Based on German philosopher Martin Heidegger's existential analytic, this article proposes that knowledge is an ontological counterpart to man's mode of being, and the scientific tradition incurs in ontological error when, through the use of a so-called methodological asepsis, it separates who-knows (the "subject" of knowledge) from what-is-known (the "object" of knowledge). Thus, it can be argued that any scientific enterprise is linked to the characteristics of human beings, and whatever focus a scientific investigation might have, this focus will always be limited by human perceptive capabilities and, therefore, the objectivity proclaimed by the scientific tradition is never achieved at all. The article also proposes that psychology does not need to adopt the traditional naturalistic model in order to achieve scientific credibility.
existential-phenomenology; heidegger; psychological knowledge