“The scientific abstraction from concreteness, the quantification of qualities which yield exactness as well as universal validity, involve a specific concrete experience of the Lebenswelt—a specific mode of “seeing” the world. And this “seeing,” in spite of its “pure,” disinterested character, is seeing within a purposive, practical context. It is anticipating (Voraussehen) and projecting (Vorhaben). Galilean science is the science of methodical, systematic anticipation and projection. But—and this is decisive—of a specific anticipation and projection—namely, that which experiences, comprehends, and shapes the world) in terms of calculable, predictable relationships among exactly identifiable units. In this project, universal quantifiability is a prerequisite for the domination of nature. Individual, non-quantifiable qualities stand in the way of an organization of men and things in accordance with the measurable power to be extracted from them. But this is a specific, socio-historical project, and the consciousness which undertakes this project is the hidden subject of Galilean science.”

— Herbert Marcuse , book One-Dimensional Man

[describing the view of Husserl] p. 164
One-Dimensional Man (1964)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The scientific abstraction from concreteness, the quantification of qualities which yield exactness as well as universa…" by Herbert Marcuse?

Herbert Marcuse 105

German philosopher, sociologist, and political theorist 1898–1979

Related quotes

“Now precisely because Galilean science is, in the formation of its concepts, the technic of a specific Lebenswelt, it does not and cannot transcend this Lebenswelt. It remains essentially within the basic experiential framework and within the universe of ends set by this reality.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), p. 164

“The one mission of the Church receives its specification from the actual context in which it is exercised in the concrete situations in which it is fulfilled.”

Kurien Kunnumpuram (1931–2018) Indian theologian

Kunnumpuram, K. (2007) The Indian Church of the Future. Mumbai: St Pauls, p. 26
On the Church

“Surrealism in its first period offered specific methods for approaching the images of concrete irrationality. These methods, based on the exclusively passive and receptive role of the surrealist subject, are now [1935] in liquidation and giving place to new surrealist methods of systematic exploration of the irrational.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Source: Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1931 - 1940, My Pictorial Struggle', S. Dali, 1935, Chapter: 'My Pictorial Struggle', p. 13

“The exploration of the external world by the methods of physical science leads not to a concrete reality but to a shadow world of symbols, beneath which those methods are unadapted for penetrating.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

Science and the Unseen World (1929), VII, p.73

“In spite of all the foregoing, there is a science of economics, a true, and even exact, science, which reaches laws as universal as those of mathematics and mechanics. The greatest need for the development of economics as a growing body of thought and practice is an adequate appreciation of the meaning, and the limitations, of this body of accurate premises and rigorously established conclusions. It comes about in the same general way as all science, except perhaps in a higher degree, i. e., through abstraction. There are no laws regarding the content of economic behavior, but there are laws universally valid as to its form.”

Frank Knight (1885–1972) American economist

There is an abstract rationale of all conduct which is rational at alt, and a rationale of all social relations arising through the organization of rational activity.
Source: "The limitations of scientific method in economics", 1924, p. 127 (2009 edition)

“Science condemns itself to failure when, yielding to the infatuation of the serious, it aspires to attain being, to contain it, and to possess it; but it finds its truth if it considers itself as a free engagement of thought in the given, aiming, at each discovery, not at fusion with the thing, but at the possibility of new discoveries; what the mind then projects is the concrete accomplishment of its freedom.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Ethics of Ambiguity

Pt. III : The Positive Aspect of Ambiguity, Ch. 3 : Freedom and Liberation
The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)

Frank Knight (1885–1972) American economist

Source: "The limitations of scientific method in economics", 1924, p. 127 (2009 edition)

“[Progress in psychology depends] upon keeping in mind that general validity of the law and concreteness of the individual case are not antitheses, and that reference to the totality of the concrete whole situation must take the place of reference to the largest possible historical collection of frequent repetitions. This means methodologically that the importance of a case, and its validity as proof, cannot be evaluated by the frequency of its occurrence. Finally, it means for psychology, as it did for physics, a transition from an abstract classificatory procedure to an essentially concrete constructive method.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Source: 1930s, A Dynamic Theory of Personality, 1935, p. 42 as cited in: Anthony C. Westerhof (1938) Representative psychologists. p. 48.

“Surrealism in its early period offered specific methods to bring images closer to concrete irrationality. These methods, based on the exclusive passive and receptive role of the 'surrealist subject', are bankrupt and are giving way to new surrealist methods for the systematic exploration of the irrational... The new delirious images of concrete irrationality suggest their physical, real 'possibility'; they go beyond the domain of psycho-analysable fantasies and 'virtual' representations... Against the dream memory and impossible, virtual images of purely receptive states that one can only recount, the physical facts of 'objective' irrationality with which one can already hurt oneself.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Source: Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1961 - 1970, Diary of a Genius (1964), p. 23 - on new Surrealism techniques and methods.

“It is for the philosophic student to trace the train of thought which underlies the magicians practice; to draw out the few simple threads of which the tangled skein is composed; to disengage the abstract principles from their concrete applications; in short, to discern the spurious science from the bastard art.”

James Frazer book The Golden Bough

Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 3, Sympathetic Magic.

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Herbert Marcuse 105

Related quotes

Related topics