Introduction: Phenomenology and Scientific Philosophy

Starting with Brentano, the development of phenomenology has been preoccupied from its inception with the question of whether the methodology of philosophy, and by extension, descriptive psychology or phenomenology, must be framed in terms of scientific philosophy.As early as 1866, Brentano advanced the thesis that the methodologies employed in philosophy are, in essence, identical with those of the natural sciences (cf.Brentano, 1866: 137).This thesis is commonly interpreted as positing that philosophy, in its broadest sense, ought to adhere to scientific, or empirical, methodologies.Whilst this understanding is accurate, it may nevertheless provide an inaccurate representation of the scientific principles Brentano regarded as fundamental to philosophy.As Carl Stumpf, one of Brentano's students, noted in his recollections of the 1866 disputation on Brentano's habilitation thesis in Wrzburg, Brentano "of course did not mean that the realm of facts (Tatsachenkreis) of natural science should be the only basis of philosophy [].He only wanted to see the general tenets of the inductive method transposed into philosophy" (Stumpf, 1922: 70, translation by author).It is widely acknowledged that Brentano's perspective on the use of scientific methodologies in philosophy exerted a profound influence on the subsequent evolution of Austro-German philosophy.The members of the Vienna Circle acknowledged the influence of Brentano's thesis on the development of their project of a unitary science (Neurath, 1929).Furthermore, philosophers influenced by the Vienna Circle saw a direct connection between Brentano and the Vienna Circle in this respect (von Mises, 1939;Haller, 1993).However, even within the scope of Austro-German philosophy, the influence of Brentano's fourth habilitation thesis is not limited to logical empiricism.Husserl himself