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intensity, yet the search for philosophy as a strict science has nevertheless been constantlyrenewed. 4It is in this light that Husserlian phenomenology attaches to this philosophical quest tobe scientific. Through reflexive phenomenology, Husserl attempted a radical turn inphilosophy, or at least attempted to break new ground by trying to found philosophy asa strict science. However, science is not to be understood here as one among many, butinstead as the “most elevated and rigorous science of them all.” 5 Several questions arisenow: What is scientific at all about this new prima philosophia? How is it scientific? Howcould it possibly be the “most elevated and rigorous science”? What does it mean not tomistake it for other particular sciences?Husserl had been thoroughly convinced that phenomenology is a science -- and a particularone at that -- since writing his Logische Untersuchungen. As such, to grasp a morecomplete picture of phenomenology as a strict science, we shall direct our attention to thefinal section of the Prolegomena and to the Introduction to the second book of theLogische Untersuchungen (LU).b) Science and the Question after its EssenceAs some scholars devoted to Husserlian phenomenology have already pointed out, 6Husserl’s work is only to be understood in light of his pretensions to scientific rigor. Evenin the Prolegomena, Husserl’s enterprise is displayed as a search for pure logic, logic asa mathesis universalis.For Husserl, science has two fundamental features: every science is a set of groundedknowledge, and they (the sciences) are all linked by a certain grounding unity. He wrote:“scientific knowledge as such is grounded knowledge [wissenschaftliche Erkenntnis ist alssolche Erkenntnis aus dem Grunde].” (Hua XVIII, A 231.) Knowing the reason for somethingmeans “to appreciate the necessity for something to be this way or that [die Notwendigkeitdavon, dass es sich so und so verhält, einsehen],” that is, to discover the“normative validity of the state of affairs one has referred to [gesetzliche Gültigkeit desbezüglichen Sachverhaltes].” Nevertheless, it is imperative that a principle of unitycorresponding to such scientific pretensions be found. Whatever it is that makes thisprinciple of unity possible can be given either as essential or nonessential. In the formercase, the truths of one science are linked by an essential principle of unity that they found:“the essential unity of the truths of a science is their explanatory unity.” 7 Since theknowledge of grounding laws is understood as knowing the fundamental basis, then theexplanatory unity will be a unity built from the totality of grounding laws, that is, a unitydevised as a unity of theory, a theoretical unity. Hence this kind of science ischaracterized as theoretical or abstract. 84According to Husserl, the desire to attain to proper ... with philosophy lies within the Socratic-Platonic turn, as well as in the Cartesian turn. Conversely, Romantic philosophy shows a tendency towarda “weakening or faking of the desire to achieve the strongest philosophical constitution of science.” SeePhSW, 292. To find more concerning ‘strictness,’ ‘exactness’ (Strenge), see Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe,vol. 27, 44. (Henceforth GA27.)5PhSW, 290.6E. Ströker, Husserls transzendentale Phänomenologie (Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann), 20.Also see A. Aguirre, Genetische Phänomenologie und Reduktion (Dordrecht: Kluwer), xvii ff.; Ströker,“Die Einheit der Naturwissenschaften,” Philosophische Perpektiven III, (1971): 176-193.7Hua XVIII, A 234.8Starting with Kries and onward, these kinds of science can be called nomological sciences,“inasmuch as they legitimely acquire that only principle as their main research goal.” Hua XVIII, A 234.275