Perspectives on the Hermeneutic Philosophy of Science

By reviving in a phenomenological manner the forgotten reality of the primary (pre-scientific) meanings (the reality of the life-world), Husserl manages to combat successfully with the type of objectivism that deludes the natural sciences with the image of a reality-in-itself. Nonetheless, his approach succumbs to a kind of objectivism which was always attached to the traditional concept of theory. Several conceptions developed in the traditions of hermeneutic phenomenology try to overcome this deficiency. The present paper puts forward an interpretation of scientists' reflexive attitude towards cognitive structures' interpretative fore-structuring within interrelated practices. To interpret ways of interpretative constitution of objects (including science's theoretical objects) that are meaningful for a certain community amounts to devising an integral hermeneutic circle that unites the proper horizons of those who are doing research and the horizon of interpretation of the research process. This double hermeneutics characterizes the constitutional analysis of the interpretative articulation of scientific domains.