criticism is that this view falls short of what the
thinking of the pre-Socratics had already achieved. It encourages
a reduction of <jJUOU; to 1:EXVl'] by analogy. The older conception
of <jJUOL<; would preclude an analogy to artifacts, rather than con
ducing one. Such an analogy "fails from roery conceivable point of
view. That means: we must understand the Being of <jJUOU; en
tirely from itself, and we should not detract from the astonishing
fact of <jJUOL<; . . . by overhasty analogies and explanations" (BCP
262-63/W 292). In Heidegger's account, <jJUOU; is not simply a
self-making artifact but rather the self-placing into appearance
of what is encountered as already there. It is the astounding fact
that there are beings rather than nothing at all. Therefore <jJUOU;
must be understood for Heidegger on its own terms, not by re
duction to a derivative kind of being by analogy.
It is Heidegger's contention that the history of the concept of
nature since the Greeks is sustained and guided by Aristotle's
interpretation of <jJUOU;. Aristotle's assertion that being is <jJUOU;
is "barely expressed . . . an echo of the great origin of Greek
ANCIENT SCIENCE 205
philosophy" (BCP 268/W 300). What is heard more loudly,

however, from -Aristotle's Physics is the twofold nature of CPUOL�
as both matter and form. And accordingly, the analogy rather
than the separation of CPUOL� and aA�eELa comes to hold sway
in, for instance, the 'LOEa that nature is a creation of a divine
craftsperson.
Hence Aristotle is a cusp, a thinking of nature that is a peak
in Heidegger's account. He is the culmination toward which the
pre-Socratics rose, and the height from which subsequent meta
physics are decadent. Since 1915 Heidegger has been consider
ing Aristotle's natural philosophy in contrast to modem science.
In 1940 he leaves the contrast aside and looks to Aristotle alone.
He spends, in fact, an entire lecture course on one chapter of the
Physics, drawing upon the Metaphysics only when he seeks to
buttress his thesis that CPUOL� is being. The significance of this
account of ancient science to Heidegger's thinking is easy to
overlook.
Yet now Heidegger's phenomenology has found something to
hold onto. In Basic Problems of Phenomenology, one of the compo
nents of the phenomenological method was destruction: "a criti
cal process in which the traditional concepts . . . are
deconstructed down to the sources from which they were
drawn" (BPP 23/W 31). The 1940 lecture course on Aristotle
does exactly that with the concept "nature." Heidegger finds
that Aristotle's account of nature is determinative for the subse
quent history of metaphysics. He finds in that account both the
groundwork for a reduction by analogy of nature to production,
and the possibility of the retrieval of something else.
CONCLUSION
Heidegger's preoccupation and concern with natural science

that is, physics-after 1940 is a critical thinking of the modem
relation of human being to nature. In those subsequent years, he
will argue that the essence of science is the essence of technol
ogy. I suggest that Aristotle's taxonomy of knowledge and the
insight that the subsequent tradition of thinking in the West re
duces CPUOL� to tEXVT] by analogy are at the basis of this claim.
Hence 1 argue in the following chapter that in Heidegger's anal

ysis, modernity is determined by the essence of science, which
lies in the essence of technology. In Heidegger's analysis, the
history of Western metaphysics is a collapse of theoretical sci
ence into productive technology. The logic by which that history
moves is a dialectic, but of decay, not elevation, into representa
tional thinking. Heidegger's critique of modernity is a negative
dialectic that seeks to open up possibilities for thinking beyond
representation in reflection.
Heidegger's reading of the Physics is persuasive as a piece of
Aristotle scholarship, but it is also compelling as a basis for an
environmental phenomenology, a philosophy of nature. Why
Heidegger's account of qnJOL<; is compelling is evident in the fol
lowing anecdote. I recently led an informal discussion entitled
"Nature versus Technology." A colleague joked before we
began, "I put my money on technology." Overwhelmed by tech
nology and underwhelmed by nature, the modem thinker can
readily favor the powers of technology. Yet, under Heidegger's
reading of Aristotle, technology can never win. For nature is the
very ground on which technology stands. Nature is simply
prior, and technology derivative. The priority of nature does not
consist just in the fact that nature provides the materials that
technology appropriates, although it must come first as material
resource. To see nature in this way as resource is already to see
from within technology, as Heidegger makes clear in "The
Question Concerning Technology." Rather, to see nature
through eyes opened by Heidegger's account of ancient science
is to retrieve the claim that nature is that which moves of its own
accord. It is at best borrowed, not overcome by technology. And
hence modem science, in its essence as technology, threatens not
to destroy nature, but to destroy human being.
5
Science and Technology
IN THE PREVIOUS CHAPTERS I have traced Heidegger's analysis of

science from its incipience in phenomenology, through its treat
ment of experimentation and its entanglement with the political,
to its vision of latent new beginnings in the ancient legacy. The
logic of that movement is governed by the notion of projection.
In this chapter I focus on writings from the 1950s What Is Called
-
Thinking?, "Science and Reflection," and "The Question Con

cerning Technology"-in order to explore the relation between
science and technology that still preoccupied Heidegger in 1976.
In reading Aristotle, Heidegger uncovered projection not in
physics, but in "tEXVT]. In the 1950s he argues that the essence of
science lies in the essence of technology because a trace of an
cient "tEXVT] remains in modem science. That trace is the mecha
nism of a priori projection that Heidegger names "Ge-stell." The
relation between ancient "tEXVT] and modem technology is medi
ated by science. Accordingly, science plays a much more sig
nificant role in Heidegger's critique of modernity than has been
acknowledged by his critics, for science informs the modem age,
and Heidegger's description of its limits is also a vision of what
lies beyond them.
In "The Age of the World Picture," Heidegger identifies five
phenomena that are essential to the modem age: machine tech
nology, science, aesthetics, culture, and the loss of the gods. He
asks what interpretation of truth, what understanding of what
is, lies at the foundation of science. He argues that if he can
uncover the ground of science, "the entire essence of the modem
age will have to let itself be apprehended from out of that
ground" (AWP 117/H 76). The modem epoch can be under
stood by means of an account of science. Heidegger chooses sci
ence here to uncover the metaphysics of modernity, since science
stands in a crucial position with respect to that metaphysics.
As early as 1935, Heidegger attributes the genesis of modem
metaphysics to Descartes, a scientist who applied his method, so

successful in the sciences, to philosophy (Descartes 1986:4). For
Heidegger, science is not just one phenomenon among several:
it is the determination of the metaphysics of modernity.
It is in this same text, "The Age of the World Picture," that
Heidegger first considers science in its relation to technology:
"Machine technology is itself an autonomous transformation of
praxis, a transformation wherein praxis first demands the em
ployment of mathematical physical science" (AWP 116/H 75).
Here is Aristotle's threefold division of knowledge into 6EWQLU,
:n:QaSL�, and 'tEXVT] in a modem constellation. Technology trans
forms practice such that for the first time it deploys theoretical
science.
Thomas Kuhn also argues that science and technology come
together in modernity: "[they) had been separate enterprises be
fore Bacon announced their marriage in the beginning of the
seventeenth century, and they continued separate for almost
three centuries more" (1977:142). Like Heidegger, who objects in
"The Question Concerning Technology" to the idea that technol
ogy is simply applied science, Kuhn complains that historians
tend to conflate science and technology. Yet, suggests Kuhn,
something happened in the late nineteenth century. Until then,
technological innovation almost never came from scientists.
Rather, it came from practitioners and craftspeople, to whom
the inventor was a bit of a joke. In fact, "almost no historical
society has managed successfully to nurture both [science and
technology) at the same time" (1977:143). Yet there have been
three kinds of interaction. First, scientists have sometimes
gained a better understanding of nature by looking to practices
established by technologists. Second, on occasion technologists
have borrowed method from the sciences. And third, scientific
research results in products and processes that require further
development by people with scientific training. A transforma
tion in the history of science has taken place, Kuhn argues, at
the third point of interaction. The coming together of science
and technology has turned science into a socioeconomic force.
Accordingly, both Heidegger and Kuhn are interested in the
impact of science on human experience. And certainly, both ac
knowledge that in modernity, science itself becomes a tool for
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 209
industry, capitalism, and politics. Yet for Heidegger this analysis

is not enough. In "The Question Concerning Technology" he
finds the modem conception of technology as applied science
disquietingly inadequate, even dangerous because of the com
placency it conduces. The analysis Heidegger gives of the rela
tion between science and technology can be explored by means
of two claims he makes throughout What Is Called Thinking?: sci
ence does not think, and the essence of science lies in the essence
of technology.
I explicate the first claim by showing first that for Heidegger,
science is essential to the modem epoch. Hence the claim that
science does not think is a critique of modernity that looks be
yond the limitations of representational thinking. Thinking is
not reducible for Heidegger to the latter, the scientific paradigm
of knowledge that has contaminated modem philosophy. Next
I explicate the claim that the essence of science lies in the essence
of technology by looking first to the essence of science as set out
in "Science and Reflection," and then to the essence of technol
ogy treated in "The Question Concerning Technology." I argue
that each has its Ge-stell, its a priori projection of the being of
beings. I conclude by showing that for Heidegger, quantum
physics remains within the essence of modem science.
My central thesis is that for Heidegger, the essence of science
is the essence of technology. The "is" here is an "is" of identity,
but an identity of structure, not content. I argue that science and
technology are both essentially Ge-stell: projective revelation of
beings. But whereas technology reveals beings as standing-re
serve, science reveals them first as object. This reading of Hei
degger is radical. I am arguing that what is taken to be one of
Heidegger's most significant contributions to philosophy, his
critique of technology, derives from a thinking through of the
question of science that drove his thinking for sixty years. In
deed, for Heidegger, the essence of technology arises out of the
essence of modem science.
EpOCH AND ESSENCE
Heidegger claims in What Is Called Thinking? that he is not speak

ing against the sciences, but in fact for them, that is, "for clarity
concerning their essential nature" (WCT 14/WHD 49). That es

sential nature is found in the essence of technology. With this
suggestion, Heidegger is recognizing in science a deeper sig
nificance than that by which it is construed as a cultural phe
nomenon: "When we decide to look for the essential nature of
contemporary science in the essence of modem technology, this
approach posits science as something in the highest sense wor
thy of thought. The significance of science is ranked higher here
than in the traditional views which see in science merely a phe
nomenon of human civilization" (WCT 22/WHD 53). Heidegger
lays the groundwork for the decision to look for the essence of
science in the essence of technology by considering science in its
worthiness for thought. Science has for Heidegger a significance
so fundamental that he himself only begins to recognize it in
1952.
In Being and Time, Heidegger says in §69(b), when he lays bare
the theoretical attitude, that his idea of phenomenology is now
to be developed for the first time. In 1935 Heidegger looked to
the history of science in order to be able to understand modem
knowledge and metaphysics (FD 50). In 1938 he chose science as
that aspect of the modem age from which to analyze the whole
(AWP 117/H 76). That science should warrant attention in these
places shows that it is not incidental to modernity for Heidegger.
Rather, science is essentially modem; that is, the modem era
holds sway in science. Modem science is for Heidegger the cul
mination of the history of metaphysics.
That history comes to its final configuration in nihilism. Hei
degger reads the latter as the default of being in which being's
withdrawal pushes beings to the forefront. In the second of the
volumes on Nietzsche, the fourth in the English translation, in
"Nihilism as Determined by the History of Being," Heidegger
argues that "being remains unthought in metaphysics because
metaphysics thinks the being as such. What does it mean to say
the being as such is thought? It implies that the being itself
comes to the fore. It stands in the light. The being is illumined,
is itself unconcealed. The being stands in unconcealment" (N
4:211 /NII 316). In his earlier years, especially in Basic Problems of
Phenomenology, Heidegger called the difference between being
and beings the ontological difference. The not new-for it is evi-
dent in Heidegger's treatment of the theoretical attitude in §69

of Being and Time-but now rethought proposal is that in the
modem epoch, beings are determined as object by science. Sci
ence inquires not into being, but into beings. The modem epoch
is for Heidegger nihilistic precisely in its preoccupation with be
ings understood as the objects of science, and the concurrent
forgetting of the question of being.
Accordingly, the sciences are not incidental, and nor is their
consideration supplementary to the question of what calls for
thinking. The sciences are at the heart of this question; for they
are central to modem thoughtlessness, and, in company with
modem philosophy, they are blind to the question of being. The
question of the essence of science is the question of the history
of metaphysics in its modem epoch. Accordingly, a consider
ation of science is crucial to a reading of Heidegger's account of
that history. And likewise, he considers science essentiaL But
what Heidegger means by "essential" here needs explanation.
Given that Heidegger's doctoral work was on medieval phi
losophy, it makes sense that he first thinks the question of es
sence in the context of the medieval distinction between essentia
and existentia. This is the difference between what and that some
thing is. In Basic Problems of Phenomenology Heidegger attempts
to search out the common origin of these two terms in Greek
thinking by understanding "the Greeks better than they under
stood themselves" (BPP 111 /GP 157). He suggests that essentia
refers back to "productive comportment toward beings" (BPP
110/GP 155), in contrast to "pure beholding [which] is fixed as
the proper access to a being in its being-in-itself" (BPP 110/GP
155). This contrast mirrors the difference between things that are
produced and "the being of that which is already extant" (BPP
116/GP 163-64). In a move that foreshadows his 1940 reading of
Aristotle's Physics, Heidegger suggests that production always
makes use of material which is already there. In the 1940 account
he takes that to mean that <lniaL<; is prior to 1:EXV1'], since the latter
must always appropriate its material from the former. Here in
1927, however, he suggests that it is only through productive
comportment that the understanding of being as that which is
already extant is possible. Productive comportment, then, deter
mines something as what it is, and gives access to the fact that
something exists already which can be made into something

else. Heidegger's subsequent thinking will, however, cease to
take the distinction between essence and existence for granted.
In Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger argues that "es
sence" becomes ambiguous when Plato interprets being as tIiEU.
It is with Plato that "essence" comes to mean that something is
and what something is, the ambiguity that makes the distinction
between essentia and existentia possible. But, argues Heidegger,
the "substantive 'Wesen' did not originally mean 'whatness:
quiddity, but enduring as presence" (IM 72/EM 55). When Plato
changes its meaning to "whatness," !jJ1JOU; no longer means
what is, but rather means a copy, a mere appearance (IM
183-84/EM 140). Heidegger seeks to retrieve the earlier mean
ing of !jJU<JL�, and hence an earlier possibility for essence, in the
notion of enduring presence.
This account of essence figures prominently in "The Question
Concerning Technology." Here he argues that technology
"makes the demand on us to think in another way what is usu
ally understood by 'essence' " (QCT 3D/VA 34). This usual un
derstanding is essence in the medieval sense of quidditas,
whatness. The essence of "tree," for example, is the whatness of
trees, that is, "treeness." The latter is the genus under which all
trees fall and which captures the whatness that belongs to every
tree. But the essence of a tree is not itself a tree. Heidegger ob
jects to the generic account of essence and resists its universality.
In place of the traditional, generic understanding of essence,
Heidegger suggests what he described already in Introduction to
Metaphysics. He wants an account of essence that contains a no
tion of endurance, but not the permanence in which an essence
is what something is, always has been, and always will be. He
draws his alternative meaning from the German word for es
sence, Wesen, which is derived from the obsolete verb wesen. He
argues that this verb has the same meaning as wiihren, which
means "to last or endure." Thus in the case, for example, of the
essence of a house or a state, Heidegger does not mean the ge
neric type, but rather "the ways in which house and state hold
sway, administer themselves, develop and decay-the way in
which they 'essence' [Wesen]" (QCT 3D/VA 34). That essence
(Wesen) belongs with lasting or enduring (wiihren) is something
Heidegger holds to in "Science and Reflection" in 1954 and in

his 1957-58 lecture course published as "The Nature of Lan
guage" in On the Way to Language (Unterwegs zur Sprache 201/
On the Way to Language 94-95).
Under such an account, essence no longer has the permanence
of the eternal universal. It is not what a thing is, always has
been, and always will be. Rather, "essence" has for Heidegger a
historical fluidity. An essence is a coming to presence that then
endures. It is the determination, not of an eternal truth, but
rather of a historical epoch. The essence of technology is for Hei
degger the way in which technology comes to presence and en
dures in the modem epoch. It is the holding sway of technology
in modernity. Likewise, the essence of science is the way in
which science holds sway in the modem epoch. Heidegger's
claim that the essence of science lies in the essence of technology
is the claim that science and technology hold sway in the same
way: they reveal beings in the same way.
Heidegger argues in "The Age of the World Picture" that sci
ence does not simply happen to appear in modernity. Rather, it
is grounded in the metaphysics that determines the modem
epoch: science is based on the understandings of what is and of
truth that are the basis on which the modem age is formed
(AWP 115-17/H 75-76). The question of the essence of science
is therefore for Heidegger the question of an epoch in the history
of being. This is the epoch of nihilism, in which being is forgot
ten in the face of scientific and technological success with beings.
Accordingly, the essence of science cannot be understood
through some definition that would be applicable to all instances
of science, be they ancient, medieval, or modem. The question
of the essence of science seeks no such definition. Rather, the
essence of science is particular to the modem epoch, for it is in
the modem epoch that science holds sway in the determination
of the being of beings as nihilism. Heidegger's account of the
essence of science is his critique of modernity, his account of
how modem human being's projection of its world comes about
and endures. It is in this sense that "essence" must be under
stood in Heidegger's analysis of the essence of science. And it is
in this sense that science is essential for Heidegger: it is forma
tive of the modem epoch.
Given this historical notion of essence, such that science is, for
Heidegger, essential to modernity, his claim in What Is Called
Thinking? that "science does not think is a critique of the mod
"
ern epoch. Indeed, it is a critique of representational thinking.

Heidegger's distinction between thinking and the sciences corre
sponds to a distinction between being and being represented.
He offers an alternative account of thinking that relies upon an
etymological connection with thanking. Once the difference be
tween thinking and thanking, and hence between being and
being represented, is laid out in order to make sense of the claim
that science does not think the second claim, that the essence of
,
science lies at the essence of technology, can also be explicated.

I treat the first claim by reading What Is Called Thinking?, and the
second by looking to Heidegger's account of science in "Science
and Reflection," and of technology in "The Question Concern
ing Technology." I argue that the essence of science is Ge-stell,
and that it is on this basis that the relation between science and
technology is, in Heidegger's view, one of essential identity.
"SCIENCE DOES NOT THINK"
In the first lecture course he gave since 1944 and the last before
his formal retirement, at Freiburg in the winter and summer se
mesters of 1951 and 1952, Heidegger argued that science does
not think. That this claim is a disparagement is "emphatically
not the case" (WCT 13/WHD 49). It certainly sounds like one,
however, and the scanty consideration given to science by Hei
degger's readers is consistent with its being taken so. Likewise,
Efraim Shmueli's (1975) reading is very much that technology is
an evil spirit for Heidegger. Cyril Welch claims that Heidegger
and, following him, Macomber, in The Anatomy of Disillusion,
both "see in science and technology something of the devil's
work" (1970:145). Macomber claims, however, that Heidegger
does not oppose science and technology so much as he seeks to
understand them (1967:208). Both are right insofar as Heidegger
wants to understand science and technology, but also he under
stands them as something that threatens human being. He
certainly opposes the blind progress of either without consider-
ation of their essence and implications to human being. To see

Heidegger's critique of science and technology as simply con
demnation and alarmism is to neglect his reference to Holderlin
in "The Question Concerning Technology": "But where danger
is, grows / The saving power also." Heidegger holds that tech
nology is neither good nor evil, but certainly never indifferent.
The danger is not technology, but an unthinking relation to it on
the part of human being.
The claim that science does not think is more often than not
followed by the statement that "most thought-provoking in our
thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking" (WCT
6/WHD 3). Heidegger's view is not that the sciences are some
how deficient in comparison to philosophy, but rather that nei
ther science nor philosophy is thinking in the modem epoch.
Kockelmans contrasts science with philosophy in Heidegger's
thought on the basis that science does not "think radically,"
whereas philosophy does (1970:147-49). It is not precisely clear
what thinking radically would mean here, but it seems Kockel
mans intends the phrase to convey an alternative to the one
sidedness of science Heidegger describes in What Is Called Think
ing? (WCT 32/WHD 56). To fail to see the thoughtlessness of the
modem epoch in both science and philosophy is to overlook the
significance Heidegger attributes to science in the history of the
West. He does not see science as a symptom or consequence of
the modem epoch. Rather, it is essential to modernity: it is the
basis on which modernity holds sway.
Kockelmans begins by noting that the "prevailing world-view
of our contemporary Western civilization is largely controlled
by the sciences" (1970:147), but he goes on to read Heidegger's
philosophy as one that simply cannot ignore science if it wishes
to make the fundamental problems of the modem epoch its
theme. I argue the stronger position that Heidegger makes sci
ence his theme because he finds it not only symptomatic but
also formative of the modem epoch. Modem philosophy is also
therefore grounded in the essence of science rather than offering
an alternative. I believe Heidegger sees himself to be in the Auge
nblick he speaks of in Being and Time (BT 437/SZ 385); that is to
say, he offers insight into his age. His insight is that modem
human being is determined by the essence of science.
Heidegger is convinced that the sciences are essential to mo

dernity, but that their essence is different from what is imagined
in the university, the locus of organization of scientific disci
plines. Modem science, institutionalized in the university, does
not think but "nonetheless science always and in its own fash
,
ion has to do with thinking" (WCT 8/WHO 4). Thinking is a leap

for the sciences: between them and it lies an unbridgeable gap,
traversed by contemporary human being only with "makeshift
ties and asses' bridges" (WCT 8/WHO 5). The question to be
addressed in the first half of What Is Called Thinking? is precisely
what the sciences have to do with thinking.
Heidegger argues that "all the sciences have leapt from the
womb of philosophy" (WCT 18/WHO 52). They have come out
of philosophy and, having parted from it, they cannot by their
own power as sciences make the leap back into their source.
Nonetheless, it is arrogant, Heidegger maintains, to believe that
thinking knows more than the sciences. The latter have infinitely
more knowledge than thinking. Yet the sciences have a limit:
heavy on knowledge, light on self-scrutiny, they are one-sided
insofar as no science has access to its own essential nature. His
tory can explore a historical period, but by way of history, one
cannot say what history is. Nor can a mathematician say mathe
matically what mathematics is.
This is not a new claim for Heidegger. In 1937, in an address
given to the Faculty of Medicine at Freiburg University, he ar
gued that "[with] respect to the question of the character of re
flection on science is above all to be noticed a basic fact, which
we cannot think through often enough. Namely: no science can
know from itself about its own fulfilled form of knowing. We cannot
reflect on physics as a science with the help of the procedure of
physics. The essence of mathematics lets itself neither determine
mathematically nor at all raise questions about mathematical
methods. Geology does not let itself be investigated geologically,
as little as [does] philology philologically.'" The strongest for-
I "Hinsitlich der Frage nach dem Charakter der Besinnung auf die Wissen
schaft ist vor allem eine Grundtatsache zu beachten, die wir nicht oft genug
durchdenken kllnnen. NamJich: Keine Wissenschajt leann von sich selbst wissen
von der von ihr selbst vollzogenen Wis5ensJorm. Auf die Physik als Wissenschaft
ktinnen wir uns nicht besinnen mit Hilfe des Vorgehens der Physik. Das Wesen
mulation of this point is in "Science and Reflection," where Hei

degger calls it "that which is not to be gotten around (das
Unumgiingliche)" (SR 177/VA 60). In What Is Called Thinking?, he
calls it one-sidedness. A science can know the objects that ap
pear in its sphere, but every science has another side which it
cannot reach: "the essential nature and origin of its sphere, the
essence and essential origin of the manner of knowing which it
cultivates" (WCT 33/WHD 57). Heidegger's claim is that when
the one-sidedness of the sciences is lost to sight, then the other
side is also lost. On the other side is being.
The one-sidedness of the sciences is a preoccupation with but
a single side of the ontological difference: beings. The erection
of a science consists in the delimitation of its sphere of objects,
that is, in Husserlian terminology, in a regional ontology. In
Being and Time, Heidegger calls that which is determined in such
regional ontologies the "basic concepts (Grundbegriffe)" (BT 29/
5Z 9) of the sciences. Such basic concepts establish a world in
the second sense of the term Heidegger elaborates in §14 of Being
and Time: "indeed 'world' can become a term for any realm
which encompasses a multiplicity of entities: for instance, when
one talks of the 'world' of a mathematician, 'world' signifies the
realm of possible objects of mathematics" (BT 93/5Z 64-65).
Once a commitment to a specialized area of object is made, a
science looks only to that world.
The other side of the ontological difference, being, is the con
cern of thinking. Since the sciences have no access to this con
cern, Heidegger claims that the sciences do not think (WCT 33/
WHD 57), and further, that it is the good fortune-understood
as "meaning the assurance of its own appointed course" (WCT
8/WHD 4)-of each science not to think. For sciences investigate
beings, and cannot get started without a prior determination of
their object. The delimitation of a sphere of objects is a necessary
condition for a science to be able to proceed. It is thus essential
to a science precisely not to think, that is, not to question being,
but rather to proceed with the investigation of its objects. Think-
der Mathematik Hill! sich weder mathematisch bestimmen noch iiberhaup!

nach mathematischer Methode zur Fragen machen. Die Geologie lall! sich
nich! geologish erforschen, sowenig wie die Philologie philologisch" (BdW
12).
ing is, however, more than simply the determination of the ob
jects of the sciences prior to their investigation.
For Heidegger, thinking is a craft and skill. It can be learned.
The lectures that make up What Is Called Thinking? are in fact his
attempt to teach thinking. Heidegger characterizes thinking as
what the Greeks called TExvTj-that is, it is a producing. Yet he is
not attempting here simply to reinscribe thinking in an economy
of production. Thinking is a producing that is not the produc
tion of an artifact. A builder produces houses, but not all things
produced are quite so tangible. Aristotle, for example, fre
quently used medicine as an example of TEXVT]. A doctor pro
duces health. If thinking is human being's "simplest, and for
that reason hardest, handiwork" (WCT 16-17/WHD 51), and
"the handicraft par excellence" (WCT 23/WHD 53), then the ques
tion arises of what, exactly, thinking produces in Heidegger's
view.
I argue that for Heidegger, thinking produces neither being
nor ideas. He explicitly rejected the suggestion that thinking
produces being in 1943 in the postscript he added to What Is
Metaphysics?, where he argues that it is more likely that thinking
is an occurrence of being than that being is a product of thinking
(WMp 356/W 308). Indeed, being calls for thinking in What Is
Called Thinking?, and it could hardly call for what will produce
it. Furthermore, since Introduction to Metaphysics in 1935, Heideg
ger has held that being is the a priori, that is, prior to thinking.
Nor does thinking produce ideas. In What Is Called Thinking?,
Heidegger argues explicitly that thinking does not produce rep
resentational ideas. The question of what calls for thinking can,
he argues, easily be heard as "what is this-to form a represen
tational idea [das Vorstellen]?" (WCT 44/WHD 60), since this is
the traditional view of thinking. Further, producing ideas is "the
universally prevailing basic characteristic of traditional think
ing" (WCT 54-55/WHD 62), and "the long since dominant kind
of thinking . . . [is] ideational or representational thinking"
(WCT 64/WHD 63). Accordingly, the traditional answer to the
question of what thinking produces is representational ideas.
Heidegger rethinks the relation between production and repre
sentational ideas.
In Aristotle's thought, which Heidegger laid bare on the topic
of production in 1940, the role of the idea (d6o�) in 'tEXVT] is

clear. Production begins with the d6o�. The craftsperson has an
idea beforehand of what is to be made, and this idea is the origin
of what is to be produced. The origin of that d6o� is another
question. It is precisely what, in fact, for Heidegger, gives food
for thought (WeT 45/ WHD 60). Heidegger problematizes the
relation between production and ideas quite rightly; even for the
clear-thinking Stagirite, production is not the origin of the idea,
but rather the idea is the origin of production. It is no accident,
however, that production enters the question of the sciences. To
argue that the essence of science can be found in the essence of
technology is to experience the first glimmering of the sugges
tion that something of that ancient notion of 'tEXVT] remains for
the sciences. The delimitation of a sphere of objects consists pre
cisely in the determination of an d6o�, an appearance that repre
sents the object then to be investigated. The sciences operate on
the basis of an a priori determination of their object, as did an
cient 'tEXVT].
Yet for Heidegger, an account of thinking in terms of ideas
will always be inadequate: "we must not imagine it to be enough
for [anyone] merely to inhabit the world of [their] own represen
tational ideas, and to express only them. For the world of this
expression is shot through with blindly adopted and un-reexam
ined ideas and concepts" (WeT 231 / WHD 140). It is not the case
that one lives only in the world of one's ideas. On the contrary,
"as concerns thinking, we are living in the domain of a two-and
one-half-thousand year old tradition" (WeT 231/ WHD 140).
This is the tradition of Western thinking that has its origin in
Greek thought, whose legacy must be examined if it is to be
overcome.
To overcome does not mean to be done with, such that one
could then set this tradition aside or somehow begin again. It
means rather to question the meaning and truth of being, and
also, therefore, the being of truth in that tradition. Overcoming
is a refusal to remain complacent about, and therefore deter
mined by, traditional answers. In "The Age of the World Pic
ture," Heidegger explained what it would mean to overcome
Descartes: "Overcoming means here, however, the primal ask
ing of the question concerning the meaning, i.e., concerning the
realm of the projection or delineation, and thus concerning the

truth, of Being-which question simultaneously unveils itself as
the question concerning the Being of truth" (AWP 140-41/H
100). To overcome Descartes would be to work through his as
sumptions in order to retrieve the question of being and truth.
Heidegger elucidates further in a lecture course in 1940 on
Nietzsche and nihilism: "To overcome signifies: to bring some
thing under oneself, and at the same time to put what is thus
placed under oneself behind one as something that will hence
forth have no determining power. Even if overcoming does not
aim at sheer removal, it remains an attack on something" (N
4:223/NII 330). Heidegger seeks to disempower tradition
through understanding, to unveil what remains unthought in
thinking: assumptions.
Heidegger holds that the thoughtlessness of the modern age
can only be questioned through the taking up and reconsidera
tion of the Greek legacy. Hence his preoccupation with the
Greeks is not a nostalgic Hellenism, but rather an attempt to see
where human being stands in the modern epoch. He looks to
the dawn of Western thinking to come to terms with das Abend
land, the West. The leap to thinking is therefore a leap "onto the
soil on which we really stand" (WCT 41/WHD 17). Human
being does not stand on representational ideas, but within a tra
dition that makes the very notion of an idea possible. Heideg
ger's intent in What Is Called Thinking? is to overcome the idea of
"idea."
To think is not to form representational ideas, each for oneself;
rather, thinking entails understanding what thinking has pro
duced. This is not a question about the solitary thinker; on the
contrary, it is a historical question. It is an inquiry into what
thinking has produced historically. On the basis that Heidegger
argues that the sciences cannot leap back into their source, and
that the move from science to thinking would be such a leap, I
conclude that his answer to the question, asked historically, of
what thinking has produced is that thinking has produced the
sciences. Historically, the sciences arise out of thinking. Greek
philosophy is for Heidegger the origin of the modern sciences.
In "The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking," Heideg
ger speaks precisely of "the sciences into which philosophy dis-
solves" (BW 387/Zur Sache des Oenkens 74). The appearance of

the sciences is accordingly neither incidental nor any great sur
prise in both the history of metaphysics and his account. The
sciences are the culmination of a path of thinking upon which
the Greeks set the West. Yet at the end of philosophy understood
as this history, a task remains for thinking. What thinking means
here is laid out in What Is Called Thinking?
Heidegger's claim that thinking is a craft is played out in an
analogy between thinking and cabinetmaking. It may seem odd
that he wants to account for thinking by means of such an anal
ogy to production, but what he is getting at here is that thinking
is, as Aristotle knew, an activity. In 1943, in the postscript ap
pended to What Is Metaphysics?, Heidegger called "essential
thinking" (WMp 359) an activity. In What Is Called Thinking? he
wants his students to learn how to do this activity that is think
ing. He uses the example of cabinetmaking to explain what it
means to learn.
Heidegger argues that we learn nothing from teachers, "if by
'learning' we now suddenly understand merely the procure
ment of useful information" (WCT IS/WHO 50). Nor is learning
"mere practice, to gain facility in the use of tools" (WCT 14/
WHO 49-50), or collecting knowledge about the forms of things
that could be made. Rather, to learn means "to make everything
we do answer to whatever essentials address themselves to us at
a given time" (WCT 14/WHO 49). Learning pays attention to
what is essential, and in cabinetmaking it is a relatedness to
wood that determines this craft (WCT 23/WHO 54). The cabinet
maker must "answer and respond above all to the different
kinds of wood and to the shapes slumbering within wood-to
wood as it enters into [human] dwelling with all the hidden
riches of its nature" (WCT 14/WHO 50). A good cabinetmaker
understands wood not just as the material to be worked over,
but as something that emerges into the human world and to
which human being has a relation.
If what maintains the craft of cabinetmaking is a relation to
wood, likewise, what maintains thinking is a relatedness to
being: "We are thinking . . . we are attempting to let ourselves
become involved in this relatedness to Being" (WCT 86/WHO
75). Accordingly, for Heidegger, the single question that tradi-
tional thinking must be brought to face is precisely "this relation

existing between man's nature and the Being of beings" (WCT
79/ WHD 74). To learn thinking, therefore, Heidegger's students
are asked to "unlearn what thinking has been traditionally"
(WCT 8/WHD 5). They must unlearn the history of metaphysics.
To call thinking TEXVT] is not, however, to say that it is technol
ogy. In the history of metaphysics, the withdrawal of being
arises in conjunction with the domination of the sciences and the
overrunning of the globe by technology. Most thought-pro
voking in Heidegger's account of what calls for thinking is the
withdrawal of being, and because this withdrawal prevails, the
essence of technology remains hidden (WCT 25 / WHD 55). A fog
also surrounds the essence of the sciences, such that "we still
seem afraid of facing the exciting fact that today's sciences be
long in the realm of the essence of modem technology, and no
where else" (WCT 14/WHD 49). The question of what calls for
thinking is the question of the essence of the sciences. This in
tum belongs in the essence of technology. The obscurity of both
these questions is their belonging together in the history of
metaphysics, in the withdrawal of being.
The task in What Is Called Thinking? is precisely to think the
withdrawal of being in the belonging together of science and
technology, in opposition to the standing apart of thinking and
the sciences. In the modem epoch thinking is definitively repre
sentational, and it is in representational thinking that science
and technology coincide. The problem with representational
thinking is its limitation to the object. For example, approached
as an object, a tree appears in a severely limited way. When we
face a tree in bloom, the sciences tell us that what we see is not
a tree, but "in reality a void, thinly sprinkled with electric
charges here and there that race hither and yon at enormous
speeds" (WCT 43/WHD 18). To admit that one is simply stand
ing before a tree is to admit a naive, pre-scientific view. This
view, Heidegger argues, only confirms "that those sciences do
in fact decide what of the tree in bloom may or may not be con
sidered valid reality" (WCT 43/WHD 18).
Likewise, Heidegger commented in 1940 in "Logos" on the
scientific analysis of sound: "One can demonstrate that periodic
oscillations in air pressure of a certain frequency are experienced
as tones. From such kinds of determinations concerning what is

heard, an investigation can be launched which eventually only
specialists in the physiology of the senses can conduct. In con
trast to this, perhaps only a little can be said concerning proper
hearing" (EGT "Logos" 65/VA 206). The sciences say nothing
about hearing in the everyday, practical sense. Heidegger asks
in What Is Called Thinking?, "Whence do the sciences-which
necessarily are always in the dark about the origin of their own
nature-derive the authority to pronounce such verdicts?
Whence do the sciences derive the right to decide what [human
being's] place is, and to offer themselves as the standard that
justifies such decisions?" (WCT 43/ WHD 18). His question is, by
what right do the sciences, which cannot even raise the question
of their own origin, determine the real? This is no trivial ques
tion, and it is complicated by the relation between science and
technology.
It is science that determines the thing as object; and it is the
object that figures in representational thinking. Technology as a
way of revealing depends on representational thinking, that is,
on scientific objectivity. Heidegger argues that technology is
possible only by means of scientific objectivity: "only by such
objectivity do [beings] become available to the ideas and propo
sitions in the positing and disposing of nature by which we con
stantly take inventory of the energies we can wrest from nature"
(WCT 234/WHD 142). The point here is not Simply that the mod
em approach to nature has as its necessary condition scientific
objectification, but rather that human being's relation to nature
in modernity has its source in the essence of technology. In the
first lecture course of What Is Called Thinking?, Heidegger holds
that the essence of science lies in the essence of technology, but
he offers neither explanation nor justification for this insight.
Thinking has been uncovered as tEXVT], but also sharply distin
guished from the sciences. Nonetheless, a clue to the essence of
science has been uncovered in that the delimitation of the sphere
of objects of a science provides each science beforehand with
its doo�, much in the same way that Aristotle suggests "tEXVT]
proceeds. An echo of ancient "tEXVT] remains in modem science.
Before laying bare, however, that trace of ancient "tEXVT] which
remains in modem science in Heidegger's view, I will give sub-
stance to Heidegger's vision of what thinking is beyond the rep

resentational thinking of the sciences.
THINKING As THANKING: BEING AND BEING REPRESENTED
The second lecture course in What Is Called Thinking? "makes

clear, though only indirectly, the relation between philosophy
and the sciences" (WCT 132/WHD 90). Heidegger recapitulates
that the sciences rest on presuppositions that cannot be estab
lished scientifically, but only demonstrated philosophically
(WCT 131 / WHD 90). Philosophy can investigate the regional on
tology that establishes a science by determining its sphere of
objects, a moment in the genesis of a science to which the science
itself has no access. This is, however, now called "the lesser re
latedness of thought to the sciences" (WCT 135/WHD 155).
There is also for Heidegger an essential relatedness which is de
termined by a basic trait of the modem era: "It might be briefly
described as follows: that which is, appears today predomi
nantly in that object-materiality which is established and main
tained in power by the scientific objectification of all fields and
areas" (WCT 135/ WHD 155). In the first lecture, Heidegger
asked by what right the sciences determine the real. Here he
thinks that determination through and argues that scientific ob
jectification determines the real as material object.
Given the account of the measuring experiment and experi
ence in Die Frage nach dem Ding and the Beitriige, this is not a
naive position on empiricism. Rather, it is a claim about how
human being opens up its world in understanding. Heidegger
argues that a preoccupation with the material as real does not
originate in any "separate and peculiar power-bid on the part of
the sciences" (WCT 135/ WHD 155), but that the power of scien
tific objectification arises from something in the nature of things
that modem thinkers still do not want to see. He indicates it by
means of three propositions:
1. Modem science is grounded in the nature of technology.
2. The nature of technology is itself nothing technological.
3. The nature of technology is not a merely human fabrication
which, given an appropriate moral constitution, could be sub-
dued by superior human wisdom and judgment. (WeT

135-36/ WHD 155)
The second, and for Heidegger more important, relatedness of

thinking to the sciences is for thinking to question how the mod
em sciences are grounded in the essence of technology and how
that essence, itself nothing technological, is not merely a human
fabrication.
In Heidegger's account, to think is to be gathered and concen
trated on what is most thought-provoking (WeT 143/WHD 94).
Proper use of a thing "brings the thing to its essential nature
and keeps it there" (WeT 187/WHD 114); it is "to let a thing be
what it is and how it is" (WeT 191/ WHD 168). The proper use
of the human capacity to think is not a mere utilization but an
essential human activity. Neither technology nor science nor
thinking can be understood simply as a human activity. As
A6yo<; was definitive of human being for Aristotle, so thinking is
a definitive human activity for Heidegger. Technology, science,
and thinking are things that people do, but for Heidegger it is
crucial to see that they are also more. They are a relation to
being, what he called in Being and Time and the Nietzsche vol
umes "a destiny." For in Heidegger's account the origin of
thinking, and therefore of both science and technology, is being.
Heidegger suggests that the dominance of the sciences in the
modem epoch arises because the demands set for traditional
thinking have become untenable. He specifies four weaknesses
on the part of thinking: it does not bring about knowledge, as
do the sciences; it does not produce usable, practical wisdom; it
solves no cosmic riddles; and it does not endow one directly
with the power to act (WeT 159/WHD 161). Because thinking
has failed traditionally to meet these demands, the sciences have
gained a dominance in the modem epoch through their ability
to do so. The sciences do bring about knowledge, produce us
able wisdom, solve cosmic riddles, and give one the power to
act.
In 1937 Heidegger called this very success a threat to science:
"The sharpest threat to modem science arises in that it goes so
well for it as never before, that is, it is confirmed and encouraged
in its usefulness and obtaining of progress."2 It is a threat in 1937

because the success of science is so readily appropriable for the
Nazi program of a new science for the people. The threat in What
Is Called Thinking? is not so politically situated, but it is equally
historical. That threat is thoughtlessness, rampant in the epoch
of nihilism. For Heidegger argues that the success of the sciences
is conducive to the refusal of human being to acknowledge that
science is determined by the essence of technology. That essence
is representational thinking.
Representational thinking, which thinks by means of subject
and object, conceals the fact that something more originary than
the idea calls to human being, that human being itself is that
gathering of subject and object (WCT 144/WHD 157). Heidegger
explains thinking in terms of its etymological root: thane. The
etymological relations in German between denken and danken are
mirrored in English by "think " and "thank," which in fact share
their root with the German words. Compared to thane, which is
at the root of "thank" and danken, "thought in the sense of logi
cal-rational representations turns out to be a reduction and an
impoverishment of the word that beggar the imagination" (WCT
139/WHD 92). Representational thinking reduces thinking to
ideas.
Through the root thane, Heidegger explicates thinking as
thanking and memory. Thought needs "memory, the gathering
of thought [das Gediiehtnis]" (WCT 138/WHD 91). How is mem
ory to be understood here? Early in the first lecture, Heidegger
distinguished memory from "merely the psychologically de
monstrable ability to retain a mental representation, an idea, of
something which is past" (WCT l1/WHD 7). Rather, memory
belongs with "original thanking [which] is the thanks owed for
being [das Siehverdanken]" (WCT 141 / WHD 93). Memory is an
"inclination with which the inmost meditation of the heart turns
toward all that is in being" (WCT 141 / WHD 93). Thinking as
thanking and memory is, for Heidegger, the thinking of being.
2 "Die scharfste Bedrohung der heutigen Wissenschaft besteht darin, daB es
ihr so gut geht wie noch nie, d.h. in ihrem Nutzen und ihrer Fortschrittbeschaf
tung bestatigt und ermuntert wird" (BdW 7).
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY z27
The sciences, however, cannot think in this sense of thanking

and memory. Based on a regional ontology, to which it has no
access, a science is never in a position to think being. It may be
entirely unclear what Heidegger means by "inmost meditation
of the heart," as often his suggestions for an alternative to repre
sentational thinking appear mystical and largely unexplained.
Yet it seems clear that, whatever inmost meditation of the heart
entails, the sciences, preoccupied as they are with results and
the production of facts, are incapable of it. Indeed, the paradigm
of rationality in the sciences is objectivity, the indifferent appli
cation of the mind from which the heart has been rigorously
excluded. This model of rationality has in recent years been criti
cized on an international and interdisciplinary basis.
Heidegger's criticism of scientific rationality is explicit as early
as 1930, when, in "On the Essence of Truth," he calls "insistent"
the "turning toward what is readily available" (ET 135/WW
196). As insistent, Dasein turns away from being toward beings.
This essay characterizes precisely the human preoccupation
with the sciences in modernity. Heidegger describes the opened
ness of beings as prevailing precisely "where beings are not very
familiar to man and are scarcely and only roughly known by
science" (ET 131/WW 192). It is precisely at the limits of a sci
ence that beings, and therefore being, is open to thinking. Mod
em philosophy can think being through thanking and memory
where the sciences cannot, at their limit.
Yet modem philosophy does not take up the task of thinking
being in Heidegger's account. It looks rather, he argues, for the
presuppositionless question. Think, for example, of the Carte
sian method wherein one searches for the thought that requires
no further ground; or of Husserl's transcendental phenomenol
ogy that attempts tp rethink the Cartesian Meditations in order
to ground thinking radically. The thought discovered as self
grounding and hence requiring no presupposition is the cogito
ergo sum. To hold, however, that thinking begins with doubting
obscures its origin in Heidegger's account (WCT 211 / WHD 127).
He argues that the question of what calls for thinking is never a
presuppositionless inquiry. He suggested earlier that the very
task is precisely to go toward and become involved in the pre
suppositions that belong to thinking (WeT 160/WHD 162). The
idea, for example, that Parmenides can be read objectively with

no imported presuppositions "rests on the stubborn and wide
spread prior assumption that one can enter into dialogue with a
thinker by addressing him out of thoughtlessness" (WeT 176/
WHO 109). The task is to uncover the suppositions that make a
thinker's thinking possible, not to purge thought of its assump
tions. That is, the task of interpretation of a thinker is the uncov
ering of the thinker's relation to being.
Representational thinking, whether in science or philosophy,
can never think being in Heidegger's view. For a being can be
represented, but being cannot. Kant's claim that being is among
the almost unanalyzable concepts is based on the assumption
that being is graspable as concept (WeT 179/ WHO 167). Heideg
ger argues that being is not a graspable concept: "If we stop
for a moment and attempt, directly and precisely and without
subterfuge, to represent in our minds what the terms 'being' and
'to be' state, we find that such an examination has nothing to hold
onto" (WeT 225/WHO 137). Being is not a thing that can appear
as a representation. Since Heidegger has argued that thinking is
a relatedness to being, and being cannot be grasped in a repre
sentation, he concludes that thinking is not a grasping: it is "nei
ther the grasp of what lies before us, nor an attack upon it . . .
thinking knows nothing of the grasping concept (Begrifj)" (WeT
211/WHO 128).
Representational thinking, fundamental to science which
grasps the thing as object, can therefore never think being. The
success of the sciences stands in the way of raising this question
of their inadequacy. They progress successfully in their inquiry
into beings. Accordingly, it is "our modem way of representa
tional ideas [that] blocks its own access to the beginning and
thus to the fundamental characteristic of Western thinking"
(WeT 213/WHO 129). That fundamental characteristic of West
ern thinking that is its origin is being. Hence the epoch domi
nated by representational thinking is the epoch of the
withdrawal of being, its default in nihilism.
Heidegger holds that human being succumbs to the default of
being in modernity. In the modem epoch, human being prefers
the accumulation of facts about beings to the task of thinking.
For Heidegger, that task is reflection on the question of being.
He distinguishes reflection from the chatter of the sciences:

"What is demanded here is not the nimble tongue chattering
away of all and everything, but a f..EYELV of the f..6yor;, and only
through these the XQlVELV: to discriminate one thing from an
other, to bring out one thing and put another into the back
ground" (WCT 199-200/ WHO 122). This f..EYELV, "saying" in the
Greek sense, is a laying before the thinker, and does not herein
make its first appearance in Heidegger's thought.
It received full attention in a lecture course called "Logic" in
1944 which was eventually published as "Logos" in 1951, not
too long before What Is Called Thinking? What lies before the
thinker is there for the thinker to address, both to think and to
talk about. Reflection discriminates what is to be reflected upon,
what is thought-provoking, only through addressing the ques
tion of what lies before the thinker. The gathering of thought
that is thanking and memory for Heidegger distinguishes what
provokes thought in its lying before the thinker from the mere
accumulation of facts about beings. Thinking sees beyond be
ings to being.
But only a small part of what lies before human being is laid
down by human being, "and even then only with the aid of what
was lying there before" (WCT 200/WHO 122). What was lying
there beforehand, according to Heidegger, the Greeks called
q:J1JCl"Lr;. Heidegger argued as early as 1935, in Introduction to Meta
physics, that qJ1JOLr; is being for the Greeks. In What Is Called
Thinking?, that which lies before the thinker that the thinker
must address in reflection is nothing other than being.
What lies before human being as something already there is
what makes technology-as well as Christianity, the Enlighten
ment, and the definitive aspect of any age-possible in Heideg
ger's account (WCT 204/WHO 170). These epochs of human
history are only possible insofar as human being stands in rela
tion to being, whether the question of being is taken up or left
in its withdrawal. To think is to address the modem age from
within the ontological difference, to respond to the question of
being as the Greeks did from Parmenides to Aristotle (WCT 235/
WHO 143). Heidegger's call for a retrieval from the Greeks is
the call to understand the modem epoch by addressing what is
'
definitive for Heidegger of any epoch: its response to the ques

tion of being.
The development of Western thinking is, however, a limitation
and confinement of that rich origin of Greek thinking. In the
account given in Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger argued
that Plato confined being to doo<;. This move "led to the seces
sion of the logos, which became the starting point for the domi
nation of reason" (IM 179/EM 137). Plato's narrowing of the
thinking of the pre-Socratics was a confinement of being to
which Heidegger attributes responsibility for bringing about the
end of Greek philosophy. Plato is an ambiguous character in the
history of philosophy: he is a beginning for Western philosophy
as the origin of the domination of reason over being. But he is a
beginning that conceals a more original beginning in which
being is thought as qJUOL<;. And further, he begins the end of that
originary thinking.
The account given of Aristotle in 1940 makes him equally am
biguous in the history of philosophy. In "On the Being and Con
ception of qJu<JU; in Aristotle's Physics B.1," Heidegger describes
how Aristotle's Physics on the one hand contains the last echo of
the pre-Socratic thinking of qJUOL<;, that is, being, yet on the other
hand exhibits explicitly a narrowing of the notion of qJUOL<;.
<l>UOL<; is taken as Simply one kind of being among others. Hence
"ta qJU<JLXU are understandable by analogy to another kind of
being: "tEXVT], that which is produced. Aristotle narrowed the rich
thinking of the pre-Socratics when he reduced qJUOL<; to "tEXVT] by
analogy.
Heidegger describes another confinement of thinking wherein
the Greek ahla becomes the causa efficiens. He discusses this
transition in "The Question Concerning Technology" (QCT
6-10/VA 11-14) and goes on to point out the continued shrink
ing of causality in technology (QCT 23/VA 26-27). Modem sci
ence and technology, in fact, deal with an impoverished
conception of both causality and motion. Whereas Aristotle held
that there were four kinds of cause (material, formal, efficient,
and final), Newton's physics concerns itself with one kind: the
efficient cause. Whereas Aristotle held that there were four kinds
of motion (alteration, growth or decrease, locomotion, and the
special cases of generation or destruction), Newton's physics
concerns itself with one kind: locomotion. Modem science is a

narrow configuration of the rich thinking of the Greeks about
causation and motion.
In What Is Called Thinking?, Heidegger raises the question of
the narrowing of thinking itself. The conjunction of 'A.eYELv and
voELv was not a grasping, an attack, or a manipulation. It knew
nothing of the concept. The history of thinking is, however, its
restriction to representational ideas. This confinement of think
ing "is then, of course, not considered a loss or defect, but rather
the sole gain that thinking has to offer once its work is accom
plished by means of the concept" (WCT 212/WHD 128). For the
sciences succeed where thinking has shown its inadequacies.
Hence the paradigm of successful science is Newtonian physics,
which construes motion and causation in an impoverished way.
Yet, argues Heidegger, the success of the sciences is only pos
sible because being prevails in the presence of the object. He
supports this claim with the argument that if being did not
therein prevail, then the question of the object's objectivity could
not even be asked (WCT 234/WHD 142). There must be beings
for their objectivity to be a problem. The development of system
atic philosophy is, in Heidegger's analysis, an assurance in the
face of the questionable. The objectivity of the object can be left
unquestioned in the face of the success of representational think
ing in the sciences. Systematic philosophy promotes a quietude
in the assurance that questions are answered and thinking has
secured itself. Heidegger wishes to disrupt that quietude and to
leave the question of being open, as it remained open for Aris
totle (WCT 212/WHD 128).
The second half of What Is Called Thinking? poses the question
of the relation between the sciences and thinking only indirectly,
for Heidegger's immediate concern is the relation between
thinking and being. What has been established is that represen
tational thinking, in which the sciences have their success
through the positing of their object, is a narrowing and con
finement of the much richer thinking of the Greeks. Further, that
modem philosophy, which takes thinking to be the forming of
representational ideas, has been as it were "scientized" in Hei
degger's view. That is to say, philosophy is dominated in moder
nity by precisely what belongs not to thinking but to the
'
sciences: representational ideas. Hence science is not just one

occurrence among others in the modem epoch, but rather deter
minative of that epoch. How, then, does the scientific determina
tion of the real as object dominate the modem epoch?
The answer to this question lies in the essence of technology.
Heidegger first treats the essence of technology by arguing in
What Is Called Thinking? that the essence of science lies in the
essence of technology. In 1954 and 1955 he read two papers that
explore this claim: "Science and Reflection," in which he raises
and responds to the question of the essence of science, and "The
Question Concerning Technology," in which he does the same
with the essence of technology.
THE THEORY OF THE REAL
In 1954, Heidegger read "Science and Reflection" ("Wissen

schaft und Besinnung") to a small group in preparation for a
conference in Munich the following year. William Lovitt trans
lates Besinnung as "reflection," but he issues a caveat as to how
the word should be understood. He notes the inadequacy of the
English "reflection," which does not connote directionality or
following after, and he excludes the connotation of thought
turning back on itself from his use of the word. Rather, Besin
nung means "recollection, reflection, consideration, deliberation
. . . [and the] reflexive verb, sich besinnen, means to recollect, to
remember, to call to mind, to think on, to hit upon" (SR 155, n.
1). He therefore defines "reflection" as "a recollecting thinking
on that, as though scenting it out, follows after what is thought.
It involves itself with sense [Sinn] and meaning, and is at the
same time a 'calm, self-possessed surrender to that which is wor
thy of questioning' " (SR 155, n. 1; quotation from SR ISO/VA
64). In "Science and Reflection," Heidegger draws a distinction
between science and this thinking that is reflection. He is calling,
much as he did in What Is Called Thinking?, for reflection on sci
ence.
Heidegger argues that it is not enough to consider science
simply a cultural activity, as if one day human being could once
again dismantle it. Rather, it must be recognized how reality is
"determined on an increasing scale by and in conjunction with

that which we call Western European science" (SR 1561VA 41).
Much in the same vein as he in 1928 first described technology,
"which rages about in the 'world' today like an unshackled
beast" (MFL 215 I MAL 279), Heidegger argues in 1954 that West
ern European science has a power never previously met as it
spreads over the entire globe. Something rules in science that is
larger than a mere wanting to know on the part of human being.
Hence to be clear about what science is, it is not enough to de
scribe the scientific enterprise of the day, Heidegger argues (SR
157 I VA 42). To see how science intersects with all organizational
forms of life, first it is necessary to experience its essence. Hei
degger expresses that essence in a single statement: "Science is
the theory of the real" (SR 157I VA 42).
Heidegger points out that he intends modem science, not
medieval doctrina or ancient ErtLo'tiU!T], with the word "science"
(Wissenschaft). Nonetheless, he maintains that modem science is
grounded in the ancient knowledge of the Greeks: "the distinc
tive character of modem knowing [Wissens] consists in the deci
sive working out of a tendency that still remains concealed in
the essence of knowing as the Greeks experienced it, and that
precisely needs the Greek knowing in order to become, over
against it, another kind of knowing" (SR 157 I VA 43). Hence the
question of modem science has once again drawn Heidegger
back to Greek thought. The overcoming of modem science is
only possible when its coming to be is understood. There will be
no change, progress, or alternative to modem science, in Heideg
ger's view, until its essence is made clear in a dialogue with
ancient thinking. For the origin of modem knowing lies in the
Greek experience of knowledge, which cannot be overcome until
it is thought through.
Heidegger suggests that ancient thinking is still present today
"in the rule of modem technology" (SR 1581 VA 44). In "Science
and Reflection," as in What Is Called Thinking?, there is both iden
tity and difference between modem technology and science, and
between ancient and modem knowing. The question is precisely
how the rootedness of modem knowing in ancient determines
the modem relation between science and technology. Heidegger
explicates this ancient tendency, still concealed in modem
'
knowing yet being worked out decisively, in the history of

knowing by examining how "theory" and "real" belong to
gether essentially in the claim that science is the theory of the
real. He does this in two etymological accounts, first of "real"
and then of "theory," that serve both to retrieve an originary
meaning and to explain its decay.
First, the real (das Wirkliche) connects etymologically in Ger
man with "the realm of working [des Wirkenden], of that which
works [wirkt]" (SR 159 I VA 44). It is unfortunate that a translation
can do no justice to that etymology. Heidegger traces wirken
through the Middle Ages, when it meant "the producing of
houses, tools, pictures" (SR 160/VA 45), and through its narrow
ing to producing in the sense of sewing, embroidery, or weaving.
He argues that to work in this sense means to do (tun). To "do"
shares its etymological root, the Indo-Germanic dhe, with the
Greek SeoL>;, which Heidegger translates as "setting, place, posi
tion" (SR 159/ VA 45). He distinguishes this from human agency,
arguing that "the holding-sway of nature (qruoL>;), is a doing, and
that in the strict sense of SeoL>;" (SR 159/VA 45): "CPUOL>; is SeOL<;:
from out of itself to lay something before, to place it here, to
bring it hither and forth [her- und vor-bringen], that is, into pre
sencing" (SR 159/VA 45). Neither the argument that SeOL<; is a
laying before, a setting in position distinct from human agency,
nor the priority here given to CPUOL<; is new to Heidegger's
thinking.
In What Is Called Thinking? Heidegger argued that SeoL>; "does
not mean primarily the act of setting up, instating, but that
which is set up; that which has set itself up, has settled, and as
such lies before us" (WCT 200/WHD 122). He claims that ac
cordingly lJJ1;6SEOL>; is "that which is already given to and lies
before the mathematicians: the odd, the even, the shapes, the
angles" (WCT 201 /WHD 122-23). eeoL>; is then what is set up,
and first and foremost, that which sets itself up. Furthermore, in
1935 Heidegger argued in Introduction to Metaphysics that CPUOL>;
was being for the Greeks (1M 61/EM 47). His work on Aristotle's
conception of CPUOL>; at Physics 2.1 is the clearest statement of
Heidegger's claim that for the Greeks, CPUOL<; presences, that is,
is, more fundamentally than anything else. In "Science and Re
flection" these two thoughts are brought together in the claim
that qJ1JOL� is eEOL�. For to work is to bring something forth, and

it is q>UOL� that does that originally. Only later do q>UOL� and eEOL�
come into opposition.
Heidegger contrasts this bringing into presence that is work
with the Latin efficere and effectus. Even when Aristotle speaks of
what the Romans call the causa efficiens, he does not mean the
bringing about of an effect. What brings itself forth in the Greek
EQYOV is what presents itself "in the genuine and highest sense"
(SR 160/VA 46), that is, in actuality. Aristotle names this pres
ence EVEQYELa and EV"tEAEXELa. Accordingly, EVEQYELa can only be
properly translated, Heidegger argues, as Wirklichkeit (reality)
when wirken is understood in this sense of a bringing forth into
unconcealment. The work can be brought forth by a human
being, but the self-bringing-forth of q>UOL� is the primary sense
of "work" for Heidegger.
The possibility of this meaning of EVEQYELa, the real as the
work, has been suppressed in favor of the Romanized usage.
Heidegger's claim that the Romanization of ahla into causa effi
ciens is a narrowing of the rich Greek understanding of causa
tion has already been pointed out. "Science and Reflection"
adds little insight into the Romanization of thinking, since Hei
degger puts off the question of how the notion of cause (aQXT]
and ahla) belongs in the Greek experience. Ground and cause,
principium and causa, are the ways in which these notions have
come down to us. W B. Macomber comments on the translation
of Greek into Latin that the "loss of its linguistic roots is the fate
of the Western tradition" (1967:154). Heidegger argues in "The
Origin of the Work of Art" that "this translation of Greek names
into Latin is in no way the innocent process it is considered to
this day. Beneath the seemingly literal and thus faithful transla
tion there is concealed, rather, a translation of Greek experience
into a different way of thinking. Roman thought takes over the
Greek words without a corresponding, equally authentic experience of
what they say, without the Greek word. The rootlessness of Western
thought begins with this translation" (23/H 8). Concealed in the
German wirken is the Romanization of the real into Wirklichkeit.
The real "is now that which has followed as consequence" (SR
161/ VA 46). In Heidegger's account, the real in this sense of
causes and effects that follow after one another comes to the
'
foreground in the history of Western thought. What follows after

a determinate and determinable cause in this sense is factual:
"now the real presents itself in the taking place of consequences.
The consequence demonstrates that that which presences has,
through it, come to a secured stand, and that it encounters as
such a stand [Stand]. The real now shows itself as object, that
which stands over against [Gegen-stand]" (SR 162/VA 47). In
modern science, the real is what has been secured as object.
The second etymological account of the relation between the
ory and the real is to show how objectivity is a representing.
Heidegger traces "theory" to the Greek eewQElv and gives two
accounts of this word. First he examines the word as built from
eta and oQuw. The latter means to look at something attentively,
to view it closely. The former is the outward appearance in
which something shows itself, which Plato names eIbo�.
0ewQelv can thus be understood as "to look attentively on the
outward appearance wherein what presences becomes visible
and, through such sight-seeing-to linger with it" (SR 163/VA
48). To theorize in this sense is to remain with something by
looking at it. This is for the Greeks a way of life-that is, �lo�
eewQTrnx6�-that is the highest doing of which human being is
capable.
The second account of eewQElv is given in terms that share
etymological roots with the first: eeu and wQa. The former is a
goddess whose name is found in &":rjeeLa. Heidegger has argued
since Being and Time, most notably in "On the Essence of Truth,"
that &A.�eeLa is a more originary notion of truth than correspon
dence theories. It is unconcealment, which is the very thing that
makes correspondence possible. In "Science and Reflection" he
suggests that it is as the goddess 'AA.�eELa that unconcealment
that is, truth-appears to Parmenides. At what in the Greek ex
perience of truth is Heidegger trying to get in tracing the modern
word "theory" back to the goddess 'AA.�eeLa?
Heidegger spoke of the goddess 'AA.�eeLa in "Moira (Parmen
ides VIII, 34-41)." He argued there that what is given to "the
thinker to think remains at the same time veiled with respect to
its essential origins" (EGT 94/VA 240). Those origins are being
in Heidegger's account. The goddess should not therefore be un
derstood as the abstract personification of a concept, he sug-
gests, but as the disclosure of the duality of being and beings,

that is, of the ontological difference, in which thinking is a rela
tion not just to beings but to being. If this account is brought to
bear on "Science and Reflection," then Heidegger's reference
there to eECt and 'AA�6ELa can be read against the claim that
truth has a veiled origin: being. Heidegger is suggesting, then,
that theory takes its truth from an obscure source, a source that
remains veiled to science. That source is being.
Heidegger explains wQa in terms of respect, honor, and es
teem. Thus he defines 6EWQElv as "the beholding that watches over
truth" (SR 165/VA 49), and he connects the German Wahrheit
with both wQa and oQCtw. Modem truth has its roots in a respect
ful viewing, but its rootlessness consists precisely in the fact that
science left those roots behind when the real became established
as object in the age of representational thinking. eEWQElv is not
representational thinking; it is not speculation about that which
stands over and against the subject as object. Rather, eEWQElv
belonged to the Greeks in their �lo£ 6EWQTj1:LXO£, not to modem
human being's way of approaching its object in representational
thinking. Under both etymologies, 6EWQElv is not simply a with
drawal from activity into speculation. It is in fact precisely an
activity, but of a very particular kind. It is the activity of standing
in the truth, of holding back action to allow what is revealed to
show itself. It is a relation to being that does not simply grasp
beings by way of a concept.
Heidegger attempts to retrieve ancient 6EWQElV with the mod
em word "reflection" (Besinnung). His claim is that reflection is
in a sense useless, that is, it does not endow one with the power
to act as do the sciences, which produce knowledge that can
then be applied. But the very uselessness of reflection is a prom
ise of further wealth (SR 181 / VA 66) in that reflection promises
something that can never be encompassed in scientific reckon
ing. Reflection approaches that which is worthy of question (SR
182/VA 66). In opposition to the sciences, it can hold out in the
questionable. This is precisely the task that was elucidated for
thinking in 1951-52 and remains at the end of philosophy in the
account from 1966: "the surrender of previous thinking to the
determination of the matter for thinking" (BW 392/ Zur Sache des
Denkens 80). The task is not to remain complacent in the face of
'
what has been thought, but to surrender it, to give it up to fur

ther reflection. Such reflection determines that the matter for
thinking-that is, what calls for thinking-is being. "Reflection"
in "Science and Reflection" gets at the same thing as "thinking"
in What Is Called Thinking? Both turn toward a matter that is
constricted, confined, and closed off in the modem epoch: being.
Likewise, theory is a stunted development of something that
was much richer in the thinking of the Greeks.
There is, Heidegger claims, nonetheless a shadow of the ear
lier meaning of 8EWQELV in the modem "theory." The modem
term has come to us, however, through the Roman contemplari.
The core of this word, templum, comes from the Greek 'tEftVELV,
which means to cut or divide: "In 8EWQLU transformed into
contemplatio there comes to the fore the impulse, already pre
pared in Greek thinking, of a looking-at that sunders and com
partmentalizes. A type of encroaching advance by successive
interrelated steps toward that which is to be grasped by the eye
makes itself normative in knowing" (SR 166/VA 51). This im
pulse to division is prepared for in Aristotle's division of knowl
edge and in his account of the many ways for a thing to be, of
which !pUOL£ is only one, in Heidegger's view. The specialization
of the sciences is already prepared for in Greek thinking.
The tendency toward division in Romanized contemplation is
an assault upon its object, a manipulation that determines that
object by confining it in a particular realm of beings determined
as the object-area of a specialized science. Such a limited view of
nature is, however, necessary insofar as a science such as phys
ics, for example, requires a determined realm of objects in order
to then proceed with investigation of that realm. It investigates
through observation. Hence Heidegger understands observation
as "an entrapping and securing refining of the real" (SR 167/VA
51-52). It orders nature in such a way that "at any given time
the real will exhibit itself as an interacting network, i.e., in sur
veyable series of related causes" (SR 168/VA 52). This is the a
priori determination of nature by modem science.
Nature is accordingly for physics "das Unumgiingliche": "that
which cannot be gotten around" (SR 174; d. 177/VA 59/ VA 61).
Physics takes nature as its object, and it remains directed at that
object and cannot pass it by. Furthermore, "objectness as such
prevents the representing and securing that correspond to it

from ever being able to encompass the essential fullness of na
ture" (SR 174/VA 58). Physics cannot even ask if nature is with
drawing rather than appearing in scientific representation, for
physics has already undertaken its task with respect to an area
determined by objectness to the preclusion of such a question.
Likewise, all sciences are directed at that which they cannot
get around and which they cannot encompass, for in each case
a science cannot determine what it is directed at in any fullness
beyond objectivity. Were it the case that the sciences could find
within themselves what is not to be gotten around, then "they
would have before all else to be in a position to conceive and
represent their own essence" (SR 176/VA 61). They can-in fact,
must-represent their object in order to be able to proceed, but
as Heidegger has argued in What Is Called Thinking?, where he
called it one-sidedness, the sciences are never in a position to
represent their own essence: "Physics as physics can make no
assertions about physics. All the assertions of physics speak after
the manner of physics. Physics itself is not a possible object of a
physical experiment" (SR l76/VA 61). Physics can proceed with
the investigation of its object, but to think critically about the
object of physics, one must first step outside physics.
The inaccessibility of what cannot be got around in a science
is itself constantly passed over, for the sciences proceed in the
modem epoch more securely than ever. The inaccessibility of
what they cannot get around remains inconspicuous. The sci
ences lie in such inconspicuousness, Heidegger argues, "as a
river lies in its source" (SR l79/VA 63). This source is that which
is worthy of question in reflection. Reflection (Besinnung) is
"calm, self-possessed surrender to that which is worthy of ques
tioning" (SR l80/VA 64). It is different from the knowing of the
sciences. Heidegger's argument is that the poverty of the use
lessness of reflection on what cannot be got around can become
a rich treasure when that which is worthy of question is taken
up. Heidegger suggests that even though reflection on any par
ticular science is impossible from within that science, still "every
researcher and teacher of the sciences, every man pursuing a
way through a science, can move, as a thinking being, on various
levels of reflection" (SR l8l-82/VA 66). The task of thinking
'
herein set for both philosophers and scientists is reflection upon

the sciences.
"Science and Reflection" is therefore a development beyond
What Is Called Thinking? In the latter text, Heidegger claimed that
science does not think In "Science and Reflection" he suggests
.
that practitioners of science can and presumably should think ,
that is, reflect on their science. This means not simply evaluating
the science in terms of results and usefulness in practical appli
cation, but reflecting on how the science determines its object.
The task for the scientist is to pause from science and raise the
question of its origin and essence: the a priori determination of
its object.
Heidegger had held explicitly since Basic Problems of Phenome
nology that sciences proceed through a regional ontology-that
is, a science investigates an object that has been determined be
forehand. In this prior determination of its object, a science has
its source and its essence. On this basis, Heidegger's claim in
What Is Called Thinking? that the "sciences belong in the realm of
the essence of technology" (WCT 14/WHD 50) can be interpre
ted. The essence of technology is Ge-stell. Science too has its Ge
stell. In
explicating this claim, I show how it is only on the basis
of the scientific object that modem technology is possible for
Heidegger. That is, the essence of technology arises from the Ge
stell of science.
GE-STELL
Much work has been done on Heidegger's critique of technol

ogy, but the question of the relation between science and tech
nology in his thinking has been neglected. This question seemed
to have been answered by Heidegger in What Is Called Thinking?,
where he argues that "science is grounded in the nature of tech
nology" (WCT 135/WHD 155). Yet he also argues that technol
ogy is only possible because of science (WCT 234/WHD 142).
Furthermore, in reportedly the last text Heidegger wrote, read
at the tenth annual Heidegger Conference at DePaul University
only two weeks before his death, he raised precisely the question
of the relation between science and technology: "Is modem nat-
ural science the foundation (Grundlage) of modern technol

ogy-as is supposed-or is it, for its part, already the basic form
of technological thinking, the determining fore-conception and
incessant incursion of technological representation into the real
ized and organized machinations of modern technology?"
(MNST 3). "Foundation" (Grundlage) means literally "ground
laying." Heidegger is asking whether modem science lays the
ground for technology, or whether science is already essentially
technology. I will show that Heidegger holds the latter thesis:
the essence of science is the essence of technology. I will thus
argue that Ge-stell is not just the essence of technology for Hei
degger, but also the essence of science. Further, that Heidegger
holds that technology is only possible because beings are first
set up as objects in the epoch of science. And lastly, that science
is made possible by the trace of ancient TEXVT] that remains in
representational thinking.
Hence the relation between science and technology sounds
muddled: science is grounded in technology, yet science makes
technology possible. Yet it is a simple historical relation: modem
technology is possible because its essence is already to be found
in science. That is, a trace of ancient TEXVI1 remains in modem
science, and that trace makes technology possible. That trace is
projection. As ancient TEXVI1 began with the idea in the mind of
the artist prior to production, so modem science and technology
both have their a priori projection of being. That projection Hei
degger names Ge-stell. The Ge-stell of technology is standing-re
serve---beings appear as resource. The Ge-stell of science is
objectivity-beings appear as object. I will support this interpre
tation by reading "The Question Concerning Technology."
In this text, read in 1955 in Munich as part of a series called
"The Arts in the Technological Age," Heidegger insists that the
claims that "Technology is a means to an end" and that "Tech
nology is a human activity" belong together as the instrumental,
anthropological definition of technology. He argues against this
view, suggesting that it is not wrong, but rather inadequate. He
claims instead that technology is "a way of revealing" (QCT 12/
VA 16). This claim is best read against "On the Essence of Truth"
from 1930. In that essay, Heidegger retrieves the Greek word for
truth, aA.�eELa. He translates aA.�eELa as Unverborgenheit, uncon-
'
cealment, and argues that truth is a question of essence in the

difficult claim that "the essence of truth is the truth of essence"
(BW 140/WW 201). What he means is that what truth is, is a
question of historical epoch. He undermines the notion of a uni
versal, transhistorical truth and gives instead an account in
which truth is a stance human being takes toward being, an at
tunement that informs an epoch and evolves over time, an open
ing of an understanding in which being is concealed as human
being loses itself among beings.
Heidegger's claim in 1954 about technology, that it is a way of
revealing, is hence the claim that technology is a truth. That is,
it is a human stance toward being by means of which beings are
revealed. But beings are not revealed in just any way. Rather,
technology is a "challenging [Herausfordern]" (QCT 14/VA 18). It
"sets upon [steIlen] nature" (QCT IS/VA 18) to unlock and ex
pose its energy for stockpiling. Technology sets up beings as
standing-reserve. The inadequacy of the instrumental and an
thropological definition of technology is its failure to acknowl
edge how human being is implicated in technology as the one
who sets up the reaL Human being determines how a thing can
reveal itself. Technology is a way of allowing things to appear,
or making them appear.
This is not to say, however, that human being creates all that
is. Heidegger distinguishes technology from creation: "the re
vealing that holds sway throughout modem technology does not
unfold into a bringing-forth in the sense of JWLT]OL<;" (QCT 14/
VA 18). Modem technology does not reveal as does ancient
Jto LT] oU;, the creative act in which something is brought into
being. Hence technology, though etymologically connected to
"tEXVT], the branch of knowledge that was for Aristotle produc
tion, is different from that ancient way of bringing things forth
into being. Technology does not bring forth in Heidegger's ac
count, yet nor does it reveal things on their own terms, as it
were. Rather, technology challenges forth.
In that challenging forth, a claim is made upon human being
to order what is: "We now name that challenging claim which
gathers [human being] thither to order the self-revealing as
standing-reserve: 'Ge-stell' [enframingJ" (QCT 19/ VA 23). Wil
liam Lovitt, who translates Ge-stell as "Enframing" in "The
Question Concerning Technology," argues elsewhere that the

term is impossible to translate (1973:52). Ge-stell is for Heidegger
the essence of technology. It is a way of revealing things in
which things are challenged to show themselves in a particular
way: as a standing-reserve at human being's disposal. In tech
nology, then, human being orders the real. Yet the control thus
felt by human being is illusory. Rather than being the master of
technology, human being is called upon in Heidegger's view by
technology to be the one who orders the real. Technology, then,
although a human creation, is a claim upon human being.
Heidegger argues that "the herald of Ge-stell, a herald whose
origin is still unknown" (QCT 22/VA 25), is modem physics.
Physics is the herald of Ge-stell in that it prepares the way not
simply for technology, but for its essence. The ordering attitude
and behavior at work in technology was first visible in modem
science as exact, experimental science: "Because physics, indeed
already as pure theory, sets nature up to exhibit itself as a coher
ence of forces calculable in advance, it therefore orders its exper
iments precisely for the purpose of asking whether and how
nature reports itself when set up in this way" (QCT 21/VA 25).
This view of nature, that it is available for human being to set it
up in some determined way, is what makes possible the further
ordering of nature as standing-reserve. Without the scientific ob
ject, therefore, technology would not be possible.
I would add to this argument. In Aristotle's account, nature is
teleological (199b31). Tu qJUOLXU are for him those things which
move of their own accord, that is, by some internal impulse
(192b15). Motion he defines as the realization of that potential to
change (202a6). Hence Aristotle's world is filled by things that
are on the way to self-fulfillment, by 1:U qJUOLXU which propel
themselves toward their own ends. Newtonian physics, how
ever, reduces motion to locomotion, and causation to efficient
causes. Hence it has no conception of motion as actualization,
and it renders nature purposeless. That is, the purposiveness
attributed by Aristotle to 1:U <jlUOLXU no longer figures in the
modem scientific account of nature. Hence the modem scientific
conception of nature renders things in nature available to be ap
propriated toward human purposes, goals, and uses. Physics is
'
the herald of Ge-stell in this sense: it appears first and announces

what is to follow.
Accordingly, Heidegger argues that science is chronologically
prior to technology. Modem physical science began in the seven
teenth century, whereas technology developed only in the sec
ond half of the eighteenth century (QCT 22/VA 26). Earlier,
Heidegger says that "mathematical physics arose almost two
centuries before technology" (QCT 21 / VA 25). One cannot help
but ask at this point, what does Heidegger mean by "technol
ogy"? It is fairly clear throughout Heidegger's writings that by
"modem science" he means mathematical and experimental
physics, for which Galileo is a beginning, Newton a culmination,
and quantum theory an extension. But what he means by "tech
nology" is at best opaque. The earliest discussion, for example,
in the Nietzsche volumes, is of "machine technology," and it
makes sense given the dating relative to science that for Heideg
ger technology begins with the industrial revolution. Thomas
Kuhn would dispute this view. He talks of technology as if it has
always existed, or at least as long as there has been science. He
argues that they were separate enterprises until late in the nine
teenth century. Developments in the organic-chemical dye in
dustry in the 1870s and in electric power in the 1890s, argues
Kuhn, made science suddenly "a prime mover in socioeconomic
development" (1977:142) and brought technology and science
together. Previously science and technology interacted in three
ways, he argues. First, scientists advanced their understanding
of nature-for example, of magnetism, chemistry, and thermo
dynamics-by looking at the practice of craftspeople. Second,
starting in the eighteenth century, methods, and sometimes sci
entists, borrowed from sciences have been deployed in the prac
tical arts, but with unclear effectiveness. Third, the continuing
development of products and processes from prior scientific re
search is a locus of interaction between science and technology.
In fact, argues Kuhn, technology flourished without substantial
input from the sciences until the late nineteenth century.
Heidegger's account is consistent with Kuhn's in that both
pinpoint a significant and dramatic change in the relation be
tween science and technology in the late nineteenth century. For
Kuhn, this is the beginning of science as a socioeconomic force.
For Heidegger, it is the emergence of technology as that which

is commonly and superficially understood to be applied science,
and which he wishes to understand in its essence. Kuhn, then,
holds the instrumental, anthropological definition of technology
which Heidegger wishes to reject. Nor is Kuhn interested in the
genesis and implications of technology. Indeed, Heidegger's in
terest with science and technology is ultimately concern with
nihilism. In the Nietzsche volumes, where he first spoke of ma
chine technology, he described nihilism as the devaluation of all
values. Certainly, Kuhn is interested in the logic and history of
science, both theory and practice; but the value or threat of sci
ence and technology is not an issue for him . Heidegger spoke of
threat in the context of science in 1937 in "Die Bedrohung der
Wissenschaft," and of technology in 1955 in "The Question Con
cerning Technology." Although the latter issue has been a cen
tral focus for Heidegger scholars, the former point has been
neglected. In 1955 Heidegger argues that the threat of technol
ogy-that it sets upon nature and "drives out every other possi
bility of revealing" (QCT 27I VA 31) until even human being is
reduced to standing-reserve-is made possible by modem sci
ence. It is the ordering of nature into scientific object that pre
pares the way for its further ordering into standing-reserve.
Heidegger's point is that modem science has as its essence
already in its very beginning, the essence of technology. This is
not to say simply that modem science is technological, although
scientists do not get far, even as undergraduates, without access
to a fair amount of technology. Heidegger's claim that the es
sence of science lies in the essence of technology does not take
its basis from the fact that the sciences are technological, because
for Heidegger the essence of technology is itself nothing techno
logical. Ge-stell is nothing technological: it is not a thing at all,
but a way of revealing. Likewise, modem science has its Ge-stell;
object. Science is also a way of revealing, and only because mod
em science reveals as object can technology reveal as standing
reserve.
Heidegger's claim about such foundational notions for knowl
edge as nature, motion, causation, and theory has consistently
been that they have their origin in Greek thinking, and that the
Greek legacy has come down to the modem era severely nar-
'
rowed. Some trace of the Greek interpretation and understand

ing remains in the modem era. This is true also of technology.
Heidegger's analysis is that a trace of "tEXVT] remains in the mod
em epoch in Ge-stell.
For Aristotle, the ancient craftsperson began work with an
idea of what was to be made (PA 640a32;EN 1 140a13). This was
in fact definitive of "tEXVT]. Modem science likewise begins with
an idea that establishes its object beforehand. In physics, nature
is represented as "a coherence of forces calculable in advance"
(QCT 21 / VA 25), and on this basis is pursued and entrapped.
Heidegger has pinpointed the essence of technology in Ge-stell,
in the challenging forth of nature that lets what presences come
forth into unconcealment by ordering it. In technology, nature is
challenged forth and ordered as a standing-reserve at the dis
posal of human being, which extracts and stores its energy. In
modem science, nature is ordered as a calculable coherence of
forces, and as such set up to reveal itself in the experiment. Sci
ence and technology both have their Ge-stell, their challenging of
nature to reveal itself in a determined way. Projection of an a
priori determination of beings is at the essence of both.
Hence Heidegger's claim originally made in 1949, that the es
sence of technology is Ge-stell, and his much earlier claim from
Being and Time, that science is the mathematical projection of
nature, can be read together in the claim from What Is Called
Thinking? that the essence of science lies in the essence of tech
nology. Both science and technology belong essentially to the
modem epoch, the age of the world picture. I argue that the age
of the world picture is determined by science, since scientific
objectivity is the formative moment in representational thinking.
Science is not symptomatic of modernity, but determinative. Sci
entific representation in objectivity makes technology possible.
Modem science precedes technology in history, in Heideg
ger's account, and makes it possible in that the essence of tech
nology is already found in the modem epoch in the essence of
science. Technology got under way only when it could be sup
ported by modem exact science (QCT 21-22/ VA 25); but the es
sence of that science was already the essence of technology. The
projective representation definitive of ancient "tEXVT] is present in
the essence of modem science. It projects an understanding and
determination onto nature in its representational thinking, basic

concepts, and experimental method. Only because the essence
of science is thus already collapsed into the essence of technol
ogy can technology present the illusion that it is applied science.
It is in fact much more. It is the human response to the default
of being, in which beings are revealed as objects for science, and
resources for technology.
QuANTUM THEORY
The most technolOgical science of all is quantum physics. Father

Richardson's central argument for his claim that Heidegger is
not a philosopher of science is that Heidegger's conception of
science is based on Newtonian physics and is not adequate to
the new science: quantum theory. Richardson argues that Hei
degger's notion of the subject-object relation "seems to be basi
cally that of spatial exteriority and separateness of parts outside
of parts" (1968:535). But quantum theory has different concerns,
in Richardson's analysis, such that what is decisive in the sub
ject-object relation "is not opposition and separation (i.e. spatial
separation) but interdependence between subject and object,
therefore unity with distinction" (1968:535). He cites Heisenb
erg's uncertainty principle as a classic example of this interde
pendence.
There are a few responses to this criticism of Heidegger. First
of all, the notion of exteriority is not so clearly basic to Heideg
ger's account of the subject-object relation. He argues in The
Basic Problems of Phenomenology that for Dasein, "there is no out
side" (BPP 66/GP 93), and this "outside" would be precisely the
exteriority of object to subject that Richardson finds basic to his
account. Heidegger finds the traditional account of intentional
ity "inadequate and external" (BPP 161/GP 230) because it does
not conceive the belonging together of subject and object radi
cally enough. He disallows discussion of an inner and outer in
attempting to understand Dasein's commerce with things, for
this precludes understanding being in a world as fundamental
to Dasein. Likewise, in Die Frage nach dem Ding, Heidegger ob
jects to the determination of a thing as a "this," here and now,
'
such that space and time are construed as containers for the
thing (FD 11-24). In characterizing the thing, the interiority and
exteriority of space and time are simply not adequate.
Furthermore, Heidegger objects in The Basic Problems of Phe
nomenology to Kant's separation of subject and object in his ac
count of perception because "it does not make possible any
access to the unity of the phenomenon" (BPP 314/GP 447). And
Heidegger argues that the subject-object relation is a correlation,
and that the concepts of subject and object require each other
(BPP 156-57/ GP 222-23). Accordingly, it is not so clear that Hei
degger's account of the subject-object relation focuses on opposi
tion and separation rather than unity and interdependence.
Second, Heidegger was not completely uninformed on the
topic of quantum theory. Joseph Kockelmans points out with
reference to Carl von Weizsacker's report on his meeting with
Heidegger, Heisenberg, and his uncle, Victor von Weizsacker,
that "it becomes clear that Heidegger had a remarkable knowl
edge of both physics and biology and that he was able to con
duct a penetrating discussion on important topics with leading
scientists" (1985:17).3 In the young von Weizsacker's account of
that meeting, Heisenberg finds Heidegger's insights satisfactory,
when the issue at stake is precisely how the subject-object rela
tion is to be understood in quantum theory.
Finally, it is not the case that Heidegger fails to address the
question of quantum theory in his analysis of science. In his
writing he cites Heisenberg, Bohr, and Planck. His comments
are sparse, but this is not because he has nothing to say on the
issue. Rather, it is because what he does have to say makes it
clear that he sees no essential difference between Newtonian
physics and quantum theory. He recognizes that they are not
identical. For example, in Die Frage nach dem Ding, as early as
1935, Heidegger suggests that in quantum theory, the relation
between matter and space is not so simple as in Newtonian
physics, but nor is it fundamentally different (FD 15). And in
"Science and Reflection" he acknowledges that the geometrical
point mechanics of Newtonian physics is different from the sta-
3 Kockelmans's reference is to von Weizsacker, 1977, but see also von Weiz
sacker, 1977a.
tistical mechanics of quantum theory. In both texts Heidegger

sees differences between Newtonian physics and quantum the
ory, but he also makes it clear that he recognizes no essential
difference. They have the same Ge-stell, the same preconception
of nature.
For Heidegger, nature is confined in modem science to its in
terpretation as a coherence of forces calculable in advance. Not
only Newtonian physics, but also quantum mechanics pursues
its object as such a calculable coherence of forces for the pur
poses of making the energy contained within the atom available
to be extracted, stored, and at the disposal of human being. Hei
degger's reflections upon the atomic age found in The Principle
of Reason make this explicitly clear. In this lecture course from
1955-56, Heidegger argues that the "unleashing of this natural
energy occurs through the work of the most modem natural sci
ences that ever more unequivocally prove to have the normative
function and form of the essence of modem technology" (123).
Accordingly, he recognizes no essential difference between
Newtonian and quantum physics. If modem science is, as Hei
degger argues, essentially technological, then quantum physics
is nothing different, but rather an intensification of that essential
identity.
Under Heidegger's view, the mathematical projection of na
ture as the essence of science is first evident in the work of Gali
leo, who was the crucial figure in the transition from Aristotle's
method of generalization on the basis of observation to the mod
em method of formulating universal hypotheses which can then
be tested in experimentation. In "Science and Reflection," Hei
degger maintains that quantum theory is simply a narrowing of
the realm of validity of Galileo's and Newton's physics. This
narrowing also confirms "the objectness normative for the the
ory of nature, in accordance with which nature presents itself
for representation as a spatiotemporal coherence of motion cal
culable in some way or other" (SR 169/VA 54). Method-that is,
how a science entraps and secures its object-is of decisive con
cern, and in quantum theory as in Newtonian physics the
method is to secure the object in measurement.
This is particularly evident in Bohr's view of quantum me
chanics. Bohr introduces the principle of completeness: a prop-
'
erty of a quantum particle or photon (e.g., position, momentum,

or spin) has no definite value until it is measured. Prior to mea
surement, the quantity is represented by a wave packet describ
ing a super-position in which all possible outcomes of
measurement are to be found. Measurement collapses the wave
function and only a single outcome remains, the one measured.
Only on such a basis can what is called the measurement prob
lem come about in quantum theory: if what is measured is in an
indefinite state, a super-position, prior to measurement, how can
measurement collapse the wave function that describes that
super-position such that a single value is measured? Wigner
deals with this problem by maintaining that the intervention of
consciousness is what collapses the wave function (Wheeler and
Zurek 1983:324-41), and he gives a convenient overview of other
solutions (Wheeler and Zurek 1983:288-94). It seems that Hei
degger's claim that Newtonian physics and quantum physics
are essentially the same-that is, they share a mathematical pro
jection of nature in which the real is quantifiable, measurable,
and calculable in advance-is neither uninformed nor unreason
able. In fact, the crucial experiment to decide between Bohr's
quantum theory and Einstein's realism, which led Einstein to
argue that quantum theory is incomplete, is based precisely on
obtaining predictions under each account and showing that the
realist predictions of Bell's inequality are violated. An outcome
is predicted for each account, and Bohr's account is vindicated
experimentally.
The claim in quantum physics is not, then, simply that the real
is measurable, but that it is measured. Heidegger follows the
weaker reading, and he cites Max Planck's statement: "That is
real which can be measured" (SR 169 / VA 54). Heidegger takes
Planck to mean that the real can be reckoned, that is, set up as an
object of expectation, consistent with his view that the essence of
modem science is Ge-stell. In quantum theory, in fact, the real is
what has been measured. But this point only strengthens Heideg
ger's argument that the essence of science is the mathematical
projection of nature.
Heidegger does, however, recognize that Newtonian physics
and quantum theory are not identical. In physics, "nature mani
fests itself as a coherence of motion on material bodies" (SR 171/
VA 56). The difference between classical physics and quantum

theory is that the latter represents its objects with reference to a
nucleus or field, whereas the former represents its objects by
means of geometrical point mechanics. In classical physics all
aspects of an object's motion can be calculated in advance, but
in quantum theory the coherence of knowledge with its object is
of a statistical nature. The objectness of material nature is differ
ent in each case, but they both remain for Heidegger "physicS,
i.e., science, i.e., theory, which entraps objects belonging to the
real in their objectness, in order to secure them in the unity of
objectness" (SR 172/VA 56).
Heidegger quotes Heisenberg, who seeks to write "one single
fundamental equation from which the properties of all elemen
tary particles, and therewith the behaviour of all matter what
ever, follow" (SR 172/VA 57).4 Heisenberg's method is therefore
not for Heidegger distinct from Galileo's. It is in fact more Gali
lean than Galileo, for if Galileo proceeds on the basis of universal
a priori hypotheses, Heisenberg seeks the ultimate such hypoth
esis. What has not changed in quantum theory is that "nature
has in advance to set itself in place for the entrapping securing
that science, as theory, accomplishes" (SR 172-73/ VA 57). Both
Newtonian physics and quantum theory have their essence in
the essence of technology: Ge-stell.
CONCLUSION
Hence one might wish to ask Heidegger if he holds that the

modem epoch is over. On the one hand, it is no longer science
but rather technology that is the essential determination of the
age and of human being in the late twentieth century. Yet tech
nology is not essentially different from science in Heidegger's
account. His diagnosis and critique of technology began as early
as the 1940 lecture course on European nihilism. His anticipation
of the global dominion of technology has proven astute. The
question remains: Does human being stand at the cusp of an
epoch? Heidegger argues that science and technology belong to-
• Heidegger is quoting Heisenberg 1948:98.

'
252 HEIDEGGER S PllLOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
gether essentially, such that the modem epoch is the age of sci
ence and technology. Under this account, the postmodem is not
novel, but simply a devolved and quintessential modernity.
In 1976 Heidegger raised the following question during his
last public address: "Is modem natural science the foundation
of modem technology-as is supposed-or is it, for its part, al
ready the basic form of technological thinking, the determining
fore-conception and incessant incursion of technological repre
sentation into the realized and organized machinations of mod
em technology?" (MNST 3). An account of the development of
Heidegger's thinking over the sixty years from 1916 until his
death in 1976 answers this question: Modern natural science is al
ready the basic form of technological thinking. Science shares its es
sence with technology such that technological representation,
Ge-stell, can intervene in modem technology. Science is not sim
ply the foundation of modem technology, but rather its essence
and origin.
Heidegger himself comes to this view only after long and
careful struggle with the question of science. He began with two
theses: that philosophy is a science, and that natural science is
the mathematical projection of nature. Through resisting neo
Kantianism, Heidegger began an extensive critique of subjectiv
ity which led him to reject both Kantian idealism and the former
of his two theses. He developed the second thesis by reflecting
on the experimental method, and discovered therein that the
thesis characterizes modem, not ancient, science. Looking back
to ancient philosophy, he confirmed his rejection of subjectivist
metaphysics by thinking being as the a priori, that which is prior
in understanding. The thesis that modem science is the mathe
matical projection of nature remained with Heidegger and from
1950 onward informed his account of technology. Ge-stell, in
fact, captures precisely the notion of projection at work in Hei
degger's account of modem science, such that he argues that
science and technology are essentially one. His critique of sci
ence is the background against which his understanding of the
history of metaphysics unfolds.
Heidegger's analysis of the projection at the core of science
leads him from basic concepts to representation to Ge-stell. It is
a development that flourishes as a critique of representational
thinking's determination of modernity. The pre-Socratic experi

ence of nature witnesses the possibility for other human rela
tions to nature than a reductive appropriation of nature as
resource. Heidegger can be put into a dialogue with the analytic
tradition of science concerning issues about the nature and
method of scientific theory and practice. Furthermore, the con
temporary environmental crisis suggests that the significance of
Heidegger's thinking to philosophy of science is to raise such
questions as, for example, who determines what is worth know
ing? how do science and technology underwrite the human rela
tion to nature reductively? and to establish a ,oJto<; for
envisioning other possibilities for science. Thinking through
Heidegger's philosophy of science is preparation for an ecologi
cal ethic.
Heidegger's philosophy of science has its roots in the philo
sophical project of securing the sciences upon a certain founda
tion. The collapse of this Enlightenment project is the anti-realist
recognition that understanding is always hermeneutic, that sci
ence is always interpretive. Heidegger's questions are therefore
of the limits and possibilities for such interpretation. Questions
concerning science run so deeply in Heidegger's thinking that
their Significance is not easy to see. I have argued that issues
pertaining to science lie behind Heidegger's rejection of meta
physics, his entanglement with the university, his nostalgia for
the Greeks, and his critique of modernity. I have further shown
that Heidegger's thinking can be put constructively into dia
logue with the analytic tradition of philosophy of science. I do
not believe that I have said all there is to be said on such topics
in Heidegger's thinking. Rather, I hope to have awakened in oth
ers an interest in Heidegger's philosophy of science.
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INDEX
abandonment, 19, 28 Aristotle/Aristotelian, 7-11, 35,

acceleration, 53, 57, 70, 86 39, 43, 54, 57, 59, 62, 65-67, 69,
actuality, 10, 20, 49, 93, 125, 165, 75, 83-86, 90, 93-95, 99, 101-2,
179-81, 183-84, 191-93, 195, 109, 114, 120, 126, 131, 157, 161-
197-99, 203, 235 66, 168-70, 172, 177, 179-207,
aether, 70, 79-82, 107 211, 218, 221, 223, 225, 229-31,
"Age of the World Picture, The," 234-35, 238, 242-43, 246, 249
1, 52, 59, 63, 68, 70-73, 85, 92, artifact, 10-11, 179-81, 192, 197,
94, 109-17, 138, 142, 152-55, 200-204, 218
170-72, 207-8, 213, 219-20 axiom/axiomatic, 58-59, 63, 85
Alderman, H., 108
analogy of being, 10, 165, 170, Bacon, E, 6, 74, 78, 85, 87, 102, 208
179-84 Ballard, E. G., 103
analytic judgments, 40, 48-49 Basic Concepts, 144, 157, 217
analytic philosophy/ analytic phi basic concepts, 3, 5-6, 15, 87-88,
losophers, 3-5, 9-10, 70-72, 76- 247, 252
77, 79, 83, 87, 104, 117, 253 Basic Problems of Phenomenology, 9,
ancient science, 8, 10, 51, 91, 96, 14-18, 20-30, 40, 45-40 49, 52-
109-10, 162-63, 252 53, 112, 117, 120, 125-29, 135,
Anima, De, 187-88, 190 140, 146-48, 152, 205, 210-11,
anthropology / anthropological, 240, 247-48
20, 37-38 Basic Works of Aristotle, The, 189,
Antigone, 17 197
Antiphon, 191-92, 195, 198, 202, Basic Writings, 96, 113, 136, 147,
204 167-68, 178, 186, 221, 237, 242
anti-realism/ anti-realist, 68-69, Beaufret, J., 136, 147
71, 253 becoming-present/presence/
arociety, 38-39, 128-31 presences, 11, 17, 20, 32, 39, 67,
a priori, 5-6, 9, 17, 19, 28-29, 35- 116, 126, 164, 168, 174, 178, 186,
36, 39-41, 45, 47-50, 102, 105, 198-99, 212-13, 231, 234-36
116, 170, 200 209, 218-19, 238, "Bedrohung der Wissenschaft,
240, 246, 251-52 Die," 103, 148-53, 216-17, 226,
Aristoteles' Metaphysik IX.1-3, 245
182-83, 196 being, 2, 6-11, 14, 16-20, 23-25,
268 INDEX
28-35, 38-42, 44-40 49, 55-56, 93, 107, 113-14, 200, 202, 230,
60-64, 66-70, 83, 100, 103, 116- 235, 238, 243, 245
17, 120, 125-38, 140, 144, 149, circular motion, 57
155-50 163-65, 167-70, 172-73, cogito, 6, 61, 63, 113, 115, 171, 227
175-80, 183, 185-86, 195, 199, Cooper, L., 73-74, 101
202-5, 209-11, 214, 217-18, Copernican revolution, 30-32, 38,
220-22, 225-31, 236-37, 242, 41-47
247, 252 Cornford, E, 187
"Being and Conception of qnJOLC; Corrington, R S., 163
in Aristotle's Physics B.1, On Critique of Judgement, 24, 146
the," 174-75, 179-81, 185, 189, Critique of Pure Reason, 9, 19, 27,
191-93, 195-200, 202-5, 230 31-32, 35-40, 42-44, 48-50, 60,
Being and Time, 1-2, 7-9, 11, 14, 63, 72, 138
16-18, 20-21, 25-30, 34, 38-39, crucial experiments, 3, 9, 70, 73-
42-47, 49, 53, 55-56, 60-61, 64, 84, 250
70, 83, 87, 90, 93, 95-99, 107-8,
120-23, 125, 127-28, 133, 135-
Dasein, 16, 20, 22, 29-31, 33-34,
36, 147-48, 152, 164-67, 169-70,
37-39, 42, 44, 55, 61, 97, 120,
172, 174, 177, 182, 210-11, 215,
122, 126-34, 136-40, 143, 146,
217, 225, 236, 246
148, 167-68, 170-71, 220 247
Beitriige, 45, 68, 70-72, 75-76, 78,
David, P., 120
83-86, 90-96, 98-99, 101,
death, 128-29, 145
104-7, 114, 116, 141-42, 224
default of being, 138, 228
Bell's inequalities/the Bell in-
equality, 12, 77-78, 88, 250 Denken, 8, 162
Bergoffen, D., 129 Descartes, R, 18, 23, 27, 59, 61-63,
Bernasconi, R, 147 68-69, 107, 113, 115, 135, 171,
Besinnung, 2, 108, 151, 162, 232, 208, 219-20
237, 239 destiny, 7, 10, 120-21, 131-34,
Betrachtung, 103 136-41, 143-44, 146, 151, 153,
Betriebscharakter, 10, 119, 137, 155-56, 168, 225
161 Duhem, P., 77-78
Blair, G., 193-94
Bohr, N., 248-50 Early Greek Thinking, 174, 223, 236
Brentano, E, 10, 180, 183-84 ecology / ecological, 163, 253
Eignung, 201
Cae/o, De, 101 Einfiihrung in die Metaphysik, 44-
calculation, 108-9, 111, 142 45, 67, 100, 114, 124, 132, 158,
Caputo, J., 1-2, 98 170, 173, 175-77, 178, 185, 199,
Camap, R, 42 212, 230
Cartesian Meditations, 23 Einstein, 82
cause/ causes/ causation, 7, 33, 50, empirical! empiricism, 7, 21, 42,
INDEX 269
48-50, 71, 84, 87-92, 94, 96, 96, 101-2, ll6, 127, 136-37,
101-2, 105, 224 145-46, 188-89, 191, 199, 208,
"End of Philosophy and the Task 212, 224, 235
of Thinking, The," 220, 237 experiment/ experimentation/
environment/ environmental, experimental, 6, 8-9, 53-54, 59,
163, 206, 253 64-66, 68-88, 90-91, 93-90 99,
epistemology / epistemological, 101-2, 104-7, 109, 111-15, 117-
23-24, 28, 30-32, 42, 44, 62, 65, 18, 141, 154, 224, 239, 243-44,
190 247, 250, 252
epoch, 7, ll, 63, 67, 69, 91, 93, 109, extantness, 27-28
lll, l l5, ll7, 132-33, 137-38,
154, 200 209, 211, 213-15, 220, facticity, 132, 167
225-26, 228-30, 232, 238-39, Farias, v., 120
241-42, 246, 251-52 fate, 133, 137, 141
epoche, 18, 20, 23, 68 Ferry, L., 120
Ereignis, 192 Feyerabend, P. K., 65, 68, 76
errancy, 38, 148, 167 finitude, 37-39, 41, 44, 128
essence/essences, 33, 76, 83-85, form, ll, 179, 181-82, 186, 190-93,
93-94, 110, 114-15, 132, 134, 195, 198-205, 221
139-40, 144-45, 147, 149, 155, Fr"o'e nach dem Ding, Die, 9, 14, 17-
158-59, 164, 166, 170, 176, 178, 19, 40-41, 46-47, 49-53, 56-59,
205-0 209, 212-15, 217, 233, 61-64, 70-72, 84, 86-88, 92-94,
239-40, 242, 246 100-101, 104, 107, lll, l l4, 138,
essence of science, 1-3, 5-10, 12, 171, 210, 224, 247-48
53, 58, 63-64, 60 69, 71-73, 141, Franklin, u., 160
144-46, 152, 157-58, 205-7, 209, free/freedom, 96, 122, 159, 170-71
211, 213-15, 219, 222-23, 232- free-fall, 19, 53-54, 70, 75, 82-83,
33, 241, 245-40 250, 252 101
essence of technology, 5, 7, 12, 64, Fundamental Concepts of Metaphys
60 71-72, 157, 206-7, 209-10, ics, The, 15, 19, 66
213-14, 219, 222-23, 225-26, fundamental ontology, 6, 14, 16,
232, 240-41, 243, 245-47, 25, 33-34
251-52
"Essence of Truth, On the," 31, Galileo, 3, 5-6, 9, 14, 18-19, 51,
38-39, 96, 113, 123, 129-30, 53-54, 56-58, 60-61, 64-65, 69-
137-38, 160 170, 220 236, 241 71, 73-75, 82-86, 94, 102, 109,
essentia, 60 175, 211-12 114, 162, 244, 249, 251
existence, 26-28, 67, 129-33, 138, Geeignete, das/Geeignetheit, die,
168, 188 192, 201
existentia, 67, 175, 2ll-12 Geisteswissenschaft, 3
experience, 23, 37, 40-41, 47-49, geometry, 9
52, 71-72, 76, 83-84, 86-88, 90- Gesamtausgabe, 4, 20, 88, 175
270 INDEX
Ge-stell, 3, 5, 207, 209, 214, 240, 22, 230-31, 234, 236, 245-46,
242-46, 249-52 252
gravity, 74-75 History of the Concept of Time, 18,
Great Instauration, 74, 102 20, 24, 28
Greeks, the, 12, 41, 45, 50-52, 66, Hofstadter, 23
68, 109, 1 14, 116, 140, 143, 158, H6lderlin, 215
163, 169, 172, 174, 178, 184-85, Holzwege, 52, 59, 71, 92, 94, 109-16,
196, 199, 204, 211, 220-21, 229, 138, 142, 153-55, 171-72, 207-8,
231, 233-34, 236, 238, 253 210, 213, 220
Grene, M., 42-44 horizon, 39, 44, 98, 126-27, 175
ground/grounding, 6, 9, 14, 16- Husser!, E., 5-6, 18-25, 31, 88,
19, 25, 29, 31-34, 38-42, 53, 62- 217, 227
64, 98, 100, 105, 110, 115, 125,
138, 142, 145-46, 149, 206-7, idealisrn, 5-6, 8-9, 28, 30, 41-42,
227, 235, 240
44-45, 50, 72, 85, 90, 164-65,
Grundbegriffe, 144, 157
169, 170-73, 176-7� 191, 252
Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik, Die,
Ideas, 22-23
15, 66
Ideen, 23
GrUnder, K., 4, 12, 69
irnagination, 36-38, 44
Grundprobleme der Phiinomenologie,
inertia/law of inertia, 57-58, 73,
Die, 15, 22-24, 26-30, 46, 52-53,
87
117, 125-28, 146-47, 152, 211,
Introduction to Metaphysics, 14, 17,
247-48
41, 43-46, 67-68, 99-100, 107,
1 14, 116, 124-25, 132, 135, 158,
Hacking, I., 3, 76-77, 79-80, 87-
164-65, 170, 172-73, 175-78,
88, 95, 105-7
185, 199, 212, 218, 229-30, 234
Hanson, N. R., 104
intuition, 36-38
Harding, S., 123
irruption, 99, 124
Harries, K., 120
Heelen, P, 2, 122-23, 150
Hegel, G. W E, 18, 120, 125, 128, Kant, 1., 5, 8-9, 18-19, 23-28, 30-
130, 135 51, 55, 60, 62-63, 72, 90, 125,
Heidegger Studies, 108 135, 138, 228, 252
Heisenberg, W, 247-48, 251 Kant and the Problem of Metaphys
Heraclitus, 100, 158, 163-65, 173, ics, 25, 31-38, 43, 46, 49-50
174-75, 177, 179, 185 Kant und das Problem der Metaphy-
history, 4, 14, 26, 39, 53, 61, 65-69, sik, 19, 31-38, 49
74, 77, 89-91, 94, 98, 103, 110- "Kehre, Die," 141
11, 115, 121, 123, 133-37, 140, Kettering, E., 120
143, 152-53, 156, 160, 168-69, Kisiel, T., 2, 5, 50-51
177-79, 181-82, 185, 187, 204, Kockelrnans, J., 18, 104, 215, 248
206, 208, 210-11, 215-16, 221- Kuhn, T., 3, 7, 15, 65, 68, 81-82,
INDEX 271
87-88, 90, 94, 109, 122, 139, 142, mathesis universalis, 63

208, 244-45 matter, 11, 55, 78-79, 87, 145, 149,
179-82, 186, 188-93, 195,
Lakatos, L, 65, 68, 77, 79, 90, 109, 198-205
122, 139, 160 McNeill, w., 16-17, 70
language, 13, 127, 136, 156, 164- measurement/measuring, 52, 59,
65, 171, 174-75, 170 198 81, 92-94, 122, 249-50
law of gravity, 55-56 Meditations on First Philosophy, 62,
law of motion/laws of motion, 19, 69, 227
58 metaphysica generalis, 35
laws/lawfulness, 19, 21, 54-58, Metaphysical Foundations of Logic,
64, 73, 87, 94, 102, 134, 155 Th� 16, 23, 32-33, 44, 233
laws of nature, 21, 54, 56 metaphysica specialis, 35
Leibniz, G. w., 26, 59, 135 Metaphysics, 39, 131, 166, 169, 177,
"Letter on Humanism," 147, 177 181-82, 185-89, 194-95, 199,
Llewellyn, J., 163 201, 203-5
logic, 2-3, 8-9, 24, 32, 37-38, 66- metaphysics, 2-3, 5-6, 8-9, 12-13,
67, 69, 72, 79, 90, 101, 134, 163, 14-20, 25-28, 30-35, 30 39-42,
166, 206, 245 44-46, 49, 60-68, 84, 90, 113,
"Logic," 172, 174 117, 121, 125, 134-37, 149, 154,
Logical Investigations, 20 156-57, 161-64, 168-69, 175,
"Logos," 174, 223, 229 178-80, 183, 185-87, 193, 195-
Logos, 21 98, 204-5, 207-8, 210-11, 213,
Lovitt, w., 103, 232 221-22, 252-53
Lbwith, K., 178 Metaphysische Anfangsgriinde der
Lugones, M. c., 148 Logi� 16, 23, 32-33, 44, 233
metontology, 16-17
Macomber, W. B., 214, 235 Michelson, A A, 80-81
Macquarrie, J., 167 Michelson-Morley experiment,
Manheim, R, 100, 114 70, 79, 81-83
Marburg school, 24, 42 modernity, 1-2, 11, 66-69, 90-91,
mathematical, the, 5, 9, 14, 17, 19, 102, 118, 120-21, 123-24, 133-
50-53, 56, 59-64, 72, 92, 108, 34, 136-38, 140, 161, 163, 180,
111 184, 206-10, 213-16, 227-28,
mathematical projection of na 231, 246, 252
ture, 1 , 3, 9, 14, 16-19, 51-60, 64, "Modem Natural Science and
69-72, 75, 92-93, 97, 99, 246, Technology," 4, 11, 241, 252-53
249-50, 252 "Modem Science, Metaphysics
mathematics/mathematical, 3, 8, and Mathematics," 51-52, 56-
12, 53, 55, 62, 64, 101, 111, 141, 63, 70-72, 84, 86-87, 92-93, 101,
147, 157, 161, 186-87, 208, 107, 1 14, 171
216-17 Moody, E. A, 73, 85
272 INDEX
motion, 19, 54, 57-58, 101, 110, object, 6, 8, 18-19, 21, 25-27, 31-
1 13-14, 126, 186-88, 195-96, 32, 36-3� 40-41, 46-47, 56, 63,
203, 230-31, 243, 245, 249-51 68, 78, 95, 98, 107, 109-11, 113,
Motu, De, 73 1 15-16, 124, 134, 137, 142, 150,
154, 166, 168, 190, 217-19, 223-
National Socialism/Socialist, 10, 24, 226, 228, 231-32, 238, 240,
145, 149-50 243, 245, 247-49, 251
nature, 6-8, 10-12, 24, 26, 39, 41, objectivity, 21, 23, 29, 41, 75, 92,
55-59, 67-68, 70-76, 87-88, 92- 98-99, 102, 121-22, 136, 143,
93, 95, 98-99, 101-2, 104-5, 209, 223, 227, 231, 236, 239, 241,
107-8, 1 10-13, 116, 143, 146, 246
153-55, 157, 163-65, 169, 172, observation, 9, 70-73, 84, 91, 93-
175, 178, 180-81, 184-85, 187, 96, 98, 103-5, 238
189, 191-92, 195, 200-202, "Only a God Can Save Us," 145,
204-6, 208, 223-25, 238-39, 149, 158
243-47, 249-50, 253 ontological difference, 29, 125,
Naturwissenschaft, 3, 115 129, 144, 210, 217, 229, 237
Nazi/Nazism, 10, 97, 1 19-20, 137, ontology/ ontological, 6, 14, 16,
146-48, 150-52, 154, 158, 226 18-19, 23, 25-35, 43, 45, 47, 97,
Neske, G., 120 120, 130-31, 14� 166
Newton, I., 3, 5-6, 8-9, 18-19, 49,
"Origin of the Work of Art, The,"
51, 53, 56-60, 64-65, 70-71, 74-
235
75, 77-78, 86-87, 94, 101, 1 14,
Ott, H., 120
230-31, 243-44, 247-50
overcoming, 2, 140, 143, 156, 219,
Nicomachean Ethics, 188, 200, 246
233
Nietzsche, F. W, 131, 134-35, 137,
149, 156, 164, 210, 220
Nietzsche, 69, 121, 131, 134-37, paradigm, 3, 15, 65, 68, 87-88, 109,
142, 150, 155-57, 164, 168, 175- 122, 209, 227, 231
76, 210, 220, 225, 244-45 Parrnenides, 163-67, 173, 176, 178,
Nietzsche I, 142 185, 228-29, 236
Nietzsche II, 131, 134-37, 150, 156- Parts of Animals, The, 200, 246
57, 168, 210, 220 Pathmarks, 170, 176-77
nihilism, 69, 120-21, 131, 133-38, perception, 27, 125, 146, 187-88,
156-57, 164, 175-77, 210, 213, 190
220, 226, 228, 245, 251 phenomenology /phenomeno
"Nihilism as Determined by the logical, 5-6, 16, 18, 20-23, 25,
History of Being," 135-37, 168, 28, 47, 95-97, 100, 102, 108, 163,
210 169-70, 182, 205-� 210
Nolte, E., 120 "Philosophy as Rigorous Sci
nothing, the, 38-39, 120-21, 124- ence," 20-22
26, 128-31, 134-35, 137 philosophy of natuIe, 163-64
Novum Organum, 74, 78 philosophy of science, 1, 3-5, 12-
INDEX 273
13, 65, 72, 98, 121-22, 163, 166, projection, 5-8, 14-17, 51-53, 55-
253 59, 63-64, 70, 72, 96, 98, 104,
Physics, 7, 11, 67, 101, 126, 169, 110-11, 142, 207, 209, 213, 241,
172-73, 17� 179-82, 184-86, 246, 252
188-90, 192-93, 195, 198-99, Prolegomena zur Geschichte des
201-6, 211, 230, 234, 243 Zeitbegriffs, 20, 24
physics, 3, 5, 19, 31-32, 34, 47, 49, pure, 48-50
53-56, 58, 60-61, 64, 68-69, 71, Putnam, H., 105
73, 84-85, 92, 101-2, 107, 111-
12, 117, 119, 141, 154, 161, 165, quantum theory/quantum phys
178, 180, 186-87, 189-90, 207, ics/quantum mechanics, 3, 8,
216, 230-31, 238-39, 243-44, 12, 77-78, 85, 87-88, 1 14, 122-
246-48, 250-51 23, 209, 244, 247-51
Pisa, 73-74, 86 "Question Concerning Technol
place, 55, 59, 187 ogy, The," 104, 108, 112, 141,
Planck, M., 248, 250 154, 186, 206-9, 212, 230, 232,
Plato, 8, 29, 51, 60, 67, 115-16, 121,
241-46
134-35, 164, 169, 171, 175-77,
Question Concerning Technology
186, 193, 212, 230, 236
and Other Essays, The, 112, 141,
"Plato's Doctrine of Truth," 67,
143, 154, 186, 212, 214-15, 230,
170, 176-77
241-46
Plumwood, v., 163
Poetry, Language, and Thought, 186
Popper, Sir Karl, 65 ready-to-hand/readiness-to
Porter, J. S., 144 hand, 55, 61, 97, 121
position, 27, 30-31, 40, 49, 58, 125, real, 26-27, 89, 104-7, 125, 202,
227, 234, 239, 250 223-24, 232, 234-38, 242-43,
positive sciences, 15, 25-29, 31- 250-51
34, 63, 147, 152 realism/realist, 4, 6, 9, 69, 71, 76,
Posterior Analytics, 188 78, 84-85, 88-90, 104-5, 164,
potentiality, 10, 165, 180, 183-84, 177, 250
191, 192-94, 197-98, 201 "Realitatsproblem in der moder
presence/presences/becorning nen Philosophie, Das," 4, 88-89
present, 11, 17, 20, 32, 39, 67, reality, 26-2� 69, 83, 104-8, 135,
116, 126, 164, 168, 174, 178, 186, 232, 235
198-99, 212-13, 231, 234-36 reason, 37, 50, 173, 175, 200, 230,
present-at-hand, 61, 97, 132, 168 249
Principia, 70, 74, 86 recoil, 16
Principle of Reason, The, 249 "Rectoral Address," 139-40
production, 6� 180, 182, 190, "Rectorate 1933/34: Facts and
202-3, 205, 211, 218-19, 221, Thoughts, The," 145, 149, 158
227, 241-42 reflection, 8, 103, 119, 121, 131,
274 INDEX
136, 143, 146, 151, 161-62, 206, Seigfried, H., 182

216, 228-29, 232, 237, 239-40 Sein und Zeit, 15, 20, 26-30, 34,
regional ontology, 5-6, 14-15, 17- 55-56, 61, 83, 87, 96-98, 107,
18, 22, 25, 29, 32-34, 63, 108, 127-33, 136, 147, 166-67, 169-
112, 130, 147, 217, 224, 227, 240 70, 172, 215, 217
Rektoratsrede, 103, 120-21, 131, "Selbstbehauptung der deutschen
139, 143, 145-46, 150, 157-58, Universitat, Die," 139-41, 143-
161 45, 158
relativity, 82 "Self-Assertion of the German
Renault, A., 120 University, The," 139-41, 143-
repeatability, 76-77, 82 45, 158
representation, 1, 8-10, 36, 46, 48, sensation, 50, 89
65, 68, 71-72, 105-7, 112, 116- Sheehan, T., 120, 182
18, 153-54, 163, 190, 206, 226, Sherover, C. M., 43
228, 239-41, 249, 252 Shmueli, E., 214
representational thinking, 6, 12- space, 53-54, 56, 64, 1 14, 248
13, 25, 46, 65-66, 68, 113, 117- specialization, 103, 142-43, 148,
18, 121-22, 163, 176-7� 184, 152-54, 238
191, 206, 209, 214, 218, 222-24, Spiegel, Der, 144, 149
226-28, 231, 237, 241, 246-47, Spelman, E., 148
252-53 standing-reserve, 7, 209, 241-43,
research, 6, 10, 71, 79-81, 94, 97, 245-46
1 10-13, 116, 133, 138, 141-42, Structure of Scientific Revolutions,
152-53, 159-60 The, 87, 90, 109
Resnick, R., 80 subjectivity /subjectivism, 2, 7, 41,
resource, 206, 241, 24� 253 42, 44, 63, 65, 68, 115, 154, 164-
Richardson, W. J., 1, 4, 69, 186, 247 65, 170, 252
rigor, 52, 71, 92, 110-11, 113 substance, 183, 187-88, 195, 198
Robinson, E., 167 synthesis, 36-37, 39-40, 44, 49,
Robinson, T. M., 100
171, 185
Rossant, M. J., 159-60 synthetic a priori judgments, 35-
42, 47, 48-49
Sache des Denkens, Zur, 221, 237
synthetic judgments, 40-41
Sallis, J., 51
Schelling, 146
Sclunidt, D., 190 technology, 1, 4-5, 7-9, 1 1-13, 64,
Schrynemakers, 1 1 66-67, 72, 81, 84, 9� 104, 108,
"Science and Reflection," 1, 15, 117, 121, 141, 144, 154-55, 157,
58, 71, 102-4, 106-8, 123, 140- 159, 163-65, 17� 184, 205, 207-
41, 143, 151, 161, 207, 209, 213- 10, 212-15, 222-26, 230, 232-33,
14, 21� 232-40, 249-51 240-47, 249, 251-53
scientific method, 9, 66, 70, 72, 75, temporality, 16, 29, 30, 44, 120,
85, 102, 111, 1 18, 208, 249 126-29
INDEX 275
thank/thanking, 224, 226-27, 229 understanding, 37-39, 41-42, 44-

Thayer, H. S., 57, 74, 77-78 45, 48, 50, 58, 75, 99-100, 109,
theoretical attitude, 14, 16, 26, 53, 116, 120, 125-26, 129, 164, 168-
55-56, 60-61, 70, 83, 97-99, 69, 171, 182, 195, 198, 224, 244,
121-22, 210 246-47
theory /theoretical, 3, 9, 30-31, 35, university, 8, 10, 38, 119-24, 129,
62, 65-66, 69, 70-71, 74-75, 79- 132-33, 137-40, 142-46, 148-
82, 95, 99, 102-7, 109, 147-48, 55, 158-60, 216, 253
150, 180, 184, 186-87, 189-90, Unterwegs zur Sprache, 213
206, 208, 232, 234, 236-38, 243, Unumgangliche, das, 15, 141, 217,
245, 249, 251, 253 238
thinking, 3, 7-8, 12-13, 47, 89, 108, Unverborgenheit, 167, 241
120-21, 137, 143, 145, 161-63,
valuative thinking, 134-35, 156-
169-70, 173, 178, 182, 184, 209,
57, 164
211, 214, 216-19, 221-32, 234,
value/valuable, 8, 120-21, 134-
237-39, 241, 252-53
35, 142-43, 148, 155-50 159-60
threat, 148, 155, 159, 225-26, 245
Vick, G., 43
time, 14, 39, 52-56, 59, 64, 69-70,
Vietta, S., 1 15-16
114, 120, 126-28, 182, 248
violence/violent, 96, 99, 100-102,
Time and Being, On, 133
104, 107-9, 136
Topics, 186
von Weizsacker, C. E, 248
transcendence / transcendental,
Vortriige und Aujsiitze, 15, 102-3,
28-29, 31, 33, 35, 42, 44-45, 50,
106-7, 123, 140-41, 143, 154,
113, 127, 169, 170-72, 177
161, 174, 186, 212, 210 223, 230,
transcendental idealism, 3, 50, 173 233-39, 241-46, 249-51
transcendental subject/transcen
dental subjectivity, 28, 31, 35, Was heiflt Denken?, 13, 46, 117, 123,
43-45, 55, 165, 169, 170-72 161, 172, 174, 210, 214-29, 231,
truth, 2, 13, 24, 31-33, 43, 64, 66, 234, 240
69, 83, 96, 102, 104, 113, 128, Way to Language, On the, 213
135-36, 143, 145, 148-49, 164- Weber, S., 104
67, 169, 170-71, 173, 175-77, Wegmarken, 38-39, 96, 99, 110, 113,
179, 185, 198, 213, 219-20, 236- 122, 124-25, 129-30, 133, 136,
37, 242 138-39, 143, 140 170, 174, 176-
Tuana, N., 123 77, 180, 185, 189, 191-92, 195-
"Turning, The," 141 96, 198-200, 202-5, 218
Twentieth Century Fund, 159-61 Welch, c., 214
Two New Sciences, 57, 114 Weltanschauung, 5, 21-22, 24
Wesen, 76, 93, 150, 212
Urnschlag, 16 "Wesen der Wahrheit, Vom,"
unconcealment, 96, 153, 165, 167- 167-68, 178, 227, 242
69, 175-77, 185, 198, 210, 236, What Is Called Thinking?, 1, 13, 16,
241-42, 246 46, 58, 117, 123, 152, 161, 172,
276 INDEX
174, 207, 209-10, 214-29, 231- Wolin, R., 120

34, 238-40 world, 8, 15, 43-44, 55, 68, 85, 88-
"What Is Metaphysics?," 38-39, 89, 100, 102-3, 106-8, 112-17,
42, 46, 99, 10� 110, 120-22, 124- 124, 127, 130, 132, 136-37, 146-
25, 129-33, 135-36, 138-39, 143, 47, 153, 158, 167, 217, 219, 221,
145, 150, 185 233, 246-47
"What Is Metaphysics?: Post- worldview Iworld-view, 22, 24-
script," 108, 218, 221 25, 83, 146-50, 153, 215
Wheeler, J., 250
Wigner, E., 250 Young, T., 120
Wissenschaft, 3, 90, 103, 148-50,
152-53, 216-17, 226, 232-33, "Zeitbegriff in der Geschichtswis
245 senschaft, Der," 1-2, 14, 53-56,
withdrawal of being, 17-18, 136- 69, 84, 86, 93
38, 168, 210, 222, 228-29 Zurek, W., 250
INDEX OF GREEK
EXPRESSIONS
aya8ov, 134 8EWQLa, 103, 157, 186-87, 189, 208,

aYEWJ.L£�QTjW' IlTjbE� EEal�w, 60 238
ahla, 230, 235 8EWQELV, 102-3, 236-38
aAtj8EL<1, 96, 165, 167-68, 170, 172,
174-76, 179, 185, 205, 236, 241 tbw, 67, 116, 134, 164-66, 173-76,
'AAi)8ELll, 236-37 205, 212
a!;L6w, a!;uiJlla�a, 58
anoala, 26, 183 xlVT]a�. XLvT)aEL" 195, 203
aQxi), aQxm, 200, 202, 235 XQlVELV, 176, 229
a�EAEU;, 203
AEYELV, 165, 172, 174, 179, 229, 231
�la, 101-2, 104 AOYO" 164-65, 170-77, 179, 187,
�lo, 8EWOT]HXO" 143, 185, 236-37 225, 229
YEVEo�, 195, 200, 203 �a lla8tjlla�a, 51-53, 59

IlEm�oAi), 195
MvallEL QV, viii, 181, 191-92, IlE�a �a qJuOLxa, 34
196-97 Il4LTja�, 190
buvall�, 5� 196-98, 201 lloQqJT], 199
Mvall� xa�a XlVTjOLV, 197
VOELV, 231
ELbo,, 115, 165, 173-75, 179, 199-
200, 203, 219, 223, 230, 236 oQaw, 236-37
Efl!tE4)la, 9, 85, 90-91, 94 ouala, 179, 183-84, 197-99, 204
EvEQYELll, EvEQYELa" 193-99, 235,
254 naQabELYlla, 203
ETIEAEXELll, 193-98, 235, 254 nunELv, 101
EmmtjllTj, 110, 233 nOAEllo" 100
EQYOV, 193 nolTjOL" 186, 197, 242
�a nOLOullEva, 51
8Ea, 236-37 nOA�, 143
8Ea, 236 �a nQaYlla�a, 51
8EO�, 234-35 nQa!;�, 186-87, 189, 208
278 INDEX OF GREEK EXPRESSIONS
JtQoo ijv, 182 qJLAOOo<plu, 62

JtQoJ't1'] <jJLAooo<plu, 62 to. qJ\JOlxa, 51, 53, 175, 187-88,
m;woL£, 101 202, 230, 243
qJUOL£, villi, ix, xi, 6, 8, 10-11, 41-
tE�V£LV, 103, 238
tEAO�, 193-94, 200, 203 42, 45, 67-68, 116, 163-66, 169,
tEXV1'], viii, ix, 10-12, 46, 164, 169, 172-73, 175-82, 184-93, 195,
179-82, 184, 186-87, 189-93, 198-205, 211, 212, 229-30, 234-
195, 199-204, 207-8, 211, 218- 35, 238, 258, 260
19, 222-23, 230, 241-42, 246
tOJto�, 68, 118, 253
iJJto8eOl�, 234
uJtoxeL!tevov, 115, 172, 175 WQu, 236-37

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Heidegger's Philosophy

Fordham University Press

Allrights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

Perspectives in Continental Philosophy No. 12

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Printed in the United States of America

1. Metaphysics, Mathematics, and Science 14

2. Experiment and Representation 65

3. Science in the Institution 119

4. Ancient Science 163

5. Science and Technology 207

1991. In particular, I wish to thank Jack Caputo, whose ongoing

AM Aristoteles, Metaphysik IX. 1-3

MSMM "Modem Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics," in

"ON THE LONGEST DAY he ever Jived," said Father Richardson,

edly pure logic of science, that explores the genesis of science in

sence of science is the mathematical projection of nature does

lem of induction, the relation between the philosophy and the

sustained account of the development of Heidegger's treatment

entific method for doing ontology, however, Heidegger rejects

ting up of nature on the basis of an a priori conception from

pretation of being as qJ1JOL� reveals new beginnings latent in the

Time), that the essence of science is the mathematical projection

tation. Furthermore, they serve to explicate his claim that the

on the basis of an internal drive. An artifact, however, requires

Heidegger's analysis, modem science is not simply the founda­

and significant contributions to philosophy-that is, his over­

HEIDEGGER'S ACCOUNT of science can be concisely expressed by

Regional ontology is the condition for the possibility of any

ences--called "one-sidedness" in What Is Called Thinking?-and

interpretation of Antigone in Introduction to Metaphysics. In the

the projection of the being of beings is simultaneously a with­

to the claim that being is not an object at all. In his entanglement

HUSSERL: PHILOSOPHY As RIGOROUS SCIENCE

In 1925, Heidegger argues that it was Husserl who founded sci­

of Husserlian phenomenology found in Being and Time is not

psychical" (PRS 184). Hence Husserl's philosophy as rigorous

golden mountains, and the like" (Hussed 1983:356/Ideen 310)

resentative of the problem" (BPP xvi). Heidegger has already

for Heidegger, since philosophy in the cosmic sense does not

KANT AND METAPHYSICS: GROUNDING SCIENCE

Heidegger's ear!y view of the sciences is colored by his commit­

it is not a positive science. This cmoQLa dissolves in the claim that

For, argues Heidegger, extantness belongs to an existent thing

the question of the projection of being, since each positive sci­

Hence under Heidegger's reading, Kant, rather than denying

through an analytic of Dasein. He reads Kant as undertaking

terms of Dasein's transcendence. Because Dasein transcends, it

Dasein, as, for example, in Being and Time. A regional ontology,

KM 7). Under Aristotle's much earlier analysis, Heidegger sug­

KM 7). Under Aristotle's much earlier analysis, Heidegger sug­

then, of that question? How are synthetic a priori judgments

SYNTHETIC A PRIORI JUDGMENTS

In Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Heidegger finds many

can keep clear. Heidegger explicates in Section 31 the difference

the prior understanding of being that is present in all human

genuineness of his standards" (ET 135/W 195-96). Likewise, in

THE THING AND COPERNICAN REVOLUTION

<l>UOL� is not experienced free of empirical admixture, but is pre­

In 1967, Charles Sherover described Kant's Copernican revo­

Heidegger's failure, but of his eventual insight that being is not

question of metaphysics in the winter semester of 1935-36 in Die

What interested Heidegger about Kant, he read as ontology. He

Heidegger's analysis, modem science is not simply the founda

and significant contributions to philosophy-that is, his over

the projection of the being of beings is simultaneously a with

In 1925, Heidegger argues that it was Husserl who founded sci

Heidegger's ear!y view of the sciences is colored by his commit

the question of the projection of being, since each positive sci

KM 7). Under Aristotle's much earlier analysis, Heidegger sug

KM 7). Under Aristotle's much earlier analysis, Heidegger sug

<l>UOL� is not experienced free of empirical admixture, but is pre

In 1967, Charles Sherover described Kant's Copernican revo

view in Being and Time by exploring its metaphysical conse

determined realm of nature requires an appropriate mode of ac

representation and the scientific method in the 1930s is founda

beliefs about science as of its actual practice. By putting Heideg

search program consists of a "hard core" surrounded by a pro

vance. Experimentation is not central to Aristotle's method be

5 "gesunden Realismus . . . glanzenden Erfolge . . . unabweisbare, epochema

ten unzweideutig ein Vorwartsdrangen in der normalen Bestimmung der Ob

\0 "Urn dem Begriff des wissenschaftlichen Experimentes im 5inne der heuti

not, since it risks overdetermination. The modem scientist pur

Accordingly, the modem experiment stands not only in oppo

of forces that can be reckoned, calculated, and arranged to be