Kitaro Nishida's Philosophy of Science

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In the middle of 1930's, Kitaro Nishida stepped into the field of philosophy of science in earnest. In this period, Nishida tried to ground scientific knowledge on his original concept of "acting-intuition" and "historical body" from the viewpoint of bodily practice in the historical world. This attempt was, as it were, Nishida's response to the controversy about "the crisis of science."Surveying the controversy about foundations of mathematics in the twentieth century, Nishida rejected Russell's position of "logicism, " on the grounds that it was lacking in insights into the role of intuition. On the other hand, Nidhida evaluated Brouwer's "intuitionism" to a certain extent. But he suggested to substitute his concept of "acting-intuition" for Brouwer's "basic intuition." Generally speaking, Nishida did not necessarily succeed in applying "acting-intuition" to mathematical knowledge. For "acting-intuition" is originally a practical concept which depends on our bodily acts.On the contrary, the concept of "ascting-intuition" properly functions in the field of physics. Because, physics is a discipline which investigates a structure of objects by means of experimental operations. Based upon Bridgman's "operationalism", Nishida insisted that "there is not a physical world without practical acts of bodily selves. "He elucidated the epistemological significance of quantum mechanics from this viewpoit. Finally, Nishida reached the position of "radical positivism" which was expressed by a term "phenomenon=reality." From this point we might go on to an even more detailed examination of Nishida's philosophy of science.