Abstract
Quantum mechanics is interpreted, in the spirit of Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, as about physical objects in so far as these are revealed by and within the local, social, and historical process of measurement. An analysis of the hermeneutical aspect of quantum mechanical measurement reveals close analogues with the hermeneutical social/historical sciences. The hermeneutical analysis of science requires the move from the epistemological attitude to an ontological one.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ackermann, R.J.: 1985, Data, Instruments, and Theory, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Babich, B.: 1993, “Continental Philosophy of Science: Mach, Duhem and Bachelard”, in R. Kearney (ed.), Routledge History of Philosophy: Volume VIII, Routledge, London, 175–221.
Bernard, C.: 1957, Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, H.C. Greene (trans). Foreword by I.B. Cohen, Dover, New York.
Crease, R.: 1993, The Play of Nature: Experimentation as Performance, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis.
Dewey, J.: 1960, The Quest for Certainty, Putnam, New York.
Eger, M.: 1993, “Hermeneutics as an Approach to Science: Parts I & II”, Science and Education 2, 1–29, 303–28.
Fleck, L.: 1979, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, T. Trenn (ed. and trans.), F. Bradley (trans.), R. Merton (ed.), foreword T.S. Kuhn, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Galison, P.: 1987, How Experiments End, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Hacking, I.: 1983, Representing and Intervening, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Heelan, P.A.: 1975, “Hermeneutics of Experimental Science in the Context of the Life-World” in D. Ihde and R. Zaner (eds.), pp. 7–50 in Interdisciplinary Phenomenology, Nijhoff, The Hague.
Heelan, P.A.: 1983, Space-Perception and the Philosophy of Science, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles.
Heelan, P.A.: 1983, “Natural Science as a hermeneutic of instrumentation”, Philosophy of Science 50, 181–204.
Heelan, P.A.: 1987, “Husserl's Later Philosophy of Science”, Philosophy of Science 54, 368–390.
Heelan, P.A.: 1989, “After Experiment: Research and Reality”, American Philosophical Qrtly 26, 297–308.
Heelan, P.A.: 1991, “Hermeneutical Phenomenology and the History of Science”, in D. Dahlstrom (ed.), Nature and Scientific Method: William A. Wallace Festschrift, Catholic University of America Press, Washington, D.C., 23–36.
Heelan, P.A.: 1992, “Experiment as Fulfillment of Theory”, in D.P. Chattopadhyaya, L. Embree, and J.N. Mohanty (eds.), Phenomenology and Indian Philosophy, Council for Philosophical Research, New Delhi, 169–184.
Heelan, P.A.: 1993, “Galileo, Luther, and the Hermeneutics of Natural Science”, in T. Stapleton (ed.), Festschrift for Joseph Kockelmans, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 363–374.
Heidegger, M.: 1962, Being and Time, J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (trans.), Harper and Row, New York.
Heidegger, M.: 1966, The Essence of Reasons, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL.
Holton, G.: 1978, Scientific Imagination: Case Studies, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Hughes, R.I.G.: 1989, The Structure and Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Husserl, E.: 1970, The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology; An introduction to phenomenological philosophy, D. Carr (trans.), Northwestern University Press, Evanston.
Ihde, D.: 1979, Technics and Praxis, Reidel, Dordrecht.
Kockelmans, J.J.: Ideas for a Hermeneutic Phenomenology of the Natural Sciences, Kluwer, Dordrecht.
Kuhn, T.S.: 1962, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed., University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Kuhn, T.S.: 1977, The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Latour, B.: 1987, Science in Action, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Latour, B. & Woolgar, S.: 1979, Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts, Sage, Beverly Hills.
Merleau-Ponty, M.: 1962, Phenomenology of Perception, C. Smith (trans.), Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.
Newton, I.: 1962, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and His System of the World, F. Cajori (ed.), A. Motte (trans.), University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles.
Pickering, A.: 1984, Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Rouse, J.: 1987, Knowledge and Power: Toward a Political Philosophy of Science, Cornell University Press, Ithaca.
Shapin, S. & Schaffer, S.: 1985, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
Based on a paper read at the American Philosophical Association (Pacific Section) Symposium on “Philosophical Implications of Bell's Theorem”, in March, 1989.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Heelan, P.A. Quantum mechanics and the social sciences: After hermeneutics. Sci Educ 4, 127–136 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00486580
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00486580