Hermeneutics of Natural Science

In: Voprosy Filosofii, Heft 8, S. 97-106

Abstract

When in 1987 D. Marcus claimed the virtual lack of hermeneutics of the natural science as a field of recognizable individual cognitive interests, his argument made a deep impression on the philosophers of science. However, in 1998 P. Hi­lan, polemicizing with Marcus, put forward the thesis about the existence of "strong hermeneutics" – a philosophical genre of hermeneutics of the natural sci­ence. In a number of subsequent works, he gave a detailed exposition of his point of view, establishing links between the modern philosophy of the natu­ral sciences and philosophical hermeneutics. It was based on the inclusion in the philosophy of science those aspects of historicity, culture and tradition that lack in the traditional analysis of the relationship between theory and explana­tion. The expansion of the range of hermeneutics' participation in scientific knowledge turned out to be associated with the answer to the question of whether hermeneutics can improve our understanding, primarily the understand­ing of the essence of those things that fall into the sphere of natural sciences. Given that human subjects and communities are inseparable from nature, this un­derstanding must necessarily take into account the biological aspects of this unity. This forces us to include in the interpretive field of hermeneutics living matter, which should be understood not only as an object of hermeneutic inter­pretation by people, but at a deep level and as an interpretation of living beings themselves. The formation and legalization of the interpretation of this type dates back to 2002, when A. Markos published the book "Readers of the Book of Life", which called for the study of the "biohermeneutic" understanding of sign processes in living systems. The possibility of using this type of interpre­tation in a situation that arose in connection with the increasing exploitation of information technology and the Internet was also extremely interesting. Herme­neutics, which uses an interpretation of this type, is called "digital hermeneu­tics". It is based on the concept of "digital ontology", which was introduced by M. Eldred and R. Capurro: things exist (are understood) as much as we are able to digitize them. Digital hermeneutics should be considered as a general prob­lematization of the supposed homology between reality and its digital represen­tations.