How did Husserl believe phenomenology could examine the assumptions of science?

Edmund Husserl believed that phenomenology could examine the assumptions of science by shifting the focus from the "natural attitude"—which takes the existence of the world and scientific constructs for granted—to a reflective analysis of the consciousness that constitutes those very meanings.12

To achieve this, Husserl employed the phenomenological reduction (or epoche), a method of "bracketing" the existence of the world to focus instead on the manner in which knowledge of the world arises within consciousness. By doing so, phenomenology does not place itself outside the sciences but rather seeks to make the foundations of scientific knowledge transparent.321

Husserl argued that scientific inquiry often forgets the "accomplishing subject" and the "life-world"—the immediate, subjective experience that serves as the foundation for all scientific meaning. By analyzing the essential structures of consciousness and the founding acts through which objects are constituted, phenomenology aims to uncover the unquestioned presuppositions of the sciences, thereby providing a rigorous foundation for knowledge that avoids the pitfalls of naturalism and historicism.142