Page 87 - Contribution To Phenomenology

80 OSBORNE WIGGINS

life of practical needs certain particularizations of shape stood out and
. . . a technical praxis always (aimed at) the production of particular
preferred shapes and the improvement of them according to certain
directions of gradualness" (1970, p. 375). Geometry arises historically
through the idealization and formalization of these practical activities; and
once developed this science is handed down to subsequent generations as
a ready-made tradition. Both Gurwitsch and Merleau-Ponty adopted this
Husserlian position (Gurwitsch, 1974; Merleau-Ponty, 1962). Gurwitsch
sought to develop it further by following Piaget in the study of how
children learn to think mathematically through performing basic human
acts (1974, pp. 132-149).

V^ Experiential Realism and Phenomenology: Points of Divergence

I have sought to indicate areas of agreement between the phenomenol-
ogies of Edmund Husserl, Aron Gurwitsch, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty
and the experiential realism of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. In
conclusion I would like only to mention some crucial points of disagree-
ment.
Despite the primacy which they repeatedly ascribe to the active,
experiencing human body, Lakoff and Johnson present no developed
theory of the body. And since many of their explanatory concepts, such
a "image schema," are closely related to the body, these concepts remain
vague and free floating as long as they are not integrated into a theory
of the body. Husserl, Gurwitsch and Merleau-Ponty have developed
phenomenologies of the "body-subject" (Husserl, 1952; Gurwitsch, 1985;
Merleau-Ponty, 1962). Lakoff and Johnson's insights could, I submit,
receive much systematic clariflcation through confrontation with these
phenomenologies of the embodied mind.
Several problems stand in the way of any attempt to join phenomenol-
ogy with experiential realism, however.
The positions of Lakoff and Johnson are explicitly realistic.
Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology too implies a form of realism
(Merleau-Ponty, 1962). The phenomenologies of Husserl and Gurwitsch,
however, are decisively non-realistic by being transcendental (Husserl,
1970; Gurwitsch, 1966).
Lakoff and Johnson, on the one hand, view embodied mental life as
**world-constituting." That is, they view objects and situations as disclosing
the features they do because of the structuring processes of an embodied