Habermas’s single universal epistemic interest cannot frame all relations to nature

Evidence

Was it really possible, using the philosophy of science for reflecting on the varieties of modern science (in forms undistorted by positivist misunderstandings), to discover transcendental frameworks for the reproduction of the human species that would provide eternally valid criteria for the correct way of dealing with external nature, internal nature and the social environment? Had there not been such a radical change since the sixteenth century in the fields of natural science, technology and labour that it was implausible to assume that one and the same epistemic interest might form the universal transcendental framework for a relationship with external nature? Had the seventeenth century not seen the beginning of the victorious progress of a particular form of technology, and a particular way of relating to external nature, with which a qualitatively different variant had coexisted? This variant had been different not because it was hidden behind a cultural mask, but because nature was seen in it as a technologically exploitable causal network, and at the same time as a process requiring to be understood and in which the investigators themselves were involved. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2446

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s Critical Theory project: Habermas’s theory of cognitive interests (Knowledge and Human Interests) versus the Frankfurt School tradition. The critique that technological and hermeneutic relations to nature are heterogeneous parallels discussions in Horkheimer’s ‘Traditional and Critical Theory’. — connects to: Natural science’s drive to dominate nature rests on a universally valid epistemic attitude — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2437; Total mediation makes nature nothing but domination-available, eliminating any positive first nature — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1335
• QUESTION: The text raises but does not answer whether Habermas’s transcendental framework holds. Worth chasing how this critique was later answered or modified.

Broader Connections

• Natural science’s drive to dominate nature rests on a universally valid epistemic attitude #qualifies (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2437
• Total mediation makes nature nothing but domination-available, eliminating any positive first nature #qualifies (0.80) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1335