How did Husserl criticize naturalism in the human sciences?

Edmund Husserl criticized naturalism for its attempt to apply the methods of the natural sciences to all domains of knowledge, including the realm of consciousness. He argued that this approach results in the "naturalization" of reason, which fails to account for the unique nature of knowledge itself.1

Specifically, Husserl contended that attempting to ground the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften) in experimental psychology is impossible. By treating consciousness as a natural object to be studied through empirical methods, naturalism misses the essential structure of conscious acts—the very locus where meaning is constituted and founded. For Husserl, philosophy must instead function as a "rigorous science" that examines the relationship between consciousness and Being through pure, immanent intuition. Rather than relying on the empirical methods of the natural sciences, he demanded a return to the "things themselves," focusing on the immediate self-givenness of phenomena to discover the essential structures of consciousness (noesis) and their corresponding objective entities (noema).1