Why did Husserl think the life-world is important for scientific knowledge?
Edmund Husserl argued that the life-world—the world as immediately experienced in everyday subjectivity—is essential to scientific knowledge because it serves as the foundational ground for all scientific constructs.12
Husserl observed that modern science, beginning with the mathematization of the world by figures like Galileo, often forgets the "accomplishing subject" and the subjective experiences from which scientific theories originate. By focusing exclusively on objective, physicalist data, science obscures its own roots in the life-world. Husserl contended that scientific truth is not superior to the truth of the life-world; rather, the life-world is a truth already presupposed by all scientific research.12
Consequently, Husserl believed that phenomenology must develop an ontology of the life-world to thematize these unquestioned presuppositions. By analyzing the founding acts of consciousness that constitute meaning, phenomenology aims to overcome the fragmented split between objectivistic science and transcendental subjectivism, ultimately helping humanity reconnect with the foundations of reason.1