Why did Edmund Husserl think the human sciences could not simply copy the methods of natural science?

Edmund Husserl argued that the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften) could not simply adopt the methods of the natural sciences because doing so relies on naturalism—a flawed approach that attempts to apply physicalist, objectivistic methods to the realm of consciousness.12

Husserl believed this attempt was doomed to failure because it ignores the "accomplishing subject" and the life-world, which is the immediate, subjective experience that serves as the foundation for all scientific meaning. By treating consciousness as just another object to be studied through experimental psychology, naturalism fails to grasp the essential nature of knowledge itself.12

Instead, Husserl proposed phenomenology as a "rigorous science" that examines how objects are constituted in consciousness. He maintained that because Being is accessible only as a correlate of conscious acts, the philosopher must focus on the immediate self-givenness of these acts—such as perception, judgment, and feeling—rather than forcing them into the rigid, objectivistic frameworks of the natural sciences.12