1. DESCRIPTIVE
PHENOMENOLOGICAL
PSYCHOLOGICAL
RESEARCH
Dr. Susi Ferrarello
Loyola University, Rome
Florence University of the Arts
Associate Editor of Quaderni di Sabbia

2. WHAT DOES “PHILOSOPHY” MEAN TO YOU?

3. PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE
Philosophy
Science means
means love of
knowledge (Lt.
knowledge
Scio= I know)
(Gr.φίλος+σοφία)

4. HOW CAN PHILOSOPHY AND
PSYCHOLOGY WORK TOGETHER?

5. PHENOMENOLOGY AND HUMAN SCIENCE
Phenomenology is
a philosophical
approach applied
to psychology
Both philosophy
and psychology
are human
sciences
Study of
phaenomenon
(Gr. Φαίνω, What
appears to us)

6. HUMAN AND NATURAL SCIENCE
The word science is not a univocal term
Scientia comes from Latin scire and refers
to the outcome of inquiry within a
community of knowers
The meanings of science have been
debated for millennia

7. ARE HUMAN AND NATURAL
SCIENCES OBJECTIVE?

8. ORIGIN OF DISTINCTION BETWEEN
HUMAN AND NATURAL SCIENCE
Galileo Galilei
René Descartes
John Locke
Auguste Comte
Wilhelm Dilthey

9. GALILEO GALILEI (1564-1662, ITALY)
Father of modern,
objective and
natural science
Learn to read the Learn to be
book of nature nature

10. HOW CAN WE BE NATURE AND SPEAK ITS
LANGUAGE?

11. THE LANGUAGE THAT NATURE SPEAKS
[The universe] cannot be read until we
have learned the language and become
familiar with the characters in which it
is written. It is written in
mathematical language, and the
letters are triangles, circles and other
geometrical figures, without which
means it is humanly impossible to
comprehend a single word.
-Opere Il Saggiatore, p. 171

12. HOW CAN YOU PROVE THE EXISTENCE OF
THINGS IF YOU DON’T FIRST PROVE YOUR
OWN EXISTENCE?

13. RENÉ DESCARTES (1596-1650,
FRANCE)
“I think, therefore
I am” (Je pense,
donc je suis or
Cogito ergo sum)
Res Cogitans and
Res Cogitans (I Res Extensa (I am Res Extensa
think - Mind) - Body ) interact through
the pineal gland

14. JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704, ENGLAND)
Founder of Empirical science
Nature speaks in the language of
experience
Reliable knowledge is grounded in the
evidence of sensory experience and
established by means of experimentation

15. DO WE SPEAK THE SAME LANGUAGE AS
NATURE? IS HUMAN SCIENCE THE SAME
AS NATURAL SCIENCE?

16. AUGUSTE COMTE (1798-1857, ENGLAND)
Founder of positivism
Human science can be studied
using the methods of the
natural sciences
Natural Science is a positive
science
Positive comes from Latin
positum

17. ARE WE OBJECTS? HOW CAN OUR LIVED-
EXPERIENCE BE INVESTIGATED?

18. WILHELM DILTHEY (1833-1911,
GERMAN)
The human science movement arose in the 19th
century as an alternative to positivism, which had
become the dominant philosophy of science
Human science argues that meanings, not just facts,
are critical in understanding human phenomena:
Dilthey was a founder of this movement
Geistes- Naturwissenschaften (Human and Natural
science) have to use the same objectivistic method

19. PHENOMEOLOGY
Works : Crisis of
European Science
Founder: Edmund and the
Husserl (1859- Amsterdam
1938) Lectures on
Phenomenological
Pyschology

20. IS SCIENCE OBJECTIVE AND UNBIASED?
IS IT REALLY POSSIBLE TO SPEAK THE
LANGUAGE OF NATURE?

21. CRISIS OF EUROPEAN SCIENCE (1936)
Objectivism of
Mathematical
the Human
and Empirical
and Natural Science is All our
language Transcendental
Sciences led always knowledge
alienated us Subjectivism
Europe toward subjective come from us
from our
a “deluge of
lifeworld
skepticism”

22. HUSSERL:
If man loses this faith, it means nothing less
than the loss of faith "in himself," in his own
true being. This true being is not something
he always already has, with the self-evidence
of the "I am," but something he only has and
can have in the form of the struggle for his
truth, the struggle to make himself true. True
being is everywhere an ideal goal, a task of
episteme or "reason," as opposed to being
which through doxa is merely thought to be,
unquestioned and "obvious."

23. HUSSERL:
As men of the present, having grown up in this
development, we find ourselves in the greatest
danger of drowning in the skeptical deluge and
thereby losing our hold on our own truth. As we
reflect in this plight, we gaze backward into the
history of our present humanity. We can gain
self -understanding, and thus inner support,
only by elucidating the unitary meaning which
is inborn in this history from its origin through
the newly established task [of the Renaissance],
the driving force of all [modern] philosophical
attempts.

24. MERLEAU-PONTY (1908-1961, FRANCE)
Phenomenology of Perception
Humans are more than a chain of facts
There is no objective and higher language
of nature to be excluded from
All our knowledge begins with the act of
perception