Interpretation of the world. The meaning of hermeneutics

 

This text is not a PhD raw material but rather an exercise in dialectical reasoning. My sweet little daughter Sonya drew a portrait of Thomas Kuhn, and that's what made the difference.

Extremes of Vattimo and Ricoeur

Gianni Vattimo argued that there were no facts but only interpretations and that statement itself was merely an interpretation of the meaning of hermeneutics in philosophy. He described hermeneutics as an ultimate generalization of the notion of interpretation to a man’s experience of the world (Vattimo, 1997). I take this statement as an extreme proclamation of a full merger of a scientist’s personal values and perspectives with properties and characteristics of the phenomenon that he/she researches. 

That merger, I think, should it become generally accepted beyond the realm of social sciences, would seriously affect theoretical grounds, research designs and strategies of natural sciences. That is hardly possible. The negation of Ultimate Truth makes little sense in interpretation of lab experiments or astronomic observations as they provide the universal man-made system of coordinates we need to survive in the world. Man is the measure of all things, including black holes and God’s particles, but that measure is a controlled variable to be held constant (and separated) in the physical model of the universe, which is the arena of natural sciences. The “interpretational influence” of man in that arena appears to be far lower than in social sciences. 

Perhaps the area where Vattimo’s hermeneutics may constructively rival against the empiricist is limited by the span of social sciences.

Paul Ricouer’s extreme was related to excessive, surplus meaning that is always left unknown in any scholarly quest (Ricoeur, 1979). Unlike Vattimo’s, it seems more applicable in the realm of natural sciences. This is because it fosters a scholar’s curiosity stronger than the positivist linear approach to collecting knowledge about the world. Ricouer encourages a scholar to imagine additional meanings that are hidden deep and require an intensive elaboration, while the Vienna circle (positivist) promotes an extensive development of the researched area. The former is about talent and passion, the latter is about skills and discipline.

Optimism of Kuhn and Gadamer

In the 1st half of the XX century the Vienna circle manifested there was one and only way to read and perceive the book of nature: science. That logical positivism left no room for science of man. The situation slowly changed with works of Gadamer, Heidegger, Taylor, Vattimo and Kuhn.

Thomas Kuhn

Physicist Thomas Kuhn discovered hermeneutics for himself as scientific way of thinking by reading Aristotle’s works on kinesis: he understood that a qualitative, not quantitative change was meant. As a result, Kuhn offered hermeneutics to all as a new philosophy of science. 

Hermeneutic or interpretative way of thinking suggested by Kuhn can be explained through the book vs text metaphor. A book belongs to its author, and readers can only find and understand its meaning. A text incorporates readers’ knowledge, values, experiences into its interpretation. The former is logical positivism, the latter is the science of man, hermeneutics.

Like other modern hermeneutics, he argued there was no such thing as a linear development of knowledge, but instead there was an intermittent change of paradigms. Paradigm by Kuhn is a temporary consent among scientists and practitioners on what problems are and how to solve them. Thus discontinuity of human science came to play to fight continuity of empiricism (Noe, 2011).

The concept of paradigm shift is well combined with Gadamer’s fusion of time horizons. In both cases new meanings and scientific consents are created by tectonic moves in the human knowledge rather by a gradual exploration of the unknown. I might comment, should we be able to predict paradigm shifts, that would create some sort of a surfing effect when one cohort of scholars hurries up to complete their studies, as those will be discarded by the coming wave of change, and the other cohort just lies on the surfs (research questions) and waits for the coming newness to arm them with new interpretations and perspectives. (This reasoning reflects Karl Popper’s critical “wait for a better theory” remark on Kuhn’s hermeneutics.)

Kuhn’s American optimism shows up in his attitude to prejudice. Prejudice in science, in Kuhn’s concept of paradigm, is good and needful. He argued, that without a paradigm-based prejudice a scientist could not even set up an experiment (Kavaliauskas, 2012). This sounds compelling and quite universal, although it seems appropriate to link that idea with what I speculated above: the interpretational influence of researchers in natural sciences is insignificant in comparison with that in social ones. I mean that a researcher’s dependence on a paradigm-based prejudice in social sciences appears to be quite definitive and truly important, while Gadamer’s new time horizons in natural sciences are contaminated (urbanized) with solid meanings inherited from older horizons or paradigms.

Kuhn coined the term incommensurability, which reflected autism of adepts of two different paradigms, their inability and/or unwillingness to use common criteria and language. That state of paradigmatic autism, however, is always temporary, proclaims Kuhn in his optimistic tone. Incommensurability promotes a fundamental change: the paradigm shift, which integrates the horizons of two earlier confronting paradigms. That well complies with the theories categorization by Van de Ven and Poole (1995): Kuhn stands in the dialectical corner of their four-field matrix where multiple entities study meets constructive approach. This leads to a paradox: the interpretational philosophy of science (hermeneutics, science of man), the way Kuhn introduced it to us, was the product of hermeneutical surgery in the body of analytical philosophy of Anglophone Europe made in the 2nd half of the XX century.

The bottom line

The key hermeneutical definitions and conclusions by Vattimo, the concepts and reconciliations by Kuhn are, indeed, a great leap in philosophy of science. They (i) have put an end to illusions (or debates) that a researcher may not be part of his/her research, and now it is a commonly shared view; (ii) they have promoted the idea of scientific revolutions to substitute the idea of gradual continuous extension of mankind’s horizons; (iii) they have claimed – once more, yet from a new perspective – that there is no such thing as Ultimate Truth but there is abundance of surplus meanings, and that induces scientific inquiry by adding more senses to each researched phenomenon and to the scholarship itself.

On the other hand, hermeneutics seems to receive a disparate treatment in two scientific realms: natural and social sciences. It is obviously less applicable in material studies than in researching intangibles. And that casts doubts on its overall ability to replace empiricism.

Hermeneutics may be considered a meaningful part of another paradigm (or time horizon), which has been brought to the rapidly changing XX century to blend with the empirical tradition. It has endured the time of incommensurability, reached its limits, and at present it is lying on its surf waiting for a new paradigmatic wave to come.

P.S. As far as PhD research is concerned, it is not a good idea to ground a conceptual variance model in hermeneutics. Empiricism works more reliably.

References

Kavaliauskas, Tomas (2012). “Philosophy of Science”. Course of Baltic Doctoral Program, ISM, Vilnius.

Kuhn, T.S. (1965). “Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research?”. Princeton University.

Noe, Keiichi (2011). “Hermeneutic problems in the Philosophy of Science”. Tohoku University, Japan.

Ricoeur, Paul (1976). “Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning”. The Texas Christian University Press.

Van de Ven, A. H. and Poole, M.S. (1995). “Explaining Development and Change in Organizations”, Academy of Management Review, 20 (3): 520.

Vattimo, Gianni (1997). “Beyond Interpretation: The Meaning of Hermeneutics for Philosophy”. Standford University Press.