Reflections on the origin of modern physics

16th and 17th centuries

pp. 22-35

in: Joseph Kockelmans, Ideas for a hermeneutic phenomenology of the natural sciences II, Berlin, Springer, 2002

Abstract

In what follows I hope to discuss ideas of Ptolemy, Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton; in each case only very few observations can be made; yet I hope that what will be said will be adequate to explain what I have in mind: to show that the scientific praxis as a whole is inherently hermeneutical, and the same is true for all its constitutive aspects.¹