Lebenswelt and Operational Methodology in the Philosophical and Epistemological Reflections of Hugo Dingler

Hugo Dingler (1881-1954), a German philosopher and scientist who was taught by Husserl, among others, devised a singular and original form of operationalism based on phenomenology which while being very different from the perspective of P. W. Bridgman and American pragmatism, was no less interesting than either of them. According to Dingler, finalistically oriented behaviour is the ground on which we build all theoretical constructions and represents their criteria of validity: the actions that constitute scientifical theory are not essentially different from those that make up our everyday lives, and like these must be declined methodically and determined univocally. Technically characterised "doing" is not the arbitrary result of human artifice but coincides with that order which emerges from the same context of the vital procedures that Husserl refers to in The Crisis of European Sciences.