heelan, p. (1975) discussion on hermeneutics and social science to prof gadamer

7/28/2019 Heelan, P. (1975) Discussion on Hermeneutics and Social Science to Prof Gadamer

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Cultural Hermeneutics

Editor.' DAVID M. RASMUSSEN, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Mass., U.S.A.Editorial Assistants.' James May and William C. Gay, Boston College, Chestnut

Hill Mass., U.S.A.Board of Consulting Editors.' Oliva Blancherte, Mircea Eliade,

Joseph Flanagan, Bernard Lonergan, Thomas Owens, PaulRicoeur, Jacques Taminiaux, David Tracy.

Cultural Hermeneutics 2 (1975) 367-377. AllRights ReservedCopyright 1975 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland

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335 DISCUSSION ON 'HERMENEUTICS AND SOCIAL SCIENCE'

Patrick Heelan/SUNY Stonybrook: Prof. Gadamer, can I assume that in referring to naturalscience you generally endorse Koyre's and Husserl's interpretation of what science was forGalileo, as well as Carnap's view that science is a formal system interpreted semantically?Prof. Lawrence claims that you overlook the dialectical character of science. The example hegave would be the lack of awareness of the possible interchange and consequent development

of thought for a scientist reflecting upon his own self-understanding of science - that self-understanding itself having been molded by Carnap and Koyre. That is a dialectic on thelevel of the individual scientist practicing his science more or less independently of thegreater society. Another aspect of the dialectic, which Prof. Lawrence did not mention butwhich was implied and is certainly relevant to some of the statements of Prof. Gadamer,regards the interpretation of science merely as providing means to ends. In this case, the

application of those means results in two stages. The first stage occurs with the developmentof the design and the making available of the means for the production of ends - like washing

machines. The second stage occurs when the availability of those means themselves changethe human subject. Consequently, we may or may not be able to anticipate by philosophical

reflection the character of the final product. Let us suppose it cannot be anticipated inadvance by philosophical reflection. One is then in a dialectical situation in which one cannotcriticize technological science except while doing technology. Therefore, it is a moment in anongoing process, not a moment before or after that process, but a moment that must bepresent throughout the process itself. Surely, this is dialectical and, from what I understand of

Gadamer's work, that is a moment which is not one upon which he focuses.

Gadamer: In some of my earlier comments I indicated that I never identified sciences withtechnology. My position is very far from this assumption. Sciences have nothing to do with

technology but technology has to do with sciences. I do not perceive that there are anyexceptions to the manner in which the sciences objectify

336 ___ DISCUSSION ON 'HERMENEUTICS AND SOCIAL SCIENCE'


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their data. Although modern physics finds new ways for the description of processes inmathematical form without intuition, as exemplified by atomic fission, these theoretical

efforts are interchangeable with one another: interchangeability does not depend on theindividual characteristics of the particular scientist. This is the only reason why technology is

able to have free access to the results of the sciences. I do not see how the involvement of thescientist in scientific activity should imply a dialectical structure. The reference by Prof.

Heelan to Carnap and a different self-understanding does not alter the fact ofinterchangeability. Does the theoretical description of the results of science by means of asemantic system really imply a different relationship between the investigator and nature? Atmost, it provides a better description.

Lawrence: May I clarify this matter? In the humanities the normative moment is not theequally substitutable investigator but, what Prof. Gadamet has spoken of as levels. It appearsthat this tendency is to de-emphasize the role of level in science. My clarification is this: a de-emphasis on the role of level would be justified in normal science as Kuhn describes it, butde-emphasis of level is not constitutive of revolutionary science - of science making thebreakthrough. There, level makes the difference in the same way that it makes the differencein the humanities.

Gadamer: That, of course, is the development of the hermeneutical side of science. I do notwish to deny that there is such a dimension. When Thomas Kuhn published The Structure ofScientific Revolutions, I was very pleased because it supported my view. The framework oftheoretical assumptions which guide scientific investigation has a communicative side whichin the final analysis is connected with language. This argument supports the universality ofthe hermeneutical approach. In this lecture, I did not attempt to distinguish between thesciences and the humanities; I attempted, rather, to clarify the social implications ofmisleading orientations which neglect indispensible social qualities and virtues necessary forhuman survival.


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367 PANEL DISCUSSION

Pa tr ic k He el an /S UN Y at St on y Br oo k: I wish to make two comments. The first concerns thedistinction between 'Science' and 'science'. By 'Science', I mean Science considered from avery high altitude, as Radnitsky defines it. This is Science as appropriated by our common

culture and society, Science as ideology. By 'science', I mean science as practiced by anexperimenter in his laboratory and in his professional community. Both 'Science' and

'science' can be submitted to a hermeneutical analysis. For the moment, I will submit 'science'to hermeneutical analysis. (It is 'Science' that has concerned both Husserl and Prof. Gadamer.)

In considering science, we find that it is often confused with model-building, makingmathematical models of the world. Of course, model-building is important in science, but itis not the most important product of science. The most important product of science, in myview, is making correct judgments about the world, and therefore about particulars. Suchjudgments are made in the presence of items in the world and in an experimental situation.Thus, science is paradigmatically not model-building as Koyre would have held. Nor is it tobe construed in terms of the interpretation of semantic models, as Carnap would have it.

Secondly, a number of hermeneutical moments occur in experimental science. Clearly,since science performs its role within a tradition, there is the usual hermeneutical circleinvolved in any scientific statement. I take that for granted, and I assume Prof. Gadamertakes that for granted as well. That is not what is at issue here. On the one hand, there is ahermeneutical moment in using mathematical models non-objectively. Of course, themathematical physicist objectifies models by discussing them, drawing correspondingtheorems, etc. However, in an experimental situation these models, I claim, are not usedobjectively, but are used non-objectively and that non-objective use is a hermeneutical one.On the other hand, the instrumentation which is characteristic of experimental naturalscience, involves reading the instrument as if the instrumental response were a text. This use of

an instrument is a non-objective one and I also refer to this as a hermeneutical use. I think thishermeneutical use, which we may refer to as a hermeneutical shift, takes place when symbolsare understood in terms of their signification. For example, when a strange language is read

for what it means, the symbols and


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368

PANEL DISCUSSION

signs of the language are no longer perceived as objects, but in terms of the meaning theycarry. If the signs are seen for what they are: shapes, forms, circles, marks, etc., they are part ofthe objective world. We know that one can translate signs from one language to another, andstill maintain the same meaning; the variation of the signs does not change the irtvariantmeaning which they convey. What is meant when one reads a sign is not the sign itself; thesign has been transferred from one side of a subject-object division, from the object side ofthe division to the subject side of the division, and that sign becomes incorporated orembodied within the subject acting or knowing in this situation. Since the activity ofexperimental science involves the reading of instruments and the use of mathematical modelsto make particular statements of fact, both uses involve a shift, a hermeneutical shift, of the

subject-object division from one domain to another. Such a shift has the characteristics ofhermeneutical activity.

arx Wartofsky/Boston University: There are a few remarks I want to make about this day'sproceedings. I feel like I wandered in off the philosophical street, into a hall of mirrors and itstrikes me that the discussions - the hermeneutic and the criticist discussion of reflection - is

characteristic of a mode of philosophizing with which I am familiar, but with which I amvery uncomfortable, being neither a hermeneuticist nor a criticist. In this hall of mirrors, in

this maze of mirrors through which we are walking, there is a reflection and a reflection of areflection and we are looking at the reflection and seeing ourselves in the reflection. The onething we are not doing is bumping into the glass, and realizing that there are mirrors here in

which there are reflections. The glass is a material object which reflects an image, and as longas we stay clear of the glass, I cannot answer Prof. Bubner's question: 'What is Praxis?' Praxis,after all, does not begin until one bumps into the glass. Up to that point, the reflectionremains at the level of reflection, and cannot be taken to be a reflection of anything, or even

to be a reflection at all. My own experience of this is bumping into a very highly polishedglass, so clean that I did not realize it was a mirror; bumping into someone who lookedvaguely familiar and saying, 'Excuse me!' - a sign of this failure to recognize both reflectionand praxis.

Having said this, the discussion seemed to me interesting, nevertheless, because the notion of

changing the world by reflection or by theoretical reflection or by reflective theory or by

critical theory or by interpretation or re-interpretation seems to me to make very good sense. Ofcourse, the world can be changed by reflection, but not simply by changing the reflection.One of the cutting edges of Marx's irony in the subtitle to The Holy Family, viz., the

heelan, p. (1975) discussion on hermeneutics and social science to prof gadamer

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