Steven French at IAI News:
Husserl’s The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology is widely regarded as both his most accessible and most influential work, written under the shadow of fascist ideology looming over Europe. Based on lectures given in 1935 at Charles University and the German University in Prague, Husserl opens by addressing the ‘Crisis? What crisis?’ question that many in the audience must have been asking themselves:
‘I expect that at this place, dedicated as it is to the sciences, the very title of these lectures … will incite controversy.’
Husserl was alluding to the fact that the German University had been the academic home of such notable scientists as Ernst Mach and Albert Einstein and that science was then enjoying a period of obvious and wide-ranging success. How, then, could he talk of the sciences undergoing a ‘crisis’? Husserl makes it clear that he is not referring to the ‘victorious struggle against the ideal of classical physics’ as represented by the rise of the theory of relativity and quantum physics.
More here.