Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-wzw2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-23T16:34:28.446Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Natural Science as a Hermeneutic of Instrumentation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Patrick Heelan
Patrick Heelan*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy State University of New York at Stony Brook
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The author proposes the thesis that all perception, including observation in natural science, is hermeneutical as well as causal; that is, the perceiver (or observer) learns to ‘read’ instrumental or other perceptual stimuli as one learns to read a text. This hermeneutical aspect at the heart of natural science is located where it might be least expected, within acts of scientific observation. In relation to the history of science, the question is addressed to what extent the hermeneutical component within scientific observation opens natural science to the charge of reflecting merely cultural values, and of providing merely a culturally acceptable reading of the “Book of Nature”, rather than, as the author states, one stating universal antecedent conditions of possibility of cultural activity itself.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , June 1983 , pp. 181 - 204
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Apel, K-O. (1980), Towards a Transformation of Philosophy. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Bleicher, J. (1980), Contemporary Hermeneutics: Hermeneutics as Method, Philosophy, and Critique. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Bloor, D. (1976), Knowledge and Social Imagery. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Dilthey, W. (1958), Gesammelte Schriften, volume VII, Der Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den Geistenwissenschaften. Leipzig and Berlin: Teubner.Google Scholar
Dreyfus, H. (1980), “Holism and hermeneutics”, Review of Metaphysics 34: 3–24.Google Scholar
Feyerabend, P. (1975), Against Method. London: New Left Press.Google Scholar
Fleck, L. (1979), The Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Frisby, J. P. (1979), Seeing. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gadamer, H-G. (1975), Truth and Method. New York: Seabury Press.Google Scholar
Gouldner, A. (1970), The Coming Crisis of Sociology in the West. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Gutting, G. (1980), Paradigms and Revolutions. South Bend, Indiana: University of Notre-Dame Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, J. (1971), Knowledge and Human Interests. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Hanson, N. R. (1958), Patterns of Discovery. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Heelan, P. (1970), “Quantum logic and classical logic: their respective roles”, Synthese 22: 3–33.Google Scholar
Heelan, P. (1972a), “Toward a new analysis of the pictorial space of Vincent van Gogh”, Art Bulletin 54: 478–492.Google Scholar
Heelan, P. (1972b), “Hermeneutics of experimental science in the context of the Life-World”, Philosophia Mathematica IX: 101–144. Reprinted in Interdisciplinary Phenomenology, Ihde, D. and Zaner, R. (eds.). The Hague: Nijhoff, 1975, pp. 7–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heelan, P. (1977), “Quantum relativity and the cosmic observer”, in Cosmology, History, and Theology, Yourgrau, W. and Breck, A. (eds.). New York: Plenum, pp. 29–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heelan, P. (1979), “Music as basic metaphor and deep structure in Plato and in ancient culture”, Journal of Social and Biological Structures 2: 279–291.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heelan, P. (1982a), “Hermeneutical realism and scientific observation”, in PSA 1982, Asquith, P. and Giere, R. (eds.). East Lansing: Philosophy of Science Association, Michigan State University, pp. 77–85.Google Scholar
Heelan, P. (1982b), “Perception as a hermeneutical act”, forthcoming in The Review of Metaphysics.Google Scholar
Heelan, P. (1982c), Space-Perception and the Philosophy of Science. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Heidegger, M. (1962), Being and Time. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Hesse, M. (1980), Revolutions and Reconstructions in the Philosophy of Science. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.Google Scholar
Holton, G. (1973), Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought: Kepler to Einstein. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Husserl, E. (1931), Ideas. London: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Husserl, E. (1970a), Logical Investigations. 2 vols. Trans. by Findlay, J. N. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Husserl, E. (1970b), The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Philosophy. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Ihde, D. (1979), Technics and Praxis. Dordrecht and Boston: Reidel.Google Scholar
Jauch, J. M. (1968), Foundations of Quantum Mechanics. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Kuhn, T. S. (1970), The Structure of Scientifc Revolutions. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kuhn, T. S. (1977), The Essential Tension. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laudan, L. (1977), Progress and its Problems. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Mannheim, K. (1936), Ideology and Utopia. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World.Google Scholar
Margolis, J. (1980), “Cognitive issues in the realist-idealist dispute”, in Midwest Studies in Philosophy V: Studies in Epistemology, French, P., Uehling, T. Jr., and Wettstein, M. (eds.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 370–390.Google Scholar
Marr, D. (1982), Vision. San Francisco: Freeman.Google Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964), Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968), The Visible and the Invisible. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Merton, R. (1973), Sociology of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Morgan, M. (1977), Moleneux's Question: Vision, Touch, and the Philosophy of Perception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mulkay, M. (1979), Science and the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Polanyi, M. (1964), Personal Knowledge. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Popper, K. (1959), The Logic of Scientific Discovery. London: Hutcheson.Google Scholar
Reid, C. (1970), David Hilbert. New York: Springer Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reid, C. (1976), Courant in Göttingen and New York: Story of an Improbable Mathematician. New York: Springer Verlag.Google Scholar
Ricoeur, P. (1978), Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur: An Anthology. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Ricoeur, P. (1981), Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rorty, R. (1980), “A reply to Dreyfus and Taylor”, Review of Metaphysics 34: 39–46.Google Scholar
Schrödinger, E. (1967), What is Life? And Mind and Matter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sellars, W. (1963), Science, Perception, and Reality. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Segall, M., Campbell, D., and Herskovits, M. (1966), The Influence of Culture on Visual Perception. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.Google Scholar
Sloman, A. (1980), “Commentary on S. Ullman's paper ‘Against direct perception'”, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3: 403.Google Scholar
Taylor, C. (1980), “Understanding in human sciences”, Review of Metaphysics 34: 25–38.Google Scholar
Uttal, W. (1978), Psychobiology of Mind. Hilsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Van Frassen, B. (1980), The Scientific Image. London and New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wartofsky, M. (1979), Models: Representation and Scientific Understanding. Dordrecht and Boston: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar