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Hermeneutic Philosophy of Science, Van Gogh’s Eyes, and God

Essays in Honor of Patrick A. Heelan, S.J.

  • Book
  • © 2002

Overview

Editors:
  1. Babette E. Babich

    1. Fordham University, New York, USA
      Georgetown University, USA

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Part of the book series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science (BSPS, volume 225)

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Table of contents (39 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xvii
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction

    1. The Fortunes of Incommensurability

      • Babette E. Babich
      Pages 1-18

  3. Hermeneutics and the Philosophy of Science

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 19-23
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    2. The Hermeneutics of the Natural Sciences

      • Stephen Toulmin
      Pages 25-29

    3. Experimental Life: Heelan on Quantum Mechanics

      • Robert P. Crease
      Pages 31-41

    4. The Hermeneutic Context of Constitution

      • Dimitri Ginev
      Pages 43-52

    5. The “Copenhagen Interpretation” of Quantum Mechanics and Phenomenology

      • Ragnar Fjelland
      Pages 53-65

    6. Sokal’s Hermeneutic Hoax: Physics and the New Inquisition

      • Babette E. Babich
      Pages 67-78

    7. Wittgenstein, Hertz, and Hermeneutics

      • Allan Janik
      Pages 79-95

    8. On the Interpretive Nature of Hertz’s Mechanics

      • Joseph J. Kockelmans
      Pages 97-115

    9. Comte and the Possibility of a Hermeneutics of Science

      • Robert C. Scharff
      Pages 117-126

    10. Was Heißt das — Die Bewandtnis?

      • Theodore Kisiel
      Pages 127-136

    11. The Hermeneutics of Texts

      • Thomas M. Seebohm
      Pages 137-152

    12. Husserlian Hermeneutics: Mathematics and Theoria

      • Richard Cobb-Stevens
      Pages 153-161

    13. Abstracting Aristotle’s Philosophy of Mathematics

      • John J. Cleary
      Pages 163-176

    14. Piaget and Husserl: On Theory and Praxis in Science

      • Wolfe Mays
      Pages 177-186

    15. Human Agency and the Social Sciences: From Contextual Phenomenology to Genealogy

      • Tony O’Connor
      Pages 187-194

    16. Toward a Phenomenological Philosophy of Nature

      • John J. Compton
      Pages 195-202

    17. No Man is an Island

      • John Ziman
      Pages 203-217

    18. Science as the Work of a Community

      • Rom Harré
      Pages 219-229
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Keywords

About this book

perceptual essences that can be rendered directly manifest in perception with the help of theoretically structured instruments serving as 'readable technologies'. " Scientific knowledge should thus be understood as an extension of "unassisted" perception. A perceptual fact has an outer horizon "which separates it from the ground on which it appears," and an inner horizon "composed of a multiplicity of possible perceptual profiles organized by an invariant essence. " The perceiving subject can "bring forth a representative sample of the profiles in question," occasionally by making use of certain technological processes, which are themselves subject to interpretation in terms of theoretical representations. The theoretical entities described in these representations are not "simply detected thanks to an inferential operation, but rather, they are directly perceived. " It follows from this that the correspondence between the "manifest image" and the "scientific image" is not done one-to-one, but by a "many-to-one or one-to­ many application between contextually defined perceptual objects within contexts that are mutually incompatible but complementary. " This should not, however, be understood as a form of conventionalism, nor as a form of "cultural relativism. " Pre­ comprehension, which guides interpretation imposes strict limits to the descriptive categories which can be used and to the manner in which they can be linked to appropriate empirical objects. The author applies his hermeneutic principles to the study of visual perception. (In fact this question is treated in the first part of the book.

Editors and Affiliations

  • Fordham University, New York, USA

    Babette E. Babich

  • Georgetown University, USA

    Babette E. Babich

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