Cover -- Half title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Hermeneutic versus Objectivist Construal of the World -- 2. Constitutional Analysis of Meaning and Scientific Practices -- 3. Synopsis -- 1 Rereading Heidegger's Existential Conception of Science -- 1. Scientific Research as a Mode of Being-in-the-World -- 2. Is the Existential Conception of Science a Kind of Philosophy of Science? -- 3. Steps in Overcoming Mathematical Essentialism -- 4. Reading-Representing-Textualizing -- 5. A Note on Self-Referentiality -- 2 Cognitive Existentialism and Science's Theoretical Objects -- 1. Essentialist and Existentialist Perspectives on the Distinction between Theoretical and Nontheoretical Objects -- 2. A Note on the Visualizability of Science's Theoretical Objects -- 3. The Historical Background of Cognitive Existentialism vis-à-vis Science's Theoretical Objects -- 4. Replacing the Epistemological Reconstruction of Science with a Hermeneutic Conception of Scientific Research -- 5. Why Does Cognitive Existentialism Resist the Collapse into a New Sort of Essentialism? -- 6. On the Notion of "Hermeneutic Fore-Structure" -- 3 Cognitive Existentialism and Biological Research -- 1. The Notion of "Characteristic Hermeneutic Situation" -- 2. From a Characteristic Hermeneutic Situation to a Thematizing Project -- 3. Thematizing Projects of Biological Research -- 4. A Note on Irreducibility and Complementarity -- 5. Nonreductionist Unity and Nonrelativist Disunity of Biology -- 4 Cognitive Existentialism and Postmodern Philosophy of Science -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The Postmodern Destruction of the Legitimation Project of Modern Science -- 3. From Deflationary Accounts of Knowledge to a Comprehensive Naturalism -- 4. Basic Shortcomings of the Naturalistic-Deflationary Accounts of Scientific Knowledge.

5 Cognitive Existentialism and Feminist Philosophy of Science -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Why Not Standpoint Epistemology? -- 3. Feminist Postmodernism and Feminist Cultural Studies of Science -- 4. Gendered Constitution of Meaning and Gendered Identities -- 5. Preliminary Remarks on the Role of Narratives in Expressing Gendered Identities in Scientific Research -- 6 Cognitive Existentialism and the Critical Philosophy of Nature -- 1. Introduction: Politics of Nature versus Political Ecology -- 2. Marcuse's "New Science" -- 3. Extending the Scope of Cognitive Existentialism -- 4. Characteristic Hermeneutic Situations in the Dialogue with Nature -- Epilogue -- Notes -- References -- Index.