The Context of Constitution: Beyond the Edge of Epistemological Justification (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science)

The Context of Constitution

BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

Editors ROBERT S. COHEN, Boston University JÜRGEN RENN, Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science KOSTAS GAVROGLU, University of Athens

Editorial Advisory Board THOMAS F. GLICK, Boston University ADOLF GRÜNBAUM, University of Pittsburgh SYLVAN S. SCHWEBER, Brandeis University JOHN J. STACHEL, Boston University MARX W. WARTOFSKY†, (Editor 1960 –1997)

VOLUME 247

THE CONTEXT OF CONSTITUTION Beyond the Edge of Epistemological Justification by

Dimitri Ginev Professor for Hermeneutic Philosophy of Science and Hermeneutic Theory of Culture at the “St. Kliment Ohridski University” of Sofia

A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN-10 ISBN-13 ISBN-10 ISBN-13

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CONTENTS PREFACE INTRODUCTION a. The Hermeneutic Task of Re-Reading Kuhn b. Providing a Rationale for a Hermeneutic Reformulation of Normal Science c. Against Externalism, and the Farewell to Normative Epistemology d. On the Phenomenological Background of Cognitive Existentialism e. Beyond the Context-Distinction f. The Post-Epistemological Dimension of the Context of Constitution Chapter One IDEAS FOR THE SITUATED TRANSCENDENCE OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH a. Introduction b. Philosophical Hermeneutics and Hermeneutics of Scientific Research c. Heidegger’s Ideas for the Constitutional Analysis of Scientific Research d. Postwar Ideas for a Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Science e. Against Cognitive Essentialism and the Possibility of a Cognitive Existentialism

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1 9 14 26 28 32

35 43 50 55 75

Chapter Two REFORMULATING THE CONCEPT OF “NORMAL SCIENCE” IN THE FRAMEWORK OF HERMENEUTIC PHENOMENOLOGY 93 a. Normal Science, Practice Theory, and Kuhn’s Historicism b. Framework-Reading Versus Tradition-Bound-Reading 110 of Normal Science 124 c. Community’s Consensus and Situated Transcendence

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Chapter Three HERMENEUTIC PHENOMENOLOGY OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH a. Introductory Note 133 b. Hermeneutic Fore-Structure, Cognitive Structure, and Research Everydayness 135 c. Pre-Narrativity of Normal Scientific Research 145 d. A Passage to Macro-Hermeneutics of Modern Science 153 e. Thematizing Projects and Types of Scientific Research 158 f. Non-Reductionist Unity and Non-Relativist Disunity of Science 180 Chapter Four THE NORMATIVITY OF NORMAL SCIENCE: HERMENEUTIC CONTEXTUALISM AND PROTO-NORMATIVITY a. A Historical Note b. Between Wittgenstein and Heidegger c. The First Step: Normal Science’s Normativity in Terms of Holistic Epistemology d. The Second Step: Towards a Hermeneutic Theory of Proto-Normativity

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NOTES

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REFERENCES

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NAME INDEX

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191 192 198

Preface This study brings together ideas developed over many years in various lectures in an endeavour to clarify the concept of hermeneutic fore-structure of scientific research. The starting point of my investigations was the outline of an interpretative approach to the constitution of science’s cognitive content. In the late 1970s I was preoccupied with a question that nowadays should be formulated as follows: Is it possible to claim a validity of the hermeneutic view of the “situatedness in a tradition” also for the natural sciences? I was convinced that the negative answer implies a self-defeating position. It states that in order to champion the (cultural) universality of hermeneutics, one has to profess the non-hermeneutic nature of the natural sciences. Paradoxically enough, this answer presupposes a sharp dividing line (between dialogical experience and monological research) in culture in order to stress the universality of hermeneutics. Long before the period of perestroika in my corner, I learned from Joseph Kockelmans, Patrick Heelan, and Theodore Kisiel how the universalization of hermeneutics can include the natural sciences without ignoring their cognitive specificity. Somewhat later, in the aftermath of the discussions over the “finalization of science”, I began to confront the view that it would be a kind of trivializing the struggle for a philosophical hermeneutics if the theory-observation nexus is treated as a specific hermeneutic circle. No doubt, the view is correct. I was, however, dissatisfied with the way of arguing for it. According to its proponents, the place where the hermeneutic circle serves the function of a circulus fructuosus is human communication. Since the research process in the natural sciences does not rest upon “the principles of rational communication”, there is good reason for relegating the experimental-mathematical (and objectifying) forms of investigation to the scope of the (non-hermeneutic) instrumental rationality.1 The argument wrongly presumes that a “hermeneutic model for the natural sciences” stands or falls by the possibility of revealing a circulus fructuosus in a process of mutual interpretation of a theory and its data-models. Based on my vii

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long discussions with Gernot Böhme and Elisabeth Ströker (and encouraged by Pierre Kerszberg’s work), I opposed the argument by stressing that a hermeneutics of scientific research should not give answers to old epistemological questions. The task of such a hermeneutic enterprise is rather to deconstruct the epistemologically-centered questioning of science. However, to deconstruct the questioning does not mean rejecting the relevance of (non-representationalist and non-foundationalist) epistemological conceptions to an interpretative (and phenomenological) philosophy of science. I was very fortunate in having Azarya Polikarov (1921-2000) as my teacher, friend, and colleague. To a certain extent, he was an opponent to the “interpretative turn” in the philosophy of science. Yet he proposed a highly original strategy of superseding the approaches promulgating the traditional metaphysical dilemmas by a heuristic approach to the philosophically significant “problem situations” in the constitution of scientific knowledge. From him I learned how to develop a “non-algorithmic methodology” that breaks off with the distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification; how to champion a pluralism of competing theories and a “multi-methodologism” without succumbing to epistemological anarchism; how to profess a “heuristic realism” by avoiding the pitfalls of Cartesian dualism; how to struggle for antifoundationalism without “epistemological behaviorism”; and how to defend the historicity of scientific rationality while rejecting historical relativism.2 Contemporary studies in hermeneutics of science at once continue and revise Heidegger’s “existential conception of science”. While retaining the traditional concern with science’s cognitive structure (and cognitive specificity), they reject any kind of epistemological essentialism (foundationalism, representationism, objectivism). Consequently, contemporary studies in hermeneutics of science articulate the “strange position” of cognitive existentialism. Their champions are dissatisfied not only with traditional philosophy of science but also with those variants of philosophical hermeneutics that exclude science’s cognitive structure from the “scope of hermeneutic reflection”. The main argument of this book is that the “situatedness in a tradition” of normal scientific research underlies both the open-endedness of the research process and the “interpretative conservatism” of scientific communities. Hence, there is an unavoidable ambiguity in the positive answer to the above formulated question concerning the possibility of a hermeneutic theory of scientific research's situatedness. Interpretative conservatism does contribute to the isolation from the “rest of culture”. Being preoccupied solely with this isolation, many authors tend to exclude the natural sciences from the “scope of the hermeneutic reflection”. Yet the isolation from the rest of cultural experience is itself a hermeneutic phenomenon. The juxtaposition of interpretative conservatism and effective-historical open-endedness defines the main hermeneutic char-

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acteristic of the natural sciences. This characteristic is intimately related to the cognitive specificity of scientific research – a specificity which should be the theme of an “ontology of interpretation” and not of a normative epistemology. The “unavoidable ambiguity” in answering the question about the validity of the view of “situated transcendence” for the natural sciences is terminus a quo and terminus ad quem of the philosophical hermeneutics of these sciences, which I will try to outline in the present book. The book is organized as follows. The Introduction describes my aim of rereading Kuhn’s work in a “postmetaphysical context”. It also locates the project of this study in the field of a tension of competing tendencies in contemporary philosophical hermeneutics. By critically expounding on the deficits of the discovery-justification dichotomy, I introduce a proposal for a “context of constitution”. Chapter One discusses the very idea of a constitutional analysis of scientific research. Starting with the so-called “existential conception of science”, it traces the development of such an analysis. I contend that to champion “the hermeneutic nature of the natural sciences” opposes both every version of externalism and the deflationary accounts of science’s cognitive content. I finish the chapter by examining the program for a cognitive existentialism. According to this program, even after Feyerabend, Rorty, and the poststructuralists, the possibility to define science’s cognitive specificity in philosophical terms is not dead. Chapter Two focuses on the main issues of special interest to the hermeneutic reformulation of the concept of normal science. In the course of this reformulation, I outline a particular paradigm of constitutional analysis of scientific research. Chapter Three adresses the basic notions of this paradigm. I suggest that there are several characteristic hermeneutic situations in scientific research. To them correspond various types of articulating cognitive content within normal research practices. Following this claim, I develop a conception of a “hermeneutic plurality” and a non-reductionist unity of science. Chapter Four is a discussion of how the constitutional analysis of scientific research may address the intrinsic normativity of research pracrtices in the process of articulating cognitive content.

INTRODUCTION

a. The Hermeneutic Task of Re-Reading Kuhn This book explores the possibility of developing a conception of scientific research as “situated” in tradition, experience, and more generally, in an open horizon of practical understanding and interpretation. The underlying ideas will be largely familiar to philosophers conversant with the critique of epistemology that was occasioned in the first place by Gadamer’s view of “the universality of the hermeneutic problem” and by discussions thereof in the 1970s and 1980s. Though not formulated in the terminology of hermeneutic philosophy, the view of the “situatedness” of scientific research in its own traditions occupies a prominent place in Kuhn’s historical philosophy of the natural sciences. “Normal scientific traditions” and “interpretative scientific communities” are notions whose philosophical analysis requires to having a recourse to the situated transcendence as manifested in the routine practices of science’s research everydayness, and to the interpretative openness as a feature of scientific revolutions. Although confessing his commitment to the tenets of hermeneutic thinking,1 Kuhn has never attempted to place his ideas in a hermeneutic context of philosophizing. What he actually studied, however, was precisely the interpretative constitution of cognitive “dynamic structures” like those of scientific discovery, and of scientific change. Only for the sake of illustration, I should like to mention Kuhn’s discussion of the role of anomaly for unexpected discoveries. At stake is a definite problem of interpretation – the break with established normal-scientific “prejudices” which inform the horizon of expectation in the research process. Anomalies (such as a violation of expectation and a destruction of the very horizon) do emerge from the normal scientific research when “both instruments and concepts have developed sufficiently to make their emergence likely” and to make their effects 1

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“ recognizable as a violation of expectation”. (Kuhn 1977, pp. 173-74) The “ broken” horizon of expectation plays the role of an interpretative fore-structure of a coming cognitive transformation (whose starting point is the “unexpected discovery”) which calls into being new anticipations and expectations. In claiming that the recognition of anomalies is due to clashes between the anticipatory horizon and the actual results of doing research, Kuhn is looking neither for a logical (in terms of a “rational reconstruction”), nor for a socio-psychological explanation of unexpected discoveries. “The historical structure of scientific discovery” is always entangled in the interpretative fore-structure of normal scientific research. It is the “practical rationality” of normal science that (by calling into question the relevance of the existing theoretical models) teaches scientists to view old situations in new ways in order to eliminate anomalies. The present study is inspired by the hermeneutic task of re-reading Kuhn. Generally speaking, a text is re-read when it is placed in a new context. The text invites us to re-read it, for it is open to new interpretations. In every new context, the text implies a reader for its concretization. Each new contextual interpretation takes place under the guidance of the text’s openness. Following the tenets of literary hermeneutics, one might argue that the openness of a text needs a reader (called by Wolfgang Iser the “implied reader”) for its “completion”.2 More specifically, the implied reader is invited to fill up (under textual guidance) the “gaps of indeterminacy” (Iser). As a rule, the “event of re-reading” is called into play by the need to accommodate the text to a familiar horizon. Thereby the gaps are filled up. Yet the text can also be read with the intention of transcending such a horizon. To a great extent, my study is provoked by an attempt to re-read Kuhn’s work in a manner that transcends “familiar horizons” of understanding science. In this study, Kuhn’s texts are placed in the context of doing philosophy of science after the “end of modernity’s epistemological project”, i.e. the project that is called into being by the link of the representational conception of knowledge and the mechanistic science of the seventeenth century.3 Who is the implied reader of his work in this context? There is a short list of answers. First, the reader who is prepared to take a critical stance to previous readings. Second, the reader whose expectation and orientation permit her to transcend the horizons of such readings. Finally, the reader who is not inclined to read Kuhn as a historically minded theorist of knowledge, or as an advocate of a version of relativism, or as a protagonist of a neopragmatism that by giving up the notion of “data and interpretation” rejects science’s cognitive specificity, or as a neoKantian “transcendental realist”, or as a predecessor of a “postmodern turn” in the philosophy of science. In this book I will suggest a re-reading of Kuhn’s work in the perspective of hermeneutic phenomenology. (Following the tenets of Iser’s literary hermeneutics, one has to assume that the “event of re-reading”

Introduction

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does not only involve an implied reader. It involves an “implied author” as well. The latter can essentially differ from the personal author of the work. The implied author is the hypothetical figure that exercises authorial control in the deand re-contextualization accomplished by the re-reading. It is the figure that brings into play correctives and sanctions of each new contextual interpretation of the text.) Of course, the aspiration to re-read Kuhn’s corpus in a postmetaphysical context by shifting the focus from epistemology to a hermeneutic phenomenology runs into serious difficulties. Champions of literary hermeneutics draw attention to the fact that in a new re-reading textual guidance becomes more intensive than in previous readings. Do Kuhn’s texts, however, tolerate at all a rereading in the aforementioned context? I will answer this question by raising the claim that sine qua non for the intended rereading is a hermeneutic reformulation of the concept of normal science. Yet this claim only shifts the exegetical question which now sounds as follows: Would Kuhn’s writings on a “historical philosophy of science” tolerate a hermeneutic reformulation of the notion of normal science? The negative answer is given as if by Kuhn himself, when he states: “If one adopts the viewpoint I have been describing toward the natural sciences, it is striking that what their practitioners mostly do, given a paradigm or hermeneutic basis, is not ordinarily hermeneutic... The natural sciences, therefore, though they may require what I have called a hermeneutic base, are not themselves hermeneutic enterprises.” (Kuhn 1991, p. 23) To be sure, several passages from Kuhn’s early papers suggest the impression that routine research practices are regulated by a paradigm which is not corrigible by normal science. Moreover, they suggest the view that a paradigm guiding puzzle-solving procedures is on an epistemological meta-level with regard to the normal research process. A paradigm (as a conceptual framework and methodological codex) dictates the rules of a theoretical interpretation of empirical data, but it is not constituted within the “research everydayness”.4 Though the “Second Thoughts on Paradigms” marks an essential change of the original views (paradigm is the name for the shared commitments of a scientific community that become explicit within normal research), even “late Kuhn” is not willing to admit that what the practitioners of the natural sciences do is a hermeneutic enterprise. In his exchange with Charles Taylor, Kuhn goes on to maintain that because the human sciences are interpretative-dialogical, through and through, “very little of what goes on in them at all resembles the normal puzzle-solving research of the natural sciences.” (Kuhn 1991, pp. 22-23) By contrast, the lack of a dialogical dimension of the research process of the natural sciences preserves the stability of reading the “texts of nature” through mathematical theorizing and experimentation. In his last writings Kuhn advocates a view that can be summarized as follows: Though there is a constant interpreta-

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tion (whose “hermeneutic basis” is provided by the paradigm) that aims at improving and extending the match between theory and experiment, normal scientific research is the opposite to the interpretative enterprise of the human sciences. Does this view imply the impossibility of spelling out normal scientific research in hermeneutic terms? By no means. It only implies the necessity of distinguishing between hermeneutic method(s) of the human sciences and the hermeneutic approach to the (communal) discursive-practical being-in-the-world. According to Kuhn, because of the hermeneutic method(s), there are no normal scientific practices that consolidate scientific communities in the human sciences. And vice versa, because routine research aims at stable explanatory models, the natural sciences are not hermeneutic disciplines. Since there is a lack of an “interpretative dialogue” with what is under inquiry in the natural sciences, the “dogmatic voice” of paradigms determines a normal scientific consensus. By contrast, the dialogical pluralism implied by the methodology of “double hermeneutics” disperses the research work of disciplines like history, art criticism, and cultural anthropology in particular interpretative case studies, which are not guided by general paradigms. To be sure, Kuhn would not object to the existence of theoretical paradigms in the human sciences (like structuralism and neofunctionalism in cultural anthropology, or nouvelle histoire and microhistory in historiography). Yet these paradigms remain only methodological orientations of carrying out case studies.5 Such an orientatation (however high is the degree of its methodological codification) cannot inform a “research everydayness” of a scientific community. Paradigms in a given human science may only engender – so Kuhn’s argument goes – a number of simultaneous incompatible “schools”. These are distinguished by specific values and stereotypes of interpretation, but not by routine practices of a team-work. On various occasions Kuhn insists (in particular, in his “Comment on the Relations of Science and Art”) that in contradistinction to the arts and the human sciences, there are no schools in the natural sciences. In sum, when Kuhn proclaims that the natural sciences are not a hermeneutic enterprise, he has in mind the lack of methods of reproductive interpretation in them. When, however, one goes on to reformulate the notion of normal science in hermeneutic terms, one faces the need to make use of the ontological conception of interpretation as constitutive appropriation of possibilities within-the-world. Following Kuhn’s tenets, one can hold that because of the lack of “semiartistic” interpretative methods (which promote the formation of “schools”) and because of using repeatable procedures (like experimentation) in disciplines like physical chemistry and biophysics, the routine organization of practices of a team-work becomes possible. Kuhn admits, however, that though not singled out as a special method, interpretation is intrinsic to normal research in the

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natural sciences. Though he does not offer a philosophical account of the interpretative nature of the routine everydayness of scientific research, his stance approximates the view of philosophical hermeneutics that interpretation is an ontological dimension of “the everyday mode of being-in-the-world” (in Kuhn’s case, the “research everydayness” of a normal scientific community). Like the champions of philosophical hermeneutics, Kuhn differentiates between (theoretical, semantic) interpretation as a cognitive procedure and interpretation that is embedded in the interrelatedness of routine practices. In this regard, I would not agree with Hubert Dreyfus who writes: “Heidegger’s emphasis on truth-determining practices is remarkably similar to Kuhn’s in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, but they draw opposed conclusions from their shared insights ... Kuhn argues persuasively ... that a given scientific lexicon of natural kind terms determines what can count as true ... Heidegger would agree with Kuhn’s elegant argument that true statements in science can be made only relative to a lexicon. But the strong claim that no lexicon can be true or false of physical reality does not follow from the fact of incommensurate lexicons ... Specifically, it follows from Heidegger’s account that, although truth depends on Dasein’s practices, among which is the linguistic practice of using incommensurate scientific lexicons, a whole lexicon can be true and another false ...” (Dreyfus 1994, p. 279) I would not agree with Dreyfus’ analysis because he goes on to compare not Kuhn’s view of the “hermeneutic basis” of normal scientific research, but the linguistic relativism of The Structure with Heidegger’s view of Dasein’s concernful dealing within-the-world. In Chapter Two of this study, I shall try to show that early Kuhn’s linguistic relativism is a consequence of a version of framework-content dualism, and for that reason it is incompatible with Heidegger’s non-epistemological account of science. Yet the view of the “hermeneutic basis” supports entirely the claim of existential ontology that the finitude of human beings discloses the infinity of existential possibilities within-the-world. It is the picture of the interplay of immanence and transcendence (of existential finitude and projected horizon of infinite possibilities) that provides an elegant argument against all kinds (including the linguistic one) of relativism. Is it possible, however, to re-read Kuhn as an author whose main line of argumentation is (to borrow Richard Bernstein’s expression) “beyond objectivism and relativism”?6 Obviously, a hermeneutic reformulation of the concept of normal science has to confront with that relativism which follows from the view that after a scientific revolution the new scientific community is working “in a different world”. I will discuss on several occasions in this book the way of surmounting this relativism from the viewpoint of the “situated transcendence” of scientific research. Let me, however, focus on an anti-relativist argument (formulated most succinctly by Ian Hacking) against Kuhn, which I shall

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oppose. Target of the argument is the following claim: “Though the world does not change with a change of paradigm, the scientist afterwards works in a different world.” (Kuhn 1962, p. 121) The claim is quite a convenient point of departure for developing a sort of neo-Kantian historicism. Yet it is above all a serious challenge to basic assumptions of the analytical philosophy of science. Hacking refers to Kuhn’s challenge as a “new-world problem”. In his view, the problem consists in explaining what it does mean that scientists on either side of a global transformation of theoretical ideas are said to work in different worlds. (See Hacking 1993, p. 276) Leading in Hacking’s solution is the view that the world does not change, but after a scientific revolution the scientists work in a world of new kinds. On this suggestion, the new-world problem has to be sketched in terms of a theory of “scientific kinds” which are sui generis composition of kinds of instruments, apparatus, and artificial phenomena and “kinds found in nature”. The world of individuals is an objective reality that is distinguished from the world of kinds, where in order to get to grips with a postrevolutionary working in a new world one is obliged to “study how the introduction of a kind of instrument alters the world in which the experimenter works not by having a new pile of physical stuff held together with string and sealing wax but by having an instrument of a new kind, with which certain types of intentional behavior become possible.” (Hacking 1993, p. 307) Crucial for Hacking’s approach to the new-world problem is the statement that all scientific facts are relations between scientific (conceptual-experimental-instrumental) kinds. Hacking combines his position of entity-realism with a sort of moderate constructivism. In contrast to the radical nominalism, his starting point is the presumption that the world (of scientific research) is not only the thematic world of investigation but the world of a community using conceptual and experimental instruments designed to fall under various descriptions. (A scientific community not only “sees theoretically” a new world, but it works and lives in a new world.) The final step in Hacking’s proposal consists in arranging in taxonomic trees the kinds investigated in various branches of science, whereby scientific kinds in this taxonomy never overlap; “either one is properly contained in the other, or they are mutually exclusive.” (Hacking 1993, p. 278) Consequently, the natural-kind terms current in the old world cannot be translated into natural-kind terms of the new world. The price Hacking’s solution has to pay is the retention of a sort of a “residuary-Cartesian dualism”. The solution harbours the metaphysical distinction between individuals and kinds which echoes this dualism. In several papers Hacking has been telling us that basic for all philosophical undertakings is the distinction between the world of individuals and the world(s) of kinds. In my view, the talk of worlds of acting, working, living (and finally constructing kinds designated by names that are projectable in Nelson Goodman’s sense) which are

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superstuctures over the material world of individuals is a continuation of the “old-speak” talk of the “external world” that is “out there” as opposed to the (individual and social) cognitive apparata. In his “new-speak” talk Hacking simply replaces the independence of the external world with Putnam’s independence of reference of terms from any particular scientific theory. Hacking fails to surmount Cartesian dualism in a radical manner since he does not take into consideration the fact that scientific communities find individuals in “the natural world” always within a projected (here not in Nelson Goodman’s sense) “worldness of the world” as a horizon of interrelated discursive practices. There are neither “natural kinds” nor individuals in the “natural world” existing beyond the projected horizon of being-in-the-world. This claim is the starting point of a solution of the new-world problem in terms of hermeneutic phenomenology. At the same time, it provides the rationale for a reformulation of the concept of normal science. It is in keeping with the “practical nature” of normal scientific enterprise that would allow a closer look at the “interpretative phenomena” taking place in scientific research. On the level of the interrelatedness of such practices normal science is predicated on a self-regulatory development. Even when a paradigm changes, inducing thereby significant shifts in the criteria legitimating the results of the puzzle-solving enterprise, there is no break of the continuity of changing configurations of interrelated research practices. The interrelatedness of practices always projects a horizon of further possibilities of doing research; a horizon that resists even the most radical scientific revolution. This horizon is not to be confused with a conceptual scheme. Moreover, it is not statically projected onto normal scientific practices. It is (pre)given in a specific manner to each particular situation of the research process. It is also an “anticipatory horizon” (or, a “horizon of expectation”) regarding the (situational) outcomes of the puzzle-solving activity. Discrepancies between the expectations suggested by the tradition of practical experience and the actual results of research practices like measurements and calculations call into question the “practical rationality” (the “prudence”) of the puzzle-solving enterprise. Kuhn’s arriving at the view of normal science’s phronesis is closely related to his criticism of the equation of scientific rationality with normative-epistemological justification.7 Neither the theory of scientific change that stipulates “a constancy of logic and method which unifies each scientific age with that which preceded it and with that which is yet to follow” (Scheffler 1967, p. 9), nor Laudan’s reticulated model of change can give an account of normal science’s practical rationality which provokes a revolutionary conceptual change. The oversimplification countenanced in these conceptions is painful. The account I am looking for is to be given in terms of a hermeneutics of “practical experience” that combines ideas of hermeneutic phenomenology and practice theory. “Practical experience” is

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an expression denoting that kind of “unreflective understanding” which is informed by the anticipatory horizon.8 To a certain extent, the attitude of “practical experience” that calibrates practices, rules, and dispositions in normal scientific research resembles Bourdieu’s “habitus”. The experience of normal science (say, in molecular biology) is “acquired” through participation in the research practices that this experience perpetuates through the “exemplars” (deriving molecular structures from X-ray diffraction patterns, experiments with information transfer from nucleic acid to protein, sequence analyses of genetic codes, etc.) it generates. Normal scientific experience plays the role of a habitus when in its perpetuation it selects the actions a scientific community’s members perform. One of the reasons why Bourdieu introduces the notion of habitus is to prevent explanations of the organization of practices based on the presumption that thoughts, rules, and plans are not mere accompaniments of practice, but causes and independent determinants of it. In treating (in certain papers) normal science as a self-regulated organization of practices, Kuhn opposes such explanations as well. One can take a step further by claiming that the paradigm’s rules of intepretation (the “hermeneutic basis of normal science” in Kuhn’s terms) are generated by the interrelatedness of activities involved in the research process. It is this interrelatedness that institutes the normative resource (rules and standards) of interpretation, which is at the same time the “implicit normativeness” of normal scientific research. In other words, normal science is an interrelatedness of norm-instituting, interpretative practices. The process of norm-instituting is engendered by the very discursive-practical fore-structure which in this case is a horizon of interpretation by carrying out normal scientific practices. There is a mutual reinforcement of interpretation and norm-instituting process which is an aspect of what Kuhn dubs a “hermeneutic basis of normal science”. Like a paradigm, the hidden prescriptive factors of research practices are not independent determinants of normal science. With regard to the upcoming re-reading of Kuhn’s conception (Chapter Two), I should like to single out the moments whose working out will be guiding my attempt to find a way beyond the edge of epistemological justification. The first moment concerns the coexistence of a holistic view of normal science’s cognitive structure and (a kind of ) “historical hermeneutics” in this conception. The second moment is the inherence of “practical understanding and interpretation” in the normal scientific enterprise. The unity of understanding/interpretation and discursive practices in normal science informs a discursive-practical forestructure of scientific research which is the medium of articulation of all conceptual paradigms. And the third moment is the type of historicity that arises out of the dynamics of normal scientific practices. It is a type that opposes both the Hegelian type of rational reconstruction and historical-cognitive relativism.

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b. Providing a Rationale for a Hermeneutic Reformulation of Normal Science Nancy Cartwright, an author who by no means subscribes to a “hermeneutic program” in the philosophy of science, pinpoints the problems that call into being a reading of normal science related to interpretative notions like practice, tradition, experience, discourse, and situation. She makes it clear that in Kuhn’s conception there is no suggestion “that the concepts of force, mass, and acceleration have no meaning of their own, that they need to be defined by more concepts like separation and charge. Rather, we need, case by case, to understand more concretely what being subject to a force of a given size consists in.” (Cartwright 1993, p. 270) By implication, the “normal scientific practitioners” are not seeking to reduce the theoretical to the observable, nor are they doing anything that bears on confirming a theory or testing a theoretical construction experimentally. Rather, they are, in an interpretative manner, fitting their concepts out in concrete models by means of which they constitute the reality under investigation. If one undertakes a step further in this direction, one shall go on to aver that the “interpretative fitting out” is that central feature of normal science which makes hermeneutic reflection necessary. The analysis of the nexus between a community’s belief in the existence of theoretical objects and a routine interrelatedness of research practices illustrates in a tentative manner how this reflection should operate. In a nutshell, the hermeneutic reformulation I am after consists in the demonstration that normal science is neither an idealized activity that can be “rationally reconstructed” (though it resembles Lakatos’ “work in the protective belt”) nor a state of affairs that is in need of explanation in terms of the sociology of scientific communities (though precisely its scrutiny has essentially contributed to the rise of cognitive sociology of science). In comparing Kuhn’s normal scientific puzzle-solving with Lakatos’ account of long-term stability in the history of science, Alan Musgrave observes that the only difference between both conceptions “is that Kuhn, following Polanyi, uses psychological terminology, and speaks of the normal scientific community being ‘committed’ to its paradigm. Lakatos, on the other hand, speaks not of ‘commitments’ but of methodological decisions.” (Musgrave 1976, p. 458) In fact, Kuhn has never dealt with the psychological problematics of the motivation of a scientific community’s members. “Commitment to a paradigm” has not so much to do with personal motivations but with the conservatism of the normal scientific mentality. The latter cannot be elucidated in terms of the “context of discovery”. “Commitment to a paradigm” is Kuhn’s expression for what in philosophical hermeneutics one calls attachment to the “prejudices of a tradition” (or, the “pre-judgments handed

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down by a tradition”). Both “commitment to a paradigm” and “tradition’s prejudices” are not subjective but rather trans-subjective phenomena.9 Furthermore, Kuhn’s stress on the conservatism of the normal scientific mentality is informed by the assumption that a scientific community involved in routine practices displays a “non-psychological familiarity” with what is going on in its research domain. I will make the case that this assumption is to be understood in terms of an analysis of the interpretative phenomena indicated in the preceding section. To begin with, a reformulation of normal science in terms of hermeneutic phenomenology requires a clear delineation of the reality under investigation without committing any kind of sociological or epistemological reductionism. This reality is to be classified under the heading “a scientific community doing normal research in a scientific domain”. The whole expression designates a unitary notion, which is not a mere composition of its ingredients. In other words, “a community of researchers working in a scientific domain” denotes a sui generis entity. “Scientific community” is a sociological notion, whereas “scientific domain” is an epistemological notion. My point is that a “scientific community working in a scientific domain” is neither sociological nor epistemological, but a notion that has to acquire its meaning in the context of a hermeneuticophenomenological constitutional analysis.10 It is impossible to match the notions of “scientific community” and “scientific domain” by recasting each of them separately in terms of a constitutional analysis. Like the notion of a “scientific community working in a scientific domain” is irreducible to its ingredients, the constitutional analysis is not a “composite framework” of descriptive sociology and normative epistemology. The aim of the hermeneutic reformulation of normal science in terms of this analysis is to show that the inquiry into the “embeddedness” of both the structure of a scientific domain and the structure of a scientific community in the interrelatedness of discursive practices opens up a new avenue for scrutinizing scientific research. Stressing the irreducibility of (the kinds of) constitutional analysis to empirical or normative-epistemological investigations allows one to elaborate on a set of notions that go beyond the traditional opposition between the context of discovery and the context of justification. The notion of “horizon” (and its derivative, the notion of hermeneutic fore-structure, which will play a crucial role in this study) belong precisely to the intended context of constitutional analysis. They have to be taken into consideration when at stake is the issue of the integrity of a “community doing normal research in a scientific domain”. Roughly speaking, in the context of the constitutional analysis at issue is the hermeneutic circularity between the horizon (of doing research) and the particular situations of the research process in which a community of researchers and a scientific domain gradually take shape. It is this circularity that cannot be recast in terms of sociology and normative epistemology. The constitution of both a scientific

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community and a scientific domain proceeds within a given horizon of doing research. Yet to do justice to the notion of “horizon” requires making use of many other hermeneutico-phenomenological notions, in the first place those of “transcendence”, “situatedness”, “projection”, and “interpretative articulation of meaning”. In a succinct formulation: Normal scientific research in a given domain is a community’s everyday-routine mode of being-in-the-world where “the world” is both the interrelatedness of practices and the ongoing articulation of cognitive content. The conception that will begin to emerge is a result of a twofold disagreement with theoretical (as championed by post-positivism) and practical (as suggested by neopragmatism) holism. This conception states that since no puzzle-solving enterprise can exist unless its practitioners are involved in a network of “everyday dealings” in a domain of scientific research, there is always a fore-structure of the articulation of a domain’s cognitive structure. This fore-structure, however, does not exist per se. It can only be recognized in the process of articulation of the cognitive content of a scientific domain. Roughly speaking, discursive-practical fore-structure (as unreflective “practical understanding and interpretation” in carrying out routine research practices) projects a room-formaneuver concerning possibilities of articulating (conceptually, mathematically, and methodologically) a domain of research. In each particular situation of the research process, the articulation of a domain’s cognitive content is pressed forward into a limited range of possibilities. All cognitive, experimental and communicative activities of producing (worlds of ) scientific kinds are “always already” within-the-world. And vice versa, because there is no worldless activity the talk about an independent world of individuals is meaningless. Within-the-world precedes ontologically both the “world of kinds” and the “world of individuals”. Only within-the-world one is able to draw a demarcation between kinds and individuals (as a specification of the epistemic “subject-object cut”). Furthermore, all demarcations of such a sort (i.e., demarcations based on epistemological considerations) are to be only held with regard to their origin in the discursive-practical being-in-the-world. To stress this is to move towards a reflection upon scientific communities’ twodimensional existence – within a theoretical world expressed by a domain’s cognitive content, and within a practical horizon of doing research. This reflection is a prelude to a strong (ontological) hermeneutics of science. Working in a new world means changing the mode of being-in-the-world, where the “world” is both the interpretative fore-structure (world-as-a-horizon of doing research) and the changing structure of a domain of research (world-as-a-thematizedreality). The expression “being-in-the-world” stands for a human being’s practical (concernful) involvement in the “world” constituted at the same time by the everydayness of interrelated practices. Therefore, the “world” is simultaneously

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pre-given (not to the involvement in it in general, but to the particular situations qua configurations of discursive practices) and constituted by these practices. The meaningfulness of the “world” rests upon the discursive-practical involvement/constitution in/of it. There is no meaning (including the meaning of the empirical facts studied by scientific theories) in the “world” without beingin-the-world. (To put it in another way, there is no “objectivity”, however defined epistemologically, without discursive-practical constitution of meaning.) Accordingly, there is no “world” independent of (the modes of ) being-in-theworld. The “world” is changeable since the modes of being-in-the-world are variable. The existential unity of “agents” and “world” precedes the “emancipation” of any kind of epistemic subject as opposed to an external world that is “out there”. In this perspective, “to work in a new world” amounts to being involved in a new routine discursive-practical enterprise characterized by a specific world-as-a-horizon and world-as-a-thematized-reality. Yet however radical the “newness” of the new “world”, there is always an interpretative fore-structure which it shares with the old “world”. The task to re-read Kuhn’s work with the intention to reformulate the notion of normal science requires specifying the “target-conceptions” by means of which the reformulation should be accomplished. These are hermeneutic and phenomenological doctrines which have to provide the relevant context of the re-reading and the appropriate terms of the reformulation. Yet the “target-conceptions” need also to be contextualized. They are to be placed in the context of searching for a new (postmetaphysical) “identity of science”. In addressing this context, Gianni Vattimo makes the observation that “drawing primarily on aesthetic experience, hermeneutics further advances the polemical assertion of the superiority of the human sciences to the natural sciences ...; and in so doing, it closes off the path to a recognition of its own nihilistic vocation, remaining moreover linked to a vision of science ... that is still metaphysical.” (Vattimo 1997, pp. 16-17). Prima facie, it does not make much sense to match the “nihilistic meaning of the philosophy of interpretation” with the need for a hermeneutic reevaluation of the natural sciences. If one is going, however, to do justice to this undertaking in terms of “the logic of Nietzsche’s hermeneutics” (as Vattimo suggests), then the “nihilistic vocation of hermeneutics” seems most relevant to the search for a “postmetaphysical identity of science”.11 Vattimo tells us that the “existentialist discovery” of the finiteness of the practical and theoretical horizons of scientific research cannot be separated from that series of events which in Nietzschean terms is called “the history of nihilism”. In other words, a hermeneutically reformurlated Kuhnian philosophy of science does belong to “the nihilistic history of modernity”. Vattimo makes sense of this statement by referring to late Heidegger’s ideas. In discarding the reading of these ideas as a road to an

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“apophasic ontology”, he launches a “leftist reading of Heidegger” that is guided by the intention to remain faithful to the ontico-ontological difference (i.e., faithful to the engagement of avoiding the collapse of hermeneutic ontology into a kind of interpretative relativism). Yet this ontology can never be achieved in the form of a complete and universal theory of interpretation in whose terms one can recast the cultural (scientific, religious, political, moral, aesthetic, etc.) experience of modernity. The “return of Being” is no longer possible. What remains possible is “the history of Being as the story of a ‘long goodbye’, of an interminable weakening of Being.” (Vattimo 1997, p. 13) In this case, the overcoming of modern metaphysics is understood as “a recollection of the oblivion of the ontico-ontological difference”. This “weakly ontological theory of interpretation” is precisely in harmony with the post-Nietzshean nihilistic vocation of hermeneutics. The “tendency of weakening” through a recollection of what is forgotten in modernity is, in Vattimo’s view, the only possible way of philosophizing “after the death of God”. Now, the tendency of weakening concerns not only the metaphysical subject-object dualism, foundationalism, objectivism, and representationalism. The “long goodbye” is also an interminable weakening of the ontico-ontological difference itself. A weakly ontological theory of interpretation (not to be confused with James Bohman’s “weak holism”, which is a kind of interpretative epistemology) has to make the phenomenological ontology of human finiteness translatable into interpretative theories with an empirical status (e.g., reflexive sociology, interpretative anthropology, theory of structuration, practice theory). The weakening of the ontico-ontological difference means in this regard a dialogue (based on a partial co-translatability) between ontological and ontic interpretation (or, between hermeneutic ontology and interpretative scientific theories). 12 It is this dialogue that underlies the search for modernity’s “postmetaphysical identities” (including that of modern science). Yet the weakening of the ontico-ontological difference is by no means only a manifestation of the Nietzschean nihilistic vocation of hermeneutics. The “dialogue that weakens” opens up not only the possibility of the aforementioned interpretative theories, but also a wide range of hybrid ontico-ontological discourses which are at once manifestations of a “postmetaphysical culture” and topoi of hermeneutic theorizing where postmetaphysical identities are forged. In contributing to the construction of such identities, the ontico-ontological discourses have an affirmative vocation as well. Examples of these discourse are art criticism (moulded upon the Gadamerian critique of aesthetic consciousness) after (what Arthur Danto 1986, pp. 81-116 calls) “the end of art”; interpretative theological conceptions aiming at a deconstruction of religious fundamentalism;13 and the sociophilosophical discourses that seek for (what Chantal Mouffe 1993 calls) “the return of the political”. The ontological hermeneutics of science should be ranked

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among these discourses. Its task is to provoke a science’s new philosophical self-reflection (and “identity”) that can overcome the ideology of scientism. (See Ginev 2000, pp. 94-99). Though I do not share the view that the only vocation of contemporary philosophical hermeneutics is the nihilistic one, I completely agree with Vattimo that only an ontological theory of interpretation that can forge a non-objectivist (and a “non-scientistic”) identity of science can be a truly postmetaphysical hermeneutics. In reaching this conclusion, let me turn now first to the views I will oppose in my hermeneutic account of scientific research, and second, to the target-conceptions that shall be used in the intended reformulation of normal science.

c. Against Externalism, and the Farewell to Normative Epistemology As a rule, internalism is defended by those who champion normative epistemology and cognitive essentialism about the structure and dynamics of scientific knowledge.14 This study is led by the intention to dismiss normative epistemology and cognitive essentialism in scrutinizing scientific research. Nevertheless, the study advocates a kind of internalism. Yet this is not the internalism of the “rational reconstructions” whose proponents expect to find support for their epistemological theories of rationality in the “empirical manifestation” of science’s “internal logic” of development. The view I am going to put forward is rather a kind of hermeneutic internalism. On this view, the theoretical and practical horizons of scientific research are responsible for science’s cognitive specificity (and autonomy).15 Furthermore, the interpretative “effective history” (Gadamer’s Wirkungsgeschichte) of normal scientific traditions is the “source” of science’s historicity. By implication, all kinds of science’s externalist historiographies as well as all kinds of rational historical reconstructions are “secondary” with respect to the historiographies suggested by hermeneutic internalism. Finally, this internalism is an indispensable dimension of the defence of science’s cognitive autonomy “at the end of modernity”. The “classical” externalist conceptions of science’s development and change maintain that the leading cognitive interests in constructing better (according to methodological criteria) theories and research programs are (in an important way) “affected” by social, political, and economic circumstances, or, by views stemming from political ideology, aesthetic doctrines, metaphysical systems, religious experience, and moral world-views. For Edgar Zilsel (1942), it is the systematic contact between intellectual strata (university scholars, secular humanists, and artisans) that in the early modern age brought into a dialogue the experimental thinking and the neo-Platonic mathematical speculations. These

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strata were separate in late Mediaeval Europe and due to the technological innovations by the beginning of the 17th century a merger of the liberal and mechanical arts (and of the aforementioned strata) took place. In the final reckoning, the socio-economic change (and the progress of mechanical technology) in early capitalist societies “affected” the cognitive interest in having mathematized theories with empirical interpretations. For Robert Merton (1978, p. 238), “the combination of rationalism and empiricism that is so pronounced in the Puritan ethic forms the essence of the spirit of modern science.” The cognitive interest in carrying out experiments whose results acquire meaning in the frameworks of formalized theories was provoked by the co-existence of neo-Platonic rationalism and the practical, active, and methodical bents of Puritanism. For Boris Hessen, the cognitive interest in developing a general mechanics (as expressed in Newton’s Principia) is a response to the technological needs of emerging merchant capitalism and manufacture. Joseph Needham “derives” the cognitive interest in constructing scientific theories based on conceptual idealization from the bourgeoisie’s political power which succeeded in bridging the gap between mental and manual labour. For him (like for Zilsel), the nomological design of modern science (i.e., the structuration of scientific knowledge according to the doctrine that the universal natural laws have a divine origin) is inspired by the rise of powerful centralized goverments in the early modern period. All these conceptions share the assumption that the production of specific cognitive content in the research process is “embraced” by a cultural-historical medium. The embracement is responsible for the content’s specificity. The latter is a function of the former. Changes of the cultural-historical medium would imply changes of the cognitive content (new objects of inquiry, new patterns of theorizing, new mathematical apparata, etc.). Indeed, only some Marxist conceptions admit that the medium determines (by establishing causal relations) the “production” of scientific research. (For instance, the socio-economic situation of 17th-century England determines the structure of classical mechanics, including such particular facts as Newton’s denial that motion is inherent to matter, or his failure to develop a law of the conservation of energy.) Yet, regardless of how “classical” externalism would specify the functional dependence on the cultural-historical medium, in all cases the view is asserted that non-scientific pre-judgments underlie the judgments of scientific reason. “Non-classical” conceptions of externalism (like that of the “finalization of science”) outline more sophisticated and complex relationships between circumstances and kinds of scientific research. These conceptions are inspired by the political motive to “remove the barriers set against a social orientation of science by conservative members of the scientific community.” (Böhme 1992, p. 6)16 While classical conceptions focus on the initial phases of formation and development of scientific disciplines (when cognitive content is still largely open

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to external influences), the non-classical ones are prompted by the idea of the existence of cognitively complete branches of science, i.e. branches characterized by “closed theories” (e.g., Newtonian mechanics). Under the conditions of such a cognitive completion, the further development of the mature scientific branches is determined by targeted external purposes. The social orientation of science acquires a leading role just because there are (from an epistemological point of view) complete theories. At the same time, the incorporation of external orientation and regulation in the cognitive dynamics leads to new forms of “scientizaton” (“scientification”) of social life and the public sphere. Non-classical externalism advances non-determinist scenarios of sciencesociety relations, and this is a significant advantage as compared with the classical conceptions. In the last two decades, different forms of social, historical, political, and cultural contextualization have replaced the old-fashioned search for causal determinism. (A case in point is Steven Shapin’s [1994, pp. 310-354] cogent scenario about the formation of Robert Boyle’s view of the proper place and role of mathematics in experimental philosophy. Shapin is highly successful in revealing several non-causal relations between the probabilistic, observational and experimental early-modern English tradition, and the role of civil considerations of social order. As a result, he offers, in particular, a nice externalist account of what “mathematics” and “the mathematical sciences” in early modern culture were for those who had been involved in their practices.) Unlike the classical version, at issue now is something that mediates between social-historical circumstances and the pursuit of scientific knowledge. The role of such a mediator is played by scientists’ multifarious experiences of their own settings. These experiences are both external and internal, and their interpretation helps one to contextualize the production of science’s cognitive content. But the protagonists of non-classical (non-determinist) externalism do not dispute the main hermeneutic assumption of the classical version – the assumption that the response to social, intellectual, and economic circumstances shapes the cognitive interest in outlining research programs and constructing theories. By implication, both versions of externalism do contribute to demolishing the critical distance from the pre-judgments of external traditions. On the main externalist assumption, there are in science’s cognitive dynamics circles of interpretation between the horizons of extra-scientific traditions and the articulation of scientific knowledge. (For scientists, these are circles underlying their ongoing practices, whereas for students of science, making the circles explicit is the chief task of understanding science historically and philosophically.) Due to these circles, the cognitive interests of constituting scientific (theoretical and/or experimental) objects are “absorbed” in what might be counted as “external pre-judgments” of the research process. I think that this assumption is wrong. More specifically, I believe that there is an essential incoherence in

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the externalist relativization of science’s cognitive interests (and content) to cultural-historical settings. To carry out such a relativization requires two incompatible procedures. First, one has to draw in epistemological terms a clear borderline between the content and context of scientific research. Second, one needs to look for a hermeneutic unity (a common circle of interpretation) between external horizons and internal content. This unity-disunity-contradiction of content-context-relations expresses, in my view, the hermeneutic fallacy of every version of externalism. (There is a special class of historical studies, represented typically by those of Mario Biagioli, which are looking for externalist accounts not of the production of scientific knowledge but of the legitimation of science. For instance, Biagioli [1990, pp. 253-258] tries to show that an epistemological legitimation of Copernican astronomy and the mathematical exploration of nature Galileo practised, required Galileo’s extraneousness to his dicovery of the stars. In this case, the hermeneutic fallacy does not arise since the institutionalized codes of a given socio-cultural milieu [like those of the Medici court culture and the Medici system of patronage] are not supposed to explain phenomena of cognitive dynamics.) Even the most detailed externalist case studies fail to take into account scientific traditions’ potential of translatability of the external pre-judgments into interpretative fore-structures of scientific research. Thus, in his celebrated study of the formation of conceptual structures of quantum mechanics in the Weimar academic world, Paul Forman makes the point that physicists’ bias towards a renunciation of the principles of causality was influenced by the “irrational metaphysics” (Spengler’s philosophy of life in the first place) of that period. No doubt, the repudiation of causality was an external pre-judgment rooted in various philosophical, artistic, and political reactions against the abstract intellectualism associated with mechanical determinism. Forman is quite successful in arguing that the wide acceptance of non-determinist patterns of theorizing was an expression of physicists’ wish to remove the pain of spiritual loneliness and to form a community with those who dictated the intellectual fashion. In his view, the search for non-causal models in the development of quantum mechanics under the circumstances of Weimar culture is an “ideological adaptation” to the Zeitgeist. Forman’s case study, however, does not have resources to explain why the ideological adaptation to the intellectual environment that might result in a personal capitulation to irrational philosophical views and dangerous political doctrines is not erosive to science’s cognitive structures. (On the contrary, this ideological adaptation is quite fruitful for the advent of quantum mechanics.) To be sure, there is something “irrational” in physicists’ adaptation to the “hostile intellectual environment”, and perhaps, there is a sort of “transgression” of the academic ethos and “the codex of scientific honesty”. Echoes of this

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transgression are to be heard in Wilhelm Wien’s statement that “the results of research are worthless if they are not taken up into the culture”; in the “quasireligious conversions to acausality” (Walter Schottky, Richard von Mises, and Walther Nernst); and in the fact that “most German mathematicians and physicists largely participated in, or accommodated their persona to, a generally Spenglerian point of view.” (Forman 1971, p. 55) But why did not this irrationalism and dubious ideological adaptation to the intellectual climate invite distortions of the cognitive structure of scientific research? Why did not the ideological adaptation transform scientific theories into ideological constructions? Why was not the openness to acausality’s pre-judgments destructive in terms of provoking non-scientific forms of idealization, conceptualization, formalization, and so on? Perhaps, there is a significant link between “Weimar cultural irrationalism” and the philosophical spirit of quantum theory, but (unlike the human sciences) there is no merger between extra-scientific (in particular, metaphysical) ideas and cognitive content.17 To reiterate, the central shortcoming of both versions of externalism consists in the failure to take into account the potential of translatability of scientific research. Here, “translatability” is to be understood in the first place as the opposite to the “absorption” of cognitive interests I mentioned earlier. Translatability connotes the potential of scientific research to transform all significant external influences into “cognitive factors” of its own mode of being-in-theworld. Nothing external can exercise an influence before being integrated in the intrinsic hermeneutic circles of the constitution of cognitive content. No social, political, or economic circumstance can affect the pursuit of scientific research without being caught up in the intrinsic interpretative fore-structure of the research process. In contrast to the hermeneutic assumption of externalism, the version of internalism defended here assumes that the interpretative openness of the constitution of a domain’s cognitive content rules out any kind of external determinism. Thus considered, the research process’ interpretative openness promotes a version of cognitive existentialism: The research process in a given domain is mature when the interpretative choice and appropriation of possibilities is (1) not disturbed by “untranslatable” external circumstances; and (2) carried out entirely in its own space of possibilities (i.e., in the hermeneutic forestructure of the research process). (1) and (2) provide the most general characterization of cognitive existentialism. I am not going to state that cognitive existentialism is a consequence from hermeneutic internalism. Rather, by discussing issues of the latter, one is able to enter into the problematics of the former. On a further connotation of cognitive existentialism, it is this fore-structure of scientific research that selects what to internalize from the cultural-historical milieu and what to transform into “cognitive factors”. From that point of view, scientific research constructs (or creates)

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its own medium. Due to the interpretative dimensions of scientific research, the constitution of cognitive content “makes possible” a relevant external context, which becomes only “visible” within the theoretical and practical horizons of the research process. (When one goes on to restrict cognitive existentialism only to the free choice of possibilities within the research process, then it would be more with a Sartrean than with a Heideggerian flavour. Sartre (1963, p. 168) states that “existentialism is anthropology insofar as anthropology seeks to give itself a foundation.” Not a hermeneutic ontology but the “immediate comprehension” of the project as non-determined choice of possibilities provides this foundation. This existentialism stresses in the first place the moment of free choice and responsibility. My aim, however, is to show that the conception of hermeneutic internalism is rather in line with a kind of cognitive existentialism grounded on the tenets of hermeneutic phenomenology [and ontology]. For Heideggerian existentialism, what is important is not the individual’s free choice, but the interpretative fore-structure that underlies the problem of choice. The project is not an elaborated plan of acting, but the very existence that is pressed forward into possibilities. Although the free choice always takes place withinthe-world of projected possibilities, existence is not determined by something that is outside it. To claim that there is a fore-structure that underlies the problem of choice is not to hold an essentialist determinism. The “ontological priority” of the hermeneutic fore-structuring of scientific research [within the room of projected possibilities] over all kinds of “anthropological factors” is the hallmark of the Heideggerian version of cognitive existentialism. To follow this version, however, is by no means an unreserved commitment to Heidegger’s variety of hermeneutic phenomenology. The version of cognitive existentialism, I will put forward in this book, involves both a radical criticism of Heidegger’s “existential conception of science” and an implementation of ideas stemming from postwar variants of hermeneutic phenomenology.) Let me now spell out the same argumentation from another perspective. Hermeneutic internalism does not efface the essential (and philosophically significant) differences between the objectifying natural sciences and the interpretative human sciences. On the contrary, it provides a rationale for arguing that the genuine discussion of these differences can be addressed not by normative epistemology (and methodology), but by hermeneutic philosophy.18 In contrast to the human sciences where there is a constant fusion of internal and external horizons, – a fact of prime importance for Gadamer’s hermeneutics – in the natural sciences the extra-scientific pre-judgments (however influential they might be) are always internalized in practical and theoretical horizons of the research process. Because of the internalization, this process possesses the aforementioned “potential of translatability” of pre-judgments into cognitive content’s elements. Physicists cannot escape the influence of the milieu in which they live,

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but nevertheless, physical science is immune to the destructive effects of this milieu. There are no extra-scientific pre-judgments that underlie the work of scientific reason. (Forman could display discontent with a certain research program of that period, but would not go on to claim that even the “fundamentally acausal quantum mechanics” is an irrational enterprise. Though the acausality may result from external influence, it does not operate in physical theories as a metaphysical idea. It is rather an internalized pre-judgment that is translatable into theories’ conceptual, observational, and mathematical languages.) It is the failure to take into account the above mentioned potential of translatability that indicates the hermeneutic deficit of externalism. The deficit rests upon the wrong presumption that patterns of thinking stemming from the extrascientific milieu come directly (or, via scientists’ experiences) into the theoretical frameworks of scientific research. To put it in another way, what the externalist conceptions fail to take into account is the unavoidable translation of external pre-judgments in ideas and views that only acquire meaning within the theoretical and practical horizons of scientific research. In drawing a parallel with Carnap’s “internal questions”, one could argue that the pre-judgments coming from the intellectual milieu are only operative in scientific research when they are internalized in the hermeneutic circles characterizing the effective-historical dynamics of the research process. The “intrinsic hermeneutic circles” of scientific research are stronger than the direct external influence upon science’s cognitive structure. Now, I am in a position to take a preliminary look at the hermeneutic situation of the natural sciences. They attain a cognitive autonomy through a “selective translation” of views, ideas and doctrines in constructions that address “internal questions” of scientific research. (If not translated in an appropriate manner, many of the “external pre-judgments” may threaten the ethos of research.) The “methodologically controlled alienation” from the intellectual environment is carried out within the theoretical and practical horizons of doing research, which in this case are also “horizons of translatability”. (In this book I will make the case that it is not the “anti-hermeneutic nature” but the hermeneutic situation of the natural sciences that demands this alienation. And it is not the “purification from hermeneutics” but the “hermeneutics of selective translation” and cognitive existentialism that provide the mechanism of alienation and autonomy.) Thanks to the ongoing translatability that internalizes external prejudgments, the constitution of theoretical objects of investigation is entirely placed in the cognitive dynamics of research traditions. And because of this translatability, the cognitive dynamics takes on the form of an effective-historical development, i.e., a development in which every construction is predicated on a “situated transcendence”.

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The hermeneutic situation of achieving autonomy by means of an ongoing translatability of external pre-judgment informs also the indestructible cognitive specificity of the natural sciences. This specificity owes its existence to the stability of the interpretative fore-structures (the intrinsic “horizons of translatability”) and not ( pace Husserl and Gadamer) to the procedures of idealization. The natural sciences are resistant to external influences (and able to maintain their cognitive specificity) not because their research process is a non-interpretative enterprise, but because of the potential of translatability they demonstrate in each particular historical situation. Their cognitive specificity has to be defined first and foremost with respect to the intrinsic hermeneutic circles constituted by that ongoing translatability which prevents the “ideologization”, “metaphysical finalization”, or “political manipulation” of the research process. Science maintains its cognitive autonomy not through isolation by implementing procedures of idealization, but by means of interiorization based on ongoing translatability. To come to grips with this hermeneutic situation is the task of the “strong hermeneutics of science” which I will address in the first chapter. From a “political” point of view, the advocate of hermeneutic internalism is an uncompromising antagonist of all “postmodern philosophies of science” that expose the academic ethos and autonomy of scientific research to danger. In particular, she opposes the social epistemologists’ attempts to reform scientists’ research practices in a “socially responsible manner”.19 The advocate of hermeneutic internalism rejects the very possibility of developing normative programs for a society’s political control over the production of scientific knowledge. Every appeal to the “democratization of scientific authority” from outside (i.e., from “the rest of society”) threatens scientific research with a destruction of its practical and theoretical horizons of producing knowledge. Against the background of the view of hermeneutic internalism outlined thus far, let me indicate the type of criticism of normative epistemology that will be followed in this book. The articulation of such epistemology (codifying scientific rationality) is a response to the demand of preserving science’s cognitive autonomy. In my view, it is the wrong response. At stake in normative epistemology is the belief that one may defend science’s cognitive autonomy in the context of justification by stressing a canon of (invariant) epistemological norms that express the essence of science as an intellectual enterprise. Thus, the normative-epistemological strategy of defending science’s cognitive autonomy is coupled with the position of cognitive essentialism. As a rule, those who advocate this position (cum justificationist normativism) raise the (negative) argument that there is no alternative to the essentialist view of scientific rationality.20 According to Lakatos (1978), the abandonment of this view entails a commitment not only to dubious philosophical positions (like historical relativism) but to dangerous political positions (“elitism” and “authoritarianism”) as well. Lakatos’ caution sounds reasonable and seems to suggest the indispensability

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of normative epistemology. What then is wrong with the coupling of science’s cognitive autonomy with the normative-essentialist doctrine of scientific rationality? Provisionally, I will outline four answers relating them to the efforts of Feyerabend, Polanyi, Toulmin, and hermeneutic phenomenology. Feyerabend’s answer rests on the assumption that all normative theories of rationality are only tools for insinuation that the regularities (in the development of science) are not merely factual, but are a manifestation of aprioristic normative codes of rational behaviour. There is no such theory that can provide reliable arguments for the choice of the standards of normative appraisal. All methodological canons of rationality are obtained via arbitrary steps. There is also another aspect of Feyerabend’s attack against the normative stylization of methodology as a kernel of scientific rationality. The conceptions in normative epistemology (and philosophy of science) offer arguments in favor of the “objective” (rather than “meta-historical”) character of the methodological norms, standards, and criteria. Feyerabend refutes the claim of objectivity in a manner that reminds us of the strategy of “naturalizing epistemology”. In his view, to claim objectivity for given standards means that by following them (granted that the cognitive procedures are also “objective”) one will obtain the same epistemic results in the same circumstances. This “objective normativity”, however, “arises as the result of rigorous training that reinforces some reactions and supresses others.” (Feyerabend 1974, pp. 27-28) Hence, normativity is the subject of an empirical theory of the training process in scientific institutions. The appeal to objectively valid norms (i.e., norms whose validity transcends each empirical context of their application) functions as an instrument for epistemological indoctrination. Michael Polanyi (1969, p. 138) expresses his aversion to normative epistemology by raising the following claim: “No rules can account for the way a good idea is found for starting an inquiry, and there are no firm rules either for the verification or the refutation of the proposed solution of a problem. Rules widely current may be plausible enough, but scientific inquiry often proceeds and triumphs by contradicting them.”21 The main point of Polanyi’s criticism of normative theories of knowledge is that the rules of rational scientific behaviour are part of the practical experience of doing research and they are known tacitly. The explicit formulations of rules and norms presuppose “tacit knowledge”, which is always situational and contextual. As a consequence, there is no “statute law” but only a “case law” for demarcating between rationality and nonrationality. The logic of “tacit inference” may serve as a heuristic model of the situationally prescriptive “logic of discovery”. Stephen Toulmin is most consistent among post-positivist authors, in his efforts to tie down the criticism of normative epistemology with a (partially Wittgensteinian and partially neo-Aristotelian) emphasis upon praxis and

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historical experience. Toulmin (1976, p. 666) writes: “Since the intellectual content of a natural science embraces both its (linguistic) terms and propositions and also the (non-linguistic) procedures ..., the ‘third-world’ model of science must make room for the essential praxis of natural science alongside its propositions and inferences, terms and ‘truths’.” By raising this claim, Toulmin opposes the refusal to take into account concrete, contextual, and contingent rules and norms of praxis. In his view, alluding to the normative dimensions of practical experience does not mean an irrational surrender to the context of discovery. By integrating these dimensions in the “sphere of rational discussion”, he shifts essentially the demarcational line between rational and non-rational. Questions of the changing normativity of scientific praxis remain rational (or, questions of the “evolutionary ecology” of scientific disciplines) in contrast to the institutional, psychological, or sociological questions of “scientific professions”. In his most recent papers Toulmin displays sympathy for “the hermeneutics of the natural sciences” as an approach to the inseparability of practical rules and normative codices of rationality. To sum up, there are three main types of arguing against a normative-epistemological definition of scientific rationality in post-positivist philosophy. In different ways, Feyerabend, Polanyi and Toulmin are trying to overcome the hypostatization of normativity through a certain reform of the doctrine of rational reconstructon (i.e., the doctrine that couples cognitive essentialism with normative epistemology). Feyerabend proceeds from an opportunist relativism called by him a “Kierkegaardian view of scientific rationality”: The task of reconstructive epistemology is neither to replace rules and norms, nor to show their worthlessness, but “to increase the inventory of rules, and ... to suggest a different use for all of them ... [This epistemology] regards each piece of research both as a potential instance of application for a rule and as a test case of the rule ... We are guided by the vague hope that working without the rule, or on the basis of a contrary rule we shall eventually find a new form of rationality that will provide a rational justification for the whole procedure...” (Feyerabend 1977, p. 368) This statement reveals the quintessence of “epistemological anarchism”. Polanyi tends to a kind of heuristic psychologism. He believes that the paradigm of gestalt psychology of perception demonstrates the “tacit operations” of scientific research. The cognitive coherence of the research process is grounded upon these operations and their contextual rules. Toulmin adheres to an evolutionary model of scientific reason, in which there is only room for regulative mechanisms (by no means immune to variability) that maintain a continuity in the face of historical change. Toulmin ascribes to these mechanisms implicit normative functions of preserving a dynamic equilibrium between innovative and selective processes. Again, the contextual rules of, say, selecting “ conceptual populations” in the historical evolution of collective understanding

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replace the invariant methodological norms of rational behavior. In all three cases the protest against the ahistorical and essentialist approach to the normative notion of scientific rationality does not rule out the normative dimension of scientific research. The impetus to unfold the intrinsic normativity of scientific research comes to the fore in hermeneutic phenomenology as well. Yet in this case, at issue is not the ways of contextualizing or relativizing the methodological rules, but the “regularizing perspectivity” of each mode of being-in-the-world. It is the involvement in practical and theoretical horizons that informs a perspectivity of doing research. Each particular mode of being-in-the-world constrains us to articulate meaning (as praxis, discourse, and knowledge) in a given perspective. Thus, the inescapable perspectivity of existence implies a discursive-practical proto-normativity of articulating meaning and constituting “meaningful worlds”. In hermeneutic phenomenology, the idea of discursive-practical proto-normativity is intimately related to the defence of “relativity without relativism”. However different our cognitive, historical, or linguistic worlds might be, there is always a shared horizon of “primitive meanings” and meaningful orientations of everyday practices. On this view, one has to do justice of the contextual norms and rules not by weakening the ideal of a rational reconstruction in the context of justification – a strategy followed by all post-positivist philosophers – but by spelling out the idea that in-the-world is always in a range of “existential possibilities”. In this study (Chapter Four), I am going to spell out an answer to the above formulated question and develop an alternative to the normative-epistemological justificationism from two standpoints: the proper hermeneutics of nonrepresentationalist (and holist) epistemology, and the “ontological normativity” of scientific being-in-the-world. The principal tenet I will follow demands that all epistemic normativity be articulated within the horizon-boundedness (Horizontgebundenheit) of the discursive practices in-the-world. There are no ultimate, critical standards of rationality that “transcend” the horizonboundedness. Corresponding to the latter is the notion of proto-normativity, which refers to the part-whole relations of various hermeneutic circles characterizing the normal scientific research process – relations between a projected horizon of possibilities for doing research and particular actualizations of them; between a totality of routine everydayness and particular situations in the research process; between a whole interrelatedness of research practices and particular configurations of practices; between a community’s transsubjectivity and individual choices of possibilities in a particular situation, etc. In all these cases, the horizon-boundedness serves a proto-normative function in delineating preferences, inclinations, expectations and orientations that shape the research process.

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Proto-normativity is not a “product” of a normative mentality. On the contrary, proto-normativity underlies the formation of normative-methodological attitudes in normal science. It is rather an intrinsic characteristic of the unreflective commitment to the horizon of a routine “skillful coping” with experimental instruments, conceptual and mathematical tools. Proto-normativity accompanies the self-perpetuating normal science. Since all “practical understanding” (the know-how of everyday activities) embraces a proto-normative regulation, the latter is existentially (ontologically) prior to the regulation through explicit epistemological and methodological norms.22 Notoriously, Karl-Otto Apel tries to rescue the normative epistemology and normative reconstruction of scientific rationality from the arguments of philosophical hermeneutics. Though rejecting the postulation of non-contextual methodological norms, he is not willing to dismiss the normative-epistemological notion of rationality altogether. (See Apel 1994 and 1997) In his view, the surrender of the “regulative idea of possible progress” of the rationality of understanding and interpretation is tantamount to a repudiation of a critical (evaluativereconstructive) function. If one admits the ontological priority of the protonormativity (generated by the interrelatedness of practices) and holds that the “prejudices” of practical experience are “more powerful” than the normative principles of rational dialogue and agreement, one is unable to determine the logos of hermeneutics. To do justice to this logos requires taking into account the “validity-claims in communicative agreement”, which define the regulative criteria for progress in understanding and interpretation. The “transcendental pragmatics” (as a result of reframing Kantian themes in terms of communicative intersubjectivity) rehabilitates normative epistemology’s notion of scientific rationality by recasting Lakatos’ “codices of scientific honesty” in terms of universal cognitive interests and their validity-claims. Matthias Kettner argues that in attributing a universal cognitive interest in objectifying and controlling physical nature to the natural sciences, Apel is not relativizing science’s empirical truth. He goes on to assert that “without some conceptually universal tie to human agency and to significant practices in which human agency flourishes in the actual world as a source of empirical knowledge would lose its very point for us ...” (Kettner 1996, p. 263) In opposing this claim, I should like to stress that all of the conceptually universal ties of science to human agency are generated in the medium of discursive practices of the modes of being-in-the-world that are not characterized by conceptually articulated cognitive interests (and validity-claims). The essential difference between philosophical hermeneutics and transcendental pragmatics lies in the construal of the discourse-notion. The former operates with the notion of a discourse-as-an-interpretative-medium, whereas the latter is committed to the notion of discourse as a tool of universal cognitive interests. For philosophical hermeneutics, discourse reveals the hermeneutic truth, while for transcendental pragmatics it makes validity-claims.

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This is why Apel’s enterprise needs a certain paradigm of normative epistemology. Elsewhere I spelled out the view that in rehabilitating the normative notion of (scientific) rationality, transcendental pragmatics fails to defeat cognitive essentialism. (See Ginev 1999b) The myth of a pre-communicative knowing subject is replaced by the myth of a transcendental intersubjectivity whose principles of unrestricted rational dialogue build up the ultimate cognitive essence of all cultural forms of man’s being-in-the-world. It follows from this criticism of Apel’s intersubjective reframing of normative epistemology that protonormativity is to be attributed to the phronesis of designing and carrying out practices, and not to the structural possibility of argumentative discourse. In terms of Being and Time, proto-normativity is to be attributed to the fore-sight, fore-having, and fore-conception of everyday practices.

d. On the Phenomenological Background of Cognitive Existentialism According to Husserl, the life-world of which “we are all conscious” is the horizon of our everyday life. It is the world in which forms of life distinguished by particular aims and goals take shape. The life-world is a “self-enclosed ‘world’horizon”. What exists within this world is not a matter of indifferent (objective) predication. Entities and events are meaningful when they are congruent with the participants’ ends in the life-world.23 Within the self-enclosed horizon what is right and wrong does not depend on elaborated criteria. It is the pre-predicative practical experience that decides in this regard. Like the “practical criteria” of right and wrong, the whole life-world is unthematic for the practitioners. Being in the self-enclosed world-horizon implies a “communal understanding” (Husserl’s expression) of the participants. The transition from everyday life to scientific idealizations destroys the life-world’s self-enclosedness. Husserl (1970, p. 380) writes (in a manuscript from 1936) that the “scientific world, the scientists’ horizon of being, has the character of a single work or edifice growing in infinitum, upon which the generations of scientists, belonging to it correlatively, are unendingly at work.” Since the scientific world is not constituted within a self-enclosed horizon, it is not a “work-world”, but a “work of predicative truth”. The lack of “horizons of everydayness” (or, “horizons of pre-predicative truth”) in the scientific world can be characterised as a “deworlding” (Entweltlichung). Despite all essential differences between Husserl’s and Heidegger’s conceptions of science, they share mutatis mutandis the same idea of “deworlding”. For Heidegger, in the change-over from everyday circumspection within the totality of the “equipment-world” to the theoretical attitude of objectifying thematization, one overlooks the place of what has a character of tool in this world. In this scenario of deworlding, the place of a tool in the equipment-world

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becomes a matter of indifference, or more specifically, it becomes “a spatiotemporal position, a world-point”. (In the popular example of the falling body, the everyday horizons of seeing and using such bodies are replaced by idealizations that disregard everything except the initial position and velocity of the falling body. Being reduced to “ideal-mathematical entities”, the bodies are world-points of a mathematically projected infinite reality.) Speaking more technically, after the deworlding of the equipment-world (or, the “work-world”), the transition to a mathematically homogeneous world of objectifying thematization becomes possible through the formulation of relevant theorems of invariance. In the most elementary case, these are theorems that concern displacement in time and space (as a first step of an “objectifying replacement” of the “world of concernful everydayness”). For a large class of classical theories, Poincaré’s derivation of the theorems of invariance from the equations of electrodynamics provides something like a “code of deworlding” employed by classical scientific thinking. (Notoriously, this code is invalid for most of the non-classical theories, in which one cannot derive theorems of invariance from theoretical postulates.) What for Husserl is a destruction of the self-enclosed world-horizon, for Heidegger is a releasing of places of equipment ready-to-hand from the confinement of the equipment-world. In opposing Husserl’s and Heidegger’s idea of deworlding, one of the main tasks of the strong hermeneutics of science is to reveal the intrinsic “horizons of everydayness” of scientific research. Although Heidegger deals with the “existential genesis” of science’s theoretical attitude, the very idea of deworlding (deprivation of worldness) implies cognitive essentialism about scientific research. The idea states that the mathematical projection of an infinite and homogeneous “natural world” is the cognitive essence of science on which all research practices are based. All kinds of objectifying thematization presuppose deworlding attained by means of mathematical projection. According to Heidegger (1962, p. 414), science’s specificity consists “in the fact that the entities which it takes as its theme are discovered in it in the only way in which entities can be discovered – by the prior projection of their state of being.” Strangely enough, because of the idea of deworlding “the existential conception of science” of Being and Time involves a significant essentialist assumption. The task of that version of the strong hermeneutics of science, which I will follow in this study, is to develop a kind of constitutional analysis without reducing it to cognitive essentialism. This task requires revealing the intrinsic horizons of normal scientific research and addressing hermeneutic phenomena of everydayness, situated transcendence, interrelatedness of practices, pre-narrativity, proto-normativity, temporality, hisoricality, and so on as “existential conditions” of the constitution of research domains. By integrating the account of these phenomena in a paradigm of constitutional analysis of scientific research that aims at unfolding

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science’s cognitive specificity, one follows the tenets of what I have called cognitive existentialism. Let me now touch upon that distinction of the traditional philosophy of science whose overcoming has to make headway in the further discussion of the possibility of cognitive existentialism.

e. Beyond the Context-Distinction Two great philosophers of the last century – Imre Lakatos and Azarya Polikarov– argued that there exists a realm of rational heuristic procedures and nonguaranteed methods for problem-solving between the context of discovery and the context of justification. In both cases, the belief came into prominence that there is no ultimate instance of (“Euclidean principles” in Lakatos’ terms) epistemological justification, but nevertheless, scientific research is governed by a kind of “methodological rationality”. Lakatos (starting with the program of Proofs and Refutations) was inspired by Polya’s ideas for a mathematical heuristic that is susceptible to rational analysis. Under the guidance of these ideas, Lakatos developed the methodology of research programmes. Polikarov was inspired by several lines of research in AI. His “divergent-convergent method of problem-solving” (which includes procedures of detecting possible solutions and procedures of selection of relevant solutions) is devised to identify criteria and standards of doing research that are not justified by a normativeepistemological reconstruction. In joining (from a hermeneutic position) the efforts for a heuristic philosophy of science, my aim in this study is to define a specific context of scrutinizing scientific research. I should like to call it the context of constitution (or, the context of cognitive existentialism). Delineating this context (in Chapter Three) raises the important question about the traditional distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification. The interpretative fore-structuring of scientific research is not to be cast in terms of the context of discovery, since the “spiral movement” of the hermeneutic circles (e.g., between a horizon of theorizing and particular theoretical constructions, between an interrelatedness of research practices and particular procedures of inquiry, and so on) it involves is intrinsic to the cognitive dynamics. (This statement is a corollary to hermeneutic internalism.) Yet the fore-structuring does not belong to the context of justification either, because it is not “located” in science’s “ready-made cognitive content”, which is the theme of all programs of rational reconstruction. The “situated transcendence” and interpretative openness of scientific research shifts the focus from what is complete (in epistemological and semantic terms) to what is in status nascendi (or, what is yet to be completed). Studying science in the context of constitution is opposed first and foremost to all kinds of

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reifying scientific knowledge. There is no Platonic world of science’s cognitive entities ( pace the dogmatic construals of objective knowledge’s “third world”), and no Hegelian historical logic of science’s development ( pace the attempts to build a self-consistent version of rationalism within the historiography of science that can avoid the self-authentication of philosophy in history). The constitution of science’s cognitive content is situated within the traditions of doing research. The “effective history” of these traditions is not to be subjected to the standards of a rational reconstruction. Yet the studies in the context of constitution are not to be reduced to a particular sort of empirical investigation of “science in the making”. In a central claim I am going to spell out, studies in the context of constitution place more emphasis upon the dynamics of research practices. There is no articulation of cognitive content beyond the interrelatedness of these practices. By no means, however, studies in the context of constitution would advance a picture of scientific research as a heterogeneity of contingent practices and “ local accomplishments”. In opposing any kind of philosophical essentialism, the proponents of such studies are not willing to reduce their enterprise to ethnomethdological descriptions of research practices. Ethnomethodology of science tries to avoid the methodological difficulties with the problem of “double hermeneutics” in understanding the laboratory everydayness by abandoning a core of philosophical (and sociological) interpretation in favor of an endless array of practitioners’ (philosophical and sociological) self-interpretations. For ethnomethodologists of scientific practices, only the collection of such self-interpretations (Garfinkel’s “wild sociologies”) does make sense.24 By contrast, the studies in the context of constitution start out with (the ways of) handling the problem of “double hermeneutics” in the interpretation of scientific practices. In this context, the interpretative constitutional analysis of practitioners’ self-interpretations of their being-in-research-domains (i.e., the “double hermeneutics” of the constitutional analysis) is a sui generis methodologization of the onticoontological distinction. The empirical (ontic) interpretation of research practices presupposes (and requires) an ontological interpretation of what becomes constituted within the interrelatedness of these practices. To enter the context of constitution amounts to entering the hermeneutic circles between empirical and ontological interpretation. In the context of constitution, the notion of “constitution” has very little to do with the social-constructivist notion of “construction”. I agree with Michael Lynch (1993, p. 267), who claims that “no particular epistemic or political criticism would seem to follow from the announcement that ‘science is a social construction’, nor would it imply that scientists could possibly choose to act differently.” The champions of the sociology of scientific knowledge go on to universalize the notion of “social construction” in a manner that trivializes it.

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The possibility of “facts before artifacts” in scientific research drops out of relevance. Social constructivism (in particular, cognitive sociology of science) trivializes itself by rejecting the possibility of “unconstructed realities”. In order to avoid such a self-defeating trivialization, studies in the context of cognitive existentialism specify the notion of “constitution” in paradigms of constitutional analysis. (See Ginev 2001b) The assertions that facts, social contexts, cognitive content, theories, theoretical worlds, cultures of research work and so on are constituted through processes of interpretation do make sense only within a given paradigm of constitutional analysis. These paradigms are at the bottom of the context of constitution. For many years the traditional context-distinction has been under attack from different perspectives. It has been criticised for the impossibility of drawing a clear-cut temporal differentiation between discovery and justification. In fact, discovery and justification are not only intimately interwined, but their inseparability is an essential feature of scientific work. Of course, “there is no reason to conclude that the entire process of discovering must be completed before the process of justification can begin.” (Salmon 1970, p. 37) But nevertheless, the constant interplay between discovery and justification prevents one from drawing a clear demarcational line between studying scientific research (exclusively) in terms of a certain empirical discipline and judging the rationality of this research (exclusively) in terms of normative epistemology. Neither discovery nor justification can be extracted as “pure” processes. Furthermore, the disciplines that are supposed to constitute the two contexts are not so clearly divided as the context-distinction admits. On the one hand, psychology, sociology, and cultural history (the main disciplines that provide data and explanatory resources to the context of discovery) contain significant logical and normative aspects, and on the other, normative epistemology presupposes empirical studies for delineating the context of justification. (Moreover, there is no normative justification that can be detached from the justifying psychological and social attitudes. Empirical processes are always shaping the normativity of justification.) Finally, a necessary condition for defending the context-distinction is to claim the irreducibility of normative epistemology to empirical disciplines. But if this claim fails, as, in particular, the champions of naturalized epistemology assert, then there is no room for separating the normative from the factual in scientific research.25 I am not trying here to articulate further some of the existing lines of criticism of the context-distinction. It is not my aim to reject the pragmatic validity (and value) of differentiating between normative reconstruction and “ethnographic” description of the construction of scientific knowledge. My basic argument is rather that the issues addressed in both traditional contexts are “ontologically irrelevant”. This is why neither in the context of justification nor

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in the context of discovery one can pose the problem of constitution. What strikes me about this state of affairs is not so much the dichotomizing of the factual and normative aspects of science as the fact of ignoring that both “science-as-praxis” and “science-as-cognitive-structure” are only manifestations of science as a kind of being-in-the-world. The context of constitution is to be delineated by taking into consideration the ontico-ontological difference. (In terms of this difference, both the rational justification and the empirical studies of research practices are “ontic enterprises” since they are unable to formulate and approach the ontological problematics of the constitution of meaning withinthe-world. In hermeneutic phenomenology, reflection upon this problematics defines a transcendental position with regard to the treatment of empirical and normative-evaluative issues.) This is why the ontico-ontological difference informs a transcendental dimension of the analysis of the constitution of meaning within-the-world. Yet, in delineating the context of constitution, one has to avoid a transcendental dichotomism in appropriating this for the purposes of a hermeneutics of scientific research. As I pointed out in the preceding section, a kind of transcendental dichotomism is still preserved in Heidegger’s existential conception of science. Let me remind that thanks to the transformation of the world of everydayness into a mathematical infinity of world-points, science cannot “think” the meaning of Being. It is science’s cognitive essence (objectifying thematization through mathematical projection) that prevents scientific research from asking transcendental questions about the existential-temporal structure of Being. It is no accident that Heidegger develops his conception of the “genesis” of science’s theoretical attitude in a section of Being and Time that defines the transcendental position of hermeneutic phenomenology through the formulation of “the temporal problem of the transcendence of the world”. In this context of discussion, he postulates objectifying thematization as science’s cognitive essence in order to show that the theoretical attitude that constitutes its objects of inquiry through mathematical projection cannot approach the “transcendental problem of transcendence”. By objectifying, scientific research is “making-present”, but the latter is distinguished from the temporal modus of the present of everyday circumspection withinthe-world. Science’s making-present is rather an atemporalization that prevents from thinking the “ecstatical unity of temporality” as the transcendence of the world. Yet if “transcendence does not consist in objectifying, but is presupposed by it” (Heidegger 1962, p. 415), then objectifying thematization has its own existential-temporal structure, which is totally ignored by Heidegger. To subject this structure to a constitutional analysis is the main task of cognitive existentialism. I am indicating tentatively the basic point of my criticism of Heidegger’s conception, since in this study the same point will be of prime importance in overcoming the dilemmas of the context-distinction. Engaging science in the

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context of constitution requires a confrontation with all kinds of cognitive essentialism entrenched in the discovery-justification controversy. With the turn to constitutional analysis of science as a mode of being-in-the-world, hermeneutic philosophy of science tries to attain two aims. First, it allows us to reformulate many important problems (e.g., the problem of scientific rationality, the problem of incommensurability, and the problem of demarcating internal from external history of science) posed by the standard (analytical) philosophy of science in an entirely new framework. Second, it opens up a horizon of new problematizing. In this regard, the context of constitution invites discourses (hitherto ignored or prohibited by analytical philosophy) to dwell on various non-standard problems.

f. The Post-Epistemological Dimension of the Context of Constitution Hermeneutic studies of science in the context of constitution have an ambivalent relation to the “epistemological heritage” of the traditional philosophy of science. On the one hand, by embracing the “discursive-practical image of science”, they break in a radical fashion with any kind of subject-object dualism. On the other hand, in contrast to the postmodern programs of “overcoming epistemology”, they retain a connection with some holistic and semantic theories of scientific knowledge. This ambivalent relation is consonant with a postepistemological (not to be confused with an anti-epistemological) position that in my further analysis will be specified in different directions. By “post-epistemological philosophy” I mean a discourse that does not aim at “epistemological foundations and justifications”, but nevertheless admits (not only the possibility but also) the necessity of “systematic” reflections regarding the authority and autonomy of scientific knowledge. (See Ginev 2001a) (The first historical step towards a post-epistemological attitude is the disentanglement of reflections upon truth, objectivity, validity, and rationality of knowledge from the framework of subject-object dualism. In my opinion, this first step was undertaken by Popper in his “epistemology without a knowing subject”. By putting the “objective problem situations” first, Popper combats “traditional” [subjectivist] epistemology [typically represented by Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Russell], on the one hand, and the objectivist reification of knowledge, on the other. The special status of his “third-world situational logic” is informed by the unique combination of a kind of anti-naturalism [anti-behaviorism and anti-psychologism] and a quasi-mathematical [anti-mentalist] constructivism, achieved through a criticism of Brouwer’s intuitionism. I should go on to assert that Popper (1979, pp. 140-145) suggests a view of “situated transcendence of scientific inquiry” in terms of his objectivist-constructivist epistemology.)

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Though non-foundationalist and non-justificationist, the reflections upon truth, objectivity, and rationality of scientific knowledge in a wide range of post-epistemological conceptions do not collapse into an “epistemological behaviorism” that explains any and every sort of epistemic authority (including that of science) by reference to particular contexts of social interaction. (In a succinct formulation, epistemological behaviorism “is a matter not of metaphysical parsimony, but of whether authority can attach to assertions by virtue of relations of ‘acquaintance’ between persons and, for example, thoughts, impressions, universals, and propositions.” [Rorty 1979, p. 177]) The main common feature of all post-epistemological conceptions is the rejection of deflationism implied by epistemological behaviorism. All of them assume that a cognitive autonomy based upon epistemic rationality and authority cannot be explicated in behavioral and interactionist terms. Yet the rejection of deflationism does not eo ipso legitimate the indispensability of (non-foundationalist and non-justificationist) epistemological reflections. To dispense with such reflections is the ambition of most champions of a “systematic” phenomenological constitutional analysis, who show little sympathy for “scientism” (as modern science’s metaphysical self-identity), but are eager to guard with non-epistemological means science’s cognitive autonomy and authority. Thus, there are post-epistemological conceptions, in which the redescription of issues about objectivity, autonomy, rationality, and the truth of scientific knowledge is carried out without invoking non-Cartesian kinds of epistemology. (To be sure, to this category belong not only conceptions of hermeneutic and phenomenological traditions. Kenneth Burke is an example of a postepistemological thinker, who dispenses with “systematic” epistemological reflections. In rejecting behaviorist deflationism, he recasts epistemic authority, truth and objectivity into rhetorical terms. For Burke, the tropes of metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony are vehicles for such a recasting. (See Burke 1969) Indeed, he is not a philosopher of science. This is why a much more appropriate example of post-epistemological thinking that is committed neither to a non-foundationalist epistemology nor to a constitutional analysis is the whole tradition of the so-called “Methodical Constructivism”, which grew from the early works of Hugo Dingler and was developed by the Erlangen school of Paul Lorenzen. (See Janich 1997) Philosophers like Peter Janich, Jürgen Mittelstrass and Friedrich Kambartel working in this tradition believe that the transitions from pre-scientific to scientific knowledge can be subjected to a “principle of methodical order”. According to this principle, science’s objectivity, truth, and rationality stem from everyday practices and are, consequently, constrained by pre-scientific interests, goals, and values. The normative function of methodical constructivism as a “critical philosophy of science” consists in rejecting theories that represent research practices

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and cognitive results in an order which hides the real steps and passages of their construction.26). Cognitive existentialism is a post-epistemological conception that can be developed in both variants – by means of complementarity between non-Cartesian (holist) epistemology and constitutional analysis, and through a radical version of such analysis that dispenses with epistemological assumptions. This study tends to the second variant.27

Chapter One IDEAS FOR THE SITUATED TRANSCENDENCE OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

a. Introduction James Bohman (1991a) draws a distinction between weak (epistemological) and strong (contextualist and ontological) holism. According to the latter, there is no cognitive activity that can privilege a particular content as self-verifying apart from the context of all other contents and activities. Strong holism claims the universality of the “hermeneutic circle”, which implies that interpretation is ubiquitous in every cognitive activity and practice. Because of this universality, interpretation is itself indeterminate (by epistemological norms), contextual, and circular. It takes place against the background of all beliefs and practices that form (in Heidegger’s parlance) the “worldness of the world”. This is, in Bohman’s account, the central dogma of strong holism. A sort of anti-epistemological “skeptical contextualism” is related to this dogma. The task of “weak holists” (like Bohman) is to surmount skeptical contextualism by arguing that there is always a “normative epistemology” (criteria and standards of validity) involved within the hermeneutic circle of interpretation. Because of this intrinsic epistemology, all interpretations are fallibilistic claims to knowledge that are intersubjectively valid and capable of public adjudication. In ascribing weak holism to Davidson’s antifoundationalist theory of interpretation, which does not give up truth claims, Bohman completes the portrait of that standpoint which is dominant in the postpositivist philosophy of science. In this standpoint, all sciences are historical, social and self-reflective practices. Yet, in accordance with the tenets of weak holism, this philosophy “must still be normative, now in a different way: it must develop critical standards and pat35

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terns ... and it must find criteria of adequacy within indeterminacy, criteria that help research programs evaluate the success of their explanations.” (Bohman 1991b, p. viii) It is not surprising fact that the articulation of weak holism coincides with the evolution of postpositivism. Thanks to the pioneering efforts of Norwood R. Hanson and Mary B. Hesse, the avenue to the “normative interpretation” (based on the theory-ladenness thesis) was opened. Following this avenue, Hesse developed a kind of “epistemologically universal hermeneutics” in which the dichotomy between natural and human science was effaced. All sciences are guided by an interpretative rationality which consists “in the continuous adaptation of our language to our continually expanding world, and metaphor is one of the chief means by which this is accomplished.” (Hesse 1966, pp. 176-7) The rapid expansion of postpositivism left the impression that weak holism not only replaced successfully the non-holistic, unificationist, and reductionist dogmas of logical empiricism, but also made meaningless the attempts to ground the philosophy of the natural sciences on (a version of ) strong (ontological) holism. Strong holism implies “skeptical contextualism”. It is unable to distinguish between better and worse explanations, and it undermines the efforts to develop a historical concept of scientific rationality. Should one give credit to these accusations? Yes, if one is unable to demonstrate that weak holism is a “derivative form” of strong holism, whereby the validity of the former hinges on the validity of the latter. If weak holism is (traditionally) associated with postpositivism, the place where strong holism plays a leading role is the ideas and programs for a hermeneutic phenomenology of science. In the remainder of this chapter, I should like, first, to place the very idea of an ontological hermeneutics of science’s cognitive dynamics in a broad context of current discussions about the “destiny” of contemporary philosophy of science (and its “legitimation crisis at the end of modernity”), and second, to touch upon some historical events which pave the way for the strong hermeneutics of scientific research. (In so doing, I am going also to meet the main objections leveled against strong holism.) Part of the events I will discuss run parallel to the development of postpositivist philosophy. Basically, the latter tries to put forward a rational reconstruction (and a sort of “historical epistemology”) of science’s development, while hermeneutic phenomenology is dwelling on the constitution of scientific research’s theoretical worlds. The strong hermeneutics of science tries to develop a kind of constitutional analysis of both research practices and cognitive content. In this regard, it is the implementation of the tenets of cognitive existentialism in studying (the specificity of ) science’s structure and dynamics. While post-empiricist philosophy integrates interpretative indeterminacy into the framework of a normative epistemology, strong hermeneutics tries to come to grips with this indeterminacy by invoking a conception of situated transcendence.

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However, strong hermeneutics of science shares with postpositivism the belief in the indispensability of the notion of rationality for an understanding of science’s cognitive structure and dynamics. This notion is rejected by a wide range of “post-epistemological” science studies. Cultural studies as propagated by Joseph Rouse and feminist studies of gender in science as professed by Donna Haraway are cases in point. What these studies persistently reject is the picture of interpretative scientific communities identified by shared networks of theoretical beliefs, methodologies, and cognitive values. “Postmodern post-epistemologists” of various sorts are inclined to replace the inquiries into the links between scientific communities and the research domains’ cognitive content with ad hoc investigations of the formation of cultural alignments and groups in scientific research. Epistemically significant communities in science are defined by their cultural and political commitments, and the research process is viewed as “dispersed” within narrative traditions, imagery, cultural practices, and institutions. Yet, in substituting the issues of the distinctiveness of scientific rationality for investigations that nullify categorization of what is inside and what is outside scientific research, gender and cultural studies ignore the hermeneutic situation of the natural sciences as it was described in the Introduction. Because of their interpretative deficit, these studies do not take into account the research process’ potential of translatability of external pre-judgments stemming from ideological doctrines, moral traditions, metaphysical conceptions, confessional world-views, etc. By disregarding the potential of translatability, these studies make a step further (in comparison with epistemological anarchism and social constructivism) in rejecting science’s interpretative rationality and cognitive specificity. Let me now turn to a more detailed critical estimation of “post-epistemological” science studies. To reiterate, the move from history and philosophy of science to cultural and gender studies of research practices opposes the variants of historicist epistemology advanced by postpositivism.1 Contextualizing science as a historically rooted and culturally embedded praxis deprives the reflection on the structure and dynamics of scientific knowledge of a “meta-historical framework” of rational reconstruction. Notoriously, the attack against postpositivism started with the view (expressed by many practitioners of sociology of scientific knowledge) that methodological relativism is indispensable for the naturalistic account of variation in belief. In its original versions, sociology of scientific knowledge was designed as a second-order natural science that is appointed to study science itself.2 Although rejected by “first-order scientists” who have become aware of it, the practitioners of this sociological discipline invested much effort to “deconstruct” philosophical frameworks in which the rationality of science can be viewed as a specific phenomenon from a historical point of view. In opposing the historicist-holist epistemology of postpositivist

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conceptions, they proclaim that the goal of sociology of scientific knowledge is “to construct an ‘anti-epistemology’, to break down the legitimacy of the distinction between ‘contexts of discovery and justification’, and to develop an anti-individualistic and anti-empiricist framework ... in which ‘social factors’ counted not as contaminants but as constitutive of the very idea of scientific knowledge.” (Shapin 1995, p. 297) At the same time, many cognitive sociologists of science are still eager to demonstrate that the construction of scientific knowledge “is a problem in politics and, conversely, that the problem of political order always involves solutions to the problem of knowledge.” (Shapin and Schaffer 1985, p. 21). The champions of cultural and gender studies of science go further in rejecting postpositivist holism and historicism. (In criticizing “Western notions of masculinity”, authors like Evelyn Fox Keller [1985] and Sandra Harding [1991] are not tired to argue that the metaphors and models of scientific rationality serve also the function of suggesting that there can be only good science or bad science but not feminist science. This is why in so many studies in “feminist critique of existing science”, the attack against normative-epistemological justification of rationality is associated with the motif of replacing the metaphors that justify a “sexist science”.) Cultural theorists accuse social constructivists of being still committed to the neediness of a global interpretative legitimation of science. What for cultural theorists and feminist critics of science is unacceptable is the idea of a content of scientific knowledge which needs explaining. They dismiss any detached assessment (presumably held by authors like Bloor, Barnes, Collins, Pickering, Latour, Shapin, and Woolgar) of the totality of science as claiming objective knowledge, while retaining and amplifying the political engagement of studying the traffic between practices of scientific inquiry and practices of cultural settings without commitment to “the legitimation project” of the place of scientific knowledge in modern culture. Thus, the deconstruction of postpositivist philosophy that began with social constructivism reaches its final point in contemporary cultural and gender studies of science. It is not my contention to advocate postpositivism. On the contrary, in the next chapter I am going to spell out some arguments against the historicism associated with this philosophical tradition. Yet, in my view, the price for overcoming postpositivism the champions of cultural studies of science are willing to pay is too high. By rejecting the reification of theoretical meaning (as implied, in particular, by framework-content dualism), the substantialization of abstract scientific communities, and the Hegelian manner of figuring out the coalition of history and philosophy of science, the proponents of these studies repudiate (without specifying arguments) those practical-instrumental and theoretical forms of rationality which distinguish the constitution of cognitive content in the research process. Cultural theorists go on to throw out the inter-

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pretative basis of science’s specificity with the bath water of theoretical holism and speculative historicism. The situatedness of scientific practices in diverse cultural and political environments – a fact on which cultural theorists are insisting – does not “equalize” scientific practices with the networks of extra-scientific activities. On the contrary, due to the potential of translatability (as it is stressed by the claim of hermeneutic internalism) the research process forms its own “interpretative-ontological rationality”, viz. the rationality of the constitution of meaning within its own theoretical and practical horizons. The combat against postpositivism’s theoretical holism (and the sui generis reactualization of the spirit of logical positivism) have much to do with the rejection of synthetic knowledge a priori. Notoriously, those who subscribe to “The Scientific World-Conception” acknowledge only empirical statements about factual states of affairs, and analytical statements of the formal sciences. In stressing the importance of a lot of mediatory factors for the epistemological inquiry into the dynamics of scientific research, the postpositivist turn did contribute to the rehabilitation of “the synthetic a priori”. A hallmark of all postpositivist conceptions is the claim that there is a theoretical (explicit or implicit) content that exceeds the meaningful content (of scientific statements) identifiable through its method of verification. The non-operationalizable content might take on a wide spectrum of forms: background knowledge (typified by Radnitzky’s “preconceptions”), heuristic procedures and methods (in particular, Lakatos’ “positive and negative heuristics”), implicit cognitive structures (like Polanyi’s “tacit knowledge”), ontic pictures of the world (playing a central role in Watkins’ conception of “influential metaphysics”), mathematical formalisms with a “surplus structure”, and so on. In focusing on these forms, one argues that what seems to be “immediately given” is actually mediated through a synthetic knowledge a priori. To incorporate this mediation in a complex epistemological conception requires figuring out a diachronic model of scientific rationality (methodological historicism), specifying that part of the theoretical framework which cannot be subjected to a logical analysis (non-logical linguistic universalism), and forging a semantic conception that will not attribute the theoretical meaning to particular statements (semantic holism). In getting rid of the tenets of methodological historicism, non-logical linguistic universalism, and semantic holism (plus “synthetic-apriori-epistemology”), cultural and gender theorists try to restore the positivist spirit of methodological instrumentalism: science has to be understood in terms of its operationally specified methods. (They insist on a sort of “antiempiricist positivism” [represented typically by Nancy Cartwright] since logical empiricism is still committing the mistake of reifying an “ultimate layer” of observational meaning. Such reificationism can only be pushed aside when one is concentrated upon practices of laboratory manipulation, instrumentation, and measurement instead of

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inflating empiricist conceptions of perception.) Leaning on antiempiricist positivism, one rejects that notion of consensus which presupposes reified networks of beliefs, methods, and values. In so doing, one pays attention predominantly to heterogeneous solidarities in scientific research informed by various cultural, political, and economic factors. It is this “anti-consensualist” picture of contingent groups and fragmented identities that is at the bottom of (what Rouse calls) “the politics of postmodern philosophy of science”, whose issues are highlighted by the combination of “respect for the local context of scientific inquiry and resistance to any global interpretation which could constrain local inquiry.” (Rouse 1996, p. 74) Tolerated in this program are only the contextual judgments that do not invoke the image of science’s rational authority. The political goal of postmodern philosophy of science is to displace science’s authoritativeness supported by epistemological arguments for its cognitive autonomy. In pursuing this goal, cultural and gender theorists (accompanied by some neopragmatist philosophers) put more emphasis on the “marginal sciences” in which an ongoing mixture of scientific and non-scientific practices takes place. The politics of postmodern philosophy of science overlooks or misconstrues the “hermeneutic protection” on which natural science (through its potential of internalizing the external influences) is predicated. As I pointed out, however, apart from all epistemological demarcations there is a philosophically significant dividing line that is to be highlighted in hermeneutico-ontological terms. The politics of postmodern philosophy of science assumes that all scientific practices are geographically, historically, culturally, and politically situated, but it is not successful in drawing the hermeneutic consequences from this assumption. Insofar as this philosophy ignores science’s intrinsic interpretative basis of creating its own autonomy and (hermeneutic and political) authority, it is unequal to its own task of studying the “multidimensional situatedness” of scientific research. Against the background of my criticism of (to modify slightly Rouse’s expression) “the postmodern politics of deflating the authoritativeness of the sciences” and “critical theory’s philosophy of science project”, the present study has to sketch out the principles of “the politics of a hermeneutics of science based on strong holism”. In this chapter, my efforts will be concentrated on arguing the thesis that weak holism does not contradict ontological holism since the former is a “derivative form” of the latter. The situated transcendence of scientific research is intimately related to the ubiquity of interpretation in scientific research. This is why the research process is through and through an interpretative process and the scientific communities are interpretative communities. Yet the ubiquity of interpretation as implied by the situated transcendence (the “interpretation as an ontological phenomenon”) is to be distinguished from the ubiquity of interpreta-

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tions (as epistemic activities) accompanying the performance of research practices. The interpretation that constitutes and articulates the cognitive content of scientific domains corresponds to strong holism, whereas the “accompanying interpretations” are manifestations of what is covered by the concept of weak holism. The whole reality of “scientific-communities-being-in-domains-of-scientificresearch” is constituted by an “appropriative interpretation” of practical and theoretical possibilities that are “always already” projected. By contrast, the accompanying interpretations take place within this reality and serve a function of eliminating discrepancies of normal scientific practices. Examples of “secondary” interpretative-epistemic activities are: (a) readings of experimental results; (b) interpretations of mathematical results in terms of possible situations in physical reality (think of the discovery of the positron as a consequence of a solution of Dirac’s relativistic wave equation in an electromagnetic field); (c) interpretations aiming at elimination of incompatibilities between theoretical schemes; (d) reinterpretations of theoretical variables in the light of new principles (e.g., the reinterpretations of quantum numbers in connection with Pauli’s exclusion principle); (e) interpretations of the experimental design when one decides to vary given experiments; (f ) reinterpretations of old mathematical formalisms (e.g., the rediscovery of the Hamilton-Jacobi method), and so on. In all these cases, there are epistemic activities “designed” within a “thematizing project” of scientific research. In all these cases, there are interpretations grounded upon such a project. In dealing with them, weak holism presupposes a thematizing project providing anticipations, expectations and orientations of all normal scientific processes of reading. But weak holism is unable to give an account of the project itself. It has no resources to see why the project has nothing to do with a normative agenda of rational scientific behavior, and why normal scientific research has already projected itself and remains in projection so long as it is. The task of giving such an account is to be addressed by ontological holism (and ontological hermeneutics of scientific research). Strangely enough, however, the application of strong holism in philosophy of the natural sciences comes up against severe opposition from the adherents of the ontological turn in hermeneutics. Though nobody would dispute that scientific research is situated within traditions, there are many authors who display skepticism about extending the claims of interpretative openness and effectivehistorical consciousness to the natural sciences. Ironically, those who rebut the integration of the research process of the natural sciences in the scope of hermeneutic reflection are predominantly the champions of the universality of the philosophy of interpretation. In their opinion, communities that pull a research process based on procedures of idealizations and formalization are striving for a cultural isolation. Though normal scientific research might produce an

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“intrinsic effective-historical consciousness”, the “culture of scientific experts” is in dissonance with the claim that all “knowledge of the truth” is achieved by that “fusion of horizons” which expresses the “dialogue we are”. The procedures of idealizations constrain the interpretative openness of scientific research. The normative ordering and regulation of these procedures is what Gadamer calls “scientific method”. It prevents the fusion of horizons of mathematico-experimental theorizing with horizons of cultural experience as a “dialogue that we are”. (I will try to show that this claim is only partially consonant with the tenets of hermeneutic internalism. True, methodological norms do contribute to the cultural isolation of scientific research. Nevertheless, the “potential translatability” of science I already discussed is a part of the “dialogue we are”.) In Gadamer’s view, “the idea of method” excludes the natural sciences from the scope of hermeneutic reflection. The idea of method (i.e., the idea of inquiry “into the laws of nature on the basis of mathematical abstraction and its verification by means of measuring, counting, and weighing” [Gadamer 1982, p. 156) defines the area of epistemology that is not to be conquered by hermeneutics. Gadamer would not deny that scientific research is also predicated on an involvement in traditions dictating characteristic prejudgments. But in this case, the historical finiteness is “compensated” by the method’s ahistoricality. This is why Gadamer reaches the conclusion that science not only does not think, but also “does not really speak a language in the proper sense”. (Gadamer 1982, p. 3) In contrast to all other forms of cultural experience, the natural sciences are deprived of being-in-language-as-a-medium. They only make use of empirical and theoretical linguistic tools. To reiterate the same claim in a slightly modified form: Gadamer assumes that the methodological objectivism of natural science resists an account in hermeneutic terms, and its analysis is to be entirely relegated to epistemology. The area controlled by methodological objectivism and epistemological rationality not only rules out the “intrusion” of “prejudices” stemming from extrascientific (political, metaphysical, confessional, moral, etc.) traditions. More important is the fact – so the argument of the traditional philosophical hermeneutics goes – that scientific research is at odds with the interpretativedialogical character of cultural experience. On the traditional view, it would be a non-sequitur to state that the internal consciousness of the situatedness within a “tradition of objectifying thematization” enables an interpretative openness to the fusion of horizons. Indeed, prejudices are formed and transmitted within the research process, but these are the prejudices that guarantee the monological character of inquiry.3 In the final reckoning, – and this is a “central dogma” of the post-Gadamerian philosophy of interpretation – to develop a theory of the situated transcendence of natural-scientific research, and to claim that the constitution of scientific domains bears an interpretative character since it is

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embedded in the open horizons of doing research, would lead (probably) to a kind of heuristic philosophy of science but not to an extension of philosophical hermeneutics. I am going to oppose this claim in what follows.4

b. Philosophical Hermeneutics and Hermeneutics of Scientific Research In Truth and Method, a work whose main purpose is to contribute to a new philosophical self-understanding of the human sciences, Gadamer writes: “Research in the human sciences cannot regard itself as in an absolute antithesis to the attitude we take as historical beings to the past. In our continually manifested attitude to the past, the main feature is not, at any rate, a distancing and freeing of ourselves from what has been transmitted. Rather, we stand always within tradition, and this is no objectifying process, ie we do not conceive of what tradition says as something other, something alien. It is always part of us, a model or exemplar, a recognition of ourselves which our later historical judgment would hardly see as a kind of knowedge, but as the simplest preservation of tradition.” (Gadamer 1976a, p. 250) Thus characterized, the human sciences merge with kinds of experience which lie outside the realm of the methodological control of natural-scientific rationality. Notoriously, in “overcoming the epistemologically reduced image” of the human sciences, Gadamer draws on Heidegger’s ontological elaborations on the connection between understanding (as a basic existential characteristic) and the historical finiteness of human existence. Yet Gadamer makes use of ideas from Being and Time in quite a peculiar manner. His approach to the (non-epistemological) nature of the human sciences leads to a de-transcendentalization of Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology. For Heidegger, the reflection upon that mode of existence in which the agent (Dasein) exists for the sake of a potentiality-for-being is a transcendental reflection. (This kind of reflection can be illuminated by invoking the double status the notion of “possibility” has in Being and Time. When Heidegger asserts that the average existence projects its being upon possibilities, the notion is construed in an ontic [existentiell] manner. Dasein is involved in an [inauthentic] continuity of actualizing and realizing out possibilities that are always already projected. Yet the whole being-towards-possibilities has its own ontological [existential] possibility. Analyzing the latter is a prerogative of the transcendentalontological reflection. It has to reveal through an existential analytic of the phenomena of care, death, conscience, and guilt the “condition for the possibility ” of the ontic being-towards-possibilities as well as of the transition from inauthentic to authentic existence.)

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The transcendental reflection attributed to the analytic of Dasein unfolds the “existential-temporal conditions” for the possibility of the world (as a diversity of entities that are either ready-to-hand or present-at-hand) in which all kinds of knowing subject (and all kinds of methodologically specified epistemic subject/ object cut) are involved. This possibility lies in the finiteness of existence as being-towards-death. On a central claim of Being and Time, in being-towardsdeath existence comports itself towards itself as a distinctive potentiality-forbeing. This is why the “existential analytic of death” as an analytic of human finiteness (in which the problem of the “transcendence of the world” is posed and resolved) defines Heidegger’s transcendental position of asking how the world in its unity with Dasein is “ontologically possible”. On this position, the starting point of the investigation into the possibility of scientific research is a specific hermeneutic question. It is the question of how to come into the hermeneutic circle between the horizon of thematic research and the particular objects of inquiry that become intelligible within the horizon. In Heidegger’s view, such a hermeneutic circle of a constitution of scientific knowledge is always grounded upon the existentially primordial circle between “average understanding” (the horizon of everyday being-in-the-world) and the “appropriative interpretation” that constitutes the elementary meanings of the world of everyday (pre-scientific) practices and social interaction. There are two important corollaries to this view. First, (the “existential possibility” of) all kinds of scientific research (and knowledge) are to be articulated in terms of hermeneutic ontology. Second, there is no ontologically significant cut between the natural and the human sciences. Both of them are involved in hermeneutic circles of thematic research. In both cases there is an “assimilation” of (“existentially primordial”) understanding and interpretation to a definite ideal of knowledge. From the viewpoint of the existential analytic, the only difference is that the constitution of cognitive content in the natural sciences is “situated” in a horizon of “objectifying thematization”, while to the human sciences (or, the sciences guided by what Heidegger calls “philological interpretation”) corresponds a horizon of “interpretative thematization”. The transformation of Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology into Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics makes both corollaries invalid. I completely agree with Vattimo who observes that “there is a decisive need to urbanize Heidegger’s thought in many senses ... But such urbanization will be truly successful only if one does not forget the specifically Heideggerian ontological aspect of the discourse.” (Vattimo 1997, p. 3) No doubt, a “Gadamerian urbanization” is unavoidable in the attempt to reactualize Heidegger’s existential conception of science. Yet the price for that should not be the loss of the ontological dimension of the hermeneutics of science. Roughly speaking, Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics replaces beingtowards-death with tradition. Since human beings live in what has been handed

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down to them, tradition is tantamount to existence (or, to Heidegger’s beingin-the-world). Of course, what here is meant is not the notion of “cultural tradition” in the conventional sense of the history of ideas. In Gadamer’s view, tradition is the world itself which is communicatively experienced and continuously entrusted to human beings as an infinitely open task. For Heidegger, the world is projected as a horizon in all ways of being-in-the-world, and it is transcendent. The “factical existence” as being-towards-death is always within-theworld. For Gadamer, the tradition (in this case, an analogue to the world) is not transcendent in an absolute sense. The transcendence of the tradition does not promote a transcendental position (of analyzing ontologically the “factical existence”). The transcendence is rather always situated within the tradition. In contrast to Heidegger’s “transcendental transcendence” (implied by the onticoontological dichotomism of the existential analytic), Gadamer maintains a view of “situated transcendence”. Instead of the definite end of death, he stresses the infinite fusion of horizons informed by the situated transcendence of human exisitence within the tradition. For the author of Truth and Method, the finiteness of human existence conditions the interpretative infinity (openness) of “effective history”. Gadamer spells out his view of the human sciences on the same philosophical level on which he goes on to transform Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology. These sciences acquire a special status because they provide the means for interpreting effective history. By implication, they cultivate and preserve the “effective-historical consciousness”. The human sciences are not something external to the tradition that is the world itself. Moreover, they concern themselves with actualizing our involvement in the tradition in a manner that would prevent “the tyranny of hidden prejudices that makes us deaf to the language that speaks to us in tradition.” (Gadamer 1976a, p. 239)5 As a self-reflection of “the tradition and dialogue that we are”, the human sciences are part of the philosophical project of universalizing hermeneutics. All particular thematizations (thematic constitutions of research objects) in them are framed within the understanding of tradition, whereby understanding is not a specific cognitive process but the experiencing of one’s situatedness within the process in which past and present are constantly fused. Since human-scientific experience does not break with this (existentially primordial) situatedness, a thematization in the human sciences makes also explicit the “placing” of the research dialogue between interpreter and what becomes thematized within tradition(s). The dialogical experience of these sciences “works” with procedures of interpretation in which the situatedness in traditions does function as a fore-structure of the emerging cognitive structures of human-scientific research. On a view that is only partially in line with Gadamer’s program, the experience of the human sciences has not only moved in interpreting towards the meaning of cultural artifacts (events,

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monuments, documents, etc.), but its ongoing accomplishment elevates the (prereflexive) effective-historical consciousness in a reflexive position towards the situatedness in traditions. (This claim is not in full agreement with Gadamer’s critique of method since the position I am talking about might involve either a “methodologization of interpretation” and/or “epistemic distancing” from the [trans-subjective] effective-historical consciousness. Yet the “reflexive position” I am referring to does not imply a rehabilitation of methodological hermeneutics in the sense of a normative codex of correct interpretation that ignores the historicity of the interpreter. My point is that the human sciences – though not liable to a methodological reconstruction – are not exempt from a reflexive attitude to the projected prejudices in the process of interpretation. Indeed, the interpreter cannot choose her prejudices, for she discovers them as something that exists prior to conscious choice. Nevertheless, the human sciences are exercising a kind of “non-methodological” control over prejudices. Realizing that the space between the interpreter and what is interpreted is “the true locus of hermeneutics” [Gadamer] does not provide an argument against the possibility of reflexive control. The human sciences preserve and alter prejudices.) Both the objects of inquiry and the research process are “moments” of the historicity of the – not epistemologically reduced and not methodologically stylized – reflexive position, which (as a “second order” effective-historical consciousness) excludes by all means an underlying transcendental reflection. It follows from the line of argumentation against transcendental reflection that the role the human sciences are playing in transmitting the “hermeneutic truth” of historical experience is to be illuminated within the very dynamics of “the tradition”. (Truth that is not limited to what is justified by methodological norms is always to be achieved within tradition’s constantly expanding experience. The expansion of experience is a movement in a hermeneutic circle, where “the concept of the whole is relative and the inclusion in ever larger contexts alters the understanding of single parts.” (Gadamer 1976a, p. 167)) To this end, Gadamer introduces the notion of hermeneutic situation. It is the situation in which one is compelled to have a recourse to one’s own placing in fore-structures (projected wholes) of acting, thinking, applying and following rule, decision-making, experiencing, using tools, interacting, exercising power, etc. By having such a recourse, one reflects upon one’s own situated transcendence. Gadamer states that effective-historical consciousness is primarily consciousness of the hermeneutic situation. The human sciences are always in a “second order hermeneutic situation” since what they are thematizing is “always already” constituted by effective-historical consciousness.6 (Notoriously, AngloSaxon authors designate this status of the human sciences with the expression “double hermeneutics”. The research work in these sciences proceeds as an interpretative thematization of phenomena which are brought into being by

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interpretations. The reflexive approach to the kinds of the “fusion of horizons” constituting cognitive structures of the human sciences adds to the idea of double hermeneutics the idea of the dialectic of interpretation and selfinterpretation characterizing the second order hermeneutic situation. (See Ginev 1995; 1998). To sum up, being-in-the-tradition is distinguished by experience, which is both the experience informed by human finitude and the experience of human finitude. (This claim is to be traced back to the pioneering projects for a hermeneutic philosophy of history advanced by Giambattista Vico and Johann Martin Chladenius.) Effective-historical consciousness of “the situatedness in the tradition” is the consciousness called into being by that finitude. The human sciences, however, are involved in particular situations occurring in particular traditions. The specification of (the notion of ) hermeneutic situation with respect to these sciences concerns their interpretative-thematic reflections upon particular kinds of situatedness. The human-scientific research work illuminates historical kinds of situtated transcendence, without raising the pretension that an “ultimate theory” (or, a final “hermeneutic truth”) of beingin-the-tradition can be achieved. In this regard, the human sciences serve the function of a never-ending self-interpretation of effective-historical consciousness. In their “cognitive content” one is to find conceptually articulated prejudices of the cultural-historical traditions in which the particular hermeneutic situations of interpretative research work take shape. (Of course, these prejudices are not reproduced per se in the cognitive content. What is rather reproduced is the “interplay of prejudices” taking place in the dialogical research process of the human sciences.) The human sciences (at least those which are historically oriented) are not only research domains but (first and foremost) the mediaton of traditions. The experience of these sciences (including their research methodologies) belongs to the traditions they hand down. As second-order effective-historical consciousness they are predicated on a twofold openness: In preserving and altering the cultural traditions’ prejudices, they are, on the one hand, open to “the anonymous authority of tradition”. On the other, they create an openness to the traditions they hand down through the applicability of research experience to the particular cases of traditions’ life. The twofold openness of the human sciences’ research process predicates their basic hermeneutic situation. The applicability of the research results is not something “additional” to the process of inquiry. Rather, it is a constitutive dimension of the human sciences’ cognitive dynamics. The application constitutes the meaning of the research objects in disciplines like (interpretative) cultural anthropology, history of art, or literary criticism. As a consequence, the “applied experience” of the human sciences is always a conjunction of knowledge and prejudice. Application of the interpreter’s

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conceptual means to other cultural traditions or historical realities brings to the fore (otherwise hidden) prejudices of her own traditions and historical time. (What I have in mind when stressing the moment of “application” in this context is Gadamer’s dictum that the human sciences have no competence to preside over their application. Gadamer is eager to argue that there is no episteme [knowledge justified by purely epistemological criteria for objectivity] in the human sciences without regard to application. By implication, not only research but also education in the human sciences is intrinsically oriented toward application. Human-scientific experience [in research and education] involves more application of “know-how”, guided by the anonymous instruction of tradition, than elaborated epistemic knowledge. Furthermore, application is a symmetric and reciprocal process. According to the hermeneutic situation of human-scientific research, the interpreter “applies” herself to the researchee and, at the same time, she “appropriates” the situatedness of what she wants to understand.)7 To be sure, in doing research, communities in the natural sciences stand always within traditions of practical and theoretical experience. Situated transcendence is also a characteristic of the research process in these sciences. The possibilities of carrying out further the research process in a scientific domain countenanced by a tradition always “exceed” the possibilities actualized by a scientific community in a given situation of this process. Consequently, the constitution of thematic objects within the research process is always in a state of situated transcendence. An effective-historical consciousness accompanies this process. Yet, in contrast to the human sciences, the effective-historical consciousness is “pushed aside” by the “consciousness of objectivity”. The latter is the mentality that supports the expansion of objectivism, representationism, essentialism, and instrumental rationality as supreme values and goals of scientific research. Guided by the consciousness of objectivity, scientists make sense of their enterprise as a machinery of getting objective knowledge that mirrors nature. Prima facie this mentality seems to be a barrier to the intrusion of extrascientific prejudice. (It is a commonplace that the consciousness of objectivity harbours the ethos of academic neutrality and the feeling of independence from non-academic [religious, metaphysical, political, etc.] traditions.) As I pointed out, however, what guards the autonomy of scientific research is not the consciousness of objectivity and the “true representation of the natural world”, but the intrinsic hermeneutic circles of the constitution of science’s cognitive content. (The theoretical and methodological autonomy of scientific domains supervenes on a shift from interpretations within the horizons of cultural traditions to interpretations within the horizons of scientific research. Phrased differently, it is a shift from an external to an internal hermeneutic fore-structuring: Not

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the prejudices of cultural traditions, but “the prejudgments” of scientific reason’s traditions [or, the traditions of the very research process] are forestructuring science’s cognitive content. Universality of understanding, interpretative openness, and effective-historical consciousness are not ruled out by normal scientific research. On a central claim of this study, the natural sciences’ cognitive specificity does not contradict the idea of the universality of the situated transcendence. Rather, the texture of discursive practices taking place in normal scientific research presupposes universality of understanding, interpretative openness, and effective-historical consciousness. The cognitive specificity is constituted not on the level of the epistemological-methodological justification, but on the interpretative-discursive-practical level.) On a claim I will spell out in the upcoming chapters, the insistence on an essential link between the consciousness of objectivity and the cognitive autonomy of scientific research is a self-imposed delusion. The more advanced the latter, the further the (existentially primordial) effective-historical consciousness is pushed aside. By pushing aside phronesis-rationality of scientific research, one ensures the authority of the epistemological conception of truth in scientific research. To be sure, all kinds of scientism are rooted in the “ideological replacement” of the effective-historical consciousness (as implied by the situated transcendence of scientific research) with the consciousness of objectivity. (In the present discussion, I do not have in mind the trivial meaning of scientism as a doctrine, and associated social practices, extending to science an authority beyond its putative legitimate scope. Scientism is rather a set of culturally established views whose core-doctrine states that because of their epistemological objectivism, the natural sciences are the only legitimate source of knowledge that can be socially institutionalized and assigned to play the role of the only indisputable “cognitive authority” in contemporary societies. As a “selfimposed coercion” and “false identity”, scientism is the “ideology” of modern science.) It follows from the tenets of hermeneutic internalism that the replacement of the consciousness of being involved in the effective-historical process of scientific research with the consciousness of objectivity (and “epistemic representation of nature”) is by no means the source of genuine arguments for the distinctiveness of the natural sciences. Just because scientism is “ideologically false”, it cannot define the “true specificity” of scientific research. Searching for such a specificity in terms of objectivism, representationism, and essentialism amounts to confounding two antipodal undertakings – the defense of the academic ethos of scientific research in terms of the ideology of scientism and the defense of the natural sciences’ autonomy. In accordance with the preceding considerations, science’s cognitive autonomy is ensured by the situated transcendence of the constitution of objects of inquiry within the research process.

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Thus, the autonomy of scientific research is an issue of the (ontological) hermeneutics of the constitution of research objects and not of the context of epistemological justification as an extension of the ideology of scientism.8

c. Heidegger’s Ideas of the Constitutional Analysis of Scientific Research In Being and Time Martin Heidegger suggests a description of the genesis of scientific theorizing out of the everyday mode of being-in-the-world. At issue in this description is the transformation of the “locations” of things that are “readyto-hand” in the (pre-scientific) everyday practices into “world-points” which are released from specific “environmental confinements”. (Briefly, this is a transformation of what is practically and instrumentally ready-to-hand into what becomes objectified as a presence-at-hand.) Heidegger is preoccupied with the analysis (in terms of existential ontology) of the constitution of thematic objects of scientific research. In this regard, he elaborates on a particular paradigm of transcendental (constitutional) analysis. The genesis of thematic objects becomes possible through the way in which a domain of doing research is mathematically projected. The mathematical projection discloses a structure of “world-points” that is a priori. (For instance, by projecting the structure encoded by partial differential equations which establish relations connecting space, time, and the electromagnetic field-magnitudes one delineates the domain of classical electromagnetism. It is the specific mathematical projection that makes the domain’s structure resistant to the attempts to explain the electromagnetic phenomena from a mechanical point of view. The mathematical structure informed by Maxwell’s equations makes possible the constitution of the reality of electrodynamic data as a “primary empirical reality”, i.e., as a complexity of data that is not derivable from mechanical data. Within this structure, one assigns to each “world-point”, i.e., to each point of the field, a quantity representing an energy irreducible to mechanical events.) The mathematical projection provides the “transcendental conditions” for articulating thematic objects within the domain that it delineates. This articulation is carried out by executing research practices like observation, calibration, calculation, experimentation, instrumentation, measurement, and so on. The transcendental conditions concern the construction of theoretical concepts (and models) and their empirical interpretations, the choice of themes, the clues of methods, the possibility of epistemic truth and objectivity of what is thematized, and the epistemic rationality of all practices employed in the articulation of thematic objects. By fulfilling these conditions (posed by mathematical projection), scientific research objectifies. The constitutional analysis of science in terms of hermeneutic ontology addresses the process of objectifying as “the

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thematizing of the present-at-hand”. In a highly sophisticated manner, Heidegger relates the mathematical projection (and the constitution of thematic objects of scientific research) to the temporal problem of the transcendence of the world. The thematization that objectifies “entities” and “items” within-the-world presupposes transcendence. More specifically, the transcendence of the world (a transcendence which is grounded in the ecstatical unity of temporality) makes it possible to sketch out the way of objectifying. Speaking not in strictly Heideggerian terminology, the transcendence of the world designates the fact that there are no objects (including all thematic objects of science) beyond the horizonal temporality (or, the horizon of temporalizing the constitution of meaning within the totality of all possible practices) of human existence. From a perspective that avoids an objectivist postulation of an “independent reality out there that is opposed to the mind”, the world is the unity of all practical relationships characterized by the moments of circumspective concern: the “in-order-to”, the “towards-which”, the “towards-this”, and the “for-the-sake-of”. Deviating again from Heidegger’s terminology, the world is the complexity of organized equipment and practices in which human beings are involved. (While the world, from the viewpoint of epistemology, is the external totality of entities which is standing over against the mind of the epistemic subject, the world from the viewpoint of hermeneutic ontology does not have an essence behind the organized equipment and practices.) Yet the same unity of practices and equipment is the existential-ontological meaning of temporality. This is why Heidegger ascribes to three of the moments of circumspective concern within-the-world the role of “horizonal schemata” of ecstatical temporality. (The reason why Heidegger is using the term “ecstasis” is that to each temporalizing involvement in the organized equipment and practices belongs a “whither” to which one is carried away.) On Heidegger’s summarizing formulation, the “world is already presupposed in one’s being alongside the ready-tohand concernfully and factically, in one’s thematizing of the present-at-hand, and in one’s discovering of this latter entity of objectification... Having its ground in the horizonal unity of ecstatical temporality, the world is transcendent.” (Heidegger 1962, p. 417) According to this formulation, the problem of transcendence consists in establishing the ontological possibility for “entities” to be encountered within-the-world and objectified thematically. As I pointed out in the preceding section, the problem of transcendence is the main transcendental problem of Being and Time. To a certain extent, the “existential genesis” of the thematization that objectifies is due to an atemporalization of a peculiar involvement within-theworld. This involvement is the “theoretical attitude”, by means of which one is making-present a domain’s subject-matter of thematic objects. As a theoretical kind of making-present the thematization that objectifies is not simply an

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“ isolation” of the horizonal scheme of the present from the ecstatical unity of temporality”. This making-present that belongs to scientific research is rather “ the kind of discovering which ... awaits solely the discoveredness of the present-at-hand.” (Heidegger 1962, p. 415). The most important merit of Heidegger’s attempt to develop an “existential conception of science” is the way in which he is figuring out relations between the existential-ontological problem of transcendence, the horizon of temporality, and the cognitive structure of scientific research. Nevertheless, Being and Time does not offer a coherent conception of the constitution of scientific objects in terms of hermeneutic ontology. There are several reasons for this failure. First, Heidegger’s picture of science’s cognitive structure is underdeveloped. Second, the paradigm of constitutional analysis being employed depends heavily on the (hidden metaphysics of) the ontico-ontological difference. Third, there is a lot of missing links between scientific thematization that objectifies and the solution of the problem of transcendence. Fourth, the intrinsic horizon of the temporality of scientific research is completely ignored. (The makingpresent of thematic objects is a process distinguished by its own temporal dynamics. Heidegger conflates in an inappropriate manner two essentially different issues: the atemporalization of what is made-present in scientific thematization and the proper temporality of the “theoretical attitude”.) Finally, the contrast between the pre-scientific modes of “cirscumspective concern” and the scientific constitution of thematic objects is exaggerated. On the one hand, thematic objects of scientific research penetrate into the pre-scientific life-worlds, and, on the other, there is a permeability of pre-scientific procedures into the thematization that objectifies, and a constant diffusion of practices stemming from both the pre-scientific everyday life and the cognitive organization of scientific research. Before turning to postwar ideas of a hermeneutic phenomenology of science, I should like to draw attention on the paradigm of constitutional analysis (including the analysis of scientific research as a mode of being-in-the-world) suggested in Being and Time. Notoriously, the core of each phenomenological philosophy is a given paradigm of constitutional analysis, i.e., analysis of the constitution of meaning and meaningful objects. In Husserl’s phenomenology, this paradigm is built upon a kind of transcendental idealism. It is an idealism that is concerned with the intentionality of consciousness’ acts to the reality of the natural world. According to transcendental-idealistic phenomenology, the meaningfulness of the natural world (the manifolds of meaningful objects) is constituted within the intentional life of consciousness. There is no meaning (however remote from the immediate personal and interpersonal life) that is not constituted by transcendental subjectivity. The locus of constitution is this subjectivity that endures as something self-identical. On the paradigm of constitutional

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analysis put forward by Husserl, every manifold of objects has a certain sort of conscious acts correlated with it. “Phenomenology does not investigate the objects investigated by the researcher in other sciences; on the contrary, it investigates the total system of possible acts of consciousness, of possible appearances and meanings related precisely to those objects.” (Husserl 1989, p. 312) Husserl’s phenomenology is a typical essentialist conception since it presupposes transcendental consciousness as an absolute essence. An important consequence of Heidegger’s reformulation of the transcendental phenomenology of consciousness’ intentionality in a hermeneutic phenomenology of “facticity” is the rise of a new paradigm of constitutional analysis. The transcendental ego no longer plays the role of a privileged site of meaning constitution. It is rather the totality of existence (the “facticity”) where this constitution takes place. In the new paradigm of constitutional analysis, there is a kind of interpretation that is an intrinsic moment of all human activities. This universal interpretative dimension of human being-in-the-world should not be confused with the concept of interpretation as a specific epistemic procedure. From the perspective of hermeneutic phenomenology, interpretation must be comprehended as a primordial existential phenomenon. Interpretation that is inherent in human being-in-the-world brings to light the meanings constituted by most elementary discursive practices. There is no meaningful practice withinthe-world without interpretation. To make sense of this claim, one has to take into consideration Heidegger’s account of the nexus “understanding-interpretation”. Understanding is the projection of a horizon of possibilities of constituting meaning upon a given mode of being-in-the-world. By executing particular practices within this horizon, interpretation comes into play as the articulation of what is projected in understanding. Heidegger states: “In interpretation, understanding does not become something different. It becomes itself. Such interpretation is grounded existentially in understanding; the latter does not arise from the former. Nor is interpretation the acquiring of information about what is understood; it is rather the working-out of possibilities projected in understanding.” (Heidegger 1962, pp. 188-89) In rejecting the idea of an ultimate grounding provided by the ego’s intentional life of consciousness, one focuses on the temporal-interpretative self-constitution of human being-in-the-world. In this perspective, the “existential structure of the primordial interpretation” (i.e., the structure revealed through Daseinsanalytik) involves three moments, which Heidegger calls fore-having (Vorhabe), fore-sight (Vorsicht), and fore-conception (Vorgriff). Fore-having is the background of familiar practices in which an “anticipatory grasp” of coming situations of “everyday concernful dealing” is embedded; fore-sight provides the expectation of the everyday involvement in concernful practices; and fore-conception is the orientation of what is supposed to be an outcome of the

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concernful practices. Thus considered, the existential structure of interpretation plays the role of hermeneutic fore-structure of meaning constitution taking place in the modes of being-in-the-world. Heidegger’s elaborations of the nexus “understanding-interpretation” provoke an interesting ambiguity in the way of construing the notion of hermeneutic fore-structure. On the one hand, this notion denotes the interrelatedness of the most elementary routine practices that form “everydayness” as the primordial mode of being-in-the-world. Speaking in terms of Being and Time, everydayness is the existential mode characterized by a concernful dealing with things that are “ready-to-hand”. Within this mode, the pre-epistemic constitution of a meaningful (everyday) world comes into being. On this reading, everydayness is opposed to the scientific constitution of nature as an “epistemologically specified mode of existence”. In transforming the ready-to-hand (and the meaningful world of everyday routine practices) into a thematically objectified presence-at-hand, scientific research guided by objectifying thematization remains based upon the concernful constitution of meaning. Yet the hermeneutic fore-structure of this constitution becomes “concealed” by objectifying thematization. In this regard, the notion of hermeneutic fore-structure can be construed in terms of the contradistinction between the pre-epistemic being-in-the-world and the world(s) constituted by objectifying thematization. On the other hand, scientific research is a being-in-the-world that is predicated on its own discursive-practical everydayness. Following this tenet, objectifying thematization can indeed “conceal” the fore-structure of everyday (pre-scientific) practices, but nonetheless it (as a way of constituting theoretical objects of scientific research) is grounded on its own hermeneutic fore-structure whose analyzing is the central task of a hermeneutic phenomenology of science. A regime of “everyday concernful dealing” (illustrated typically by a scientific community’s everyday life) is to be attributed to scientific research as a mode of existence. In this concernful dealing (as interrelatedness of discursive practices), objectifying thematization takes place. Thus, the search for a hermeneutic forestructure (within the everydayness) of scientific research is a completely reasonable task. This is why many important distinctions of Daseinsanalytik are to be applied not only to the inquiry into the “existentially primordial” mode of pre-thematizing (pre-objectifying, pre-epistemic) dealing with things that are ready-to-hand, but to the intrinsic discursive-practical fore-structuring of the cognitive structure of scientific research as well. In particular, the distinction between the “pre-predicative as-structure of seeing of the ready-to-hand” and the “thematic-predicative as-structure of seeing of the present-at-hand” is applicable to the existential-ontological interpretation of scientific research. To be sure, Heidegger does not pay much attention to the “intrinsic everydayness” of science. Moreover, in his analysis of objectifying thematization

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the interrelatedness of discursive practices of the research process does not play any significant role. He focuses chiefly on the “existential genesis” of science (as “theoretical attitude” and “mathematical projection of nature”) from the everyday concernful constitution of elementary meanings. (This is the guiding idea of Heidegger’s “existential conception of science” in Being and Time.) Yet following the line of my preceding considerations, scientific research is characterized by its own everydayness, which exhibits important similarities to what Kuhn calls “normal science”. Related to this “secondary everydayness”, hermeneutic fore-structure is the horizon of possibilities that can be worked out by the objectifying thematization of scientific research. The working-out of these possibilities constitutes a domain of scientific research.

d. Postwar Ideas for a Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Science Based on Heidegger’s ideas, Joseph Kockelmans developed in the late 1960s a hermeneutic conception of objectifying thematization. There are several reasons for admitting that this conception marks the starting point of the contemporary hermeneutic philosophy of science. In contrast to older authors (like Jean Cavailles, Suzanne Bachelard, and Jean Ladriere) striving for a constitutional analysis of science’s thematic objects, Kockelmans does not seek to give an account of particular cognitive dimensions of scientific research in terms of a certain phenomenological doctrine. Furthermore, unlike these authors he is not willing to make any concessions to the philosophy of consciousness.9 At stake in his work is the issue of objectifying thematization as a theoretical and mathematical projection that both underlies and takes place within the “work-world” of scientific research. Kockelmans is highly innovative in providing a double interpretation of objectifying thematization – within the framework of hermeneutic phenomenology and within the scope of philosophy of science. He believes that by means of such an interpretation, one is moving beyond semantics, mathematics, logic, and epistemology, to an ontological domain where issues concerning truth and constitution of meaning in scientific research are to be discussed. More generally, Kockelmans’ guiding idea is that the move from logical reconstruction, linguistic analysis, and the various branches of epistemology of science towards an ontological theory of scientific research would allow us to recast the problematics of philosophy of science in terms of hermeneutic ontology. Through objectifying thematization, scientific research reveals a domain of projected possibilities for articulating empirically valid cognitive structures. To say that a particular theoretical construction is true, means that it is entangled in the very process of revealing. For Kockelmans, the natural sciences’ objectifying thematization poses ontological problems that are problems of meaning and truth.10

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Kockelmans does not reject the conception of truth as correspondence. Yet he denounces any representationalist and/or foundationalist reading of the “adequation of intellect and thing”. The correspondence between the content of a theoretical construction and the thematic objects is itself an ontological relationship. (Alternative projects of objectifying thematization of the same natural phenomena reveal “truth” [in the hermeneutico-phenomenological sense of Aletheia] in different ways. Kockelmans [2002] illuminates this claim through an interesting comparative analysis of Newton’s and Hertz’s principles of classical mechanics.) By the same token, objectifying thematization is not an epistemic procedure, but an “ontological event”. It takes place within “the theoretical mode of being-in-the-world”. In terms of hermeneutic ontology, objectifying thematization is a particular way of revealing the meaning of being. By implication, the cognitive structure that is articulated in the process of objectifying thematization has an important ontological dimension. Following the idea that each scientific domain is distinguished by typical ontological projection, Kockelmans succeeded in figuring out the three main aspects of objectifying thematization: (i) the connection between domain’s conceptual structure and mathematical apparatus, (ii) the constitution of a domain’s language, and (iii) the formation of a domain’s methodological profile. He also carried out pioneering studies in the temporality and historicity (in the sense of hermeneutic phenomenology) of scientific research. Kockelmans is eager to retain a transcendental dimension in the philosophy of the natural sciences. Very important in this regard is his exchange with Bas van Fraassen whose constructive empiricism opposes the necessity of such a dimension.11 Kockelmans states that a philosophical doctrine of science which dispenses with a transcendental dimension is doomed to skepticism and unable to speak of truth. Thanks to this thesis, the problem of a relevant conception of “the transcendental” took a central place in the studies in hermeneutics of science. The criticism epitomized by the claim that there is no “empiricist study that explicitly asks what the necessary conditions are that must be fulfilled if human beings are to have experiences” (Kockelmans 1997a, p. 201) is at the same time a plea for complementing (constructive) empiricism with a kind of constitutional analysis. Yet in advocating the need for a transcendental dimension (attributed to this analysis), Kockelmans (like Gadamer) refuses to justify an autonomous transcendental position. The lesson one can derive from his work is that the transcendentalism of ontico-ontological difference is indispensable for the constitutional analysis of scientific research. Yet in carrying out this analysis the transcendental dimension has to be minimized as much as possible. More specifically, the “distance” between the ontical and ontological levels has to be maximally shortened. What is analyzed in ontological terms (objectifying thematization, constitution of regions of scientific research,

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formalization, functionalization, mathematization, and so on) has to be translatable in terms of various (ontic, empirical) analyses of science’s research everydayness and cognitive structures. Kockelmans’ perspective on science is informed by the problematics of the ontological meaning and truth. He focuses on “actually doing science” as a whole mode of existence. Kockelmans tells us that logical, epistemological, methodological, historical, sociological, and psychological topics (and distinctions) are “artificial ones in the sense that they do not really run parallel to what scientists actually do.” (Kockelmans 1993, p. 112) Furthermore, he is reluctant to accept that the hermeneutic model of reading a text is apt to provide interesting results in the philosophy of the natural sciences. In his view, it is less than illuminating to call nature, as it is studied by these sciences, a text. In contrast to Kockelmans’ radically anti-epistemological viewpoint, Theodore Kisiel places more emphasis in his work on the hermeneutic reformulation (or overcoming) of old epistemological distinctions. In trying to develop initially a “hermeneutics of scientific discovery” (and later on, a “hermeneutic model of scientific rationality”), he proves to be the first author who suggests overcoming the context-distinction (between empirical studies and normative-epistemological reconstruction) within a constitutional analysis of science. In a series of papers from the 1970s Kisiel suggested as an alternative to the context-distinction the reactualization of the old metaphor of the Book of Nature.12 A significant place in the development of Kisiel view about a hermeneutico-ontological philosophy of science takes his reading of Kuhn’s work. In analyzing Kuhn’s conflation of language and perception in terms of a neo-Aristotelian theory of “practical interpretation”, Kisiel reaches the conclusion that one “wonders whether there is still not something left here for the epistemologically oriented historian to explore, just as Kuhn himself has examined the heuristic potential of the thought experiment by bringing out the relationship between its linguistic and ontological features. This, after all, is not so far removed from the classical tradition of ars inveniendi, which was first cultivated in the linguistic disciplines of rhetoric, dialectic, and poetics, and stressed the importance of getting down to cases.” [Kisiel 1982, p. 109]) Step by step he transformed postpositivist models of theory-ladenness and intertheoretical translatability into an ontological conception of “the situation of reading” within normal scientific research. The historical contexts “decide” what is relevant and appropriate for reading a text of nature. The situation of reading involves Merleau-Ponty’s “corporeal schemes” (typical structures of perception and praxis), the medium of language, and the historical background. According to Kisiel, the reading of the Book of Nature (within the natural sciences) is not to be reduced to a process of “reading instruments in a laboratory context”. (He raises this claim in connection with a

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criticism of Heelan’s hermeneutics of scientific research, which I will handle later.) Kisiel’s conception echoes motifs of late-Heidegger’s philosophy. It is the linguisticality of the network of relationships between man and world” in which scientific research is embedded. Being situated in this linguisticality, scientific research is an unending process of revealing not a “nature in itself”, but a “ nature which happens” to scientists through the aforementioned network. Kisiel analyzes the network’s linguisticality in a fashion that enables him to identify not only Merleau-Ponty’s “corporeal schemes”, but also Heidegger’s “ interpretative understanding” and Gadamer’s “prejudices” as kinds of scientific research’s hermeneutic fore-structuring. Unfortunately, the ideas of Kockelmans and Kisiel were not supplied with enough case studies. Though they convincingly opposed hermeneutic views to the mainstream in the philosophy of science, their arguments sounded too abstract in postpositivism’s heyday. There is also another historical circumstance which seems to me quite important. By the time Kockelmans and Kisiel launched interpretative programs of studying science’s cognitive content, the sociological approaches to the transformation of “laboratory life” into papers transcriptions flourished. These approaches either bypassed entirely science’s cognitive content, or tried to translate the interpretative dimension of “constructing scientific knowledge” in the empirical languages of sociology. But they were very attractive as ethnographic or anthropological investigations. As a result, they gave birth to the idea that all interpretative dimensions of scientific research can be scrutinized in an empirical fashion. Bloor, Barnes, Collins and many others reached the conclusion that if the validity of science’s cognitive content and the truth of scientific theories do depend on stepping above the causal nexus of social relations, then they should be given up as lost. This is the main postulate of “naturalistic externalism” – a position that is the antipode of hermeneutic internalism. According to this position, the conception of the structure and validity of science’s cognitive content should be always revised instead of abandoning a sociological approach to the constitution of knowledge. Michael Mulkay, one of the earliest critics of naturalistic externalism, makes it clear that the metaphor of the “causal nexus of social relations” relies on a notion of actors negotiating meanings. He points out that the metaphor inclines more towards some form of hermeneutic analysis than the kind of causal analysis which traditionally gives the problem of the constitution of scientific knowledge a misleading appearance of insolubility. (See Mulkay 1966, p. 66). A significant exception from the radical empiricism of mainstream sociology of scientific knowledge was Karin Knorr-Cetina’s constructivist program, which promulgated a contextual study of the laboratory work based on hermeneutic principles. This program conceives of interpretation as a constitution of symbolic objects that are provided “by the constant generation of

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measurement traces; that is, by graphs, figures, printouts, diagrams, and the like.” (Knorr-Cetina 1981, p. 144) The scientists in the laboratory are confronted with “unlimited uncertainties” and they are trying through interpretations to make sense of this “noisy milieu”. Like Kockelmans and Kisiel, Knorr-Cetina was engaged in an “urbanization” of Heidegger’s existential conception of science, making it relevant to the laboratory’s symbolic work-world. Later, when Knorr-Cetina began to study the laboratory as “enhanced environment which improves upon the natural order in relation to the social order” (Knorr-Cetina 1992, p. 116), Merlreau-Ponty’s phenomenological ideas (about the reconfiguration of the phenomenal field) took place in her studies. Despite this development, however, Knorr-Cetina’s insistence on the need for non-empirical (hermeneutic and phenomenological) reflection was the exception that proves the rule. And the rule was that of “naturalizing interpretation” in studying the everydayness of scientific research. By the end of the 1980s the position of naturalistic externalism began to lose its contours. Various construals of what should be counted as “social realism” and competing programs for naturalizing the studies of the construction of scientific knowledge enhanced the crisis in cognitive sociology. In addition, the latter was accused of a simplistic picture of scientific theories. In this precarious situation, the attempts to save naturalistic externalism culminated in two extreme forms: Latour and Callon’s actor-network theory, and the deconstructive approach which goes under the title of “reflexivity”. The latter proceeds by turning constructionist tools on constructionism, while the former radicalizes relativist and constructivist sociology by generalizing symmetry through treating all actants that are a party to the scientific enterprise in the same manner. At stake in both cases is not only the deconstruction of the boundary between true and false scientific knowledge (i.e., Bloor’s kinds of sociological relativism), but a deconstruction of all epistemological dichotomies. In a famous paper, H. M. Collins and Steven Yearley accused both programs of not leaving room for explanation. (Naturalistic externalism is saved at the expense of accepting a sort of methodological anti-naturalism.) For Collins and Yearley, both radicalizations of relativism and symmetry prove to be self-defeating approaches. Cognitive sociology can only be saved within a world without foundations. However, the “discovery that all foundations of knowledge are as fragile as those of the physicist gives us the opportunity to alternate between worlds, but it makes no difference to what it means to be a good sociologist or a good historian of scientific knowledge.” (Collins and Yearley 1992, p. 324) Collins and Yearley called the program expressed by this statement “meta-alternation”. It requires switching from naturalist realism when one is engaged in normal scientific research to social realism when one professes social studies of the natural sciences (and of their technological applications).13

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The program of meta-alternation – so Collins and Yearley’s argument goes – reconciles relativism with the need of explanations through achieving a “symmetry” between naturalism (objectivism) and social realism (constructivism). It is not my aim to give (on this occasion) a critical appraisal of the reliability of meta-alternation. Neither would I like to agree or disagree with constructivists’ criticism of “reflexivity” and the “French school”. What is important to me in the present context is only the fact that both the schools of social studies of the natural sciences and the programs which Andrew Pickering unifies under the heading “science as practice and culture” did not succeed in finding a reliable (ontological, epistemological, and methodological) solution to the problem of relativism. Neither “naturalizing the relativist mode of investigation” nor the rejection of a “metanarrative” combined with the search for “new literary forms” promise acceptable solutions. From the viewpoint of hermeneutic phenomenology, the formulation and solution of the problem of relativism requires a conception of the situated transcendence of human practices. Coming to grips with situated transcendence is a “transcendental condition” for handling (in an empirical manner) the problem of relativism. As long ago as the early 1980s, the champions of an ontological hermeneutics of science made it clear that the possibility of successful empirical programs of relativist and constructivist sociology of scientific knowledge hinges on an ontological conception of situated transcendence. The latter must be integrated in such programs. Yet it cannot be cast in empirical terms. Hence, cognitive sociology of science and studies into “science as practice and culture” have to have (pace radical naturalism of their champions) a “transcendental dimension”, which, again, does not imply a justification of an autonomous transcendental position. Actually, the program of meta-alternation (like several other programs in science studies) do not aim to solve the problem of relativism. They merely suggest a technology of how to cope with the relativist regress. These programs do not even try to formulate in a comprehensive manner the problem of relativism. By contrast, the hermeneutic phenomenology of scientific research depends entirely on the formulation and solution of this problem. The diverging ways of overcoming the relativist regress are the source of a continuous disagreement between cognitive sociology and hermeneutics of science. Although “science as culture” is the common field of investigation of both undertakings, there is no chance of reaching a consensus concerning the “practical constitution of scientific knowledge”. For the champions of an ontological hermeneutics of scientific research, the constitution of knowledge is not an empirical (and naturalistic) issue. Indeed, the apriorism of normatve epistemology has to be set aside. Yet there is the need for a certain “paradigm of constitutional analysis” in elaborating on concepts referring to the issues of how open practices of scientific research can be “closed” (Pickering calls this “the problem of closure”), and

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transformed thereby into cognitive content. Moreover, it is such a paradigm of constitutional analysis that is of prime importance for formulating and resolving the problem of relativism. On a claim I will develop in more detail in the next section, to enter into the interpretative circle between the projected possibilities of scientific research and their ongoing actualizations amounts to avoiding the relativist regress. Between the horns of sociological naturalism and philosophical apriorism, there is the perspective of “hermeneutic transcendentalism ”, which rejects the postulation of a detached transcendental position. This is the perspective followed by the strong hermeneutics of science. My short story of the post-war development of ideas for a “hermeneutic phenomenology of the natural sciences” cannot bypass Hubert Dreyfus’ criticism of AI. His first significant achievement was the implementation of the “Heideggerian viewpoint” as a critique of ongoing (and avant-garde in the 1970s) scientific programs. Dreyfus claims that regardless of their pretensions of originality, the leading programs in the early period of AI (in his words, “good oldfashioned AI based on the idea of using symbolic representations”) share fundamental assumptions with the whole of the philosophical tradition. More specifically, the ontological assumption that the world is defined in terms of a set of atomic facts which can be expressed in logically independent propositions lays the foundations of these programs. The world of structures, decision theory, and automation is the AI version of Plato’s world “in which the possibility of clarity certainty, and control is guaranteed.” (Dreyfus 1972, p. 212) Dreyfus goes on to claim that Western Metaphysics reaches its culmination in cybernetics. His ambition (from the early 1970s) was to envisage alternative programs based upon Merleau-Ponty’s and Heidegger’s ontological assumptions. This was the first attempt to integrate hermeneutic phenomenology’s ideas in the natural sciences. At the same time (seen from the reverse standpoint), this was the first attempt at a “scientification” of hermeneutic phenomenology. Dreyfus was after a scientific program that can take into account the fore-structures of experience which inform the “hermeneutico-ontological basis” of what in traditional AI is regarded as “intelligent behavior”. More generally, by replacing the traditional philosophical assumptions underlying work in artificial intelligence with ideas elaborated in several versions of phenomenological philosophy, Hubert Dreyfus suggests that a constitutional analysis based upon a conception of situated transcendence is compatible with empirical research. This is why the question of how to integrate a conception of the situated transcendence of human existence in an area of empirical inquiry is at stake in many programs of AI influenced by Dreyfus’ views. A “Heideggerian common denominator” of these programs is the denial to “deduce” the intelligent behavior of a system from the internal complexity of the system itself. Each kind of such behaviour is “always already” within-the-world. However, Dreyfus’

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contribution to the ideas and programs for a hermeneutic phenomenology of the natural sciences should be estimated in a much broader context. His celebrated “Wittgensteinian reading” of Being and Time shows a way of avoiding that relativist regress that the relativist and constructivist programs in cognitive sociology did not succeed in overcoming. Although not engaged specifically with a program of hermeneutics of science, Hubert Dreyfus undertakes a step in the direction of revising Heidegger’s existential conception of scientific research. He stresses that theoretical explanation is predicated on its own fore-structure which is relatively independent of pre-scientific experience. Since natural scientific research is also situated withinthe-world and the world-experience of cultural existence, it thematizes (conceptualizes, formalizes, explains, etc.) its objects within theoretical fore-structures, which “are not like the fore-structures of everyday coping, nor like the forestructure of everyday interpretation, nor even like the fore-structures of interpretation in the social sciences. Natural science, like any mode of existence, cannot make entirely explicit its projections, i.e., the basic assumptions and practical background skills in which the scientists dwell.” (Dreyfus 1991, p. 203) Dreyfus associates the hidden theoretical fore-structures of natural-scientific mode of being-in-the-world with Kuhn’s discliplinary matrix, which cannot be rationalized, but persists through its partial manifestation as “shared exemplars” in the tradition of normal scientific research. Dreyfus is convinced that the problem of the universality of hermeneutics cannot be resolved without working out the difference between the fore-structure of everyday (primordial, pre-epistemic) understanding and interpretation and (in his words) “the forestructure of scientific theory (explanation)”. An ontological hermeneutics of scientific research (and scientific theorizing) requires entering “in the right way” into the specific hermeneutic circles of co-dependence between scientific projections and articulating particular thematic objects. Yet Dreyfus’ attempt to introduce ideas from hermeneutic phenomenology in an empirical area of scientific research was an isolated event. Given the rise of radical empiricism in various branches of science studies in the first half of the 1980s, the view began to gain currency that philosophical hermeneutics is much more interesting and fruitful, when scrutinizing those aspects of scientific research which are omitted by the (analytical) philosophy of science. In this view, a hermeneutics of the natural sciences should not compete (pace Kockelmans and Kisiel) with the epistemological models of the structure and dynamics of scientific theories. Its goal is rather to complement these models. The autonomous cognitive structure of scientific inquiry is the legitimate area of the analytical (normative or naturalist) philosophy of science. Of course, in complementing epistemological, methodological, and logical programs, philosophical hermeneutics – so the “complementarist argument” goes – would prefer to have

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as partners historicist rather than logico-linguistic conceptions; constructivist rather than realist programs; semantico-structuralist rather than statement views; holist rather than reductionist doctrines; pluralist rather than unificationist strategies; and finally, programs oriented towards exernalism rather than internalism. The major exponent of the view that the cognitive structures and dynamics of the natural sciences are in no need of a hermeneutic reflection was (in the mid 1980s) Georgy Markus. He makes the case that education in the natural sciences neither cultivates nor stimulates interpretative skills. The future practitioners in these sciences are taught to acquire the “monological language of physics”. The lack of interpretative skills implies the persistence of the “hermeneutic naiveté” of the natural sciences. This naivité works because “the ideology ... of the natural sciences which regards any acceptable scientific text as totally self-sufficient as to its meaning (and therefore as unambiguously clear to any reader with adequate competence) does succeed because the hermeneutical consequences of a so conceived practice seem to confirm this belief.” (Markus 1987, p. 9) Why the interpretative deficit of the natural sciences does ensure a relatively continuous transmission of paradigmatic results, explanatory schemes, patterns of theorizing, etc.? By raising this question, one is confronting a serious hermeneutic problem. The interpretative naivité is not an argument against the hermeneutics of the natural sciences, but a “state of affairs” that is in need of a philosophico-hermeneutic reflection. Markus is aware of this problem. Yet he believes that it can be resolved not by trying to develop interpretative models of scientific theories, but by treating the natural sciences as representing a form of literature. In other words, Markus believes that the hermeneutic situation (if any) of the natural sciences can be treated adequately by shifting the focus from their cognitive structures and dynamics to the literary design of scientific discourse. In such a treatment, one can avoid any conflict between the observation of a significant historical success of science as a cultural institution, on the one hand, and the fact that the constitution of its cognitive content runs under a persisting “hermeneutic naivité”. Markus argues that for developing an interpretative philosophy of science, “it is insufficient to indicate or to demonstrate that some of philosophical hermeneutics’ ideas and concepts” are applicable in some sense to the field of natural scientific inquiry”. (Markus 1987, p. 10) Nevertheless, he believes that when the latter is conceived as the “cultural organization of the author-textreader relations in the constitution of literary genres of scientific discourse”, one can do justice to a special sort of such hermeneutics. It is this perspective on scientific research as an institutionalized (re)production of a culturally specified discourse that defines the only possibility for a (non-ontological but philological) hermeneutics of the natural sciences. In concentrating upon the historicocultural processes of production, transmission, reception and innovation of

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scientific texts, this “weak hermeneutics” (which does not take into consideration science’s cognitive content) should play the role of an antidote against both the linguistico-epistemological reductionism of the analytical philosophy of science and the dubious relativism of the sociology of scientific knowledge. Without recasting in ontological terms epistemological issues, the “culturologist hermeneutics of the institutionalized genres of scientific discourse” (another self-qualification of Markus’ enterprise) gives an account of features like objectivity, replicability, communality, novelty, and advance of knowledge in terms of the author-text-reader relations. (Generally speaking, “weak hermeneutics of science” is a heading for all interpretative studies of the production of scientific texts and the forms of scientific communication [including the historical dynamics of these forms]. The kernel of these studies is the comparative analysis of the patterns of different genres of scientific publications – working papers, journal articles, textbooks, monographs, essays of yearbooks, and so on. Ideas and programs of weak hermeneutics of science are developed in a wide range of disciplines – history of ideas, cultural history, rhetoric [both as informal logic of argumentation and as literary rhetoric], media and communication studies, cultural studies, social psychology, and literary criticism. The champions of weak hermeneutics are predominantly preoccupied with the “effective-history of reading [classical] scientific texts”. The focus on the historical situatedness of scientific texts and the “historical memory” of [scientific] “reading communities” helps one to address issues like the “implied reader” as a mediator between production and reception of scientific texts, the historical distance necessary for a “canonization” of a given text as classical, the role played by the texts’ “generic characteristics” in the formation of communicative spaces, and the ways of depersonalization of scientific texts’ authorship. Weak hermeneutics is [in opposition to Bohman’s “strong holism”] a historical [and philological] hermeneutics of cultural institutions. Its main subject is the diversity of cultural genres [specified with respect to the scheme “author-text-reader”] in different historical epochs. Studies in weak hermeneutics of science often merge in studies devoted to the “rhetorical production of epistemic objectivity and axiological neutrality” of scientific research. Weak hermeneutics [together with rhetoric of scientific discourse] is a response to the “hermeneutic ambiguity” indicated in the very beginning of this book – the ambiguity concerning the interpretative openness of the traditions of scientific research, on the one hand, and the interpretative conservatism [combined with hermeneutic naivité] of scientific communities, on the other.)14 Since the production, transmission, reception and innovation of scientific texts is predicated on a successful cultural organization of traditions within the author-text-reader relations, the task of a hermeneutics of the natural sciences is rather negative. It has to render explicit those parameters of the cultural organi-

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zation of scientific traditions which make a reflexive hermeneutic awareness unnecessary. Yet Markus fails to elaborate on a decisive argument for the claim that the roots of the persisting hermeneutic naivité are not in science’s objectifying thematization, theorizing, idealization, and mathematization. He also fails to defend convincingly his position that hermeneutic ontology (“ontologizing approach” in his terminology) is irrelevant to the constitution of science’s cognitive content and to the situated transcendence of the researchers-researchee relations within scientific traditions. (In developing a cultural hermeneutics of science’s author-text-reader relations, Markus was initially motivated by the endavour to confront Gadamer’s dictum that science does not speak a proper language. His scrupulous hermeneutic elaborations show that the natural sciences do have their own forms of Sprachlichkeit. Yet Markus has never given an answer to the question why these forms must be detached from the constitution of science’s cognitive content.) The notion of “strong hermeneutics of science” was introduced by Patrick Heelan in his critical response to Markus’ program. Heelan’s response to Markus’ challenge marks a new phase in spelling out the idea of a constitutional analysis of scientific research in terms of hermeneutic philosophy. A “strongly hermeneutic philosophy of science” is oriented not toward science’s textual diversity but toward “data constitution” (Heelan’s expression) from phenomena which exist in the life-world of “local scientific communities”. This philosophy has to develop its own account of science whose starting point is “the ontology of scientific research”. In short, at stake in strong hermeneutics is not the reading of texts but the data-constituting reading of phenomena within the life-worlds of scientific communities. (As early as the mid 1960s, Heelan suggested a phenomenological interpretation of quantum mechanical objects by unfolding “the intentional character of the measurement process” as a process that takes place in a “local historical scientific community”.15 In his view, it is the articulation of the notion of “quantum mechanical contextuality” that requires appropriating Continental approaches to knowledge, using concepts like intentionality, constitution, and local embodiment. Moreover, he is convinced that the contextualization of a measurement process constitutes “the local life-world space” in which quantum mechanical objects “can be seen” as localized entities. A hermeneutico-phenomenological theory of measurement is the point of departure of Heelan’s strong hermeneutics of science. Through measurement, modeldefined theoretical objects are brought into the life-world of laboratory research work. Furthermore, measurement is a device of translation. By means of it, the language of theoretical objects gets translated into the “life-world language” of laboratory practices. Heelan argues that the life-world of these practices provides a “transcendental structure” of perception of theoretical objects.

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The knowledge about the locality and historicality of the processes of measurement is incorporated in the constitution of cognitive content in non-classical physics. Heelan tells us that such knowledge is essentially hermeneutic. Following Merleau-Ponty’s seminal ideas, he treats scientific communities as “local research communities” which give “flesh” to phenomena in the world by choosing definite “socio-historical paths” of doing research. To be sure, this claim bears resemblance to Callon and Latour’s attack on “scientists’ hegemony on the definition of nature”. Like Heelan (and in contrast to the most representatives of the sociology of scientific knowledge), these authors reject an a priori distinction between nature and society. Callon and Latour are trying not to give social explanations of scientific practices (which is the intention of “social realism”), but “to explain society”, of which science’s equipment, cognitive content, and “artifacts” (or, “scientificated facts”) are signifigant components. Yet this “radicalized general symmetry principle” that admits the coproduction of society and nature leads to a trivialization of science’s objectifying thematization. All practices involved in the latter and their outcomes are only mixtures of “intentional social human subjects” and “material objects”. Scientific research can only be documented as a “circulation of network-tracing tokens, statements, and skills”. (Latour 1987, p. 258) This is by no means Heelan’s aim. What the radical symmetry of the French school ignores is the fact that every account of scientific research (and of all other modes of being-in-the-world) in terms of the (empirical) actor-network approach tacitly assumes the situated transcendence of the “combinations” of material entities and intentional human actors within the practical world. Thus, the reformulation of the nature-society spectrum in terms of this approach requires developing an (ontological) conception of situated transcendence. (In particular, the construction of a “symmetric metalanguage”, which the French authors are pursuing, cannot avoid such a conception.) Though discarding (like Callon and Latour) the opposition between “ natural realism” and “social realism”, Heelan does not give up the task of defining the specificity of scientific research (as contextual, social, local, and historical objectifying thematization) in terms of hermeneutic phenomenology. In my view, Heelan is the first author who began to fight on two fronts: against analytical philosophy for providing an epistemological justification of science’s essentialist-representational self-understanding, and against traditional hermeneutic phenomenology for opposing and misconstruing scientific rationality. With regard to the former, he stresses that neither theory nor data gathering is “the culmination of science”. Like many “internal critics” of the analytical tradition, Heelan blames the mainstream philosophy of science for neglecting the social-historical-instrumental context of scientific practices. Strangely enough, he invests more efforts in criticising Continental philosophy’s pictures of science. Traditional hermeneutic phenomenology and philosophical hermeneutics fail to see that scientific research discloses “new perceptual

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horizons”. The critique of science in terms of a hermeneutic ontology of laboratory research practices is a criticism of scientism as “objectivist ideology” of modern science. By no means, however, this critique would tolerate an ideological attack on scientific practices. Heelan is not tired of arguing that the development of a “hermeneutic context logic” of quantum mechanics and the phenomenological analysis of the constitution of quantum mechanical research objects can be construed as bridges between the natural and social sciences. It is the picture of scientific inquiry in non-classical physics that makes a methodological impact upon the social and human sciences. More specifically, the path-dependence of data constitution in quantum mechanical research provides a model for ontological interpretation of complex phenomena that are “fleshed out” differently by competing local and historical communities. The existence of cultural phenomena (e.g., certain kinds of rituals) in many particular life-worlds is a “standard situation” in the social and human sciences – a situation that demands a complementarity of phenomena’s alternative descriptions. In elaborating on relevant versions of the complementarity principle, one promotes a convergency between non-classical physics and the interpretative theories of complex cultural phenomena. (Heelan devotes also special attention to the General Theory of Relativity. He focuses especially on the phenomena studied in this theory. In combining a Husserlian and a Heideggerian perspective, Heelan defines “the phenomenon” both as “the existential unit” and as an invariant to which a multiplicity of data can be ascribed by the observer. The analysis of data constitution in the General Theory of Relativity provides an additional rationale for Heelan’s thesis of the ontological primacy of non-Euclidean space.) The possibility for a strong hermeneutics hinges on the ontological account of the situated transcendence of scientific research within its own practical and theoretical horizons. According to Heelan, the task of professing a constitutional analysis of scientific research is to criticize the one-sidedness of the picture of science’s theory-ladenness. The practices of scientific research produce “new real life-world phenomena” that are not theory-laden. Heelan calls them also “post-theoretical phenomena”. From the viewpoint of his version of hermeneutic phenomenology, the natural sciences are not just conceptualdeductive systems and mathematized theories, but real life-worlds where theories are eventually used to produce post-theoretical phenomena. The latter are not built upon everyday laboratory practices but rather are within the texture of “scientific laboratory culture”. The “production of post-theoretical phenomena” is two-dimensional. It is at once within horizons of practical and theoretical meanings. The experimental equipment involved in laboratory everydayness is semantically theory-laden, whereas the experimental observations are semantically praxis-laden. The two

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kinds of meanings are involved in an interplay that informs the dynamics of scientific research. On Heelan’s account, the procedures of measurement mediate between the two kinds of meaning since it fulfills two coordinated functions. “It presents the objects-as-measurable, this is the praxis-laden cultural function. And it takes the data from the presented object, this is the theory-laden data-taking process. These are the binary valencies of scientific data. The datataking is usually called ‘observation’; but there is no ‘observation’ without the prior preparation and presentation of the object-as-measurable as a system open to the data-taking process.” (Heelan 1997a, p. 282)) In working out a distinction between theory-ladenness and cultural praxis-ladenness, Heelan uses the metaphor of “hermeneutic spiral” in order to stress both the cyclical and the progressive character of scientific research. Theory and praxis are conjugated in a complex manner that follows the repetitive pattern of the hermeneutic spiral.16 The technologies that provide the infrastructure (equipment) of laboratory practices are theory-laden. Yet these practices are always called into being by problems whose roots are in “the pre-theoretical life-world” (in Husserl’s sense). The initial problems are laden with practical (pre-theoretical) meanings. Once “inserted” in the life-world of laboratory work, the initial problems in turn are transformed by “practice-laden theories” into problems whose meaningfulness depends on “theory-laden technologies”. Thus transformed, the problems are (re)formulated and treated in a changed “post-theoretical life-world” different from the life-world of the initial problems. Heelan’s interpretation of the relationship between theory-ladenness and cultural praxis-ladenness of scientific research helps one to envisage a way of treating “weak holism” as a derivative form of “strong holism”. The former can only be accepted if one goes on to disregard (for whatever reasons) the temporality and historicality of scientific research. In this case, the theory-praxis interplay is deprieved of the laboratory context. Research practices (like experimentation and measurement) are only considered with regard to the functions they serve in theory construction. To modify slightly van Fraassen’s well known formulation, the practices of the laboratoty context are no more than a continuation of theory construction. The picture of scientific research that is congruent with weak holism is justified when one focuses on theory’s role in the semantic structuration of cognitive content. By taking into consideration the laboratory context, – so Heelan’s argument goes – one would reveal the practical fore-structure of theory construction. In this case, however, one has to follow the tenets of strong holism. As this perspective indicates, weak holism is valid in the scope of hermeneutic philosophy of science under certain limiting conditions. An image often used by Heelan is that of researchers immersed in a laboratory context where “nature’s meaningful texts” are inscribed on instruments of experimentation and measurement. “Reading instruments in a laboratory

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context” proves to be Heelan’s most influential conception. The acts of scientific observation (to which reading instruments belongs) are eo ipso hermeneutic. There is a fore-structure of reading (characterized by fore-sight, fore-having and fore-conception) of each particular act of observation. For Heelan (who at this point is influenced rather by Merleau-Ponty than Heidegger), it is forehaving (as the culturally acquired background of embodimenys, skills and practices) that is overlooked in the philosophy of science. The position of constitutional analysis that focuses in the first place upon a fore-having of reading is called by Heelan “hermeneutic realism”. On its basic assumption, “the ‘pages’ on which Nature ‘writes’ its ‘texts’ is a scientific instrument used a readable technology.” (Heelan 1983, p. 188). There is also an important social connotation involved in the notion of “readable technology”. Such a technology is able to communicate information to skilled readers. Since the skilled readers are those who share the same forehaving, only a given scientific community can use given readable technologies in order to “see” given research objects. The use of such a technology exteriorizes a fore-structure of reading. Thus, (what Heelan calls) a fore-having embedded in the use of readable technologies (of scientific instrumentation) is both a condition of interpretative understanding and a hermeneutic ground of consensus formation in scientific communities. Heelan makes it clear that not every experimental procedure is a readable technology. For instance, the current procedures for “observing” quarks are still not capable of exteriorizing a coherent fore-having. In this regard, they are not readable technologies. According to the position of hermeneutic realism, these technologies are mediators in the relationship between theory-ladenness and praxis-ladenness of data obtained in a laboratory context. The interpretative capacity of readable technologies is due to a “superposition” of scientific theories and research practices.17 I will conclude this historical survey of the main ideas for a hermeneutic phenomenology of science in the postwar period by indicating some conceptions which are more or less inspired by Heelan’s view of “reading instruments in a laboratory context”.18 Let me begin with Martin Eger who goes on to claim that natural science itself is a “form of hermeneutics”. Furthermore, he champions the view that hermeneutics rather supports than endangering science’s cognitive autonomy.19 A point of departure of a non-literary interpretative theory of scientific research is the reading of “texts” like graphical representations, models, and experiments. There are various texts and various kinds of “projections toward the text” in scientific research. For him, an ontology of the “dialogical interaction between the scientist and the object of investigation” (Eger 1993a, p. 15) is the kernel of strong hermeneutics. (From the perspective of such an ontology, James Cushing [1995] treats the underdetermination in the interpretation of the formalism of quantum mechanics.)

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Apart from the traditional context-distinction (between discovery and justification), Eger tries to delineate a “context of interpretation”. The basic concern in working within this context is the constitution of science-as-language. Studies in the context of interpretation have to spell out the “ontological landscapes” revealed by particular scientific languages. From the standpoint of an “ontological hermeneutics of science-as-language”, he criticizes the constructivist conception of “negotiation” as a universal (social, cognitive, and interpretative) process in scientific research. (See Eger 1997) In so doing, Eger elaborates on arguments for the irreducibility of the “context of interpretation” to the interpretative varieties of social constructivism. Last but not least, he relates the program for a hermeneutic phenomenology of science to the problematics of “humanization of science”. Yet to study scientific research within the analytic of human existence does not amount to rehabilitating (what Heidegger and Foucault call) “humanism”. “Humanization without humanism” is the formula that has to be advanced by the hermeneutic philosophy of science. While “humanism” is the “ideology” of the subject/object dichotomy, strong hermeneutics of science moves beyond this dichotomy. The fore-structure of reading processes in scientific research is Fabio Bevilacqua and Enrico Giannetto’s subject of hermeneutic analysis. These authors operate with the opposition between “life-world” and “science-world”. Interpretative philosophy of science can give a bridge between the two worlds through developing a hermeneutics of the researchers’ life-world. Bevilacqua and Gianneto go on to assert that assuming “an interpretation of the scientific revolution as the transition from an empirically grounded physics related to lifeworld experience to an experimentally grounded physics, we should focus the historically given bridge life-world and science-world. This can be done analysing the hermeneutic presuppositions of science, that is the specific life-world conditions of the possibility of science.” (Bevilacqua and Giannetto’s 1995, p. 122) Robert Crease focuses primarily on the question of how experimentation does “disclose the world”. Reaching “disclosedness” through performing experiments means a specific manner of “generating the light and space in which a thing can be seen”. (Crease 1993, p. 59) What he has in mind in raising this claim is rather the kinds of “contextualizing” and “historizing” the world than Heidegger’s “demundanization” and “regionalization”. Only after disclosure (projection of a horizon for doing experiments) has occurred, can (theoretical and empirical) scientific assertions be judged as true or false. Leading in Crease’s considerations is the hermeneutico-phenomenological thesis that the equipment context exists prior to any tool use and determines that use. The equipment context of experimentation (and the horizon for its “readable technologies”) is provided by the laboratory. The latter is first and foremost the place where thematic objects have been prepared for study in an experimental environment.

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Another important view advanced by Crease, this preparation is similar to what phenomenology refers to as constitution. This is why the hermeneutic analysis of laboratory work takes on the form of constitutional analysis. In carrying out such an analysis, Crease is committed to theatrical analogies and metaphorics “as a guide to phenomenological research into experimentation”. Among the issues that the implementation of this analogy helps one to deal with are the significance of choosing the right laboratory, the presentation of one’s results, the ways of deceiving oneself about one’s results, and the kinds of selecting a team. Crease is after a point-by-point comparison between scientific experimentation and theatrical performance. Scientific experiments are unique plays in the world, while scientific performances are addressed to specific communities that are only able to comprehend what is going on. He observes that in the back and forth motion between experimenter and the equipment in the emergence of a phenomenon, there is a “hermeneutic process of constitution”. Heidegger’s fore-structure of interpretation is to be located in this process. Thus, Crease succeeds in approaching the issue of the “hermeneutic fore-structure of experimentation”. In a Heideggerian fashion, he reaches the conclusion that the primacy of performance in the laboratory context means that all particular research practices are subordinated to the appearing of the phenomenon in performance. By implication, the performance is in the service of the phenomenon. Interestingly enough, Robert Crease, Martin Eger, James Cushing, Fabio Bevilacqua and Enrico Gianneto are not “professional philosophers” but “working physicists”. I should like to conclude this section with a critical appraisal of a program that is heavily influenced by Heidegger’s existential conception of science, and nevertheless, strongly opposes the possibility for a hermeneutic phenomenology of the natural sciences. I have in mind again Rouse’s neopragmatist deflationism. This program invites us to search for the aforementioned possibility by re-reading important conceptions of analytical and Continental philosophy. Such a re-reading will be a particular task in the rest of my study. To be sure, Rouse suggests a conception of scientific practices that avoids many deficiencies of the established pictures of “science-as-knowledge”, “science-as-practice”, and “science-as-culture”. He opposes those accounts of the notion of “praxis” which place emphasis on human subjectivity as the “source” of all behaviour that is simultaneously material and discursive. In rejecting the underlying dualisms between nature and activities, Rouse bypasses the hypostatization of models, structural codes, and norms by stressing that “practices are identifiable as patterns of ongoing engagement with the world, but these patterns exist only through their repetition or continuation.” (Rouse 1996, p. 134) Practices are to be seen as situated patterns of activity. In another formulation, the patterns composing a practice do not exist apart from their actual

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instantiation. Putting things this way makes it clear that a routine everydayness of doings has an “ontological primacy” over subject and agent. (The agents who engage in a routine network of doings belong to it, rather than being “producers” of it. In this respect, Rouse’s picture of scientific practices is akin to Callon’s actor-network approach.) Another important moment of Rouse’s account is the “radical openness” of practices. A practice always includes a “horizonal future”, and is never fixed by its past instances. Furthermore, Rouse insists that practices are not chains of events and actions, but configured processes that incorporate “equipmental contexts”. He also pays attention to the issue of “practical understanding” which accompanies each particular practice. In developing these views, Rouse’s central concern is about the anti-cognitivist interpretation of scientific research, in which the analysis of the practical understanding that is inherent in the research process plays a crucial role. This concern is part of his “deflationary approach” to the outcomes of scientific research. (By this expression, he means a dynamic account of “scientific knowing” that rejects an intrinsic nature of scientific knowledge. On this approach, it is impossible to provide “global interpretations and rationalizations or critiques of the scientific enterprise as such.” [Rouse 1996, p. 180] Scientific knowledge is not understood as a normatively structured cognitive body, but as a “situation in the world”. The deflationary approach is consonant with various sorts of “epistemological eliminativism” that aim to eliminate not only the reification of scientific knowledge but also the associated concepts of rationality and justification.) In his celebrated book Knowledge and Power, Joseph Rouse criticizes what he calls “Heidegger’s early philosophy of science”. He displays discontent with the way Heidegger spells out the changeover from everyday practices to a “theoretical looking at things as present-at-hand”. On his account, Heidegger is disturbingly vague about how the transition from everyday practical involvement to a theoretical attitude occurs. More specifically, he blames Heidegger for ignoring the “horizons within theories themselves”, the role of experiment in scientific research, the recontextualization of scientific objects in the changing configurations of research practices, and the socio-cultural milieu of doing research. To be sure, as I indicated several times, the disregard for science’s own from of research everydayness and science’s practical horizons in constructing theoretical objects is the most significant shortcoming of Heidegger’s “existential conception of science”. True, Rouse is successful in exposing some of the consequences of this shortcoming. In particular, he demonstrates succinctly that the conception of science in Being and Time concedes too much to the (in fact, neo-Kantian) theorydominant understanding of scientific research. Rouse’s efforts are directed towards a “discursive-practical revision” of Heidegger’s conception. This

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revision is opposed to the “reification of scientific knowledge”. Yet, there is an essential misinterpretation in Rouse’s critical reconstruction. Briefly, he attributes to Heidegger’s conception deficiencies that follow solely from his neopragmatic position, and have nothing to do with a hermeneutico-phenomenological interpretation of science. Thus, Heidegger’s emphasis on science’s cognitive specificity is by no means an implication of his disregard for the practices of scientific research. He gives an account of its specificity against the background of the “ontico-ontological difference”. Moreover, Heidegger stresses features of science’s theoretical attitude (in particular, “objectifying thematization” and “mathematical projection”) which in his opinion are essential for outlining an adequate picture of science’s research practices. Why does Rouse not take these features into account? The straight answer is, because he dispenses with the ontico-ontological difference. At the same time, however, he tries to make use of Heidegger’s idea that all scientific knowledge has an “existential genesis”. Yet to follow this idea in a consistent manner requires admitting (not necessarily Heidegger’s version of ) the ontico-ontological difference by means of which the problem of the “practical constitution” of scientific knowledge is to be formulated. As I argued earlier, the treatment of this problem is distinguished by an ineliminable “transcendental dimension”. The “practical constitution” of the “cognitive reality” within scientific mode(s) of being-in-the-world is not to be disentangled from the situated transcendence of scientific research – a phenomenon that all sorts of neopragmatism forget to take into consideration. By ignoring the special role the “transcendental dimension” is playing in the constitutional analysis of science’s theoretical attitude and thematic objects, Rouse attributes a kind of cognitive essentialism to the hermeneutico-ontological view concerning the interplay of praxis and theoria in scientific research. (To a certain extent, he is right to do this with respect to Heidegger’s existential conception. Yet the development of hermeneutic phenomenology in the postwar period brought into existence many conceptions [Ricoeur, Kockelmans, C. F. Gethmann, D. Ihde, D. Carr, H. Dreyfus, P. Heelan, B. Babich, J. E. McCuire to mention only a few of their authors] in which the constitutional analysis is freed from any kind of cognitive essentialism. To these conceptions, one should also add programs developed in line with “classical phenomenology” [e.g., those of Aaron Gurwitch, Hans Seigfried and Elizabeth Ströker], which succeed in overcoming cognitive essentialism.) Briefly, Rouse misinterprets the constitutional analysis (in terms of hermeneutic phenomenology) of scientific research because he replaces the ontological interpretation of (the modes of) discursivepractical being-in-the-world with a version of a neopragmatic theory of practice.20

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In my view, this failure leads to a misinterpretation of “science’s practical nature” as well. An indispensable consequence of the neopragmatic reductionism of scientific practices is the reduction of the philosophical interpretation of scientific work to a kind of cultural studies. Following Rorty’s dictum that natural science is not a natural kind, Rouse does not see any other research perspective on science but a set of studies of the traffic between scientific inquiry and cultural context within the heterogeneous body of political science, cultural anthropology, gender studies, feminist theory, critical theory, literary criticism, and the like. What is the philosophical purpose of carrying out such cultural studies? To increase the sensitivity to the variability within scientific practice, Rouse answers. I do not think that this is a philosophically significant purpose. What is more important, however, is the fact that Rouse’s cultural studies of science do not reconstruct the problematics of philosophy of science in any critical way. They simply trivialize this problematics. Rouse’s struggle “against representation” and the reification of scientific knowledge is based on the wrong assumption that discarding the epistemological justification of an essentialist view about the rationality of science obliges one to disclaim science’s cognitive specificity. At the same time, the underlying dilemma of his project – either to understand science as a (narrative) field of ongoing practices, or to betray a continuity with the Cartesian tradition in reflecting upon science – forecloses the possibility to treat science’s cognitive specificity in the light of a hermeneutico-ontological (and not an epistemological) formulation of the problem of constitution. As a result, Rouse’s deflationary approach destroys the very problem of the constitution of “objective worlds” within scientific mode(s) of being-in-the-world. But without formulating this problem, it would be impossible to understand science’s practices philosphically. True, scientific knowledge is best understood not as an axiomatic system of propositions with partial empirical interpretation but as a situation-in-the-world. However, this is only an elliptical expression of the following extended formulation: scientific knowledge is a situation-in-the-world, where “world” is both the temporal horizon of the totality of discursive practices and the ongoing constitution of research domains through these practices. If by claiming (for good reasons) that there is no intrinsic “epistemic status” of scientific activities, one goes so far as to rule out the problem of the constitution of cognitive structures (and research domains), then one inevitably trivializes scientific activities. To sum up my critique of deflationism: All cultural forms of life (including science) distinguished by routine everyday practices constitute specific “worlds of symbolic artifacts”. By bypassing the process of constitution and paying only attention (in a neopragmatic fashion) to the dynamics of practices, one is unable to study the distinctive features of the particular forms of life. Furthermore, I should like to point out that there are premises in the deflationist account of scientific practices which require taking into consideration the ontological

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difference. The champions of cultural studies of science tacitly make a distinction between practical understanding, as an ingredient of the dynamics of ongoing research practices, and cognitive procedures (improving a mathematical formalism, constructing explanatory scenarios, reading experimental results, and so on).21 Due to the misinterpretation of Heidegger’s ideas and to his “neopragmatic bias” in the account of practices, Rouse fails to see the potential of hermeneutic phenomenology to give an account of science’s cognitive specificity (by avoiding any commitment to a kind of cognitive essentialism). To scrutinize this potential and to work out a philosophical understanding of science that resists the deflation to cultural studies of science is the task of the strong (ontological) hermeneutics of science.

e. Against Cognitive Essentialism and the Possibility of a Cognitive Existentialism Let me start with the definition of a notion I took for granted in the course of this chapter. By “cognitive essentialism” I mean the view that in scientific knowledge (and only in this knowledge) an invariant (ahistorical) essence of human cognition takes place. There are two corollaries to this view. First, there is no pre- or non-scientific form of knowledge that can incorporate this essence. (Phrased in a quasi-Hegelian manner, the absolute essence of human cognition has had to await all genealogical steps of human intellectual history in order to “attain itself ” in science as the final genealogical step.) Second, the invariant cognitive essence is a “Platonic entity”, since it is supposedly independent of (i.e., not step-by-step derivable from) particular configurations of research practices and from what I am going to describe in Chapter Three as a “pre-narrative temporality” of scientific research. According to the dominant account, to stress the view of cognitive essentialism is a prerequisite for defending science’s cognitive specificity. Although this account has increasingly been put in question within the non-analytical (Continental) approaches to scientific research, the majority of the philosophers of science still believe that only by reconstructing an epistemological and/or methodological and/or metaphysical and/or transcendental “essence” of science, one can defend its cognitive specificity in a coherent manner. By implication, depending on the philosophical framework of supporting cognitive essentialism, the specificity of science can be cast in terms of (i) normative epistemology or (ii) naturalized epistemology or (iii) scientific realism or (iv) a kind of transcendental philosophy. Since scientific realism is (in principle) reducible to a kind of naturalism and the transcendental strategy to cognitive essentialism leads to a

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normative epistemology, the essentialist understanding of science can basically be spelled out in the frameworks of (i) and (ii). The (i) case is most typically illustrated by various quasi-Hegelian rational reconstructions of the history of science. In case (ii), by using Quine’s “replacement thesis”, science’s cognitive essence is defined in the frameworks of scientific disciplines like AI, cognitive psychology and evolutionary biology. This leads inevitably to a kind of paradoxical self-authentication of science’s cognitive specificity since the cognitive essence that determines science’s differentia specifica is defined in terms of a particular scientific theory. To be sure, similar difficulties arise also with justifying the normatively postulated cognitive essence of science. More specifically, by admitting a normative version of cognitive essentialism one is unable to meet such “classical” objections as the descriptive/normative paradox and the so-called Fries’ trilemma. (See Ginev 1988) However, despite these difficulties, to defend cognitive essentialism in terms of normative epistemology seems (at least intuitively) a much more consistent strategy than defining the “cognitive essence” of science in terms of science itself. This is why my attention will be concentrated first and foremost on the normative versions of cognitive essentialism. Let me now distinguish between five core doctrines (and respectively, ideal types) of cognitive essentialism. Each of them defines science’s cognitive specificity in terms of a certain postulated essence of science. (a) The first doctrine is essentialism in terms of scientific method. According to it, there is an invariant normative code of scientific method. Most of the champions of this doctrine do not assert that scientists in fact follow an invariant code of norms and rules of appraisal. Moreover, they would agree that if an internally consistent methodology proves to be closer to scientific praxis than its alternatives, then we are not obliged to prefer it automatically since it may be based on an aim for science which we may consider not so worthwhile as the aims associated with the rivaling principles and norms. (See Maxwell 1972, p. 133, and Laudan 1984, pp. 142-165). Doctrine (a) rather states that Scientific Method (regardless of the discrepancies of each particular methodology with the real scientific praxis) is only an idealized essence of science. Consequently, the rejection (in the historical development of science) of any particular methodology does not disturb the upholders of doctrine (a), since despite the fallibility of scientific methodologies there is a persisting “system of reference” from which the progress of scientific knowledge can be evaluated. Ex hypothesi scientific method is a “philosophical construction”, and not something “extracted” from scientific praxis. Doctrine (a) postulates that one cannot develop a notion of scientific progress without taking into account this construction. Because scientific progress may profit from the proliferation of methodological norms and principles, the doctrine is compatible with the pluralism of normative

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methodologies. The uniqueness and the authenticity of Scientific Method (as a cognitive essence of science and prerequisite of the progress of scientific knowledge is to be demonstrated on a meta-level with respect to this pluralism. On this meta-level, Scientific Method is irrefutable and ( pace Lakatos) immune to the facts from the historiography of science. On the main argument for the indispensability of an invariant set of (meta)methodological principles and norms (behind the proliferation of first-level methodologies), one needs such a set if one opposes the collapse of the idea of scientific progress into a kind of cognitive relativism. (See Worrall 1988) (b) The second doctrine is essentialism in terms of the truth of science as a postulated relation either between scientific knowledge (or, scientific language) and the objective reality, or between components of scientific knowledge (or, scientific language). The former case is typically represented by scientific realists (who make use of the correspondence theory of truth), whereas the latter case is illustrated by some logical positivists (who try to localize truth to a set of particular verifiable propositions within the structure of scientific knowledge), conventionalists who advocate the coherence theory of truth and pragmatists (who are looking for scientific truth in terms of “cognitive systematization”). For both, logical empiricists and conventionalists, the postulation of the truthrelation as a cognitive essence of science can avoid the requirement of objective validity of scientific theories. (To dispense with this requirement is also characteristic of those variants of doctrine [b] which, by appealing to the correspondence theory of truth, devise the truth-relation as a semantic relation between mental constructions and their models of interpretation.) In other words, not only the variants that postulate truth as internal relation in science’s cognitive structure, but also some of the variants that stipulate a correspondence as a sui generis semantic relation are guided by (what Michael Devitt calls) “epistemic theory of truth”. (c) The third doctrine is essentialism in terms of the objectivity of scientific knowledge. According to it, only science can tell us what objective reality is. In adhering to this doctrine, one claims that scientific knowledge has a privileged access to reality. There is a “core of privileged representations” that builds up the “bottom” of scientific knowledge.22 To be sure, stressing this aspect does not imply (by necessity) a commitment to a realist position and/or to a correspondence theory of truth. First, one can hold that all epistemic relations to reality are historically, socially and culturally constructed, but nevertheless, among these relations science’s epistemic relation to reality is (according to certain epistemological criteria) most reliable. (This position is exemplified, in particular, by Ian Hacking’s [1983] “entity realism”. On this view, the doctrine that asserts the reality of “theoretical entities” [genes, electrons, etc.] and the doctrine that scientific theories have a truth-value are logically distinct since there are entities

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not truly described by any theory as well as that theory may be true though none of its terms refers to any entities. (See Sankey 2000) Hacking’s “entity realism” defends the objectivity of scientific knowledge [the privileged access to reality due to the possibility to establish that theoretical terms of scientific knowledge refer to theoretical entities] without holding the objective truth of science.) Or second, one can admit that scientific truth depends in a crucial manner on the mechanism of achieving consensus in a scientific community (subscribing thereby to something like a consensus-cum-pragmatic picture of truth), but nevertheless, one can still hold that natural-scientific knowledge provides a privileged access to nature. (This is, in particular, Charles Taylor’s [1985] position. He insists that because of its objectivity this knowledge reveals efficient causality as a real [i.e., independent of the intersubjective meanings constituted in particular cultural-historical contexts] relation in the natural world. In this regard, Taylor asserts the “absoluteness” of natural-scientific objectivism as a privileged relation to the natural world. According to this view, objectivism is an understanding of nature that does not involve a projection of meaning through interpretation.) What, however, one takes for granted when stressing the privileged epistemic access to reality is the representational relation of a certain class of propositions in scientific knowledge to the “definite world structure”. It is this relation that takes the form of a characteristic cognitive essence of science. Thus, defending cognitive essentialism in terms of objectivity of scientific knowledge has much to do with epistemological foundationalism. I would say that the former is a strategy of arguing for the latter within philosophy of science. (A further elaboration of this doctrine leads to the view that the scientific description of reality constitutes a “privileged taxonomy”, since only it can reveal how reality breaks into “natural kinds”. In so doing, one goes on to extend epistemological foundationalism to a kind of “objectivist metaphysics of science”.) To define the objectivity of scientific knowledge as a cognitive essence of science requires not only an appropriate epistemology but also the framework of a theory of meaning. This can be a traditional theory, which stipulates that by choosing certain properties as defining a type of thing (or a “natural kind”), we give the meaning of the term we are using for that type. Or, it can be a “causal theory of reference” that in contrast to the traditional theories advocates the historical permanence of meaning (of a given type of thing) despite any changes in the descriptive criteria associated with the thing. As Shapere (1984, pp. 221-240) points out, both kinds of theory of meaning (and reference) stem from the idea that one can impose inviolable conditions on the knowledge-seeking enterprise by an analysis of semantic features of language that are supposedly “linguistic essences”. Meaning and reference are “ideal entities” whose semantic and epistemological specifications define the objectivity of scientific knowledge as a cognitive essence.

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(d ) The fourth doctrine is essentialism in terms of the rationality of science. To be sure, there are many cognitive aspects of science that can be treated under this heading. In the present discussion, I refer to “scientific rationality” as a doctrine that defines epistemological criteria of demarcation between science and nonscience. (Of course, the enterprise to draw a dividing line between science-as-institution and the rest of institutionalized activities might be quite independent of any kind of cognitive essentialism. There is a variety of attempts to demarcate science in terms of sociological and cultural theories which do not take notice of science’s cognitive content. What one takes into consideration in these attempts is [exclusively] the patterns of institutionalization and the norms of historical-cultural reproduction of science as a social form of life disentangled from the structure and dynamics of science-as-knowledge.) A prerequisite for doctrine (d ) is to have an epistemological theory of the structure and dynamics in whose terms science’s rationality can be defined in a philosophically significant manner. By distinguishing the structure of scientific knowledge and the cognitive organization of scientific research from non-scientific cognitive procedures (and epistemic structures), one formulates a demarcational criterion in epistemological terms. Popper’s falsifiability criterion (as defined in the framework of the “epistemology without knowing subject”) is an appropriate case in point. In sum, the view of an epistemological distinctiveness of scientific rationality is a core doctrine of cognitive essentialism. Of course, most philosophers of science would claim that doctrine (d ) does collapse into doctrine (a). However, one need not necessarily seek to understand the rationality of science in terms of the method it employs. Thus, for example, scientific rationality can be defined in terms of the optimal structure of scientific theory (Sneed, Moulines, and Balzer are among the upholders of this view), or in terms of following the best cognitive aims and goals without possessing a clear method of investigation. The latter case is considered in Laudan’s “reticulated model of scientific rationality”. Notoriously, this model repudiates a unidirectional justificatory ladder, proceeding from cognitive aims and goals to methodological norms and rules to particular factual claims formulated in theoretical frameworks. The reticulated model postulates a triadic network of justification in which axiology, methodology, and factual claims are intertwined in relation of mutual dependency. If in a given research process the methodological rules and norms are both undercontsrained by the factual claims of scientific theories and underdetermined by the cognitive aims and values, then the Archimedean standpoint of rational decision-making depends entirely on theoretical structures and/or axiological resources but not on methodologies. To a certain extent, Feyerabend also belongs to the philosophers who attack (a) but are not willing to reject in a radical way (d ). His attack on the idea of a fixed method implies the view that there is no comprehensive rationality of science. Yet this

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view precisely opens the perspective to a non-methodological study of the contextuality of scientific rationality. It is a study that focuses upon the relation between rules and practices. In the beginning of Science in a Free Society he declares that it is “this relation and not any particular rule-content that characterizes the position I wish to defend.” (Feyerabend 1978, p. 32) Feyerabend’s epistemological anarchism is a position of defending a contextual (“Kirkegaardian”) view of scientific rationality without elaborating a theory of scientific method. (e) The final doctrine is essentialism in terms of the privileged status of science in modern societies. Since (e) presuposses one or more of the previous doctrines, it suggests a meta-position regarding science’s cognitive essentialism. This is a meta-position that seeks its arguments not so much in philosophy of science as in philosophy of modernity. As a rule, doctrine (e) is defended by developing (what Joseph Rouse calls) “legitimizing narratives” of how science’s cognitive essence (method, truth, objectivity, rationality) contributes to the technological (as well as economic and institutional) progress of modern societies. When one thinks of a final legitimation of the privileged political and cultural status science enjoys (a status described by Feyerabend in terms of the “twentieth-century ideology and mythology”), one typically provides a “large narrative” that relates a supposed cognitive essence of scientific research to the basic achievements of modern civilization. And vice versa, by defending the “project of modernity” and the rationality of modern civilization, one often has recourse to the cognitive essence of science. In so doing, one “tells a large story” about the important cultural-historical events related to the cognitive organization of scientific research. The narrative legitimation of the privileged political and cultural status of science in modern societies is (based upon) a philosophical dogmatism, since in stressing this status one takes for granted (i.e., without inquiring into their constitution) major features of science as knowledge. Legitimizing stories relate such features to essential technological, economic, social, and even moral functions of science in modern societies. The advance of knowledge due to science’s cognitive organization promotes social progress, technological development, economic growth, and increasing political democratization. The plots of legitimizing stories are devised under the auspices of the “rational reconstruction” of science’s development. In these plots, science’s method, truth, objectivity and rationality are presented as determinants of modernity’s constellations of emancipation, education, economic prosperity, welfare,accumulation of useful information and technological capability, etc. Depending upon which of these doctrines more emphasis is placed, one is to distinguish between five “ideal types” of cognitive essentialism. Each of them covers a large set of “real variants”. It is not my intention to enter here into a discussion of the possible variants of cognitive essentialism. What is of significance in the present context is a basic distinction between non-radical and

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radical versions. Only by taking into account all five doctrines could one maintain a radical version of cognitive essentialism. Ex hypothesi, by excluding one or more of these doctrines the view of cognitive essentialism will be compatible with a given kind of antiessentialism. In other words, each partial (non-radical) version of cognitive essentialism will at a certain point no longer contain the resources to withstand the “invasion” of antiessentialist arguments. A locus where the compatibility (and in some cases even the complementarity) between variants of cognitive essentialism and variants of antiessentialism has emerged is the realism/antirealism debate in the philosophy of science. Of course, this claim is in need of a serious and detailed argumentation. I am not going to develop it here. But an example would be in place. This is Newton-Smith’s (1981) “temperate rationalism” which is inspired by the realism-instrumentalism controversy. Newton-Smith champions a position of “minimal realism” which (in contrast to “global realism”) need not be an all-or-nothing matter. According to it, one might provide realist construal of some theories and instrumentalist construal of others. Temperate rationalism is the minimal realist’s philosophical standpoint, which combines antiessentialist (but non-relativist) views of scientific method and scientific rationality (the methodologist has to work with an evolving series of models in evaluating the rationality of past episodes in the history of science) with an essentialist view of verisimilitude. (The latter view is developed as a “transcendental strategy” to the historical development of science – a strategy that has to show the appearance of theories that are increasing in truth-content without increasing in falsity-content). Depending on which of the core doctrines of cognitive essentialism is attacked, one could distinguish between five “ideal types” of (non-radical) antiessentialism. Since they oppose the postulation of a cognitive essence of science by forging critical arguments not against all core doctrines, there is no (with the exception of the special case of attacking doctrine [e]) obligatory (logical) connection between a given type and having a positive or a negative attitude towards science’s cognitive specificity. This is why I am going to discuss the ideal types of antiessentialism without handling the issue of this attitude. By attacking (a) one arrives at a certain kind of cognitive relativism.23 More specifically, this would be a view denying the possibility of having an “absolute point of reference” (an Archimedean platform outside the empirical development of science) when evaluating scientific progress. Usually, this relativism concerning scientific progress is associated with Kuhn-Feyerabend’s incommensurability thesis. Of prime importance here is the rejection of a “neutral experience” (i.e., an experience on a meta-level with respect to the intrinsic methodological discussions in science) that can recognize a progressive shift in the development of science. Yet cognitive relativism is not in dissonance with all essentialist pictures of science. Since it does not travel without the (essentialist)

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idea of conceptual scheme (and all epistemic and semantic dualisms promoted by it), cognitive relativism is rather a kind of non-objectivist, non-universalist and non-historically-invariant cognitive essentialism. A special variant of rejecting (a) without succumbing to cognitive relativism is Dudley Shapere’s view that the preferred scientific methodology is simply one that has in fact evolved in the historical development of science.24 Refuting (b) is the main enterprise of all sorts of (methodological, epistemological, or social) constructivism. In the contemporary philosophy of science, van Fraassen’s “constructive empiricism” is the most celebrated program that illustrates this type of antiessentialism. Van Fraassen (1989, p. 13) demonstrates in a succinct manner that to study science’s structure in and by itself, “as a product of the intellect that strives to order and unify the deliverances of experience”, offers an alternative approach to the reification of “objective truth” that goes beyond the actual, observable phenomena obtained in scientific research. Van Fraassen’s antiessentialism resists not only this kind of reification but also the demand for explanations of the regularities in the observable course of nature by means of scientific laws. Constructive empiricism as an alternative to the reification of scientific laws departs from the structure of theory’s models. It only pays attention to structural features of theory, which delineate the structure of any possible world allowed by theory. Usually, the attempts at discarding (c) are associated with attempts to figure out an alternative both to realist and antirealist positions in the philosophy of science. Fine’s program of the “natural ontological attitude” is perhaps the most promising candidate for such a post-realist-antirealist position. All kinds of antiessentialism attacking the doctrine of the objectivity of scientific knowledge suggest ways of how to “deprivilege” the special sort of science’s epistemic access to reality that is built into the essentialist picture of scientific objectivism. It is the stress upon this epistemic access that forms the common denominator of realism and antirealism. Arthur Fine (1986, pp. 147-148) argues that what binds realism and antirealism together is the view of science as a set of practices in need of interpretation (i.e., an interpretation with respect to the aforementioned epistemic access), and that both realists and antirealists see themselves as providing just the right interpretation. Discarding (c) provides the opportunity to demonstrate that science is not in need of this interpretation. Rorty’s version of neopragmatism is the most prominent attack on (d ). The aim of undoing this core doctrine of cognitive essentialism is to show that “scientific rationality is ... a pleonasm, not a specification of a particular, and paradigmatic, kind of rationality, one whose nature might be clarified by a discipline called ‘philosophy of science’.” (Rorty 1988, pp. 71-72) In fact, Rorty’s deconstructive efforts continue the program of universal hermeneutics in displacing the realist epistemology of “objective representation”. Yet, according to

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him, the very idea of (philosophical) hermeneutics should disappear since it leads to replacing the old dichotomies with new ones (i.e., with new forms of essentialism). In admitting a radically antiessentialist strategy, one has to seek to stress the lack of a philosophically significant science/nonscience cut of the integral web of cultural meanings and values. The “ideological motive” that guides this strategy is the defence of the unity and integrity of the “whole of culture”. This is a motive lying behind the struggle for a culture that does not make a methodological or philosophical distinction between science and nonscience. Rorty’s aim is to drop all traditional distinctions put forward by the epistemological theories of scientific rationality, and thereby to dispense with the attempts to mark off “the whole of science” from the “whole of culture”. The struggle against (d) is part of the struggle for a “culture without centre”. All our beliefs and desires should be seen as part of the same Quinean web. (Rorty 1988, p. 56) The success of science has to be explained not by appealing to a special rationality of scientific research. There is only a pragmatic criterion for such a success (and for separating science from nonscience) – some increase in our ability to predict and control that one can trace back to the development of science. The initiation of attacks against (e) within the philosophy of science has to be traced back to Feyerabend’s “epistemological anarchism”. The latter suggests a criticism of science’s privileged position in modern societies based upon a repudiation of a “rational reconstruction” that can demonstrate a superiority of “scientific wisdom” over the wisdom of non-scientific traditions. Feyerabend’s anarchistic undertaking is to deconstruct the “professional ideology of modern science” as providing arguments for defending (e). The victory of science’s authority in modern societies is due to irrational moves like propaganda, prejudice, and concealments. A new stage of criticism of (e) was put forward by philosophical feminism (informed in most cases by variants of psychoanalytic theory). Roughly speaking, the feminist kinds of criticism focus upon the connections between the core doctrines of the essentialist understanding of science and the domination of masculine values. The aim of this criticism is to deprivilege the “masculine rationality of science” by adopting a (non-relativist) “multiperspectivalism” (Sandra Harding) or by integrating a “feminist empiricism” (Helen Longino) into science’s cognitive body. To attack the core doctrines of cognitive essentialism amounts, in this case, to looking at a transformation of science.25 The need for such a transformation is provoked by the conviction that the sex/gender phenomenon penetrates into science’s self-understanding of its epistemic rationality.26 Just as the plurality of variants of cognitive essentialism is not to be reduced to the five “ideal types” listed above, so the diversity of antiessentialist views is much greater than these five “ideal types”, which I tried to illustrate with some

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prominent examples. Given the diverse array of relativist, contextualist, particularist, conventionalist, constructivist, pragmatist, and postmodernist views that have sought the antiessentialist label, it is impossible to identify the core of the contemporary attacks against cognitive essentialism. Yet a common denominator of the views covered by the five ideal types is that they oppose one or more particular doctrines of cognitive essentialism. By implication, they do not suggest a radical antiessentialist alternative. Let me stress again that only by opposing the totality of the five central doctrines of the essentialist understanding of science is one able to figure out a radical alternative. With respect to the issue of science’s cognitive specificity, there is an important similarity between (at least some of) the non-radical antiessentialist views and the different sorts of cognitive essentialism. Both parties (the naturalist and non-naturalist champions of science’s cognitive specificity and those who deny that there is a significant science/nonscience cut in the whole of culture) agree that one needs cognitive essentialism (as a set of demarcational epistemological criteria) in order to defend a differentia specifica of science. What binds believers (like Lakatos) in the internal logic of science’s cognitive dynamics and postmodernists (like Rouse), is the presupposed one-to-one correspondence between cognitive essentialism and science’s cognitive specificity. Yet in both cases one is unable to meet the objection of vicious circularity. In the former case, the “proof of science’s cognitive specificity” is always tacitly assumed because of the hypostatization of the internal logic of the history of science. In the case of non-radical antiessentialism the assumption of one-to-one correspondence implies that the way of overcoming science’s cognitive specificity is based upon a petititio principii. More specifically, “deflationary approaches” to the cognitive organization of scientific research, like those of Rorty, Haraway and Rouse, fail to defeat a circularity argument. The way they challenge the view of science’s cognitive specificity is based upon a petititio principii, since they tacitly admit that only by assuming an “immanent essence” of science one can hold that scientific research is predicated on a philosophically significant cognitive distinctiveness. Therefore, the starting point of such approaches does not differ from the starting point of those doctrines which defend the view of a “substantive rationality of science” in terms of normative epistemology and epistemological foundationalism. Consequently, the “deflationary approaches” go on to deconstruct the same “essence” which they by necessity assume to exist in order to formulate their tenets. To reirerate, just as a radical version of cognitive essentialism would be only that one which takes into consideration all five principal doctrines, so a radical overcoming of cognitive essentialism would be that one which opposes all five doctrines. Is such a radical overcoming feasible at all? And if yes, does the radical overcoming of cognitive essentialism allow a development of a consist-

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ent strategy for defending science’s cognitive specificity? In trying to answer these questions, let me now approach the issue of science’s cognitive specificity from a perspective that goes beyond the scope of the analytical philosophy of science. Vis-à-vis the requirement to oppose all five principal doctrines, this should be a perspective that will pay more attention to the fact that cognitive essentialism (like any other form of essentialism) is the antipode of existentialism, i.e., the view that there is no essence that precedes existence. Thus, the radical version of antiessentialism would be something like cognitive existentialism – a conception that treats science as a mode of being-in-the-world in which cognitive content is constituted and “situated” within open (pacrical and theoretical) horizons of doing research. Against an “existentialist approach” to science one might raise the claim that the “theoretical objects” are not “withinthe-world of research practices”. They are rather presupposed by those who are involved in a normal scientific everydayness. Indeed, the theoretical objects “transcend” the performance of routine research practices. Yet they are not Platonic entities, in relation to which the “identifiable research objects” are only copies. The theoretical objects do not exist per se. They come rather into being only within the particular situations of normal scientific research. In this regard, they are always “situated”. Moreover, the theoretical objects are associated with anticipations, expectations and orientations that the practitioners of scientific research display. Strangely enough, the infinity of the theoretical objects’ possible empirical interpretations bears resemblance to the “open horizons” of the modes of being-in-the-world. In a view I will follow in the course of this study, this infinity is congruent with the potentially infinite set of possibilities involved in a thematizing project as a horizon of doing research. Now, let me shed more light on the concepts I mentioned in this preliminary sketch. By “existentialism” I mean, in the present context, a “radically antiessentialist” viewpoint whose main characteristic is the search for the “existential genesis” of every supposed “essence” in human life. As a radical alternative to each kind of (historical, cognitive, moral, aesthetic, political or theological) essentialism, “existentialism” is not to be confused with relativism, instrumentalism, constructivism, pragmatism, conventionalist antirealism or any other non-radical antiessentialist conception. To define science’s cognitive specificity from this viewpoint amounts to revealing scientific research as a mode of being-inthe-world based upon a specific “existential project” (i.e., a distinct way of interpretative realization of possibilities already projected). In the case of scientific research, the existential project takes the form of a “thematizing project”. Roughly speaking, the latter mediates between the interrelatedness of discursive practices in-the-world and the thematic reality which is gradually constituted (objectified) by accomplishing these practices. In other words, a thematizing

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project mediates between research practices and the reality that is “made present” by domains’ cognitive content. The ongoing realization of a thematizing project is (what in the tradition of hermeneutic phenomenology is called) objectifying thematization that constitutes domains of scientific research. Generally speaking, the project of each mode of being-in-the-world (including scientific research) “makes present” a reality of constituted artifacts within the horizon of characteristic discursive practices. In the present study, the notion of “thematizing project” connotes first and foremost projected historical possibilities for scientific research of a given type. The appropriation of these possibilities (both within the research everydayness of scientific communities and in the historical development of scientific domains) “makes present” objects of inquiry. Let me remind that authors like Kockelmans, Heelan and Kisiel revise Heidegger’s views in an essential respect. In Being and Time, objectifying thematization is deprived of its own situated transcendence. By contrast, for the authors of the postwar tradition of hermeneutic phenomenology, the ways of “making present” objects of inquiry through objectifying thematization are situated within the horizon of projected possibilities. At the same time, objectifying thematization actualizes (“appropriates”) the possibilities. A thematizing project is a unity (within a “world of scientific research”) of projected possibilities and their ongoing appropriation as a process of articulation of scientific domains’ cognitive content. Neither the projected possibilities nor their actualization (as cognitive content) exist as “isolated entities”. They are both involved in objectifying thematization’s situated transcendence (i.e., the realization of a thematizing project). From the viewpoint of the semantic conception of scientific theory, the “readymade” cognitive content (the ongoing outcome of objectifying thematization) “makes present” objects of inquiry through theoretical models. For instance, the models of classical genetics make present the transmission of genes; the models of special relativity make present the space-time of a non-Euclidean 4-dimensional world; the models of Maxwell’s electrodynamics make present the mutual relations between a vector field (the magnetic one) and a tensor field (the electric one); and the models of general theory of relativity make present the warping of the space-time structure, and thereby the gravitational field. Objectifying thematization refers to the realization of thematizing project as an appropriation of projected possibilities. Through objectifying thematization, a transformation of research practices into cognitive content (theoretical models) takes place. Hermeneutic phenomena like “projection”, “constitution”, and “being in a world of scientific research” are at issue in an “existentialist theory of objectifying thematization” as a kernel of cognitive existentialism.27 My aim in the rest of this book is to show that cognitive existentialism is successful in avoiding the reification of scientific knowledge without admitting

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any “eliminativism” that threatens the autonomy of scientific research. (At this point, I would like to indicate a distinction between “theoretical objects” and “research objects”. I will elaborate on this distinction in Chapter Three. For the moment, let me only stress that the theoretical objects are “transcendent” while the research objects are what is made present through performing normal scientific practices.) Since theoretical objects are “ideal entities” whose potential empirical content is not to be “exhausted” by a finite class of data-models, the way of making present is an infinite process. The theoretical objects always “transcend” the semantic delineation of a scientific domain, but they are meaningful only within (normal scientific practices of ) such domains. A realization of a thematizing project is what makes present theoretical objects in a “worldhorizon” of interrelated research practices that engender meaningfulness. Being at once the realization of a thematizing project and the constitution of research domains, objectifying thematization is not merely a particular feature of science. It is rather the common denominator of all features that define science’s specificity as a “cognitive mode of being-in-the-world”. Hence, if cognitive existentialism can provide an account of objectifying thematization, it can also provide a defence of science’s cognitive specificity without succumbing to cognitive essentialism. To give “an account in terms of cognitive existentialism” means to spell out all aspects of objectifying thematization with respect to the “situated transcendence” of what is constituted in scientific research. Even this preliminary touching upon the notions of “objectifying thematization” and “thematizing project” indicates that at stake in the existential analysis of science’s cognitive specificity is the ambivalent status of the objects of inquiry as “theoretical objects” (corresponding to the infinity of a thematizing project) and “research objects” within normal scientific practices. In hermeneutic phenomenology, the formulation and solution of “the problem of transcendence” (Heidegger) through existential hermeneutics of modes of being-in-the-world results in a paradigm of constitutional analysis. Cognitive existentialism is the account(s) of objectifying thematization in terms of the paradigm of constitutional analysis advanced by hermeneutic phenomenology. (This claim contradicts the view, epitomized by Herman Philipse, that the “variety of weak transcendentalism” of Being and Time as opposed to Kant’s and Husserl’s strong transcendentalism “does not have a constitution theory concerning the entities of the empirical world”. [Philipse 1998, p. 380]) Being and Time is to be read as an ambitious attempt to develop a new paradigm of constitutional analysis. The core of this paradigm is the nexus of understanding and appropriative interpretation. Since existence (Dasein’s facticity) is being-towards-possibilities, the ongoing actualization of these possibilities is the articulation of the meaning of existence. As the possibilities are always already projected, Dasein understands itself as a potentiality-for-being. This kind of

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understanding does not lie outside the being-towards-possibilities. Hence, the projection of understanding as an open horizon of Dasein’s existence has its own possibility – that of developing itself. The actualization of understanding’s own possibility presses Dasein’s existence into possibilities, and thereby, articulates (constitutes) meaning within the projected horizon of a potentialityfor-being. Heidegger’s paradigm of constitutional analysis is grounded upon understanding’s own possibility, which has a transcendental status with regard to all kinds of “concernful dealing within-the-world” that actualize particular possibilities. Thus, like the other forms of such analysis (Kant’s analysis of productive imagination and Husserl’s intentional analysis in the first place), Heidegger’s elaborations on the nexus of understanding and appropriative interpretation move into the orbit of transcendental philosophizing. Yet, in contrast to the other forms, he suggests a constitutional analysis characterized by a kind of non-essentialist transcendentalism. There is no need for an “apriorist essence” (such as the transcendental ego) that plays the role of a privileged point of reference in Heidegger’s paradigm of constitutional analysis. In this paradigm, the constitution (the articulation of meaning withinthe-world) is not rooted in something that is isolated from what is constituted. Instead of an absolute essence, Heidegger’s non-essentialist transcendentalism presupposes a hermeneutic circle between understanding’s own possibility and the possibilities towards which Dasein is pressed. To come into this circle in the right way is the first step of constructing a hermeneutic ontology of existence. Being-towards-possibilities as a development of understanding’s own possibility is within that “facticity” (in the sense of hermeneutic phenomenology) in which the projected possibilities become actualized. Regarding Dasein’s facticity, the hermeneutic circle I am referring to is at once immanent and transcendent. The concept of cognitive existentialism refers to the constitutional analysis built upon the non-essentialist transcendentalism of hermeneutic ontology. There is no “cognitive essence” of science whose “genesis” is “independent” of the appropriative interpretation of projected possibilities. This is the “central dogma” of cognitive existentialism. All structures of knowledge arising out of scientific research are susceptible to a scrutiny in terms of the paradigm of constitution advanced by the existential analytic. Furthermore, all cognitive essences (scientific method, objective truth, principles of symmetry and invariance, scientific rationality, etc.) come into being in a “world”, which has already been understood by a scientific community involved in normal research practices. Following Jeff Malpas’ (1997) deliberations, I will state that there is in hermeneutic phenomenology’s paradigm of constitutional analysis a complete convergence between the hermeneutic circle (of projected possibilities and their actualizations through research practices) and what Malpas calls the “transcendental circle”. It is this convergence that enables one to achieve a “combination” of a transcen-

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dental reflection and a hermeneutic approach to scientific research. The possibility of a cognitive existentialism lies in the successful account of objectifying thematization in terms of this combination. Let me return to the fact that in denying science’s cognitive specificity, the non-radical versions of antiessentialism fail to defeat the circular argument (in the form of petitio principii). One has to admit, however, that to a certain extent circularity is unavoidable in any strategy of defending science’s cognitive specificity. Hence, as it was already mentioned, the task is not to eliminate circularity radically, but rather to reformulate it (by avoiding the logical paradox) as a hermeneutic circle (or, better circles) that can come to grips with the intrinsic circularity of the interplay between “practical theorizing” (carrying out particular research practices, which are theory-laden in Heelan’s sense) and “theoretical praxis” (articulation of cognitive content) in a scientific domain. Science’s cognitive specificity is to be attained by an interpretation (in terms of a non-essentialist constitutional analysis) of scientific research’s intrinsic interplay of “practical theorizing” and “theoretical praxis” that makes possible the constitution of (otherwise unachievable) “worlds” of objects of inquiry. The talk of “making possible” in this formulation denotes the “transcendental dimension” of cognitive existentialism. In Jeff Malpas’ view, the existential analytic’s transcendental dimension refers to the circular relations between the conditions of having a specific form of experience (and mode of existence) and its empirically manifested specificity. The main point of this view is that the circular relations are not “behind” but “within” the empirical totality of the respective form of experience (and mode of existence). By implication, the transcendental dimension of the constitutional analysis lies in the recognition that there are features of the cognitive body of science which render their possibility within the processual circularity (the interplay of theoretical praxis and practical theorizing) inherent in scientific research. Since the circular relations are relations of “self-constitution” of a mode of existence, they are not determined by something outside them. Thus, there is a kind of transcendental argument involved in the hermeneutic circularity through which a characteristic “world” comes into being. Actually, Malpas is interested not in the transcendental dimension of hermeneutic circularity but in the intrinsic interpretative nature of (what he calls) the “transcendental project” of reasoning. This is why he (1997, p. 17) writes that “only if we grasp the (transcendental) project as involving something like an ‘interpretation’ will it begin to make sense, for in interpretation it is precisely the integration of elements within a structure ... that is at issue.” Paraphrasing Malpas, I would say that only if we grasp the hermeneutic analysis of the interpretative self-constitution of scientific research as involving something like a “transcendental reflection” (that does not reify an autonomous “transcendental

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position”) will it begin to make sense, for in this reflection it is the non-essentialist revealing of science’s cognitive specificity that is at issue. (The very formulation involves a kind of “double hermeneutics”. The transcendental reflection is carried out through an interpretation of the interpretative self-constitution of [a “world” within theoretical praxis and practical theorizing of] scientific research. There is nothing behind the circularity involved in this double hermeneutics. In other words, there is a complete coincidence between the hermeneutic circle and [what Malpas calls] the “transcendental circle”. It is this coincidence that inaugurates a “non-essentialist transcendentalism”.) Given these considerations, let me take a closer look at how the “transcendental circle” has to be integrated in the existential analysis of science’s cognitive specificity. Roughly speaking, the idea of “the transcendental” in this analysis consists in envisaging an investigation that proceeds from the “facticity” of normal scientific research through focusing upon the “open horizon of possibilities” of this research to unfolding a “world” of specific objects constituted within this horizon. There is nothing that lies behind “facticity”, “horizon of possibilities”, and “world”. Between the three, there are only hermeneutic circles. The constitutional analysis of hermeneutic phenomenology makes these circles its own subject of investigation. The “facticity” of normal scientific research consists in changing configurations of research practices. The regime of normal science is fore-structured by the horizon of “objectifying thematization”, i.e., by possibilities which are always already projected. Normal scientific research is pressed forward into these possibilities, which become actualized in its “facticity”. The outcome of the ongoing actualization of possibilities is the constitution of a “world” of specific objects of inquiry (for instance, the “world of dynamical systems subjected to the classical causality”, the “world of statistical ensembles whose description requires a principle of complementarity”, the “world of teleonomic objects”, the “world of objects existing in irreversible time”, the “world of potentially possible objects that only exist in their processes of construction”, and so on). In this formulation, the “transcendental circle” is at once within the horizon of possibilities, the “world” of objects of inquiry (or, the “world” as an ongoing outcome of objectifying thematization), and the normal scientific interrelatedness of research practices. All of the three can be subjected to a constitutional analysis guided by a “double hermeneutics”. Within the scope of this analysis, science’s cognitive specificity lies in the specificity of scientific research as a mode of being-in-the-world. In reflecting upon the “transcendental circle” embedded in hermeneutic correlations of horizon, research practices, and “world” of objects of inquiry, one aims not at defining a priori invariant conditions but at revealing a process of constitution (the interplay of “practical theorizing” and “theoretical praxis”). If one goes on to demonstrate that “the transcendental” is

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not derivable from an “atemporal essence”, but lies in the dynamics of research practices (characterized by a complex temporality) in which a cognitive structure gradually takes shape, then one would be able, from an existentialist point of view, to provide a defence of science’s cognitive specificity. The transcendental reflection of cognitive existentialism does not make an appeal to a “deduction” of the thematizing projects. This reflection only shows the possibility to articulate in an interpretative manner that hermeneutic circularity of scientific research in which a cognitive specificity comes to the fore. The hermeneutic circularity of the transcendental reflection upon scientific research is not to be disentangled from the circularity of the self-constituting being-in-the-world. My aim in this chapter was to indicate the direction of answering the question of how to be simultaneously an antiessentialist and a champion of science’s cognitive specificity. The very answer would require an “existential analysis” of objectifying thematization’s situated transcendence. The next two chapters accordingly show how to move from an account of the interrelatedness of research practices that inform the everydayness within a scientific domain to an account in terms of a non-essentialist paradigm of constitutional analysis. While the former account aims at a hermeneutic reformulation of Kuhn’s normal science, the latter approaches the idea of a “strong hermeneutics of science”.

Chapter Two REFORMULATING THE CONCEPT OF “NORMAL SCIENCE” IN THE FRAMEWORK OF HERMENEUTIC PHENOMENOLOGY

a. Normal Science, Practice Theory, and Kuhn’s Historicism This chapter seeks a further comprehension of the nature of Kuhn’s “normal science”. The latter has been for forty years a pivotal object of sociological, epistemological, and ethnomethodological analyses. By tackling an issue, the possibility to reformulate the notion of normal science in accordance with the tenets of a certain variant of hermeneutic philosophy, my efforts enter a terrain delineated by philosophical theories (e.g., the theory of “practical understanding”, the theory of discursive practices, the hermeneutic theory of tradition, and so on) that are most relevant to comprehending aspects of Kuhn’s agenda. In placing the picture of the “puzzle-solving enterprise” in the context of these theories, I will then try to bring to light some “interpretative phenomena” characterizing the nature of normal scientific research. I will have recourse to three basic phenomena: the discursive-practical integrity of scientific research whose phronesis-rationality opposes epistemological rationality associated with the notions of theoretical framework and conceptual scheme; the interpretative forestructuring of the cognitive articulation of a scientific domain; and the interpretative openness of the research process. It is my hope that the upcoming account of these phenomena may promote an approach that opens the door to a dialogue between trends in the analytical philosophy of science and conceptions stemming from the anti-foundationalist wave in Continental thought. The possibility of such a dialogue grounds the whole project of this study. 93

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A common denominator of the three phenomena I am going to bring into focus is the involvement of normal scientific researchers in a (dynamic) organization of discursive practices. The very idea of involvement in a routine everydayness is of central importance for Kuhn. According to him, in normal scientific research, the community of researchers proves to be put into an “already articulated body of problems, data, and theory” (Kuhn 1962, p. 136). The members of this community find out that they are already committed to a particular set of paradigms (of understanding and interpretation of the outcome of their activities). Their factual involvement in an interrelatedness of practices is not of their choosing. For many philosophers of science, Kuhn’s insistence on this “passivity” of scientific communities is the root of his “irrationalism”. In my view, the analysis of a scientific community’s “embeddedness” in normal research practices promises to bridge the gap between the holistic approach to the cognitive structures of scientific research and the hermeneutic account of normal science. I will try to spell out to this effect the view that in its “situatedness” in the medium of everyday research practices, the scientific community’s practical experience (understanding, interpretation and intelligibility) “participates” in the articulation of the cognitive structure of a scientific domain through projection and actualization of its own possibilities. These are possibilities that inform the horizons of doing research, and are “inscribed” in the “readiness to hand” (theoretical language, conceptual tools, design of experimentation, techniques of measurements, mathematical apparata, and so on) of the community’s research practices. Yet the hermeneutic approach to the “participation” of (normal research) practical experience in the articulation of science’s cognitive structures is not tantamount to the ethnomethodological search for “pair structures” between science’s cognitive procedures (a mathematical proof, for instance) and “lived work-site practices” (the lived work of proving a theorem, for instance).1 By rejecting a hermeneutico-ontological account of normal scientific practices, ethnomethodologists are not able to spell out the internal relation of cognitive procedures to the lived work of designing and conducting them. In my opinion, what fails in the ethnomethodological studies of science’s “pair structures” is the constitutional analysis of the production of socialized research objects within the lived normal scientific work. One of the aims of the hermeneutic reformulation of “normal science” is to overcome this deficit of the ethnomethodology’s praxiological approach.2 My efforts will be concentrated in the first place on the concept of the hermeneutic fore-structure of scientific research. One of the overarching philosophical commitments that orients the whole project is to develop a framework of investigating the constitution of science’s cognitive specificity within the practical and theoretical horizons of doing research. It is the everyday interpretation

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of as diverse events as (real and thought) experiments, calculations and calibrations, ways of composing differential equations, deviations from theoretical expectations, discrepancies between research practices in normal scientific routine, which is of prime importance in this respect. In the course of this chapter, I will also operate with the notion of “discursive-practical fore-structure”. It has the same denotation as the concept of hermeneutic fore-structure. Yet in contrast to the latter, it is not defined in terms of philosophical hermeneutics. Discursive-practical fore-structure only indicates those aspects of scientific research whose treatment demands a hermeneutic framework. Roughly speaking, discursive-practical fore-structure is a “semi-hermeneutic” notion of the so-called practice theory, whereas hermeneutic fore-structure is a concept of phenomenological ontology. In trying to portray the relations between the dynamics of research practices and the production of cognitive content, I will make use of some ideas of this theory.3 In fact, practice theory occupies a sui generis intermediate stage between Kuhn’s own (interpretative-holistic) philosophy of science and the “strong hermeneutics” of scientific research. I will leave aside the discussion of practice theory (and its insufficiences), which is a task whose proper execution lies beyond the scope of this book. My purpose is rather to focus on some (partially prescriptive) principles of practice theory playing an important role in the hermeneutic reformulation of normal science. They are: a. The theoretical approach to the social formations has to be grounded upon a social ontology that surmounts the individual-social dilemma by arguing that the “primordial source” of sociality is in the constellations of discursive practices. Sociality is a “transsubjective reality” whose specificity can be disclosed neither by the nominalist principles of methodological individualism nor by the Platonist tenets of social holism.4 b. Any theoretical concept referring to the symbolic artifacts produced by discursive practices has to avoid whatever form of “reificationism”. Accordingly, the concepts of practice theory must be (in principle) reducible to the empirical language(s) describing processes of a holistic structuration of discursive practices. c. The medium of communication is not external to the dynamics of discursive practices. Accordingly, the production of “cognitive content” and social structuration are mutually reinforcing processes whose common site is the medium of communication. d. The ontological autonomy of mentality has to be deconstructed. All concepts referring to this autonomy have to be recast in terms of interrelatedness and processuality of practices. (There is no mentality as an autonomous ontological substratum separated from the constellations of practices constituting the social worlds. Expressions like “practical understanding” and “practical

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consciousness” are coined in order to stress the devaluation of mentality’s autonomy.) e. Sociality is based upon “unreflective co-understanding”. This postulate states that the routine everydayness arising out of an interrelatedness of practices looks purposeful, but no conscious or unconscious goals need play a role in producing it. Rules are embedded in the unreflective understanding, guiding the (unreflective) performances of routine discursive practices. These are the “primary social rules” upon which all institutionalized (reflective) rules are built up. f. The construction of social identities proceeds through performative synthesis of configurations of practices dispersed over various settings of the physical space-time. (Guided by this claim, one attempts to elaborate on the notions of social time and space within the framework of practice theory.) To make use of these principles in the present discussion requires focusing on the “everydayness of normal scientific research” (with its multifarious discursive practices). It is this everydayness that resists subjecting of the concept of a puzzle-solving enterprise to a theoretical-framework-holism. More specifically, the view I am going to spell out premises that when engaged with normal research problems, the members of a scientific community are “situated” not in the framework of a current theory but rather in an interrelatedness of practices emdedded in various settings. This view does not imply, however, a replacement of theoretical holism with a kind of “practical holism”. Thus, in what follows I am going to oppose (along with the cognitive essentialism based upon schemecontent-dualism) the view that because scientific cognition is reducible neither to mental representations, nor to mental acts, “theoretical holism needs to be replaced by practical holism” (McGuire, Tuchanska 2000, p. 15).5 Leading in all versions of practice theory is the view that discourse is always entangled in an interrelatedness of practices. Following tenets of Giddens’ theory of structuration, for instance, one is to admit that the interrelatedness of practices is at once the medium in which practices are carried out and the renewed result of their execution. In the same vein, Bourdieu’s version of practice theory, in which at stake is the “field of cultural production”, advances the thesis that the more autonomous the field of everyday discursive practices becomes, the more intensive the interplay of medium and execution. In terms of this interplay, one approaches the “normal everydayness” within the scope of practice theory. Furthermore, the champions of the latter postulate different kinds of everyday mentality (like Giddens’ “practical consciousness”, or Bourdieu’s “practical understanding”) accompanying the routine execution of practices. Ex hypothesi, this mentality is opposed to the thematizing consciousness guided by cognitive procedures and methodological rules. A principal feature of the (trans-subjective) practical mentality is its prethematic awareness of the “map” of the lines of relating one practice to another.

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Thus, practical mentality involves an unconscious mechanism of concernful (situational and contextual) coping with the complexity of an expanding everydayness. In other words, practical mentality correlates with the unconscious, i.e., the dimensions of discursive practices that are (for the practitioners) thematically inaccessible to explicit awareness. (In practice theory, the notion of unconscious is in close relation to the “normality” of the routine execution of repeatable practices. Thus, it may refer to participants’ habitus of selecting actions, or to the resources participants draw on when interacting within a “working everydayness”, or to [what T. Schatzki calls] “teleoaffectivities” as orders of understanding, rules, and patterns of interaction which structure everyday collective comportment [see Schatzki 1996, pp. 118-124]. It is the nexus between the notion of unconscious and the concept of “normality” of routine doing that makes the application of practice theory to issues of Kuhn’s normal science appropriate.) The talk about a normal scientific community’s unconscious seeks an extension of practice theory’s perspective on the everydayness of scientific research. This talk has nothing to do with the attempts to apply ideas of deep psychology to the analysis of scientific groups’ mentality. By a scientific community’s unconscious I mean experiences (Erlebnisse) that are “actually forgotten” or (in another formulation) “pushed aside” by the actual (present) situation. These are experiences of research practices that are “tacitly participating” in a community’s actual research work. (They participate just because they are pushed aside by an actual configuration of practices.) As in the case of personal memory, the ability to constantly forget is the most important feature of normal scientific experience (Erfahrung). Past configurations of research practices are “recorded” in deactualized experiences. But since the latter might be under particular circumstances reactivated, what is recorded is also constantly projected into future experiences. (The ongoing de- and re-activation of experiences corresponds to constant thematic shifts in normal scientific everydayness. A scientific community replaces one object of study with another – one group of microorganisms with another, one kind of populations in studying the equilibrium of ecosystems with another, one type of quantum-mechanical objects with another, one cluster of enzyme-catalyzed reactions with another. The “practical unconscious” under discussion provides an awareness that the new objects of study will not dramatically reshape the normal scientific everydayness.) From the viewpoint of practice theory, a scientific community’s unconscious is not a state of absence. It is, rather, the hidden partner of each actual situation in the research process. A scientific community’s unconscious (in the form of “actually forgotten experiences”) breaks with the dichotomy of presence and absence within the temporal organization of normal scientific experience. There is in each actual situation a “retention” of past and a “protention” of future experiences.

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No doubt, the aforementioned ideas of practice theory are quite relevant to a further conceptual articulation of everyday work in science. In particular, the schemes immanent in praxis spelled out in this theory might contribute to a further comprehension of the integrity of normal scientific research. Yet there are significant deficiencies in this theory that may bring into play undesired tendencies in interpreting the everydayness of scientific research. Let me, in a preliminary manner, point out one of them. The reading of normal science in terms of practice theory is epitomized by the attempts to equate the routine of everyday practices of scientific research with the ritual interrelatedness of doings, which preserves the status quo of a given social order. To be sure, normal scientific research is a transmission of “practical experience” (including the practical experience of constructing theoretical models) through routine activities that preserve the structure of a community. Since to a certain extent this transmission occurs unconsciously, normal science takes on the form of a “ritualized praxis”. The puzzle-solving enterprise depicted by Kuhn is (like any other ritual) an activity devoid of personal commitment to the values being expressed. According to Mary Douglas (1970, p. 21), ritual is preeminently a form of communication and ritual form is a transmitter of culture. Likewise, normal science is a medium of communication, which transmits habits, skills, patterns and algorithms of solving problems, and, more generally, an ethos of practical behavior. A reading of normal scientific tradition in terms of a cultural-anthropological account of ritual displays, however, the danger of a hypostatization of certain “regimes” of discursive practices. The use of linguistic structures as ritual configurations of discursive practices looms large.6 Vis-à-vis the present discussion, normal science as a ritual is an enterprise devoid of personal commitment to the values, norms and standards being expressed. Those who are involved in this enterprise “speak” (in a collective and unreflective manner) the normative-social order so as to have normal scientific research. But if one simply goes on to postulate that ritual is an anonymous execution of interrelated practices, then one risks hypostatizing the social order (and the interelatedness of practices underlying it). This is precisely what happens in the theory of ritual as a version of practice theory. In the case of normal science, it is the periodic reaffirmation of the coherence of a theoretical world through a ritual execution of puzzle-solving activities that exercises a solidarity-maintaining function. There is a ritual – so practice theory’s argument goes – because the discursive-practical articulation of meaning within the laboratory everydayness and routine communication is based on “rigid syntax” and “restricted codes” of social-normative order which limit the ability of the community’s members to transgress the “normal scientific space of possibilities”. In a good Durkheimian way one starts out with (the restricted codes of )

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“collective representations”, forgetting thereby the “existential genesis” of each well-structured interrelatedness of practices. The scientific community “learns” in a collective fashion specific codes that regulate its laboratory everydayness, and through its discursive practices it “speaks” the social structure which is indispensable for having a normal scientific research. In other words, normal science as a ritual is the involvement of a scientific community in a codified (and distinguished by a “rigid syntax”) everydayness of iterative practices. The hypostatization of a restricted code as a mechanism of transmission of stable configurations of practices (whose carrying out provides a periodic reaffirmation of the social-normative order) is the principal defect of this theoretical account.7 It is this deficiency that a reformulation of normal science in terms of hermeneutic philosophy tries to overcome. A first step in that direction would be an outline of the rationality that corresponds to a hermeneutic reading of normal science. In The Essential Tension Kuhn often speaks about normal science as a “tradition-bound work” guided by “exemplars” (i.e., concrete problems with their solutions which do not call into question the very tradition). Doing-researchwithin-a-tradition is governed by a sort of phronesis-rationality which is incompatible with the epistemic rationality that consists in normative criteria and standards of applying a theoretical framework to particular problems. As I will argue, practical experience (and not epistemological norms and criteria, or “restricted codes” of ritual everydayness) constitutes the core of phronesis-rationality. Yet to stress the role of the particular and the “exemplars” in practical experience does not mean to get rid of general models and structures. Phronesis is rather a mediation between the general and the particular. Richard Bernstein, a prominent champion of the hermeneutic reorientation of the philosophy of science, makes in this regard the following observation: “As Aristotle stresses, and Gadamer realizes, phronesis presupposes the existence of nomoi (funded laws) in the polis of community. This is what keeps phronesis from degenerating in the mere cleverness or calculation that characterizes the deinos (the clever person). Given a community in which there is a living, shared acceptance of ethical principles and norms, then phronesis as the mediation of such universals in particular situation makes good sense.” (Bernstein 1983, p. 157). In the present study, both notions of fore-structure (in terms of “practice theory” and in terms of hermeneutic phenomenology) that I am employing draw on the potentiality for normal science in an autonomous domain of research. This claim is to be clarified in the following manner. The research process is always projected into possibilities (of doing further research) that are situationally actualized by configurations of interrelated practices. This projectedness directs the research process towards the constitution of a scientific domain. Thanks to the sustained “pressing into possibilities”, the research process (regardless of

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the domain’s cognitive completeness) is always open for further development. The more possibilities become actualized, the wider is the horizon of new possibilities. In this ongoing actualization of possibilities, there are always understanding and interpretation involved in the research process. As I pointed out in the preceding chapter, these are not specific cognitive procedures, but ontological characteristics of the constitution of (experimental, instrumental, calculative, etc.) meaning within the domain of research. On Heidegger’s account, – to reiterate again a claim formulated in the preceding chapter – understanding is a projection of an open horizon of possibilities. Interpretation is not something external to understanding. In interpretation understanding’s own possibility becomes actualized. Furthermore, in interpretation the understanding becomes itself. Interpretation appropriates what is projected (understood), whereby it articulates the meaning within-the-world. More specifically, the “understanding which interprets” and the “appropriative interpretation of what is understood” articulate the “existentially primordial meaning” that is independent of thematic predication and predicate logic. The nexus “understanding – appropriative interpretation” is the chief idea of hermeneutic phenomenology that will be implemented in the upcoming reformulation of normal science.8 On a preliminary definition, the discursive-practical fore-structure is the infinite set of possible ways of carrying out the research process in a scientific domain, whereby these ways are projected onto the community’s discursive practices. The talk of discursive-practical fore-structure presupposes the nexus “understanding – interpretation”. Understanding is coupled with interpretation as phronesis of the practical involvement in the domain of scientific research. Through appropriation of possibilities that are already understood, one articulates meaning of what is ready-to-hand in carrying out practices. Understanding and interpretation within the domain of everyday routine practices of doing research houses the unreflective openness towards a range of possibilities in each particular situation. Thus, to stress in a slightly modified form a claim already made, neither understanding nor interpretation are viewed in hermeneutic phenomenology as “theoretical practices” that can be reconstructed methodologically. They are rather ontological characteristics of human existence as “disclosedness of being-in-the-world”. Pressed forward into possibilities, the practitioners are always already in an ongoing articulation of meaning within the research domain. The nexus of understanding and interpretation underlies both the dynamics of “mundane practices” and the transsubjective sociality (i.e., the sociality that is not reducible to a variety of contextual social relations) of the practitioners. The notion of discursive practices I am going to employ embraces ideas stemming from different philosophical traditions. It is the “existential equiprimordiality” of praxis and articulation of meaning that gives evidence of

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the universality of discursive practices. Phrased differently, “discursive practices” are not a special sort of practices, but the very concernful involvement within-the-world upon which all sorts of practices are grounded. By stressing this universality, however, I am not trying to equate (a tendency demonstrated in Lyotard’s work) the language-games in which forms of intersubjectivity are articulated with the pragmatic dimensions of discursiveness. My aim is rather to underline the discursive aspect of all practices that constitute scientific research, regardless of whether verbal communication is used in their execution. Identifying bacterial species, counting total cells, and determining the number of viable cells in a culture are three typical discursive practices in microbiologists’ research process. By executing them, the researchers are able to correlate observed biochemical activity with the biological state of the cells. In so doing, microbiologists create a standard routine for every experiment in their domain. The three practices can be depicted as entirely “wordless doings”. Yet the communicative structuration of the community of researchers supervene on the interrelations among these “non-verbal” practices. There is always in normal scientific research a discursive medium of situational interactions in which research practices are carried out. All “wordless doings” are also embedded in this medium. They are not beyond (what Heidegger calls) the “totality-of-meanings”. It is the “dynamic unity” of transsubjective sociality and interrelatedness of practices that provides in the first place a rationale for treating practices taking place in the research process as discursive practices. Seen in these terms, the first step in approaching the dynamic unity must be that of elaborating on the non-essentialist (existential) notion of discourse. This is a large issue which I am not going to discuss in this study. Provisionally I will only envisage some of the main moments of the existential notion of discourse. In the framework of Heidegger’s Daseinsanalytik, discourse is ascribed neither to the communicative behavior based on linguistic codes nor to the variety of speech acts, but to the articulation of meaning through appropriative interpretation of practical understanding. Discourse underlies all kinds of thematic assertion. As an “existential-ontological foundation” of speech acts that produce assertions, discourse articulates meaning that is taken for granted by the linguistic activity of predication based on predicate logic and grammar. “Silence” as meaning generated by wordless doings is a form of discourse as well. Doings based on non-verbal interactions which supervene on interrelated routine practices belong to the discursive constitution of meaning. (In the same vein, champions of practice theory insist that cultural artifacts [e.g., instruments of experimentation] acquire meaning by virtue of their rootedness in nexuses of social practices. At the same time, carrying out such practices might not need linguistic structures and communicative spaces.) Thus, the notion of discursive practices I employ in this chapter opposes not only the

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view of “linguistic determinism” but the essentialist postulate that action underlies discourse as well. To be sure, interrelated elementary practices are the milieu in which grammatical paradigms and codes of communication are constituted. (Syntactic structures and semantic models of scientific languages also supervene on the routine of research practices.) Yet there is no practice devoid of discourse. If the worldless doings of factory workers (or, microbiologists) would not be meaning-generating doings, they would not serve the function of maintaining the networks of interactions. The elaboration of a notion of discourse that is in line with the strong hermeneutics of science hinges on the philosophical problem of universality of understanding and interpretation. The articulation of meaning within the “world” of routine everydayness precedes (ontologically) the emancipation of logical and grammatical forms of thematic predication. Thus considered, the notion of discourse contradicts the Saussurean thesis of the priority of langue (a system of codes) over parole (a diversity of communicative practices).9 In what follows the claim will begin to emerge that discourse is the common medium of interrelated practices of doing research and the scientific community’s structuration. As such a medium, discourse promotes a kind of “feedback loops” between contexts of social structuration and configurations of research practices. In practice theory the mediating role of discourse is grasped by means of notions like “habitus”, “practical consciousness”, “unconscious wants” and so on. No doubt, these notions provide a valuable conceptual framework for studying how normal scientific practices extend themselves over time and space. Yet if one reduces the analysis to this framework alone, one would reduce normal science to a kind of mentality. There is another aspect of the “existential equiprimordiality” of discourse and practice (qua discursive-practical fore-structure) which deserves special attention. What I have in mind is the hidden normativity embedded in this forestructure. The appropriative interpretation of what is already understood within the practical everydayness implies also an intrinsic normative regulation of what is going on in the everyday routine. To make use of a metaphor implemented by the champions of pactice theory, there is a kind of “orchestration” of discursive practices underlying the teleoactive order of normal scientific everydayness. The discursive-practical fore-structure of doing research houses the implicit normative base of this order. Theodore Schatzki makes it clear that unlike explicit rules, the orders constituting an everyday routine “need not be spelled out and explicitly enjoined in formulations, although formulation does sometimes occur, especially (but not only) in learning situations, in the face of nonstandard doings and sayings.” (Schatzki 1996, p. 100). The hidden normativity instituted by routine discursive practices is a central issue for thinkers like Giddens and Bourdieu. (In normal scientific research, hidden normativity comes to the

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surface as a “mutual normalization” of practices. Routine discursive practices promote and constrain each other in the research process. Each situation of this process is a configuration of discursive practices. Thus, in a certain situation of studying enzyme adaptation the “mutual normalization” includes experiments with inducers of such adaptation, specifying concepts of enzymology and biochemistry with respect to issues of bacterial metabolism, isolating strains of microbes, calculating the quantitative effects of the activity of hydrogen-activating enzymes, repeating experiments with anaerobic fermentation, designing possible experiments with systems of lactose fermentation, biochemical identifying of new enzymes, forging “ad hoc bridges” between biochemistry and bacterial physiology by correlating enzyme activity with viable cells, improving techniques for counting total and viable cells, and experimenting with bacteria that synthesize new enzymes which are highly selective in their recognition of the amino-acids.) In stressing important parallels between practice theory and Kuhn’s way of relating the scientific community’s experience and normal research routine, I would not like to imply that the former can redescribe (in its own terms) all basic socio-theoretical presuppositions of normal science conception. Although neglected by most commentators, there is a bunch of issues in Kuhn’s work related to the problematics of narrativity. To approach the narrative character of normal scientific experience and research everydayness amounts to undertaking a step beyond the scope of practice theory. Let me in a preliminary manner differentiate the issues Kuhn is discussing in this regard. First, the narrative approach to the historiography of science takes a prominent place in Kuhn’s various papers. Under scrutiny here is the narration as a primary act of historiographic reflection. Second, there is the issue of devising a narrative account of the historical situatedness of normal scientific research. Given the situatedness within a projected horizon of possibilities, normal scientific traditions are experienced as temporal-narrative wholes. Guiding in discussing the third issue is the claim that there is nothing below the pre-narrative organization of experience and praxis. Narratives are the “elementary units” of analyzing normal scientific everydayness. By implication, the accomplishment of historiographic narratives of scientific development is a recapitulation of a prenarrative organization of scientific communities’ everyday experience and praxis. Fourth, reflecting upon the structuration in the narrative form of communal experience, discursive practices, and production of cognitive content plays a crucial role in searching for an alternative to the dilemma between meta-historical absolutism and historico-cognitive relativism. Finally, in the pre-narrative organization of scientific research and the narrative-temporal character of scientific traditions one is looking for the roots of science’s historicity.

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As a historian of science, Kuhn “reproduces” various normal scientific traditions by narrating in each case the way a set of beliefs and practices became dominating in a given period.10 Narratives (and not rational historical reconstructions) are the tools for grasping normal science as a tradition. In most cases, according to Kuhn, compounding a historiographic narrative serves the task of reinterpreting an established state of affairs in the history of science. By means of such a reinterpretation, one learns “to refrain from attributing to past scientists a grasp of views that had not emerged when they wrote – from equating discoveries with their canonical formulations ...” (Kuhn and Heilborn 1969, p. 246.) Giving a narrative account through reinterpreting allows one to become free from a constraining historical event within a predetermined mold, and thereby to enter into a genuine “dialogue” with the historical agents one is studying. The dialogue achieved through the reinterpretation is not independent of the narrative account. The latter is rather the very expression of the dialogue.11 Kuhn’s historiographic narratives reveal how normal scientific research mediates between general theoretical structures and particular discursive practices. In serving as such an intermediary, normal scientific experience constitutes the “primary historical reality” of a hermeneutic theory of science’s development. The integral “narrative episodes” are the elementary objects of study of this theory. Kuhn’s historical holism is not alien to the tenets of such a hermeneutic theory. In this regard, it is worth quoting the beginning of his celebrated investigation of the genesis of quantum theory: “In a general way I was aware of the structure of the developments I wished to explore, and I also knew the climatic episodes with which my story would close: the inventions, during 1922 and 1923, of Lande’s vector model of the atom and of Bohr’s model of the periodic table. Nevertheless, I lacked one detail prerequisite to the start of focused research. I did not know when physicists first began to look for quantum conditions, when they first asked about the nature of the restrictions placed by the quantum on the motion of systems more general than Planck’s one-dimensional harmonic oscillator.” (Kuhn 1978, p. VII) Obviously, for Kuhn, the whole cognitive transformation in modern physics that occurs after the appearance of Planck’s presentation of differential equations for a radiation-damped resonator has clearly determined beginning and end. Kuhn’s hermeneutic task in this case is to read not a particular theory, or the views of a particular author, but the whole transformation as a “narrative episode” of science’s historical development. Only within such a reading, one can constitute a meaningful subject of a historiographic study. In criticizing the way the historical perspective has been integrated in the theoretical programs of his “generation of philosopher/historians”, Kuhn makes it clear that the historiographic work is embodied in narrative. (See Kuhn 2000, pp. 105-120) The task of designing a narrative is in the first place to demonstrate the historical situatedness of scientific research. The narrative account

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aims at understanding “small incremental changes” of the mode of doing research. When epistemological questions about rationality, objectivity, or evidence arise in the narrative account, “they are addressed not to the beliefs that were current either before or after the change, but simply to the change itself”. (Kuhn 2000, p. 112) In this regard, Kuhn suggests a distinction between the epistemological validity of belief and the interpretative validity of incremental change. In the former case, one tacitly admits that there are higher criteria (the criteria of epistemological justification) and a “rigid Archimedean platform” of assessing the change of beliefs in the development of science. In the second case, there is no higher criterion than the criterion of validity of narrative interpretation. The historian of science has to read the “whole stories” of normal scientific traditions. In so doing, the Kuhnian historian has to reproduce in a narrative manner the “destinies” of such traditions. Birth in the aftermath of a scientific revolution, routine everydayness, anomalies, and crisis are “attributive events” of a normal scientific tradition’s destiny. One is not obliged to accept Kuhn’s schematism of events. Yet one cannot deny that there are events shaping in a “fateful fashion” scientific traditions. Historians’ narratives ought to display the dynamics of “attributive events” in normal scientific research. It is this dynamics that takes on the form of “destiny”. Seen in these terms, a research tradition comes into the world, creates its own cognitive and institutional niche, proliferates by conquering new empirical phenomena, constitutes an autonomous domain, and is “doomed to die” when insurmountable anomalies in the routine everydayness appear. The metaphor of destiny does not imply a fatalist view about normal scientific traditions. The hermeneutic concept of tradition stipulates that the end of a given tradition is always open. The upshot of a “dead tradition” can always be reanimated (reformulated, reactivated, recast in new terms, or reinterpreted) in the horizon of a new tradition. To paraphrase Heidegger, a normal scientific tradition exists as born, and as born, it is already dying, in the sense of being towards insurmountable anomalies. Only a tradition that is predicated on a “hermetically closed” (and even potentially not fusible) horizon can die out without a trace. There are no traditions that are outside the ongoing “fusion of horizons” in culture. By implication, a “finished destiny” of a cultural tradition (including normal scientific traditions) is always relative to the potentially endless fusion due to the mutual openness of horizonal boundaries. Ironically, the narrativist approach to scientific traditions, professed by Kuhn, is in conflict with (the semantic and epistemological versions of) the incommensurability thesis.12 A tradition’s “destiny” shaped by the attributive events mediates between the temporal configurations of research practices and the historicity of scientific development. This claim implies that the “source” of science’s historical

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dynamics is the temporality of normal scientific research. Hence, a general model of scientific development (and the view of science’s historicality involved in such a model) can be constructed only through scrutinizing the ways in which the forms of a macro-historical dynamics of science are rooted in (micro-historical) temporality of normal scientific research. This claim offers a radical alternative to the (Hegelian) kind of historicism informed by the dominant postpositivist models of scientific development. To set the scene, let me remind some results of the (now classical) investigation of post-positivist epistemologicalhistorical approach. Its author, Alan Musgrave (1974), argues that the different variants of this approach (in particular, as a historical approach to the confirmation of a scientific hypothesis) result from construing “background knowledge” in slightly different ways. The picture of science’s historical dynamics depends upon the logical relations between theoretical constructions, theory’s evidential support, and background knowledge. By implication, one admits that there is an immanent historical logic in the development of science. Phrased differently, the historical time of science is a function of logical relations between components of science’s cognitive structure. The independent testability of theory’s predictions of new effects, for instance, determines the difference between cognitive past and cognitive future in the development of science. The reconstruction of historical logic of this development enables the epistemologists (as “theorists of rationality”) to avoid introducing extreme relativism into their enterprise. The reduction of science’s historical time to a logical (re)construction makes post-positivist epistemological historicism a sort of Hegelianism (history is a realization of the logic of spirit). In the most typical case represented by Lakatos’ rational reconstruction, history of science is a realization of the historical logic devised by the methodology of scientific research programmes. (Ironically enough, a pupil of Popper rehabilitated the spirit of historicism in the historically oriented philosophy of science.) Of course, the imposition of a “diachronic logic” upon the historiographic data of the development of science is not a hallmark of those post-positivist authors whose point of departure is lateWittgenstein’s philosophy. But even these authors (who try to extend the notion of scientific rationality beyond the scope of formal logic and the logical semantics of scientific languages without succumbing to a kind of cognitive relativism) advocate a kind of Hegelianism when treating science’s historicality. Thus, Stephen Toulmin in his attempt to escape from the “temptations of relativism” in Human Understanding refers to the Hegelian “cunning of reason”. In repudiating that rationality as a sub-species of logicality, he places special emphasis upon the fact that intellectual positions in science are modified in the face of unforeseen experiences. The locus of scientific rationality is those changes which involve replacing of one “conceptual population” by another.

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(Toulmin draws attention to the parallel between his ecological approach and the approach employed by lawyers operating within the common-law tradition. In both cases, the “practical rationality” of adopting in an opportunist manner decisions from “precedents” helps to avoid both historical relativism and metahistorical absolutism.) Yet in the case of science, there is a progressive development which (in accordance with the tenets of Toulmin’s approach) requires the postulation of a mechanism of selection. Hence, a “historical logic” is not imposed from an external position, but scientific development is “endowed” with an “evolutionary-ecological mechanism” of selecting conceptual populations. Though one is no longer laying down a priori standards of rationality, one is postulating an empirically verifiable and modifiable ecological theory of scientific change. The problematics of science’s historical temporality collapses into a search for a (Hegelian) universal mechanism of scientific development. Again, science’s historicality is not scrutinized. Its study is replaced by an “intellectual evolutionary ecology” that demonstrates the Hegelian cunning of reason. Kuhn’s denial of any universal-historical rational reconstruction of science is rooted in his conviction that there is no “historical logic” (or, mechanism of conceptual evolution) beyond the dynamics of the particular normal scientific traditions. His interpretative approach to the “destinies” of these traditions is embodied in “middle-sized narratives”. In contrast to the “local narratives” about particular research situations (e.g., reports on experiments, descriptions of series of measurements, etc.), they reproduce “whole stories” distinguished not only by beginning and end, but by an “emplotment” that has to express the “destiny”. They are, however, narratives of particular traditions that can never be transformed into meta-narratives concerning the integral development of science. Post-positivist epistemological historicism (and all kinds of epistemologicological schematization of science’s historical dynamics) draw on such meta-narratives when they ascribe an “intrinsic logic” to the development of science. Each meta-historical normative position of an epistemological evaluation of scientific progress assumes a meta-narrative as a “grand success story”. By contrast, in trying to come to grips with the destinies of particular normal scientific traditions, the Kuhnian historian rejects any predestination (or, predetermined course) of the integral development of science. “To narrate destinies” of normal scientific traditions does not amount to imposing narratives upon the historiographical data from a position that seeks “logical regularities” in the historical development. It is the proper temporality of normal scientific research that “generates a destiny”. This thesis is opposed to Louis Mink’s conception of “narrative configurations” as a way of understanding the historical events in a single act which manages to hold them together rather than reviewing them seriatim. Mink advocates the view that in her work the historian cannot refer to events as such, but only to events reproduced

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by a narrative. By implication, there is no essential demarcational line to be drawn between narratives stemming from the historian’s work and fictional narratives. In both cases, narrative form is an artifice and a product of imagination. Because narratives are always imaginative constructions, the historian’s work cannot defend its claim to truth by any accepted procedure of argument or authentication. A central place in Mink’s view takes the claim that there can be no untold stories at all. “There can be only past facts not yet described in a context of narrative form.” (Mink 1978, p. 147). Kuhn’s holistic-interpretative reading of the “destinies” of normal scientific traditions repudiates the location of narrative form in the historian’s act of description. Narratives are not simply tools of imposing a form on the events of the past. A kind of pre-narrativity (i.e., a narrative form before the act of telling) is produced by the ongoing interplay of accumulated experience and horizon of expectation in the research everydayness of normal science. This prenarrativity is “created” by the temporal configurations of discursive practices. Historians’ narratives are a means for an interpretative grasp of what is already pre-narrated as a discursive-practical fore-structure of doing research in a normal scientific tradition. They reveal a kind of temporal self-structuration which the traditions “in themselves” do have. Historians’ narratives are not imposing a form that the events in their historical dynamics do not have. In avoiding such an imposition of narrative, the task of Kuhn’s historian consists in an interpretative reflection upon the proper temporality of those normal scientific practices, which constitutes a tradition distinguished by a peculiar historical “destiny”. The latter refers both to the existence of a scientific community (between formation and disintegration) and to the development of a research domain. What is predicated on having a “destiny” is the articulation of a domain through the discursive practices of a scientific community. Likewise, in the perspective of philosophical hermeneutics, a cultural tradition is a historical mode of being-in-the-world that “embraces” both the practitioners within the world and the discursive practices by means of which a meaningful world is constituted. In reflecting upon the “proper temporality” of normal science, Kuhn’s “middle-sized narratives” draw attention to the merger of past and present experience that takes place in the interrelatedness of discursive practices. Past achievements come to the present in the form of “exemplars” for solving puzzles. In adopting a hermeneutic concept of tradition, the reading of normal science’s temporality scrutinizes the ways in which the research process integrates the present with the past by means of (what Kuhn in his later writings calls) “concrete models”. An upholder of this reading would show little sympathy for the account of the stability of research practices in terms of an atemporal paradigm articulation due to the application of general laws to new cases in the domain of

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inquiry. Explaining normal science’s stability with a deductive articulation of a paradigm would entail ignoring not only important historical dimensions of scientific research, but the whole problematics of science’s historicity. This is why attention in the hermeneutic reformulation of normal science is paid chiefly to the activity of solving problems (through exemplary solutions) in which past experience, present concern, and projected future form the proper temporality of scientific research. In Chapter Three of this study, I will argue that the temporal configurations in normal scientific everydayness constitute ontological narratives. In employing that notion, I should like to stress that the “destinies” of normal scientific traditions are not simply convenient idealizations of the historian’s work. Like pre-narrativity associated with the discursive-practical forestructure, narratives’ “plot-structures” (Northrop Frye) – so my argument will go – are to be identified in the temporal configurations of discursive practices building a normal scientific research everydayness. James McGuire and Barbara Tuchanska stress that the historicity of science consists in the process of its self-constitution. They convincingly argue that this processual self-constitution is not cross-historical sameness and “has no need of being attributed to science with the help of a universal model of theory-change or paradigm replacement.” (McGuire and Tuchanska 2000, p. 234). Both authors pose the task of reflecting upon the historicity of science without succumbing to a certain sort of (meta-historical) essentialism. In their attempt to combine the defence of science’s progressive development with the rejection of invariant mechanisms of transformation, McGuire and Tuchanska insist that science’s historical continuance may be established only within the “onticoontological circle”. (A specification of this circle is the interplay between cognitive structure and hermeneutic fore-structure of scientific research.) Yet to come into this circle in the right way requires, in my view, working out a conception of the temporality of routine research practices. This is one of the main ideas behind the hermeneutic reformulation of normal science. To sum up, at issue in the hermeneutic reformulation is the way science’s historicity hinges on the proper temporality of normal scientific traditions. Notoriously, a central tenet of Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology is that the “existential source” of culturally significant historicality (e.g., that of science) lies in the temporality of ordinary practices of an everyday mode of being-inthe-world. On Heidegger’s view, what is “primarily historical” is the meaning constituted by discursive practices within-the-world. (“World” in this formulation connotes the discursive-practical fore-structure of being in a tradition.) “Secondarily historical” (Heidegger’s expression) is the “reified outcome” (as symbolic artifacts) of these practices within-the-world. In the same vein, the temporality of the “ordinary puzzle-solving activities” of normal science is the “existential source” of the historical dynamics of science on the level of temporal

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relations between articulated cognitive elements (hypotheses, experimental results, methods, background knowledge, etc.), i.e., the dynamics that is a subject of Lakatos’ rational historical reconstructions. Per definitionem, the temporal configurations of “puzzle-solving activities” form the temporality of a normal scientific tradition. Following this line of reasoning, one may raise a claim whose variety of aspects require a special study: Every epistemological model of scientific development (regardless of what cognitive unit is chosen and how the line between internal and external history is drawn) has to draw on a conception of this temporality. Finally, let me note that Kuhn’s own view of “historical tradition” (as distinguished from the normal scientific traditions) in physical science is not far from the hermeneutic conception of historicity. He admits that the phronesis-rationality of everyday (including pre- and non-scientific) practices gives rise to macrohistorical traditions in the development of science. Thus, in narrating the origin of the “Baconian sciences” (constituting the experimental tradition as opposed to the mathematical tradition of modern science), Kuhn (1977, pp. 41-52) singles out a wide range of pre-scientific practices that inform the initial horizon of natural scientific experimentation. Kuhn’s narrative deals with the manner in which the experimental tradition was “born” in the process of transformation of the Hermetic movement. The practices of artists, engineers, magi, and physicians facilitated the transition to modern practices of experimentation. To do justice to a hermeneutic reformulation of Kuhn’s notion requires bringing into focus problems that remain neglected both within the efforts to apply practice theory to the routine process of doing research, and within the established (in analytical philosophy) reading of normal science. This is my principal intention in the section to come.

b. Framework-Reading Versus Tradition-Bound-Reading of Normal Science It is really difficult to find a clear definition of normal science in Kuhn’s writings. As illustrations of this kind of research he points out the constant examination of atomic and molecular spectra in the years since the birth of wave mechanics, the eighteenth-century development of Newtonian dynamics, and the development of chemical thermodynamics. (Kuhn 1977, p. 233) Two epistemic processes take place in these (to use Kuhn’s expression) “normal research projects” – an adjustment of existing theory or existing observation in order to bring the two into closer agreement; and an extension of existing theory to areas that it is expected to cover. Through these processes the practitioners of normal scientific research try to elucidate topographical details on a “map whose main

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outlines are available in advance”. This “in advance” may mean two things. First, the scientists involved in a normal scientific research know in advance the items that the domain does and does not contain.13 They do possess this knowledge because by adopting the domain’s existing theory they are able to “see” the empirical scope of what has to be investigated. Thus considered, “in advance” is in full agreement with the celebrated claim of post-positivistic epistemology that all observational terms are theory-laden. Yet there is also an entirely different meaning that is irreducible to the triangle “theoretical framework – background knowledge – empirical data”. The main outlines of a research domain can be known in advance because of scientists’ commitment to the practical experience of a given tradition. (“Experience” here is a translation of the German word Erfahrung.) In his later writings Kuhn often refers to normal science as an initiation into an unequivocal tradition of training in certain esoteric practices of doing research. This claim does not belong to post-positivistic epistemology. It is rather congruent with views and postures of philosophical hermeneutics (most of all, Gadamer’s hermeneutics of experience). According to it, experience is not a set of cognitive procedures (guided by epistemological criteria of justification), but interrelated practices which in their historicity constitute a tradition. Likewise, Kuhn treats normal scientific research as “experience”, i.e., as a transmission of discursive practices that takes the form of tradition. The participants in these practices have become “indoctrinated” by a “tradition’s authority”. Yet this is not an authority embodied in a corpus of doctrines. It is rather the experience that is handed down by a “dialogue with tradition”, which “teaches” the participants to recognize the specific reality of their research domain. The experience accumulated in the tradition (and not the firm theoretical framework) informs practitioners’ anticipations, orientations, and inclinations in the research process. The very tradition is not determined by an established theory. On the contrary, it is the practical experience of a tradition that fore-structures both the formation and the acceptance of a theory. (Let me note that in contemporary writings on the notion of tradition, – which follow a now classical book by Edward Shils (1981) – the view gained currency that the inherited ways of giving meaning to experience are linked to communities’ collective memory. Yet constitutive of tradition is not only collective memory, but “collective forgetfulness” as well. The latter is to be depicted in terms of a disactivation of practices in transmitting experience. A normal scientific tradition is unconscious transmission of exemplars for resolving problems through experience in which an interplay of activation and disactivation of research practices takes place. The constellation of collective memory, collective forgetfulness, and articulation of meaning in transmitting practical experience has much to do with the “narrative nature” of normal science, which I am going to address later.)

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Against the background of these preliminary considerations I am going to differentiate between two basic readings of Kuhn’s “normal science”. The reading that makes use of concepts like tradition, discursive practices, experience, and so on (the “tradition-bound reading”), is a specification of the hermeneutic idea of historicity, whereas the reading that is close to the view depicted by Popper under the heading of “the myth of the framework” (framework-reading) is consonant with the theory of knowledge supported by cognitive relativists. The ambiguity in Kuhn’s conception has provoked in recent years several attempts to commit both readings (in terms of post-positivistic epistemology and in accordance with the concepts of tradition and “practical experience”) of the notion to two lines of a philosophical critique of science. More specifically, the discrepancy between both readings was recognised as a manifestation of the conflict between hermeneutics and epistemology. According to the tradition-bound reading (and especially in its version in terms of the hermeneutic view of “effective history” [Wirkungsgeschichte]), normal scientific research is already in a horizon of shared orientations, anticipations, expectations and inclinations, which is projected onto the totality of a community’s discursive practices in the domain. This reading states that the decision to accept the assumptions guiding normal scientific research is already informed by the horizon integrating discursive practices of a research process and by “tradition’s authority”. The rational decisions made by the members of a scientific community come into being within an already projected horizon of doing research. It is this horizon that “transcends” the (individual and collective) rational choices in the research process. The reading of normal science in terms of a hermeneutic conception of historicity requires taking leave of many (customary) episemological distinctions. To repeat a thesis that will play an important role in the upcoming considerations: Whereas tradition-bound reading involves moving from practices, traditions and experience to a consideration of fore-structures and horizons, framework-reading keeps the intention of a revival of scheme-content-epistemology. The upholders of the tradition-bound reading show little sympathy for the account of the stability of research practices in terms of a paradigm articulation due to the application of general laws (and “conceptual schemata”) to new cases in the domain of inquiry. Explaining normal science’s stability with the deductive articulation of a paradigm would entail ignoring important historical dimensions of scientific research. This is why attention in the tradition-bound reading is paid chiefly to the activity of solving problems (through exemplary solutions) in which past experience, present concern, and projected future form the inner temporality of scientific research. (Let me reiterate that the traditionbound and the framework reading of normal science are not only two opposite philosophical interpretations of Kuhn’s ideas, but two conflicting tendencies in

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Kuhn’s thought. Strangely enough, however, from the paper “ The Essential Tension: Tradition and Innovation in Scientific Research” [1959] to his final writings both tendencies were at once in a peaceful and conflicting coexistence.) Both readings would approve the definition of normal science as a mode of doing research that uses a past achievement as a model and guide for formulating and solving problems within an established domain without bringing into question the basic theoretical and methodological assumptions of the research process. Yet they differ essentially in construing the issue of the way these assumptions are accepted by a scientific community. No doubt, the kernel of the controversy concerning Kuhn’s legacy lies in the interpretation of the claim that normal scientific research is guided by a series of paradigmatic assumptions which are generally accepted by those working in a particular domain. I will call this the “acceptance-claim”. On various occasions Kuhn speaks of the normal scientific community being committed to a paradigm. This commitment may mean a “metaphysical belief” or a dimension of the community’s ethos of practical behavior. In fact, these two meanings of “commitment to a paradigm” in Kuhn’s work correspond to the two approaches to the acceptance-claim. The difference in treating this claim provides a further specification of the two readings of “normal science”. According to framework-reading, the acceptance-claim means that due to a rational choice the members of a scientific community accept something like a conceptual scheme (cum a methodological code of doing research). Following this interpretation of the claim, one faces the model of making a rational decision within an already accepted theoretical framework. On this model, there is normal scientific research in a given domain, as long as there are shared commitments to a conceptual scheme (and a “metaphysical paradigm”), each of these commitments consisting of individual rational decisions. The interpretation in terms of rational decision-making reproduces the distinction between context of discovery and context of justification. More specifically, if we start out with the rationally accepted conceptual scheme, we will have two options of explaining normal scientific research. We can either concentrate our attention on the collective motives for accepting the conceptual scheme that provides the assumptions shared by the members of the community, or we can assess the rationality of this acceptance against the background of certain epistemological and methodological norms. The former explanation would be in terms of social psychology (and it would be relegated to the “context of discovery”), whereas the latter would be forged in the perspective of a certain “rational reconstruction” of the research process, i.e., it would belong to the “context of justification”. Analyzed with respect to the notion of theoretical framework, normal science is a specification (in terms of a theory of scientific change) of “schemecontent dualism”. Wolfgang Stegmüller (1979), a leading exponent of this

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standard (epistemological) reading, explicates (in terms of Sneed’s non-statement view of scientific theory) the concept by appealing to a theory-ladenness of observations. He goes on to stress that it is impossible to specify what empirical data would have to look like in order to falsify Newton’s second law. The latter belongs to the basic core of classical mechanics. With respect to empirical refutability, this core has almost the same status as a tautology. The empirical content (however minimal it may be) of the basic core cannot be understood unless one accepts the theory. Normal scientific research is due to the immunity of the basic core (concerning empirical falsifications) in the process of applying the theory to systems of data. Normal science is the proliferation of intended applications of the basic core, which precludes the refutation of the theory. During this proliferation a domain of systems of data (or, empirical models) takes shape. This is the “Sneedian translation” of Kuhn’s puzzle-solving enterprise, which attempts to diminish the discrepancies between a paradigmatic conceptual scheme and the world. To be sure, Kuhn often makes use of an epistemological explication akin to that advanced by Stegmüller. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions he admits that normal science is a kind of research, in which an established paradigm functions “by permitting the replication of examples any one of which could in principle serve to replace it.” (Kuhn 1962, p. 23) According to this view, which gives rise to the standard reading, normal science is an ad infinitum process of replication of a pattern or a conceptual scheme by means of which an uninterpreted objective reality has become the “theoretical world” of a scientific community. Normal scientific research is directed to the further articulation of that world. (The determination of universal constants, the search for experiments that are necessary to choose among alternative lines of applying the paradigm, and the discovery of quantitative laws are the ways of such articulation discussed by Kuhn.) This reading of “normal science” follows the “stage theory” of science’s development, which is devised to provide a kind of functionalist explanation of the mechanisms that drive the characteristic activities of (the stages of) preparadigm science, normal science, crisis, and revolution. The underlying cognitive framework of paradigmatic achievement becomes firmly established as a framework for solving problems. Normal science offers formulations and possible solutions of these problems which do not threaten the “conceptual orthodoxy” held by the members of a domain’s scientific community. As a kind of research, normal science is predicated on a cumulative intellectual advance because there is a consensus in the scientific community about cognitive values and goals, methodological norms, explanatory models, and issues like the efficacy of the techniques of investigation and the relevance of mathematical formalisms. Thus, on this reading, achieving a consensus in a scientific community is determined by the domain’s (static and fixed) cognitive structure.

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Because the standard reading of normal science involves methodological, epistemological, and sociological claims, it can be associated with as diverse philosophical stances as neo-Kantianism, a kind of “conceptual empiricism”, and (to borrow Hacking’s expression) “social constructionism”. In order to place this assertion in a context, let me consider three relevant interpretations. (1) Provoked chiefly by Paul Hoyningen-Huene’s (1993) study, an interpretation of Kuhn’s position in neo-Kantian terms began to gain currency. (Notoriously, by the end of 1970s Kuhn subscribed to a view of “dynamic Kantianism”.) Hoyningen-Huene applies in his analysis the distinction between the world-in-itself itself (as an extrapolation of Kant’s “things-in-themselves”) and the phenomenal world. In so doing, he goes on to construe The Structure of Scientific Revolutions as a kind of historicizing Kant’s transcendental epistemology. Though the world-in-itself does not change in the aftermath of a scientific revolution, the “pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary worlds”, in which the scientists work, are different. Thus, Kuhn can be seen as a champion of a transcendental epistetemology that stresses a changeable (in contrast to Kant’s invariant) conceptualization of the world-in-itself. To be sure, there are a lot of statements in Kuhn’s own writings that strongly support this interpretation. Kuhn approaches a sort of neo-Kantianism when advocating that there are different observers of the same world who come to it with incommensurable systems of concepts. (In recapitulating his intellectual path in one of his latest essays, Kuhn [1991] stresses his indebtedness to Kantian thinkers like Max Weber and Ernst Cassirer. In that essay he – in criticizing Taylor’s celebrated attempt to draw in hermeneutic terms the line between the human and natural sciences – confesses his commitment to the view that interpretative relativity is a hallmark of all kinds of science. In all of them, conceptual schemes are the possession of interpretative communities, and there are no objects of inquiry that are independent of interpretations within conceptual frameworks. I should like to dub this view a “hermeneutic Kantianism”.)14 (2) In addition to the hermeneutic aspect, however, there is much room for another significant thesis about Kuhn’s Kantianism. Most clearly it is formulated by Donald Davidson (1984, pp. 187-189) who reaches the conclusion that the view of pattern-articulation presupposes the epistemology of the dualism of (a plurality of) observers’ conceptual schemes and uninterpreted content. At the same time, this sort of scheme-content-dualism is combined with an extended version of empiricism. The way in which empirical phenomena can come into being is totally controlled by a conceptual scheme. Consequently, Davidson accuses Kuhn of being committed to a “third dogma” of empiricism – the dogma of the dualism of the organizing scheme and something waiting to be organized; the dogma that remains even when the analytic-synthetic distinction is given up. Conceptual relativism and “irrationalism” about

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scientific change are the notorious consequences of that extended version of empiricism. (3) From the same epistemological point of view, which grounds the standard reading of normal science, Kuhn’s conception can be comprehended as a social constructionism par excellence. Ian Hacking (1999, pp. 88-99) makes the case that the three main traits of social constructionism – contingency, nominalism, and external explanations of stability – play a leading role in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In that book Kuhn, following the incommensurability thesis, concedes that a given scientific discipline could have developed in two or more alternative ways, and each variant of development (be it real or hypothetical) could have been as successful as the other(s). (This is what Hacking calls “contingency thesis”.) According to this thesis, there is no Hegelian scenario of scientific development. In Kuhn’s account, the scientific revolution does not determine the way one ought to go in the normal scientific enterprise. In addition, Kuhn’s conception is nominalist in a peculiar sense. On Hacking’s view, nominalism is characterized by a deep respect for the world. He describes the nominalist credo as follows: “The world is so autonomous, so much to itself, that it does not even have what we call structure in itself. We make our puny representations of this world, but all the structure of which we can conceive lies within our representations.” (Hacking 1999, p. 83) To be sure, there are many passages in Kuhn’s writings where normal science is construed as theoretical representations embodied in a paradigm, which in turn is defined as a set of doctrines constituting a worldview. (In contrast to the neo-Kantian Kuhn, the constructionist Kuhn rejects not only the possibility of an absolute paradigmatic worldview which can reveal “the world in itself” but the very transcendental idea of the world in itself since this idea presupposes a non-perceptible deep structure.) Those who engage in a normal scientific tradition are doomed to operate only with “puny representations” of the world. In Hacking’s account, this is the formula of Kuhn’s nominalism. Finally, Kuhn is inclined to prefer external explanations of the stability of scientific structures (e.g., Maxwell’s equations). In advocating this position, he joins the camp of constructionists who think that the reasons produced by research are not decisive for the course of science. Thus, Kuhn proves to be an advocate of extreme forms of the view of contingency concerning scientific development, nominalism, and constructionist externalism. (I do not imply that this picture of Kuhn’s “social constructionism” is wrong. My contention is only that its validity is restricted to the framework-reading of normal science because all three features Hacking discusses are cast in terms of scheme-content epistemology. Nothing compels us, however, to favour this reading. In fact, a hermeneutic reformulation of “normal science” would stress the openness of scientific traditions against contingency, the “situated transcend-

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ence” of scientific communities within their horizons of doing research against nominalism, and a kind of constitutional analysis of science’s cognitive content against the dichotomy of external and internal explanations of the dynamics of scientific development.) In resuming the discussion of the ambiguity of Kuhn’s “normal science”, I will formulate the central claim of my further analysis as follows: Only an epistemological schematization of the inner historicality of practical experience could lead to replacing the “hermeneutics of tradition” with the “epistemology of conceptual framework” as an apparatus for revealing the meaning of the notion. Unfortunately, such a schematization often takes place in Kuhn’s work. One of the reasons for this fact is that for him more important than the hermeneutic implications are the sociological consequences of his conception. Consequences that can easily be derived from reading the notion of normal science as a practitioners’ commitment to a theoretical framework. Even in his later writings he adheres to the idea that a large number of the characteristic traits of a scientific community’s structure of intersubjectivity are determined by the theoretical framework that guides the puzzle-solving enterprise. In addition, Kuhn relates particular phenomena of the community’s conservatism to the framework-reading of normal science. Thus, for example, a neophyte in a scientific community involved in normal scientific research who fails to adopt the established framework is doomed to be excommunicated. Normal science is “conceptual conservatism in action”. It tolerates “solvers of puzzles” (i.e., problems which can be stated and solved within the existing theory), and repudiates innovators. Yet Kuhn’s approaches the issue of conservatism from the viewpoint of tradition-bound reading as well. Insofar as the kind of conceptual conservatism Kuhn advocates lays special emphasis upon holistic arguments against the possibility of the separate refutability of particular theoretical statements, it is akin to the theoretical holism advanced by the Duhem-Quine thesis. In particular, in both cases the adjustments in the theoretical framework play a crucial role for avoiding a transition to a radically new hypothesis. Yet in the holistic account suggested by the Duhem-Quine thesis the adjustments are entirely reduced to an epistemological event. On Pierre Duhem’s (1954, p. IX) well-known assertion, a physical theory “is not an explanation; it is a system of mathematical propositions whose aim is to represent as simply, as completely, and as exactly as possible a whole group of experimental laws.” Quine’s merit consists in restating Duhem’s epistemological claim that a theory can only be tested in the presence of auxiliary hypotheses in pure logic. In contrast to the Duhem-Quine thesis, Kuhn’s holism is not confined to epistemological-logical arguments. Kuhn’s conceptual conservatism is an extension of his “hermeneutic conservatism” implied by the tradition-bound reading of normal science. In other words, Kuhn’s holistic picture of the experimental testability (verifiability and

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falsifiability) of scientific theories is advocated by invoking the practical and “hermeneutic basis” of the natural sciences. As I noted, the ambiguity in Kuhn’s conception epitomizes a clash between the effective-historical and the normative-epistemological concept of scientific rationality. In appealing to tradition-bound research work, Kuhn places more emphasis upon the historical dynamics of discursive practices, while in stressing the role of a theoretical framework (and its metaphysical presuppositions) he is preoccupied with an attempt to extend the scope of the “theory of knowledge” (suggesting a kind of “epistemology of scientific communities”). The “essential tension”, called into being by the ambiguity in Kuhn’s conception, is between the endeavour to “overcome epistemology” by means of a theory of practices embedded in a tradition and the strife to “rehabilitate epistemology” through its non-classical (i.e., non-subjectivist, non-representationalist, and holist) extension. Indeed, in “Second Thoughts on Paradigms” Kuhn undertook an attempt to remove the ambiguity by integrating both (in his opinion, only partially conflicting) views of normal science as different aspects of the notion of disciplinary matrix. However, this notion is too vague and unclear to make the attempt successful. It is composed of ordered elements of various sorts, some of them related to scientists’ ethos of practical behavior, others associated with framework-reading. Yet the very order of these elements remains obscure. This is why, I think, Kuhn was never successful in eliminating the intrinsic clash in his conception between the line of reasoning based upon epistemological dualism (and the concept of rationality related to it), on the one hand, and the interpretative analysis of the discursive-practical historicity of scientific research (and the “practical rationality” corresponding to it), on the other. It is worthwhile to mention that in the beginning of the 1990s he announced a book-project devoted in the first place to incommensurability. On this occasion, – probably in responding to Davidson’s criticism but without mentioning his name – Kuhn specifies his view of a conceptual scheme, stressing that it is not “a set of beliefs” but a particular prelinguistic “operating module prerequisite to having beliefs, a mode that at once supplies and bounds a set of beliefs...” (Kuhn 2000, p. 94). This view bears resemblance to Michael Polanyi’s “implicit knowledge” and is in line with a kind of “cognitive hermeneutics”. Obviously, it deviates essentially from scheme-content dualism. It is another question that at that time Kuhn was inclined to place his views of incommensurability and conceptual scheme in the framework of a “viable evolutionary epistemology”, searching thereby parallels between biological and scientific development only in terms of a heuristic analogy that opposes any kind of naturalizing historical philosophy of science.

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The tradition-bound reading is a prelude towards a hermeneutic reformulation of the notion of normal science. The most important result of this reading is the invalidation of the accusations of irrationalism, which are leveled traditionally at Kuhn’s conception. The accusations refer either to the lack of resources for providing a rational reconstruction of scientific change, or to the conservatism (as opposed to the rational standards of “scientific honesty”) of normal scientific behavior. In both cases at stake is the (in)famous “gestalt switch”. Looking at how normal science is bound by a tradition helps one to see that on the level of normal scientific practical experience the radical switch can be rationalized” by having recourse to interpretations appointed to eliminate discordances in the interrelations of routine research practices. It is the texture of these contingent “practical interpretations” that mediates the radical switch of a global conceptual change. In particular, there is a process of interpretations of anomalies emerging in normal scientific research. In the remainder of this section I would like to stress the contrast between the hermeneutic reformulation (associated with the tradition-bound reading) of normal science and the neopragmatist construal of this notion as it is suggested by Joseph Rouse. A critical reflection upon Rouse’s reinterpretation of “normal science” gives me a chance to examine more carefully some basic differences between the neopragmatist and the hermeneutic pictures of scientific research. I will sharpen the contrast between both pictures in order to recapitulate my efforts in this section. Generally speaking, Kuhn’s conception of normal science proves to be a corner-stone in the debate between hermeneutic phenomenology of science and a large class of neopragmatist and postmodern approaches to philosophy of science. Rouse’s “politics of postmodern philosophy of science” draws also essentially on an elaboration of a distinction between two readings of normal science. Rouse (1987, pp. 26-40) puts forward a differentiation between “the philosophers’ Kuhn” and “the radical Kuhn”. The former coincides with what I called a (standard) framework-reading of normal science, while the latter is associated with an attempt to consider normal scientific research as a field of practices rather than a network of statements. By scrutinizing “the radical Kuhn”, Rouse looks not for an epistemological alternative to the standard interpretation but for an alternative to all epistemological views of normal scientific activity as a “puzzle solving, attempting to reduce the discrepancies between a paradigmatic worldview and the world and to fill in the many blanks left open by the original sketchy development of the worldview.” (Rouse 1987, p. 28)15 In other words, he is looking for a radically non-epistemological reading of normal science. The reading he offers opens the door to a neopragmatist reformulation of normal science. Accordingly, the scientific community as a collective subject of routine research work is seen not as a community of believers (or, a subject distinguished by “collective representations”), but as a group of fellow

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practitioners. The participants in normal scientific enterprise do not search for theoretical representations of an objective reality, but tinker with experiments and instruments (including theoretical models as conceptual tools). Normal science is not an activity promoted by some theoretical presuppositions and a “hidden worldview”, but a field of changing practices which do not call into question the established process of tinkering.16 To be sure, there are many common elements between what I have described as a hermeneutic reformulation and Rouse’s “radical Kuhn”. In both cases, normal science involves shared practices, not shared conceptual schemes. Hermeneutic phenomenology and neopragmatism are both engaged in combating the reificationism of scientific knowledge. The crucial difference lies in the ways of giving meaning to the idea of “shared practices”. The hermeneutic reformulation assigns an interpretative and ontological meaning to the interrelatedness of normal scientific practices. The routine everydayness of scientific research is approached from the vantage point of an ontology of the situated transcendence characterizing the modes of being-in-the-tradition. Rouse’s reading of normal science as shared research practices and as a “tinkering with instruments and experiments” is in a deconstructive (or, “deflationary”) vein. The hermeneutic reformulation tries to show that scientific research does not escape the existential fore-structures which shape ontologically all kinds of human praxis, while the neopragmatist goal is to stress that normal science is not ontologically distinguished, and is always placed not in its own context of (self)constitution but in a social and political context. According to Rouse, communities of fellow researchers are characterized by common problems and shared practices, not by monolithic consensus. Rouse is trying to suggest that there is an evolution in Kuhn’s views about the role the consensus plays in the constitution of scientific communities. He admits that late-Kuhn is no more committed to the view that normal science is a result of a monolithic consensus. In opposing this interpretation of Kuhn’s “philosophical evolution”, I would like to stress that in his papers from the ’70s and ’80s Kuhn ties up the notion of the community’s consensus with his ideas of the “hermeneutic basis” of normal scientific research. He never accepted a pragmatist elimination of this notion. The “transsubjective view” of a scientific community’s consensus is stressed by Kuhn (most explicitly) in his analysis of the “anomalies”. Normal science displays “abnormal situations” because it embraces various sorts of discrepancies between discursive practices constituting the research process. However, entering into a “crisis state” is a more complicated event than an accumalation of such discrepancies. Kuhn argues convincingly that in most cases the discrepancies disappear under closer scrutiny. Only in such cases anomalies are not dismissed when the “normality” of normal science (i.e., the research process’ integrity due to a basic consensus about the reasonability of

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what is going on in scientific domain) is called into question. This consensus is not to be attributed to particular “negotiations” between the community’s members. In commenting on the impact his historical philosophy of science has had on the studies in cognitive sociology, Kuhn (2000, p. 109) reminds us that the net effect of all sociological accounts of achieving an authoritative consensus within a scientific community through negotiations has been to deepen rather than eliminate the original difficulty. Against the background of the “transsubjective view” of consensus, all ways of individual decision-making (including the involvement in “negotiations”) are to be explicated in terms of the consensus-laden character of normal scientific research. Anomalies that can destroy this kind of research are at the same time destructive for the transsubjective horizon of anticipation and expectation regarding the community’s decisionmaking. Due to this consensus, the transmission of discursive practices not only persists and resists the intrinsic clashes in scientific communities, but it “lies behind” the constant de-contextualization and re-contextualization of discursive practices and knowledge in normal scientific research. In my view, Rouse wrongly admits that by construing normal science as shared practices (and not as shared theoretical beliefs or cognitive content), one denounces the very notion of consensus. To characterize scientific communities only by common problems and techniques (which is Rouse’s aspiration) requires referring to the horizon of common problematizing and of joint use of techniques and instruments. It does not follow from the criticism of reification of scientific knowledge that there is no trans-contextual and trans-situational consensus in science’s team-work. In avoiding the spectre of reificationism, one is not obliged to reduce a community’s consensus to particular negotiations and temporary forms of cooperation in carrying out practices. One is not obliged to do this simply because the “resource” of having a community’s consensus is not shared theoretical models or shared theoretical scenarios of causal explanation, but a community’s situated transcendence in its own research everydayness. Rouse fails to see that one may give an account of the notion of consensus without succumbing to a kind of theoretical holism. Furthermore, what I am not going to accept is the dilemma concerning the interpretation of scientific groups either as communities of believers or as communities of fellow practitioners. More generally, I perceive as wrong the dilemma “either theoretical consensus that tacitly presupposes a version of schemecontent-epistemology or pragmatic agreement that only assumes common contextual implementations of skills and tools”. Between the horns of this dilemma there is a way of discussing normal scientific consensus in hermeneutico-ontological terms. My point of departure in exploring this third way (beyond neopragmatism and dualist epistemology) is a skepticism about the invalidation of the “quasi-confessional construal ” of scientific communities. To reiterate,

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Rouse tells us that scientists sharing a paradigm in a given domain are not a community of believers. Are they not such a community indeed? From a historical point of view, the initial step in the formation of an autonomous scientific community is the emergence of an “irrational” belief in a kind of “proto-theoretical objects”. Examples of such objects are the “moving subterranean plates” in geology of the late 1950s, the dualist objects with continuous wave structure and discrete corpuscular structure in mechanics of the early 1920s, and the genes as macromolecular objects in genetics of the 1940s. In referring to the belief in these objects, I used the predicate “irrational” since they are too amorphous and do not exist in articulated theoretical models. (In addition, the phenomena that indicate their existence are still not “saved” with respect to the sufficient basis of formal, conceptual, and experimental procedures.) The initial “cognitive institutionalization” of proto-theoretical objects is really rather a matter of belief than of theoretical justification. To the proto-theoretical objects corresponds a kind of “pre-thematic seeing” that precedes the constitution of a scientific community’s consensus. A case in point is the seeing of the diffraction of electrons before the advent of quantum mechanics. Several assumptions have been related to that seeing including that the electron is not a strictly localized particle, that it can pass through two holes, and that the electron and the waves are but different aspects of the same condition. The belief in the existence of a specific object has survived the tentative explanations of the dual aspect of light (like de Broglie’s conception that the intensity of the wave becomes infinite at a point, or Schrödinger’s rejection of the electron as a clearly defined particle situated at a definite point of space) advanced before the advent of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum events. The theoretical articulation of the aforementioned assumptions took place after the formulation of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. “Saving the phenomena” of the diffraction of electrons within quantum mechanics transformed it into a “phenomenal property” of a theoretical object. Yet the previous belief did not vanish. It became rather a scientific community’s belief in the existence of a new sort of theoretical objects. For those (like Hendrik Lorentz) who were not inclined to participate in the research everydayness of this community there remained the feeling that, though mathematically very fine, the matrix theory is a “deep mystery”. After the Solvay Congress of 1927 the believers in this mystery formed the scientific community of quantum mechanics. The persisting belief changes only its intentionality: Initially it is in prototheoretical objects and after the domain’s cognitive and social institutionalization in theoretical objects like statistical states represented by a class of operators in Hilbert space. It is this belief that enables the transition from pre-thematic seeing and pre-theoretical consensus to a scientific community’s consensus that makes the shared practices a routine research everydayness. The

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attainment of this consensus is rather a complex process that involves an overcoming of established “prejudices” regarding the domain’s objects. To elucidate what I mean, consider the case of molecular genetics. The emerging community of this domain faced the need to surmount “prejudices” about the structure of the gene advanced by prominent physicists like N. Bohr (genes are probably chemically unanalyzable), E. Schrödinger (genes are aperiodic crystals), and M. Delbrück (genes are submicroscopic steady-state systems). Eliminating the established “prejudices” does not lead to a “purification” from wrong assumptions or to ruling out a “false consciousness”. The constitution of an arising scientific domain cannot dispense with prejudices. Disposing of apparently wrong prejudices leads rather to introducing new ones. The relevant pre-thematic seeing delineates a “domain of possible thematization”. Only through projecting the pre-thematic seeing as a horizon of thematic possibilities for theoretical research, can the structure of a scientific domain begin to take shape. “Working in a scientific domain” is projection, and what it projects are thematic possibilities of the domain’s articulation.17 As I pointed out, the tradition serves as a common “horizon of expectation” that in most cases rules out the destructive effects of all sorts of disagreements. This is why there is a “deeply rooted consensus” in normal science that survives significant cognitive transformations of a scientific domain. At the same time, this consensus is not to be “derived” from a scientific domain’s cognitive structure. It is rather to be associated with the discursive-practical fore-structure of scientific research. In accordance with preceding considerations, this fore-structure is the processuality of interrelated discursive practices that plays the role of a horizon. The discursive-practical fore-structure is the normal scientific tradition in its constant openness. This fore-structure is not an “independent essence”. There is a constant interplay between the processuality of discursive practices and the outcome of their execution (the domain’s cognitive content). The community of researchers is “situated” within this interplay. By implication, the interplay of discursive-practical fore-structure and cognitive structure always “transcends” the actual “state of affairs” of the research process. As a transcendence, the tradition is a horizon of expectation. Being in a normal scientific tradition, a community of researchers is characterized by a “situated transcendence”. The scientific community experiences its situated transcendence (appropriating thereby a horizon of expectation) by means of an ongoing interpretation of the already projected possibilities for further research. In this perspective, interpretation is not a side-activity, but a constitutive trait of a community’s being-in-a-tradition. It is in this ontological sense that scientific communities are interpretative communities. With respect to (the ontological aspect of) interpretation, the discursive-practical fore-structure of scientific

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research is the unity of community’s fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. It is the ontological aspect of interpretation in the research process that remains neglected in Rouse’s pragmatist account of normal science.18 To sum up, the efforts for a hermeneutic reformulation of “normal science” should not collapse in a (neo)pragmatist reading of Kuhn’s conception. In my view, this reading leads to trivializing scientific research. To take into account the consensus of a normal scientific community is the first step in pushing away the neopragmatic picture of scientific research.19 A hermeneutic reading of normal science (committed to the “transsubjective view” of a community’s consensus) is neither a pragmatist deconstruction (deflation) of the cognitive structure of scientific research, nor a cognitive essentialism (as a form of mentalism) maintaining that there is a distinct “scientific consciousness” determining an autonomous realm of scientific experience. On this reading, it is the interpretation inherent in the discursive-practical fore-structure that constitutes the cognitive specificity of scientific research. “Specificity” in this formulation does not mean a “specific substance” or an “independent realm”. The sense in which the hermeneutic reading of normal science is neither “substantivist” nor “deflationist” implies that the community’s routine everyday research practices express a specificity which does not exist as enclosed in an independent structure. By saying this, I am anticipating a central claim of my study: Normal science is the site where an ongoing interplay between discursive-practical forestructure and cognitive structure of scientific research takes place.

c. Community’s Consensus and Situated Transcendence The preceding section provides a rationale for relating the issue of the “belief in theoretical objects” to basic ideas of hermeneutic phenomenology. As I mentioned on several occasions, the hermeneutic reformulation of normal science is based upon the tradition-bound reading. Before undertaking in the next chapter a more systematic and detailed account of Kuhn’s concept in terms of hermeneutic phenomenology, I would like to focus again on the special status the belief in theoretical objects occupies in the research everydayness of a scientific community. The discussion of this status is a paramount aspect of the realism-antirealism controversy in the analytical philosophy of science. Leading in this controversy is the endeavour to avoid the reification of epistemological dichotomies without leaving, however, the epistemological framework of reasoning. In my view, the most successful (analytical) program in this regard is van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism. At stake in the latter is not the static “theory-reality” relation but the issue of what theorizing is like. No doubt, the hermeneutic studies of scientific research share with this

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program the rejection of any hypostatization of general scientific laws and explanatory schemes. The exchange between Kockelmans and van Fraassen shows many parallels between hermeneutic phenomenology and constructive empiricism in treating the ways in which scientific communities “save phenomena” in their research everydayness through constructing models of empirical data. In denying the possibility to defend the “observable-theoretical dichotomy” by means of a distinction of vocabulary, van Fraassen appeals to an inquiry into the relations between empirical practices and theoretical models patterned after the hermeneutic circle. Within this circle – so van Fraassen’s argument goes – the real importance of a theory consists in its role as a factor in an experimental design. The claims that “theory construction consists in experimentation” and that “experimentation is the continuation of theory construction by other means” (van Fraassen 1980, p. 77) direct the reflection on the research process towards the hermeneutic issues of “practical rationality”. The traditional separation of a theory from “observable reality” is replaced by the reality of practices of “experimental theorizing” whose methodology demands an attitude that is inconsistent with any form of Cartesian dualism. This sounds pretty much like Heelan’s account of the interpretative unity of theoria and praxis in scientific research. Despite these common features, however, there is an essential divergence between strong hermeneutics of science and constructive empiricism concerning the status of the belief in theoretical objects in the research process. Van Fraassen discards any significant status of such a belief since the theoretical entities are only fictions facilitating systematic account. The argument he develops, however, is one that only makes sense in an epistemological framework. On this argument, what scientists must explain through postulating theoretical objects is not putative regularities in the natural phenomena, “but rather, why the phenomena approximate the apparent regularities to the extent they do.” (van Fraassen 1980, p. 211) Accordingly, the reasonability of the belief in the existence of theoretical objects depends entirely on the pros and cons of the epistemology of scientific realism. Admittedly, the theoretical entitities are no more than fictions from a constructive and holistico-semantic point of view concerning scientific knowledge. Yet this epistemological statement is completely irrelevant to the hermeneutic observation that the belief in the existence of theoretical objects plays a crucial role in generating a basic community’s consensus in the research everydayness. For the moment, however, I will postpone the discussion of this claim since the notion of scientific domain is in need of some clarification. Leading in my analysis will be the recognition of the situatedness of a scientific community within the interplay of (contextually changing) fore-structure of doing research and a domain’s cognitive content. (The same interplay can

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also be analyzed in terms of projected and actualized possibilities in the research process.) This claim presupposes a two-dimensional approach to scientific domains as the institutionalized locus where the interplay occurs. On the one hand, a scientific domain is an open horizon for theorizing, conceptualization, experimental instrumentation, and so on. On the other, it is a set of theoretical models united (and constrained in their possible interrelations) by the mathematical formalism(s) of one or more (interfield or intrafield) theories. These models provide meaning to theoretical objects in whose existence a scientific community believes. The “communal belief ” is at the bottom of the normal scientific consensus. At the same time, the existence of these objects is “gradually recognized” (this time not as a matter of belief but as a matter of “rational identification” through conceptual, experimental and mathematical procedures) in the research everydayness, whose openness corresponds to the domain-as-an-open-horizon. Under this analysis, the research everydayness is the totality of interrelated discursive practices, which constantly transcends the accomplishment of particular practices (e.g., statistical calculation, computer modeling, building and solving differential equations, testing hypotheses, designing new experiments, and so on). By means of this transcendence, the totality fulfills the function of a horizon of a community’s everyday “circumspective interpretation”. It is a horizon through which all projected possibilities of the community’s “modes of being” come to the fore as inclinations, preferences, expectations, orientations, and anticipations. The projected possibilities become actualized within the interrelatedness of practices of the community’s research everydayness. The transcendence being mentioned is to be attributed primarily to that interrelatedness. Yet the actualization of projected possibilities is also an ongoing constitution of a domain’s cognitive content. This constitution actualizes possible theoretical models which in their potential totality transcend at each stage the domain’s actual cognitive content. Thus, besides the transcendence of current research practices, there is a transcendence of theoretically articulated knowledge in a scientific domain. Both kinds of transcendence have much to do with a community’s belief in theoretical objects that underlies normal scientific consensus. The production of data through experimentation and measurement in the research process indicates that the proto-theoretical and theoretical objects exist also as “material entities”. (Thus, in classical hydrodynamics nobody is able to “identify” fluid entities with exactly the same dynamic properties which are defined by the NavierStokes equations. Nevertheless, the scientific community in this domain has never stopped believing in the existence of precisely those objects “postulated” by the theoretical models of classical hydrodynamics. The belief is guiding in the continuous construction of theoretical models of the dynamics of “empirical” fluids through applying the aforementioned equations.20 Even after the invention

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of the so-called Couette-stream showing the existence of “non-Newtonian fluids” and the restricted validity of classical hydrodynamics the original belief did not disappear. More specifically, the scientific community continued to believe that the progressing application of classical formalism reveals the “material reality” of fluid mechanics’ ideal objects. The discoveries of non-Newtonian fluids launched non-classical theories and models but did not change the “classical” belief.) Just because the proto-theoretical and theoretical objects are idealizations that can never be completely “materialized”, the belief in their existence supports the community’s “everyday feeling” of infinity of doingresearch-in-a-scientific-domain. It is this belief (and “feeling”) that makes the research process in a scientific domain a potentially never-ending enterprise. In drawing upon the potential infinity of the research process in every mathematized domain, Husserl develops his celebrated conception of modern science’s method of idealization. He raises the thesis that scientific thinking of the modern age, “proceeding stepwise to infinity through concepts, propositions, inferences, proofs, only ‘discovers’ what is already there, what in itself already exists in truth.” (Husserl 1970, p. 22) Husserl was among the first to show the significance of the belief in an infinite world of theoretical idealities for the basic consensus of a scientific community concerning the view that in the infinite progression of the research process, every theoretical object is ultimately attained according to its “full beingin-itself”. From the viewpoint of Husserl’s phenomenology, this belief is not subjective (i.e., a matter of empirical psychology). It is rather called into being by the very method of idealization as a “conquest of the infinite mathematical horizons”, initially associated with the incorporation of algebra, infinitesimal analysis, and analytical geometry in modern science’s cognitive body. For scientific communities, the belief in idealized objects (through which the thematic fields of research can be represented as mathematical manifolds) is as necessary as for everyday (pre-scientific) life is the belief in the world whose things appear to us differently but are the same. From the viewpoint of existential ontology, a community can attain a genuine consensus when there is a communal belief that concerns a state of affairs permanently transcending the actual situation. In the case of a scientific community, it is a belief that the research process is not terminable since neither the possibilities of activating new configurations of research practices nor the possibilities of articulating theoretically new cognitive content can be “exhausted”. On the contrary, the more possibilities become actualized the broader is the horizon of new possibilities. The belief in (proto-theoretical and theoretical) objects turns a community’s attention to what is not present (actual) in the research everydayness. This is why the belief “encompasses” particular motivations to reactivate past situations of the research process, or to figure out future

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situations. In this regard, a consensus-generating belief is always already “temporalized”, i.e. relativized to the research process’ dynamics. The significance I attribute to the belief in theoretical objects does not contradict the view (represented typically by Arthur Fine’s “minimalist philosophy of science”) that scientists’ ordinary attitude in the research process is not epistemologically specified. Such a specification comes into play – so Fine’s “postrealist” argument goes – when one adds onto the ordinary position of normal scientific research particular analyses of epistemological concepts. For the participants of normal scientific research, the belief in the existence of (say) electrons does not demand a commitment to a specific epistemological position. The belief remains no matter which one of both views – electrons are real entities or they are only of instrumental value – dominates. In other words, the belief does not require a realist or antirealist interpretation of the theory in which these objects are postulated. The belief is, however, necessary for making normal scientific research a meaningful enterprise for those who are engaged in it. Thus considered, the belief in the existence of theoretical objects is not only a constitutive feature of normal science. It is also a counterpart of Fine’s “natural ontological attitude”. The latter embraces all ordinary beliefs (freed from “external epistemological questions”) accompanying the configurations of research practices. Yet these changing normal scientific beliefs presuppose a consensusgenerating belief that transcends the particular situations and contexts of the research process. Without the belief in the existence of theoretical objects, there would be no coherent “order of normal scientific beliefs” (another name for the natural ontological attitude) that sanctions the choice of research practices and the acceptance of ongoing scientific results. Let me sum up. Compared with Bas van Fraassen’s and Arthur Fine’s antiessentialist epistemological views about the existence of theoretical entities, the hermeneutic construal of a scientific community’s belief in the existence of theoretical objects shifts the discussion from science’s cognitive aims (instrumental efficacy, best explanation, and so on) and epistemic attitudes to the consensus formation of a community that constitutes a domain through performing research practices and articulating cognitive content. Against the background of this shift, several problems (stemming from the realism-antirealism controversy) become reformulated in a radical manner. Indeed, the issue of existence is at stake in both anti-essentialist epistemology and strong hermeneutics. Yet the discussion of the issue in the former case is around the axis of the subject-object distinction, while in the latter the discussion’s organizing axis is provided by the distinction of immanence (situatedness) and transcendence. In a hermeneutic key, the issue of existence is intimately related to the issues of transcendence. According to Heidegger’s classical formulation, the world is transcendent in each mode of being-in-the-world, and it “must already have been ecstatically

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disclosed so that in terms of it entities within-the-world can be encountered.” (Heidegger 1962, p. 417) In specifying this formulation with regard to the “normal scientific mode of being-in-the-world”, “the world” that is transcendent is the network of a domain’s theoretical objects which is disclosed within-the-everydayness of scientific research (and transformed into a network of research objects that are identifiable through normal scientific criteria). A scientific community’s existence within-the-everydayness is characterized by a natural ontological attitude because it is able to disclose what transcends the research everydayness. There is a hermeneutic circle between the transcendence (the horizon of possible operationalizations of theoretical objects within configurations of research practices) and normal scientific “exemplars”. The involvement of a scientific community in this circle (or, its involvement within-the-everydayness of normal research) requires (by necessity) a community’s belief in the existence of theoretical objects. It is the correlation of a shared everydayness of practices and the belief in what transcends this everydayness that generates and supports a scientific community’s consensus. This belief remains unaffected by the secondary epistemological specifications of the natural ontological attitude through which one defines the objects either as real entities or as convenient conceptual instruments. Moreover, it is not a psychological (or, a socio-psychological), but a hermeneutico-ontological phenomenon, i.e., a phenomenon revealed through the existential analytic of a mode of being-in-the-world. A belief in the existence of theoretical objects is tantamount to the belief in transcendence that makes the existence within-the-everydayness of research practices meaningful. From the viewpoint of hermeneutic phenomenology, one is not preoccupied with the status of the theoretical objects within the thematc realities of scientific research, but with their place within the normal scientific mode of being-in-the-world (i.e., within-the-everydayness of research practices). The belief in these objects is a counterpart of the community’s situated transcendence, i.e., its situatedness within the interplay of projected possibilities and their ongoing actualization in the research process. Against the background of the foregoing considerations, one might state that the two kinds in which the projected possibilities of doing research in a scientific domain transcend the actual situations (of carrying out research practices and of constituting cognitive content) are “united” by a community’s belief in specific theoretical objects. At the same time, in expressing the recognition of a community’s situated transcendence, the belief in theoretical objects plays a crucial role in the mediation between praxis and theoria of the research process. Praxis-laden meanings and theory-laden meanings in this process are involved in a common circle of projection and actualization of possibilities. This view of a scientific community’s belief in specific theoretical objects is essentially

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opposed to the mainstream sociology of scientific knowledge. In the latter, the view is spread that every belief (in experimental results, verifiability of hypotheses, theoretical explanations, existence of non-observable objects, and so on) attributed to a particular scientific community should be explained by referring to a prior belief or as the satisfaction of earlier interests generated in a particular socio-cultural context. Individual and communal beliefs arising out of science’s cognitive dynamics are to be accounted for in terms of social interests, stemming from either internal professional contexts or external contexts of knowledge production. In trying to highlight my discontent with this view, let me return to the previous criticism of externalism. In the Introduction (Section b), I made the case that there is an ongoing translatability in scientific research that internalizes external pre-judgments. More specifically, the pre-judgments of confessional, political, or metaphysical traditions do not affect directly the production of a scientific domain’s cognitive content. Their impact on this production is rather “refracted” in the interplay of research practices and knowledge, which takes on the form of a hermeneutic circle. As a consequence, the external pre-judgments can “operate” in terms that only make sense within the practical and theoretical horizons of scientific research. This is precisely what I call an “ongoing translatability” or internalization of external pre-judgments. The translatability of social interests that “ensures” the autonomy of scientific research is not an event accompanying scientific research. Situated within the interplay of research practices and knowledge, the relations between social interests and scientific beliefs always take place in the interpretative medium of appropriating what is projected by the very interplay. They never take on the form of causal connections. Moreover, the cognitive content cannot be relativized to external circumstances for the hermeneutic fore-structure of scientific research does not permit such a relativization. All external influences are “always already” internalized in the hermeneutic circles of research practices and cognitive content. This is also the argument against the view that social interests are primary forces that set scientific beliefs (in particular, beliefs in theoretical objects). On the alternative view championed in this study, consensus-generating beliefs in theoretical objects are necessitated by the situated transcendence that characterizes a scientific community’s involvement in the interplay of projected and actualized possibilities. Yet to criticise cognitive sociology for maintaining a picture of scientific research as a closed and self-referential system of transmitting interests and beliefs does not amount to holding that the hermeneutic view of a scientific community’s belief in theoretical objects is not to be interpreted in sociological terms. The very idea that there is an “institutionalized locus” (a domain’s research everydayness) of the interplay of discursive-practical fore-structure and

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ongoing articulation of cognitive content (or, the interplay of projected and actualized possibilities) implies the opportunity of getting a picture of that interplay in sociological terms. The underlying assumption in this regard is that one can differentiate types of scientific domains according to the internal (practical and theoretical) integrity of the research process. Thus, the recognition of a vertical differentiation of tasks and problems (associated with a highly specific and relatively narrow training for research) is a symptom of a domain’s high integrity. Based on such considerations, in the sociology of scientific institutions from the 1970s a distinction between “restricted” and “configurational” scientific domains began to gain currency. In fact, it represents the two extreme types of domains I have in mind. The most “configurational” scientific domains are those with the lowest degree of theoretical integration of the objects they are studying. The objects “exist” theoretically as a plurality of configurations of properties. As a consequence, the number of individuals belonging to a “natural kind” as a theoretical object is small. The “configurational complexity” and the heterogeneity of theoretical objects is supposedly excluded from restricted scientific domains where the number of individuals is very high and the number of theoretically conceptualized natural kinds very small. Now, to the degree of theoretical integration of the objects under study corresponds the degree of integration of research practices within a domain’s horizon. To the spectrum between the poles of restricted and configurational domains corresponds a spectrum of kinds of belief in theoretical objects, each of them distinguished by a profile of sociological parameters. In the more restricted domains, the belief is instrumentalized within-the-everydayness as a more definite order of research practices. Hence, the degree of integration of practices in the research everydayness is the main parameter (which can be translated into various sociological parameters) that differentiates the kinds of belief in theoretical objects. At the same time, the generation and the preservation of a community’s consensus is a function of the kinds of belief. The higher a domain’s theoretical and practical integrity the stronger this consensus. In highly configurational domains, the higher is the danger of a “dissolution” of the respective theoretical objects and a disintegration of the research everydayness. This danger becomes a reality when there is no more a community’s belief in what always already transcends the research process.

Chapter Three HERMENEUTIC PHENOMENOLOGY OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

a. Introductory Note Insisting on the interplay of projected and actualized possibilities is important for anyone who devotes a special attention to the dialectic between completeness and openness of the research process in a scientific domain. The cognitive structure of an established domain of research is (on the level of basic theory) complete and closed from an epistemological (and semantic) point of view. More specifically, for such a theory one can formulate epistemological criteria for completeness. For instance, following ideas of Heisenberg and C. von Weizsaecker, a complete theory is that one which can no longer be improved by minor alterations. Of course, there arise many specific problems related to the definition of domains’ epistemological completeness. Thus, if one adopts Einstein’s distinction between theories of principle and constructive theories, the criterion for completeness will depend heavily on the theory’s structure. Since constructive theories are based on the hypothetico-deductive method, they are more open to conceptual revisions (of the initial hypotheses) and more tolerant of the introduction of ad hoc hypotheses. By contrast, theories of principle (such as statistical thermodynamics and special relativity) are analytical, and their starting points are empirically observed properties of phenomena (like the impossibility of perpetuum mobile). Ex hypothesi, a crucial experiment in the Popperian sense is possible only for these theories. Obviously, the talk of epistemologically complete scientific domains is more appropriate for those domains whose cognitive structures are informed by theories of principle.1 133

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Apart from the technical difficulties with identifying complete theories, one might observe that on the level of particular models of empirical data (where observation, experimentation, measurement, calibration, and calculation play an essential role) the cognitive structure is liable to modifications and revisions. The epistemological/semantic completeness (however it might be formulated) is always contextual and relative to the constant openness of scientific research. In addition, one has to make a clear distinction between a domain’s openness to changes of the basic cognitive structure and its openness to acquiring new cognitive content, which in most cases does not imply the domain’s structural transformations. (Even in the domains of classical physics, there is a constant process of constructing new models of empirical systems according to Newton’s principles of motion. The research process is open to the construction of models of a potentially endless number of mechanical systems for which the equations of motion for the positions of bodies as a function of time are valid.) In any particular situation of the research process, the respective configuration of discursive practices informs the unity of fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception of carrying on this process and constructing a new “piece” of cognitive content (experimental result, diagram, equation, model, and so on). Given this characteristic of the research situations, one may speak of a “situational horizon” of doing research. The situational horizon makes even the most rigid cognitive structure open to revising interpretations and “interpretative variations”. The “incarnation” of research practices within a domain’s “institutionalized knowledge” broadens the potential possibilities (being projected in each situation) for launching new practices and getting new knowledge in the research everydayness. By constructing a new theoretical model, for instance, one “(re)activates” effaced (or, “forgotten”) fragments of practical experience that can be relevant in future situations. The conceptual, mathematical, and experimental procedures involved in constructing a new theoretical model extend at the same time the research everydayness by integrating new contexts of “dealing with the phenomena” under investigation. Furthermore, one broadens the anticipations, expectations, and orientations of the research process. In the perspective of the “effective history” of scientific research, the dialectic of relative cognitive completeness and hermeneutic openness of the research process comes to the surface as a unity of “effacement” and broadening of practical experience. Thus, the hermeneutic fore-structure in each situation plays the role of (in Gadamer’s terms) a “fore-structure of cognitive completion” of the neverending research process. Generally speaking, this chapter is devoted to the dialectic of completeness and openness of scientific research. The previous chapter singled out the interpretative and ontological issues that prompt a re-reading of the concept of normal science. The current one should demonstrate how these issues are to be

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handled in terms of hermeneutic phenomenology. My aim in the first section is to spell out the mediating role of normal scientific everydayness in transforming research practices into a domain’s cognitive content. The exposition in the second section, while appropriating ideas from Paul Ricoeur’s and David Carr’s versions of hermeneutic phenomenology, turns toward the pre-narrative organization of normal scientific research. I will claim that it is the “fusion” of research practices and cognitive content that takes on the form of “temporalizing narratives”. By tackling the issue of the situational constitution of cognitive content and the trans-situational changes in a domain’s cognitive structure, my aim will be to elaborate on a new cluster of notions that can help one to take into consideration the historicity of scientific research. In invoking the distinction between micro- and macro-hermeneutics of science, the next section shifts the perspective in treating the constitution of cognitive content: The mediating role is attributed now not to the situational horizon of doing research but to the thematizing projects of modern science. In the final section, a new conception of science’s unity and pluralism is suggested. I will draw on a parallel with what in the program of constructive empiricism is referred to as intrinsic hermeneutic circle between “saving a phenomenon” through a particular theoretical model and a theory’s general framework. To a certain extent, the program of strong hermeneutics redefines this circle by placing it in the interplay of hermeneutic fore-structuring and articulation of cognitive content. In so doing, one is in a position to focus the ongoing realization of a thematizing project not (only) as a theoretical machinery for saving phenomena but as a growing diversity of “ language games”. This view gives us the clue for searching a “pragmatic unity” within the “ontological disunity” of science.

b. Hermeneutic Fore-Structure, Cognitive Structure, and Research Everydayness In 1988 two research teams carried out a thermodynamic analysis of isothermal chemical systems that exhibit nonequilibrium steady states. This event provoked the rapid acknowledgement of the chemistry of nonequilibrium reaction networks as an autonomous scientific domain. It acquired the status of a cognitive body of related thematic items, which include all kinds of reaction networks that exhibit the complexity typical of nonlinear dynamical systems. Being once institutionally established, this scientific domain became specified not only by its items but through an expanding repertoire of research practices as well. By focusing attention upon macroscopic variables in the reports on chemical reaction networks, one delineated clearly the systems far from equilibrium, where multiple steady states are possible, as a specific object of inquiry. Actually, the

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starting-point of the formation of the chemistry of nonequilibrium reaction networks is in the mid-1950s. At the very beginning several groups offered reports on transient chemical oscillations in closed systems far from equilibrium. These reports were initially met with skepticism. Yet, along with the multitude of such reports, the Brussels group of Prigogine suggested in the 1960s theoretical models of transient oscillations (qua “dissipative structures”) within nonequilibrium thermodynamics. In the United States, Europe and the Soviet Union permanent research units were created whose purpose was to investigate autocatalysis, complex oscillations, birythmicity, quasiperiodicity, multiple steady states, and other phenomena peculiar to chemical reactions far from equilibrium. By the end of 1980s a kind of normal science began to take shape in the recently institutionalized domain of the chemistry of nonequilibrium reaction networks. More and more configurations of interrelated research practices were routinized. But the most important event of that period was the formation of a domain’s clearly identifiable cognitive structure (stable relations among established theoretical models, formal technics, empirical methods, and so on). Due to this structure, the chemistry of nonequilibrium reaction networks ceased to be only predicated on reporting exotic phenomena. It gained a theoretical autonomy as well. One began to order the phenomena under investigation by using theoretical models of dynamical behavior. Roughly speaking, these are models describing different routes to nonequilibrium states. In normal scientific research, it became gradually clear that all phenomena in chemical reaction networks that have to be studied by means of nonequilibrium thermodynamics display a kind of order according to their essential similarities. In other words, it was realized that an “order” of the domain’s theoretical models can be developed by comparing the dynamical behavior of chemical systems that exhibit sufficient deviation from equilibrium.2 The conviction grew that the relations between different types of behavior was to be given some deeper explanation. In the aftermath of the domain’s formation until recent days, the following discursive practices have become most repetitive and dominant in normal science’s everydayness: preparing reports on various kinds of chemical reactions (e.g., transient chemical oscillations in closed systems, dissociation reactions, reactions at metal surfaces, enzyme-catalyzed reactions, etc.); calibrating instruments of experimentation; measuring various control parameters (for instance, reciprocal residence time in a system with bistability); practices of structing experimental techniques designed to bring to light new data (e.g., creating laser-illuminated systems, continuously stirred flow tank reactors, heterogeneous electrochemical systems, and so on); mathematical elaborations on specific patterns of dynamical behavior of reacting systems (in particular, patterns of nonlinear behavior like bistability, complex oscillations, nonequilibrium steady states, birhythmicity, bifurcations of limit cycles, and chaos); searching for formal

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techniques for a graphical description of dynamical behavior (like dynamical phase diagrams and cross-shaped diagrams); adjusting the new experimental data to theoretical models of the background knowledge; looking for new mathematical formalisms for reacting systems far from equilibrium; carrying out mathematical investigations of nonlinearities; repeating experiments with the intention of checking whether the experimental data confirm the existence of a specific pattern of dynamical behavior; checking the formal consistency of the theoretical models. Changing configurations of these practices define the situations in normal scientific research, and each situation is predicated on characteristic anticipations, expectations, and orientations. (Small changes in a configuration may provoke an essentially new situation. This case is illustrated by the emergence of situations in which new practices of computation [for instance, practices that assist in identifying aperiodicity] were introduced. The small change prompted an anticipation of new experimental data analyses; an expectation of new mathematical theorems designed to show, for example, that homogeneous systems can exhibit deterministic chaos; and an orientation towards the search for new attractors and patterns of non-linearity.)3 Changes in the configurations of research practices brought to the fore not only new orientations, but also important strategies of ensuring and extending the domain’s cognitive and social institutionalization.4 Thus, especially successful was the strategy of resolving internal problems by importing relevant themes from other domains. Let me give an example. A team led by P. de Kepper devoted efforts in studying the bistable iodate-arsenous acid reaction in continuously stirred flow tank reactors. The aim of this team was the experimental observation of hysterisis in transition between the two stable branches. Two other (a German and a Belgian) research teams were preoccupied with experimental studies of reaction systems with multiple steady states that exhibit dynamical slowing in the relaxation near critical points. At stake were also many autocatalytic systems that provide manifold patterns of bistability and oscillations. Parallel to this experimental work, but not in consonance with it, the scientific community’s members have been dealing with constructing equations that describe the time evolution of chemical systems far from equilibrium. Although in these mathematical investigations new bifurcation patterns were discovered thanks to the steady state solutions that the dynamical equations admit, there was a discrepancy between the research practices of experimentalists and mathematicians. An unexpected antidote to this development was the application of results of nonequilibrium and nonlinear reaction networks to oscillations in biological systems and pattern formation in geochemistry. Actually, due to designing new analytical-experimental configurations of practices for studying nonlinearities in the phase space, topics of domains like molecular biology, enzymology, and geomorphology were “incorporated” in the domain under

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discussion. The discrepancy between research practices in nonequilibrium reaction networks was overcome as a result of the domain’s thematic extension. Even such a superficial “discursive-practical identification” of a scientific domain shows the indispensability of an approach to the domain’s practical and theoretical integrity in terms of “strong holism”. That the cognitive structure of a research domain is constituted within the dynamics of routine everyday practices of a scientific community is by now a familiar idea. Many case studies in cognitive sociology, ethnomethodology, and interpretative anthropology of the laboratory life of scientific communities demonstrate the empirical dimensions of the socio-practical constitution of science’s cognitive content. Yet realizing the fact that a domain’s cognitive structure emerges within the diversity of routine research practices does not amount to holding that the constitution of such a structure is to be scrutinized in a purely empirical way. The empirical dimensions of (studying) the constitution indicate rather the need for a constitutional analysis that contains also non-empirical (hermeneutico-ontological) dimensions. Provisionally, I will state that to give an account of the ongoing constitution of a cognitive structure that is partially expressed (within the research process) requires making use of a “transcendental argument”. It involves the circular relations of three components: a hermeneutic fore-structure, a cognitive structure, and a normal scientific research everydayness. Let me remind that according to my point in the final section of Chapter One, one can unveil by virtue of a transcendental argument science’s cognitive specificity without succumbing to cognitive essentialism. Hubert Dreyfus is right when observing that the nexus of understanding and interpretation underlying the cognitive procedures of objective knowledge is to be analyzed with regard to the range of possibilities it offers in particular situations, and not with regard to all possibilities available within-the-world. This “situational specification” of Heidegger’s idea of existential possibilities goes in the direction of making hermeneutic phenomenology a fruitful account of various cultural forms of everydayness. In normal scientific research as such a form, each situation both limits and opens up possible configurations of practices of further research work. The possible configurations in a given situation inform possibilities of articulation of a domain’s cognitive structure, some of which become realized out. In other words, each situation of normal scientific research is distinguished by a space of possibilities that constrains both the community’s range of feasible practices and the possible ways of articulating a cognitive structure. In each situation, configurations of research practices are “transformed” into the domain’s cognitive content. As a result, the latter “incarnates” interrelated practices. The (situationally projected) discursive-practical fore-structure presses into possibilities of doing research that become partially actualized. By implica-

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tion, this fore-structure constrains both the range of possible research practices that can form a situational configuration, and the possible articulation of a cognitive content. Yet a situational actualization of a fore-structure does not diminish but extends the horizon of possibilities. The more articulated the cognitive structure of a scientific domain, the more possibilities of new configurations of research practices do emerge. On a claim that is still in need of clarification, normal science is the place of an interplay of discursive-practical fore-structure and cognitive content. The efforts to give an account of this interplay lie beyond the edge of epistemological justification. Designing new configurations of research practices stimulates not only a further ariculation, but sometimes a radical restructuration of a domain’s cognitive structure. The new configurations are intimately related to ways of overcoming traditional theoretical prejudices. Nevertheless, they do not destroy the existing normal scientific everydayness. Robert Kohler describes this situation as an essential “innovation in normal science”. He cites the example of bacterial physiology, which I am going to summarize since it is illustrative for a kind of stability informed by the hermeneutic fore-structuring of scientific research. The pre-history of the domain of bacterial physiology spreads across the practices of bacteriology, biochemistry, and areas of applied (agricultural and medical) science. However, the main impetus of its emergence as a distinct domain (by the mid-1940s) was the migration of researchers from the short-lived (between 1914 and the early 1940s) domain of bacterial chemistry. In the period of existence of the latter some thirty-five small projects shaped the community’s research everydayness. The major source of inspiration for this community was the search for “bacterial vitamins”. But apart from this more or less futile search, there were reasons for a genuine enthusiasm. Bacteria produce novel and often valuable chemical products, and many chemists believed that investigating microbes opens up a new avenue in their science, since bacteria were treated as essentially chemical catalysts. Yet this belief (and the corresponding research interests embodied in the projects) was formed against the background of a rather simplistic and reductionist view of living organisms. Thanks to this view, bacteria were conceived of as “convenient bags of enzymes to be extracted, separated, and examined in vitro.” (Kohler 1985, p. 164) The decline of the domain of bacterial chemistry began when its established configurations of research practices were applied to coping with the complexity of bacterial metabolism. At that stage, the champions of bacterial chemistry failed to recognize the basic difference between reactions and products of this metabolism and laboratory reactions and products. The reaction to this failure provoked the shift from bacterial chemistry to bacterial physiology whose practitioners from the very outset managed to push beyond the limits set by the prejudices of chemical research.

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By changing profoundly the repertoire of research practices in studying microbes, the pioneers of bacterial physiology extended the thematic area of bacteriology through adopting F.G. Hopkins’ program for a “general biochemistry”. This was a program (inspired by a bit of romantic taste) with the prospect of solving big biological problems. Although the aim of the program was too ambitious (and too vague) to be achieved, its adoption in treating bacterial metabolism restructured decisively the cognitive landscape of bacteriology. Generally speaking, the reductionist concepts and theoretical models were replaced by holistic ones. Yet the new cognitive structure was embedded (without significant disturbances) in the already established normal scientific everydayness. This is why the old institutional units (related to the research projects of bacterial physiology) were able to accept the cognitive changes and to produce new content within a relatively conservative configurations of everyday practices. (It deserves mentioning that in the United States the disciplinary evolution of bacteriology followed a distinct path in the interwar period. As Rivers Singleton, Jr. [2000] makes it clear, leading here was the interest in a complete account of metabolism through searching for the nature of enzymes. Like in England, the innovation of normal scientific research did not change essentially the consensus practices. Yet it provoked a new interdisciplinary dialogue between bacteriology and biochemistry. The research work profited from being embedded in a discursive-practical fore-structure that prompted the convergence between normal scientific practices of both disciplines.) At this stage of my analysis, it is worth noting that the talk of interplay of discursive-practical fore-structure and cognitive content suggests a picture of science’s theoretical knowledge that is in line with the efforts of authors in analytical philosophy of science (Michael Scriven, Nancy Cartwright, Bas van Fraassen, Ronald Giere) who are successful in interpreting theories’ fundamental equations without lapsing into the language of universal laws. The conceptions of these authors place emphasis upon the constructive-interpretative status of theoretical knowledge. (Even when they are committed to a realist epistemology, as this is the case with Giere’s conception, the formation and interpretation of scientific theories in interrelated research practices is singled out as a central characteristic of science’s image. Giere replaces the language of universal laws with that of principles, which “should be understood as rules devised by humans to be used in building models.” (Giere 1995, p. 133. See also Giere 1997, pp. 76-82) The antiessentialist impetus in criticizing the “universal laws of the natural world” is intimately connected with the program of bridging views about scientific practices with semantic views about scientific theories. The way of understanding research practices without attributing to them the production of invariant laws of nature implies a dynamic coexistence of models (semantic interpretations of theoretical objects) and research practices. The models are

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embedded in interrelated practices in the same fashion as configurations of practices are situated in a “theoretical world” of models. This is why the reading of science’s theoretical models requires by necessity having recourse to the “surrounding”practices. The site where the co-embeddedness of practices and models (interpretations of theoretical objects) occurs is a scientific community’s research eveydayness. The latter is a common horizon of both, the practical constitution of models and the theoretical constitution of configurations of practices. On another definition, the “dynamic totality” of situationally interrelated discursive practices is the research everydayness of a scientific community. This everydayness “contains” a potentially infinite number of possible situations of doing research, each of them manifested as a configuration of discursive practices. With regard to the situationally specified fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception, the research everydayness is the site where possibilities (i.e., possible configurations of practices and possible cognitive outcomes) of the open horizon become continuously actualized. In other words, the everydayness mediates between the world-as-a-horizon and the world-as-a-constituted-reality. (See Figure 1.)

Fig.1 In these triadic relations, fore-having is what a community of researchers “has in advance” in a given configuration of practices. Fore-having is the anticipation of the situation’s outcome. (In investigating the once-ionized helium atom, – to mention a classical situation in the genesis of quantum theory – one’s forehaving is the anticipation of a certain picture of the energy levels and frequencies of th e spectral lines characterizing the orbits of the two electrons.) Foresight is what a community’s members “see in advance”. It is that expectation which is to be attributed to the appropriative interpretation of the possibilities “available” in the situation. (The expectation that some of the lines of ionized

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helium should occupy very nearly the same positions as some of the hydrogen lines epitomizes what the supporters of earlier quantum theory see in advance when studying the helium atom.) What a scientific community is able to grasp in advance in a given situation is a fore-conception. It provides the orientation in the interpretative constitution of a scientific domain. (Though Bohr’s theory does not afford means of calculating the probabilities of the various drops from higher to lower energy levels, the community of nuclear physicists in the second decade of the 20th century grasped in advance that the conflict of the classical frequencies with experiments has to be resolved by making a specific use of the classical theory. They grasped in advance that the classical theory can be used under certain limiting conditions. In this regard, a proto-version of the correspondence principle [regardless of its concrete explicit formulation] played the role of a fore-conception.) Fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception are characteristics of the research process’ interpretative openness that are specified in a manner that delimits a situational space of possibilities. (This is the reason for the talk of a situational horizon.) Yet interpretative openness (and situated transcendence) are not to be only localized to particular situations. Because of the temporal reticulations of practices over the whole research process, each situation “runs a potentially non-localizable distance” in the process. (The temporal reticulations are brought into existence by relating research practices through anticipations, expectations, and orientations.) The temporal reticulations are “operating” across the limits of the particular situations.5 To put it in a Derrida-like manner, each situation “leaves traces” in a potentially infinite set of situations within the research everydayness. Thus, apart from its localized (in particular situations) form, the research process’ situated transcendence is also manifested by the “dispersion of traces” left by each particular situation in other situations. To this construal of situated transcendence corresponds a vision of the integral temporality of the research process in a scientific domain. It is this dispersion that “loops” research practices belonging to different configurations (situations). The anticipations, expectations, and orientations involved in the hermeneutic fore-structuring of scientific research form a temporal horizon within which the temporal reticularions become possible. As I will try to show in the next section, Ricoeur’s conception (1983, pp. 105-170) of “narrative temporality” is quite relevant to scrutinizing these reticulations. The world-as-a-constituted-reality is the outcome of the possibilities realized in the research everydayness’ situations, whereas the world-as-a-horizon embraces possibilities that always go beyond the actual state of the research process. The world-as-a-horizon transcends each particular situation in the research process and each particular configuration of discursive practices. Furthermore, the research everydayness is the site where a scientific community is

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“thrown”. Being constantly “laden” with unrealized possibilities, the everydayness (as a whole of interrelated practices) is transcendent as well. As I mentioned, the outcome of each actualized configuration of practices is “incarnated” as a cognitive content of scientific research. This is the content that acquires the status of “institutionalized knowledge” constituted within the research everydayness. Since the cognitive content is always within the everydayness of research practices, it is fore-structured by their processual interrelatedness. The ongoing formation of a cognitive content (as this formation is specified by situational fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception) takes place within a situational space of possibilities, which in their projection are a hermeneutic fore-structure. “Fore” stands here not for the presuppositional character of all cognition (in the sense of pre-understanding that accompanies each cognitive procedure – an aspect that is of prime importance for Michael Polanyi’s program.) Neither the hermeneutic fore-structure nor the cognitive content do exist per se. They are only existing within the actualized situations of the research everydayness. In each of them a given unity of fore-sight, fore-conception, and fore-having becomes “projected into” the domain’s cognitive content. (See Figure 2.)

Fig. 2 As I pointed out in the beginning of this section, a scientific domain can be identified by the list of most often repeatable research practices. The research everydayness manifests itself as a dynamics of changing configurations, whereby each configuration (characterized by a space of possibilities) defines a situation. Within its room-for-maneuver, a research situation actualizes some possibilities as a domain’s cognitive content. To reiterate, the research everydayness is the site where the practical constitution of models and the theoretical constitution of situations’ integrities of practices take place. Both models (as units of cognitive content) and practices are

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situated within the research everydayness which plays the role of a domain’s (theoretical and practical) horizon that transcends each particular situation. The research everydayness is a situated transcendence of both processes of constitution. The hermeneutic fore-structure (as a projection towards possibilities in carrying out a configuration of practices) is the situational specification of that horizon (i.e., the way it “operates” as a specific unity of fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception in any particular situations). In a slightly modified formulation: The hermeneutic fore-structure is the presupposed totality of interrelated practices in each particular configuration of practices. Thereby, it is at once within the actual discursive practices and beyond them. Or, it is the range of presupposed possibilities that is constitutive for each particular situation of the research process. The hermeneutic fore-structure is both “immanent” to and “transcendent” over a situation’s configuration of practices and its outcome as a cognitive content. A central issue in hermeneutic phenomenology is delineated “by asking who it is that Dasein is in its everydayness.” (Heidegger 1962, p. 149) The subject of Dasein’s everydayness cannot be “identified” in anthropological, psychological, or sociological terms. On Heidegger’s analysis, it is rather a “communal being” (or, being-with) that is “ontologically equiprimordial” with being-in-theworld. This is why “the who of Dasein” is characterized in existential-ontological terms. A scientific community is the subject of a particular kind of everydayness. Through the situated transcendence of the research everydayness, a scientific community (working in a given domain) is “absorbed” in what its members are doing. The subject of normal scientific research becomes a routine trans-subjectivity that corresponds to what Heidegger calls the “they”. (In the existential-ontological terminology of hermeneutic phenomenology, trans-subjectivity is “Dasein’s everyday state of being”, to which disclosedness, thrownness, projection, and falling belong. Actually, these are the four ontological characteristics of the “absorption” in a concernful everydayness that is always “ahead of itself” as a being alongside discursive practices within-the-world.

Heidegger considers the four characteristics as conditions of “the truth of existence”.) The scientific community is “disclosed”, “thrown”, and “fallen” in the interplay of projected possibilities (as a hermeneutic fore-structure) and actualized possibilities (as a cognitive content). (This is why the projected possibilities of the research process in a given domain are also a community’s “existential possibilities”. In a Heideggerian perspective, a scientific community’s coping with normal research puzzles proceeds by pressing into possibilities. With regard to the projection of existential possibilities in normal scientific research, a scientific community is a “communal Dasein” that [because of its “absorption” in an everydayness] is always already a “being-with” within an ongoing constitution

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of a scientific domain.) As I noted, what is constituted as a domain’s content does not remain isolated from the stream of research practices. The linguistically embodied cognitive content becomes applied in new situations, being thereby involved in new configurations of practices.

c. Pre-Narrativity of Normal Scientific Research With the expression “pre-narrativity” I will designate the narrative organization of the socio-practical experience in a given field that lies behind and precedes both the creative act of narration and the procedures of historical reconstruction. It is the line of thinking committed to hermeneutic phenomenology that shifts the focus (in treating narrativity) from the products of the creative imagination to “temporalizing narratives” that pervade all modes of practical experience and social existence. Roughly speaking, pre-narrativity is the diversity of reticulations of past, present, and future events which are completely independent of the telling of the story itself. The reticulations are “stories before storytelling”. Human experience and existence are interwoven in these reticulations. They are the elementary units of the constitution of meaning. In raising this claim, I should like to oppose the views that attribute the constitution of meaning to particular (mental, speech, or corporeal) acts. A particular (sensory, factual, emotional, cognitive, linguistic) meaning is not the upshot of an isolated act (of, say, intentional mentality), and is not localized to a “point” of a perceptual, emotional, cognitive, semantic, or whatever structure. It is rather dispersed over a reticulation of past, present, and future meanings. The isolation of a particular meaning is only possible within such a reticulation. The isolation itself requires devising a hermeneutic circle between the particular meaning and the reticulation in which it is embedded. To enter this circle amounts to interpreting, which narrates the whole reticulation of past, present, and future meanings. Since the hermeneutic circle is not a mental construction but belongs to the “facticity of existence”, the narration reproduces what is already “narrated” as a meaningful and temporalized whole. Furthermore, what is already “narrated” is to be thought of within a constitutional analysis based upon the triad “situation-understanding-interpretation”. The reticulations of temporalized meanings are “produced” by the hermeneutic fore-structuring of a cognitive content within the changing configurations of practices. Thus, the notion of “pre-narrativity” is to be applied to the dynamics of interrelated practices, whereby at issue will be the temporalization of a certain “mode of everyday existence”. Normal science has also a (pre)narrative organization before being narrated as a research tradition distinguished by a “destiny”. In a tentative manner, “normal science’s pre-narrativity” is to be analyzed in connection with: (a) the

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temporality of the interrelatedness of normal scientific practices, and (b) the circular relations between the ongoing hermeneutic fore-structuring, the (re)structuring of cognitive content, and the research everydayness. To begin with, “narratologist ideas” in contemporary philosophy of science are essentially inspired by the postmodern turn in philosophizing in general. In recent years, narratives have been studied in connection with their function of integrating two or more communicative modes; the mediatory role they have in experiencing new situations; the temporal organization of heterogeneous experiences; the constitution of personal and collective identities; and the ways they join narrators (and readers) with historical communities. Against the background of the diversity of such studies, the appearance of concepts like narrative, narration, narrativization, narrator, narrative plots, narrative genres, narrative thinking, narrative function, narrative coherence and so on (even) in philosophy of science was not surprising. Authors like E. Ochs, P. Gonzales, S. Jacoby, and E. Schegloff demonstrated convincingly that through their problem-solving narratives physicists forge a “hybrid identity” that fuses scientific communities and the objects of investigation. (See Ochs, Jacoby, Gonzales 1996; Schegloff, Ochs, Thompson 1996) Nonetheless, the narrativist approach to scientific practices (and scientific knowledge) that Joseph Rouse suggested in the early 1990s was unusual not only for its innovative character (and radical opposition to the “epistemological point of view”), but also for its divergence from the dominant narrativist approaches developed in the human sciences. (Rouse criticizes, with good reasons, L. Mink’s view of “narrative historical understanding” and H. White’s narrativist epistemology of historiography for neglecting the ontological perspective.) He attempts to synthesize phenomenological conceptions of narrativity and temporality with insights from the “praxiological turn” in science studies. To be sure, the ontological reformulation of a narrativist problematics in discussing scientific practices is a significant merit of Rouse’s approach. Of special importance for the ideas I shall advance is the notion of “narrative field of scientific practices” – the emergence of a coherent unity of action from the “multifarious doings of different scientists, whose work aims to push the story line in different directions.”. (Rouse 1996, p. 161) This notion is so valuable, since it allows one to look at the research process not as determined and “predestined” by a single “pre-narrative structure”, but composed by a contested field of overlapping and partially conflicting “narrative possibilties”. However, to reiterate a critique I put forward earlier, there are two essential predicaments with Rouse’s narrativist approach. First, in arguing that scientific knowledge is grounded upon scientists’ practical understanding and that the latter itself takes a narrative shape, Rouse goes on to dissolve the cognitive autonomy of scientific domains into potentially infinite fields of practices. His

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“deflationary accounts of knowledge” aim at a demonstration that there is nothing special about the fields of scientific practices. They are mingled with the non-scientific fields of practices, composing thereby “the whole of culture”. This is why Rouse’s version of cultural studies of science takes as its object of investigation “the traffic between scientific inquiry and those cultural practices and formations that philosophers of science have often regarded as ‘external’ to knowledge.” (Rouse 1996, p. 239) The narrativist approach I am advocating stresses the opposite claim: There is a cognitive autonomy of scientific domains precisely because scientific knowledge is ontologically grounded upon prenarrativity. Obviously, this claim is another formulation of the idea of “hermeneutic internalism” I already discussed. Rouse’s approach does not figure out a way of opposing the traditional hypostatization of science’s cognitive structures. It simply replaces cognitive content with fields of research practices. On the view I am going to develop, neither the autonomy of domains’ cognitive content nor the narrative temporality of scientific practices are to be isolated from “praxis-knowledge interplay”. Second, Rouse stresses that scientific praxis is inescapably temporal and narrative because it is teleological, holistic, instrumentally mediated, and socially regulated. These complex characteristics of scientific praxis cannot be grasped in a purely empirical way. More specifically, a philosophical reconceptualization of science as dynamics of discursive practices needs to distinguish between the level of empirical manifestations and the level of the triad “practices-understanding-interpretation”. With respect to the latter, precisely, it does make sense to pose the problematics of the narrative temporality of scientific research. The distinction between these two levels is a specification of the ontological difference. By ignoring the difference between emprical theory of praxis and hermeneutic ontology of discursive-practical being-in-the-world, one is committed to the short-sighted perspective of neopragmatic empiricism. Insofar as Rouse does not do justice to the ontological difference, his narrativistdeflationary account of scientific praxis is not equal to its own task of demonstrating that scientists’ practical understanding underlies “the body of representations”. According to my guiding observation, an ontological reading of the circular relationships of research everydayness, hermeneutic fore-structure, and cognitive structure (in a scientific domain) is compatible with a phenomenological approach to the narrative structure of human activity. Based on this observation, my contention is that the involvement of “a scientific community in the ongoing constitution of a scientific domain” bears the character of a temporalized pre-narrativity. To reiterate, my elaborations on that notion (which continue the efforts of a hermeneutic reformulation of normal science) are in line with the authors who attribute a narrative structure to the temporality of human exist-

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ence. According to them, such a structure is not imposed upon sequences of events by a retrospection (and by means of a “literary invention”). Rather, the research everydayness is organized as interwoven “stories”. Since each “story” embraces as a “coherence” (Zusammenhang) configurations of practices that are distinguished by a specific temporalization (reticulated relations of past, present and future), the view I will follow rests upon the kinship between temporality and narration. (In fact, the ideas concerning the narrative organization of everyday life go back not only to Heidegger’s conception of the “temporal structure of care but to various views of a “hermeneutics of life’s expressions” advanced by Dilthey’s school.) The following considerations oppose in the first place the ordinary view that the research process is a linear series of “nows”. I will try also to take leave of the

popular idea that the situations (configurations of discursive practices) and the “events” of the research process “happen” in time existing as an independent substance that can be measured and periodized. Following the hermeneuticoontological principle that science’s historicality is “rooted” in the dynamics of (the traditions of) the research process, I will advance the view that the temporality of this process “springs forth” in the plural unity of future, past, and present as this unity is manifested within the overlapping configurations of research practices. In order to enter into this problematics, consider the following (partially hypothetical) example. Imagine a community working in the domain of enzyme kinetics, a domain with an established regime of normal scientific research. At a certain stage of the research process, influential members of this community come to the conclusion that reports (published in a journal of a neighbouring domain) on a certain type of chemical oscillations contain information that might be quite relevant to studying a class of biochemical reactions distinguished by nonlinear behavior. At the moment of reaching this conclusion, the biochemical reactions in question have not been an actual topic in the community’s research work. Yet some members assume that in focusing on these reactions one may invite new theoretical and experimental possibilities of the domain’s further articulation. In particular, the attention on the reactions of transient oscillations opens the avenue to constructing data-models of a new class of phenomena, thereby changing the domain’s structure. The assumption that the reports (coming from a neighbouring domain) could be relevant to a present state of research has been made thanks to a “reminiscence” of theoretical speculations about transitions from one dynamical pattern to another advanced by community’s members a few years before. At the stage under examination, these speculations promise to provide a theoretical model of the reactions being reported. However, at the time they have been developed, most of the members have been convinced that the speculations do not have

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sufficient empirical support and do not deserve much attention. At that time, the community’s members almost unanimously decide to abandon this theoretical work. (The few members who continue to do research on the purportedly “uninteresting problematics” have been less than the necessary “critical mass” for bringing the investigations to a successful end. Actually, these members have been “excommunicated”, and they migrate to another domain.) Only three published papers and a few unpublished manuscripts (all of them “forgotten” by most of the community’s members) bear witness to the extinct theoretical efforts. These texts are documents of once unrealised possibilities in the research process. Yet, in confronting the new reports and figuring out their potential relevance to the arising situation of inquiry, this community, working in the domain of enzyme kinetics, has reactualized an experience “sedimented” in the research everydayness. Thus, the upcoming (through a “reminiscence” of theoretical speculations) actualization of (otherwise “displaced”) possibilities of the research process correlates with a “selective recollection” of what once has been a marginal practice. But the same event can be seen from the reverse perspective: The unexpected direction of the research process is informed by the “reorganized history” of this process. To sum up, the emerging goal (the construction of models of enzyme-catalyzed reactions with changing patterns of non-linear behavior) induces a configuration of research practices in the present situation of doing research. Furthermore, the emerging goal at once informs and supervenes the (re)organization of the past experiences. The overlapping configurations of research practices temporalize the research process (as “modes of the scientific community’s being in an ongoing constitution of a scientific domain”), and are, at the same time, embraced by “reticulations” of past, present, and future. The temporalization of this process is not behind but within the circular relationships of hermeneutic fore-structuring, ongoing articulation of a cognitive content, and research everydayness in a scientific domain. Prima facie this hypothetical situation only illustrates the complexity of experiences composing a community’s “collective consciousness”. In each situation of the research process, there is a specific “reticulation” of past, present, and future in the “stream of the community’s time-consciousness”. A closer look shows, however, that the temporal complexity is to be ascribed not only to the researchers’ collective mentality, but to “the community’s being in a domain of scientific research” as well. Essential in this regard is the link between the narrative ordering (emplotment) of past, present, and future, on the one hand, and the configurations of discursive practices, on the other. Insofar as the reticulations of the time-modi embrace the situationally changing configurations of practices, the “narrative-temporal emplotment” (to borrow Ricoeur’s well-known expression which I am going to discuss below) takes place in the

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texture of scientific research. The ordering of dispersed practices and experiences as events of a reticulated whole of past, present, and future makes the situational configurations of discursive practices episodes of a story distinguished by a non-fictional plot – the meaning of the whole of changing configurations emerges from the differentiation of time-modi in an ongoing completion of what is within-the-whole. Temporality (the differentiation of time-modi) and narrativity (the directedness of the episodes towards an expected outcome) go hand in hand. The reticulation of “projective future”, “selective past”, and actualized possibilities within the horizon of projected possibilities is due to the mediatory role the research everydayness plays between the hermeneutic fore-structuring of the research process and the structuration of the cognitive content in the domain. From the viewpoint of hermeneutic phenomenology, the projective future (projected possibilities) is much broader than the planned future (intended projects). The former is related to the open horizon of possibilities, while the latter comes into being through a delineation of a strategy within this horizon. Each situation is distinguished by a projective future. But only a few intended possibilities become realized in the research process. This means that only a small number of situational configurations of research practices actualize projected possibilities. Such an actualization is also a completion of a given temporal reticulation. (The distinction between “projective future” and “intended, planned future” reflects the basic difference between the branches of existentialism, championed accordingly by early Heidegger and Sartre. Notoriously, for Heidegger a projection towards possibilities [“projective future”] is always already within a prior being-thrown. By contrast, Sartre’s projection is always due to a free choice. The future is constantly in the making. There is no “thrown project” that is before the existential choice and independent of it.) The projective future that gets its actualization (realization of the intended possibilities) within the “thrown project” has a priority (over the other temporal modalities) in organizing a pre-narrative whole of situations in the research process. It is the situational actualization of projected possibilities that takes on a narrative form. Under this premise, the narrative-temporal “emplotment” refers to the temporalizing reticulations articulated in the interplay of practices and cognitive content. The back side of actualizing a given possibility in a situation of the research process is putting aside possibilities incompatible with the actualized one. (For example, actualizing the possibility to construct theoretical models of nonequilibrium systems by dividing the parameter space into regions according to the observed dynamical behavior pushes aside in the late 1970s at least six alternative possibilities to construct theoretical models of these systems.) To each actualized possibility corresponds a configuration of instituted research practices. Actualizing a given possibility unfolds a new field of possibilities envisaged by the situational fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-

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conception. The more actualized possibilities come into play in the research process, the more extended becomes the open horizon of possibilities. To the possibilities that are pushed out correspond configurations of practices that are either “forgotten” or “de-actualized” in the current situation. Actualization and forgetting of discursive practices go hand in hand in the research process. The de-actualized possibilities could constantly be re-actualized. In this regard, the deactualized possibilities remain present. They form the “de-actualized present” that coexists with the actualized possibility. The de-actualized present (as an interim mode between past and present) includes the possibilities that are excluded by the situational hermeneutic fore-structure of doing research. Hence, the de-actualalization of possibilities in the research process is a way of “thickening” the present, i.e. a way of enriching the actual present with the deactualized present. The more possibilities are actually excluded (i.e., excluded by the present situational horizon), the thicker the present. Thickening the present has consequences for the past. The latter embraces all possibilities that can be re-actualized, but are not actually excluded by a present situational horizon. The re-actualization of a class of possibilities in a given situation justifies the talk of a “selective past”.6 The possibilities that belong to the past are archived as “background pre-understanding”, whereas the possibilities that are not actualized but still “operate” in the situational horizon belong to the de-actualized present.7 The feedback relations between thickening the present, re-actualizing selectively the past, and delineating possibilities within the open horizon of projected possibilities (that operates retrospectively) form temporal reticulations across the situations of the research process. The very distinction between selective past and de-actualized present depends crucially on the situational horizon. Changes of this horizon caused by moving to a new situation lead to changes in the actual field of doing research. By implication, there is no firm borderline between selective past and de-actualized present. Thickening the present entails ongoing changes in a present situational horizon that constantly shift this borderline. This tentative discussion of how the research process in a given domain is to be discussed in terms of what I should like to call “ontological pre-narrativity” shows also the relevance of another conception of hermeneutic phenomenology to the present analysis – that of “narrative temporality”. Notoriously, Paul Ricoeur’s point of departure in elaborating on this conception is a critique of chronological time. On his account, the notion of narrative temporality is forged by an experience of time that escapes the dichotomy between the “chronology of sequence” and the atemporal models as deductive-nomological structure in the historical disciplines or paradigmatic codes in literary criticism. What Ricoeur is doing in his monumental inquiry is a step-by-step unveiling of the reciprocity between narrativity and temporality. Following his tenet to intensify the dia-

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logue between existential analytic and the human sciences, Ricoeur draws parallels between the features of narrative brought out either by reflection on history or by analyzing fictional narratives, and the features of temporality brought out by an existential analysis of the constitution of time. In scrutinizing these parallels, he employs the notion of plot as an intelligible whole that governs the succession of events in any narrative. Ricoeur (1980, p. 171) goes on to assert that the plot “places us at the crossing point of temporality and narrativity: to be historical, an event must be more than a singular occurrence, a unique happening. It receives a definition from its contribution to the development of a plot.” Elsewhere, I advocated the view that the “emplotment” of the circular relationships of hermeneutic fore-structure, research everydayness, and cognitive structure is the “source” of sui generis “ontological rhetorical figures”. (See Ginev 1999c, and 2000, pp. 69-93) In this connection, I suggested a program of a “strong rhetoric of science” as a supplement to the strong hermeneutics of science. Just because the “proper time” of the research process in a scientific domain is not a linear time, defined by a succession of instants, but a narrative temporality, a domain’s cognitive content is fore-structured by a plot. The view that in a scientific domain’s cognitive content there are “rhetorical topoi” whose roots are in the hermeneutic fore-structuring of the research process is the “central dogma” of the strong rhetoric of science. Since the research everydayness mediates between the horizon of projected possibilities and the structuration of scientific knowledge in theoretical models, explanatory scenarios, observational language, formal structures, etc., the narrative-temporal “emplotment” of configurations of discursive practices is the intermediary between projected possibilities and their actualization in the constitution of a scientific domain. With respect to the view of the (ontological) relationship between temporality and narrativity, the further analysis can be carried out on three levels: (i) on the level of reticulations of past, present, and future, embracing the situational configurations of research practices; (ii) on the level of the temporality of a scientific community’s “collective experience” (and “collective unconscious”); and (iii) on the level of the thematizing projects’ (macro)narrative temporality. (It is the third level that shows the formation of macro-historical narratives in scientific development through realizations of thematizing projects – a notion I will handle in the next section. The second level has more to do with narration than with pre-narrativity.) My considerations in this section were concentrated entirely on the first level.8 Narrativity and temporality were construed as ontological characteristics of overlapping cofigurations of practices. I tried to show that narrative temporality refers to the ordering of past, present and future in the actualization of projected possibilities. Thus considered, narrative temporality is a concept of the constitutional analysis of normal scientific research.

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d. A Passage to Macro-Hermeneutics of Modern Science Elsewhere, I introduced the distinction between micro- and macro-hermeneutics of science. (See Ginev 1997c) The issues discussed so far in this chapter belong to the scope of micro-hermeneutics whose inauguration is the hermeneutic reformulation of the concept of normal science. Its subject of analysis is the complementarity of practical constitution of cognitive content and theoretical constitution of persisting configurations of research practices on the level of scientific communities and scientific domains. The point of departure of all kinds of micro-hermeneutic investigation is the particular situations within-theresearch-everydayness. In focusing upon “situated transcendence”, one elaborates on a class of relevant notions concerning the “situational being in a domain of everyday research”. Yet science is first and foremost associated with macro-historical processes and structures like theoretical worlds, research traditions, styles of scientific thinking, basic cognitive values, aims and interests, ontologies of idealized objects, and so on. In order to do justice to these processes and structures, one has to extend the approach inaugurated by the hermeneutic reformulation of normal research everydayness to a macrohermeneutics of science. In this case, at stake will be the interpretative nature of modern science. The tenets of a macro-hermeneutics of modern science go back to Heidegger’s conception of “the essence of the mathematical project”. Developed in the mid 1930s, this conception is part of Heidegger’s Kehre, and reflects the transition from “hermeneutics of facticity” and existential ontology to the philosophizing that ceases to consider Dasein as the kind of being that is open to Being, admitting thereby that Being has its own history independent of the temporality of the everyday mode of being-in-the-world. In Being and Time, the notion of “the mathematical project of nature” is elucidated (I dare say defined) in “micro-hermeneutic terms”. The presence-athand that becomes a scientific theme is a delimited region of nature that is mathematically projected. At issue in that book, however, is not the mathematical projection of nature in toto in modern science, but the projection as restricted to the constitution of particular regions of scientific research.9 After the Kehre the mathematical project (as the “anticipation of the essence of things” and as a “project of thingness”) is ascribed to the modern scientific thinking tout court. Since this project determines the mode of studying what shows itself as experience, “modern science is experimental because of the mathematical project.” (Heidegger1978, p. 292) Through the latter modern science reveals “the mathematical of nature” as the realm of the uniform spacetime context of motion. The mathematical project is not a technical feature

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(in the sense that scientific theories operate with mathematical formalisms) but a central metaphysical trait of modern science. This is why Heidegger reaches the conclusion that “modern science did not arise because mathematics became an essential determinant. Rather, that mathematics, and a particular kind of mathematics, could come into play and had to come into play is a consequence of the mathematical project.” (Heidegger 1978, p. 293) Another important aspect of Heidegger’s notion is expressed by the claim that the mathematical project paves the way for “the essence of modern technology”. The mathematical project unveils exact physical science in a manner that it can be employed by modern technology, whose essence lies in enframing nature as an “orderable standing-reserve”. In this perspective, modern technology is not applied natural science. Rather, the essence of modern technology (the revealing of the actual as a Gestell) and the objectifying thematization of modern science are mutually reinforcing parts of the mathematical project. This mutual reinforcement determines the “essence of modern history” as a destining. The grounding of all human activities upon the mathematical project and the essence of technology becomes a historical epoch as “something destined”. Furthermore, modern history (as an epoch in the “history of Being”) is the destining into science-technology’s objectifying thematization and representation. On Heidegger’s conception, modernity’s destining in which (in accordance with the mathematical project) nature presents itself as a calculable complex of the effects of forces is “the danger” (not just any danger) that human beings will come to the point where they themselves will have to be taken as standing-reserve. Heidegger is aware, however, that the mathematical project he is treating refers only to “Newtonian bodies”. Now, what about modern science’s research programs that deal with various classes of “non-Newtonian objects”? (From the very outset, modern science was dealing mathematically and experimentally with such objects. Non-Newtonian bodies are in the first place those studied by [what Kuhn calls] the “experimental or Baconian tradition in the development of physical science”. In accordance with such historians of science as J. Randall, H. Butterfield, I.B. Cohen, and A. Crombie, Kuhn (1977, pp. 31-65) makes it clear that the “classical cluster of research fields” [ancient mathematics, optics, statics, harmonics, and astronomy] were empirical rather than a priori, but nevertheless proceeded in a manner that required little refined observation and even less experiment. Notoriously, these fields cultivated a refinement of the medieval thought-experimental tradition. It is the modern renovation of the tradition of these classical fields that is the historical site of formation and development of what Heidegger treats as a mathematical project. The cluster of research fields which in the late 16th and 17th century were not involved in this tradition but rather engaged “the Baconian movement” dealt by no means with Newtonian objects. Their research objects were more or less instrumentally con-

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structed laboratory artifacts [akin to those which were previously prepared by craftsmen, pharmacists, and alchemists].) Actually, the plurality of types of research objects is much greater (than the objects of the Baconian and mathematical traditions) and corresponds to the plurality of “the origins of modern science”. Let me mention some of these types. In the late 1640s Pascal and Fermat “discovered”, through elaborating on a kind of recursive calculation, the probabilist research objects. They attributed to them a “mechanism of existence” that depends not on causes and effects, but on “the final expectation”. A great merit of Pascal was the construction of a procedure of representing recursive calculation as a partial differential equation. (See, e.g., Hald 1990, pp. 42-64) By means of this procedure, he “integrated” the probabilist research objects in the corpus of modern science. William Gilbert’s theory of magnetism launched another type of objects identifiable with regard to the positions they take in the universe according to “the law of the whole”. This law can be presented in a mathematical form, but not by means of that mathematics which formalizes the idea of bodies’ causal dynamics responsible for the presence of order and regularity in nature. Notoriously, Gilbert failed to mathematise magnetic phenomena, but he tacitly suggested a “mathematical project of the universal attraction” exercised by every particle of matter. The “universal harmonics” (as represented, in particular, by Marin Mersenne) provides examples of another type of research objects. In this case, the acoustic phenomena’s physical properties (discovered by arithmetical and geometrical interpretations of experiments) are studied in conjunction with their aesthetic effects and artistic composition. (The constitution of “harmonic research objects”, like consonance, includes elaborations on a method of calculating their “degrees of excellence”, i.e., a quantitative analysis of their “sweetness”. For Mersenne, the aesthetic reception is entangled in the acoustical objects.) Other diversities of modern science’s research objects are scrutinized by Alistair Crombie. Following his celebrated conception of treating the history of styles of scientific thinking (postulation, the experimental argument, hypothetical modelling, taxonomy, probabilistic analysis, and historical derivation) as a subject of a comparative intellectual anthropology, Crombie (1994, pp. 56-92) successfully reconstructs historical lines of constitution of specific theoretical objects. In my view, it is not difficult to show that each line (and style of scientific thinking) is governed by a charactersitic “mathematical project”. The case I should like to make is that there are in modern science mathematical projects that also unveil “the metaphysical meaning of the mathematical” but do not project nature as a uniform space-time context of motion. The “other projects” have their own historical trajectories, conceptual and experimental forms of expression, and mathematical languages. The mathematical project

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Heidegger is discussing “entraps nature as calculable coherence of forces”. More specifically, it “sets nature up to exhibit itself as a coherence of forces calculable in advance, it orders its experiments precisely for the purpose of asking whether and how nature reports itself when set up in this way.” (Heidegger 1978, p. 326) Is it possible to extrapolate this conclusion to the other mathematical projects which suggest different scenarios of objectifying thematization? In realizing that there is a plurality of mathematical projects in modern science, one approaches the point of departure of a macro-hermeneutics of scientific research. Since the type of objectifying thematization (and the constitution of characteristic research objects) is the principal feature of modern science’s global project, in my further considerations I will use the expression thematizing projects instead of Heidegger’s “mathematical project”. In a tentative fashion, two macrohermeneutic perspectives – a historical and a philosophical – on the thematizing projects can be distinguished. The historical realization of a thematizing project takes on the form of a “macro-historical narrative” that involves several principal stages: convergence of various traditions (e.g., the formation of Kuhn’s “classical sciences”); semantic unification of basic concepts; differentiation of main parameters of empirical interpretation; construction of standard mathematical formalisms; development of strategies of thematic proliferation, etc. Now, the talk of macro-historical narratives in science’s development is by no means only justified by the universality of the aforementioned stages in the history of every particular type of scientific research (guided by a thematizing project). The “historicity” of such a type is rather defined by a characteristic hermeneutic situation that generates a thematizing project and accompanies its historical realization as a “hermeneutic situation of the constitution of research objects of a given type”.10 Leading in my elaborations on the notion of a “characteristic hermeneutic situation” is the statement that the stronger the discursive-practical fore-structuring of objectifying thematization, the more complex the thematizing project. (By “stronger discursive-practical fore-structuring” I mean tentatively a stronger impact of a self-reflective preoccupation with configurations of research practices upon a domain’s thematic field.) I will try to show that this “proportion” is defined by the respective hermeneutic situation. Starting from this statement, one might single out the following ten projects: taxonomic project; dynamicodeterminist project; classical probabilist project; probabilist indeterminist project; evolutionary-morphogenetic project; teleonomic project; situational-constructivist project; structural-functional project; ideal-typological project; and interpretative-descriptive project. (1) Objectifying thematization within the taxonomic project constitutes “static” research objects identified only by rules of classification.

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(2) The dynamico-determinist project constitutes a “theoretical world”, in which the research objects are identified by quantifiable parameters of dynamical behavior. (3) Statistical systems whose dynamics enables us to treat the number of relevant magnitudes as the coordinates of a single point situated in a phase space illustrate the research objects constituted within the classical probabilist project. (4) Statistical ensembles whose dynamics could not be represented by a continuous chain of causally related events are the research objects constituted within the indeterminist probabilist project. Notoriously, their mathematical description demands a specification of “uncertainty relations” and operators in an abstract space. (5) Dynamic systems whose behavior is determined only by a restricted number of control factors in such a manner that any pair of values for control and behavior stands for a single combination of the control factors and the behavior are the research objects distinguished by an “evolutionary morphogenesis”. (6) When a goal is indispensable in explaining the behavior, one attributes to a class of dynamic systems a kind of “teleological determinism”. Ecosystems are “entities” that belong to this class which includes the research objects constituted within the teleonomic thematizing project. (7) Dynamic systems whose behavior can only be studied in their situatedness within changing environments (like many systems thematized by such programs in cognitive science as “existential cognition”, “situated action”, “Heideggerian AI”, and so on) are the research objects constituted within the situationalconstructivist thematizing project. (What is at stake in this type of objectifying thematization is the structure of being which underlies both the choice of cognitive resources and the existential moment of responsibility. Intellectual choice and responsibility are to be derived from the [in Heidegger’s words] existentiality of the “thrown project”. Thus, the constitution of research objects within the situational-constructivist project has much to do with the way of thematization suggested by hermeneutic phenomenology: In both cases, one focuses on the “projectedness of existence” [i.e., what is under investigatation has already projected itself], whereby one looks for a hermeneutic circle between the thematizing project and the “thrown project” [i.e., the “existential structure of facticity”]. By implication, not only the thematizing project itself but also the “potentialityfor-being” enter the thematic field of the research objects.) (8) When the number of the dynamic systems’ interrelated variables is beyond the scope of the reasonable mathematical manipulations (which is the case in most of the social sciences’ domains), then the behavior can only be objectified within the structural-functional thematizing project.

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(9) When even a clear differentiation of functions and subsystems of a complex dynamic system proves to be impossible, the constitution of research objects proceeds through the construction of ideal types. (10) Finally, when the process of constitution is grounded upon doubly interpretative procedures, the constitution of research objects is within the interpretative-descriptive project. Obviously, there is no essential demarcational line between this project and the situational-constructivist project. The only difference concerns the thematic orientation: The latter dominates cognitive science’s domains, whereas the former is of prime importance in the human sciences. From the perspective of cultural history, everyone who intends to reconstruct the historical formation and realization of a thematizing project should ask about those questions to which the project is the answer. Authors like Hans Blumenberg (1966) and Odo Marquard (1981) draw the attention to the case that the original question corresponding to a solution has died out, so that the solution acquires applications in subsequent historical contexts. The task of a historical hermeneutics of modern science’s thematizing projects is to go back to the original questions whose answers were the constitution of characteristic research objects. This is also a task of recollecting historical contexts which “modernity has forgotten”. I am not going to discuss the problems of such a historical hermeneutics in this study. My concern is only with the philosophical perspective on the thematizing projects. Prima facie, a thematizing project is predicated on two main structural moments: a basic cognitive interest, and epistemic features (like principles of symmetry, schemes of explanation, theories’ logical structures, etc.) that remain invariant in the constitution of research objects. The characterization of a thematizing project with regard to the basic cognitive interest it puts into play is a task of a cognitive (macro)sociology of science, while the epistemic features have to be addressed by a relevant historical epistemology.11 My aim in the coming section is to throw light on the nexus “hermeneutic situation – thematizing project” in differentiating main types of scientific research.

e. Thematizing Projects and Types of Scientific Research Gunther Stent (1987), a prominent figure in molecular biology, raises the claim that the more complex a research object, the more “hermeneutic preunderstanding” is required and the less likely that the research process will have the aura of objectifying thematization. In invoking Rudolf Bultmann’s ideas, Stent holds that the natural sciences’ research work often (e.g., in reading experimental results) faces the need of transforming a vicious circle into a hermeneutic circle. The transformation requires – so Stent’s argument goes – the use of

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hermeneutic preunderstanding. His line of reasoning is ambiguous. On the one hand, the talk of hermeneutic preunderstanding is a la Polanyi’s tacit knowledge. Stent is insisting on the involvement of intuitive knowledge in the constitution of complex research objects. On the other hand, however, his considerations display a tendency of moving from cognitive hermeneutics to hermeneutic phenomenology. He is inclined to admit that the research process requires from an interpretative scientific community an “activation” of a preunderstanding that resides in the community’s practical experience. Despite this ambiguity, Stent’s conception is highly inventive in suggesting a macro-hermeneutic approach to the types of scientific research. One can identify a whole spectrum of such types even in one and the same domain. (Stent cites the example of neurobiology, which at the objective pole is represented by cellular electrophysiology, and at its opposite pole by a kind of “cerebral hermeneutics”.) Hermeneutic preunderstanding and objective validation are correlative parameters that define the “balance” between involving past experience and actual thematization (subjected to epistemological criteria of objectivity) in the constitution of research objects. In fact, this balance is resulting from the ongoing juxtaposition of two kinds of reflection in each type of scientific research: A self-reflection upon the entanglement of research practices in the production of cognitive content, and an objectifying reflection aiming at a radical decontextualizaion in the construction of theoretical models representing autonomous research objects. In some cases, the self-reflection is embodied in a separate theory. Quantum-mechanical theory of measurement is the best example in this regard. In invoking again Heelan’s distinction, one might say that in classical physics measurements are practically-laden but not theoretically-laden. Because of the peculiarity of the interaction between a measured system and a measuring system, measurements in quantum mechanics are both practicallyladen and theoretically-laden. In the framework of quantum mechanical theorizing (more specifically, in von Neumann’s axiomatization of quantum mechanics)

“measurement” is an undefined term, since the classical principle that an observable has the same value just before the measurement as is obtained by the measurement is not valid in this framework. The quantum mechanical theory of measurement is developed through a (self )reflection upon the “situatedness” of the research process. (With regard to the cases of measurement, one can distinguish between three kinds of situations.12 In the first situation, only an eigenstate is possible after the interaction of the apparatus initial state and the system state. In the second situation, the distribution of probabilities exists before the measurement since the initial ensemble is sub-divided into a number of subensembles according to the probability of the state [ensemble]. Finally, in the third situation a pure initial state is transformed into a mixture. Bitsakis is right when stressing that in contrast to the first situation, the states now are real

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before the measurement. Whether the interpretation of the third situation is congruent with von Neumann’s impossibility proof or with a construal led by the claim that the distribution of the probabilities is determined by the nature of the quantum ensemble and its conditions remains an open question. Yet what is important for my considerations is the fact that it is the third situation in which the need for interpretative self-reflection is most palpable.) By raising the claim that there is no observable that has any value before the measurement, the “standard version” of quantum mechanics incorporates in its scenarios of theorizing (a self-reflective attitude to) the discursive-practical forestructuring. In particular, it incorporates (reflection upon) this fore-structuring in the ways of getting data-models of theoretical objects (i.e., the ways of constructing theoretical models). In other words, the interpretative self-reflection is “mingled” with the (procedural) articulation of cognitive content. (For those who support the standard version, a particular aim of self-reflection is to give an account of the measurement process that avoids implicit paradoxical requirements. How the latter can be made explicit is shown by the Schrödinger cat paradox and EPR paradox.) The complementarity between interpretative selfreflection (upon the intrinsic contextuality of research practices) and objectifying reflection (that decontextualizes the empirical meaning of research objects from normal scientific situations in which it is constituted) is an “ontological extension” of the methodological principle of complementarity of the “Copenhagen interpretation” as a principle that eliminates the incompatibility between a waveproperty and a particle-property.13 Mary Hesse and Karl-Otto Apel are two other authors (along with Stent) insisting on the idea of a spectrum between the poles of “epistemological objectivism” and “hermeneutic universalism”. Hesse’s differentiation of kinds of science is carried out predominantly in terms of cognitive hermeneutics. More important for the present discussion are Apel’s considerations. His startingpoint is that all sciences have a hermeneutic dimension which is to be spelled out in terms of a “transcendental-pragmatic structure of communicative understanding and consensus-formation”. (Apel 1992, p. 254) On this account, the types of science are located between the pole of “subject-object relation of cognition” and the pole of “subject-cosubject relation of communicative understanding”. The different types are distinguished by the degrees of dominance of the cognitive interest in objectification over the cognitive interest in understanding. In other words, there is a spectrum of types of science since there are different degrees of treating the cosubjects of the research process as communication partners. The degree of integrating the “communication community” in the constitution of research objects provides the criterion for differentiating the types of science. On this approach, the pole of total “participation in the hermeneutic dimension of cognition” (Apel’s expression) is represented, in particular, by the

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“dialogical research programs” in cultural anthropology and cultural history. In these programs, no cognitive interest in objectifying the other person and her actions is presupposed. Ex hypothesi, “the Other” is (not a researchee but) a partner sharing with the researcher the same principles of communicative rat ionality, which transcendental pragmatics is appointed to reconstruct. The opposite pole of total displacement of the “context of Verständigung” is illustrated most typically by the classical deductive-nomological sciences. Somewhere inbetween the poles are, for instance, the programs in the social sciences which are facing the problem of judging and valuing people’s reasons for their actions. In this case, agents’ goals and beliefs are integrated in the logical schemata of causal-nomological (or, statistical) explanation. (Max Weber’s “interpretative explanation” and “explanatory understanding” provide the prototype of all attempts at a “hermeneutic epistemology” of the social sciences.) In figuring out the “transcendental-pragmatic structure of argumentative discourse” as a basis for differentiating types of science, Apel (1992, p. 266) aims at devising a meta-scientific “method of valuing progress and regress in the critical-hermeneutic reconstruction of human intellectual history.” Thus, he postulates (along with Habermas) the existence of a “meta-science” that has to articulate the ahistorical, non-circumventible, conditions of argumentative consensus-formation. Elsewhere, I have argued that Apel’s attempt to overcome the (alleged) “logos-forgetfulness” of Heidegger’s hermeneutic ontology and Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics is successful in only one respect – the rehabilitation of the logos-centrism of foundational epistemology. (See Ginev 1999b) Apel fails to resist the criticism based on strong holism’s arguments. More specifically, his transcendental pragmatics does not have resources to confront the view that the communication organized by claims to validity of the argumentative discourse is always only possible within an interpretative medium. The “existentialist rationalization” of this medium (as it is suggested by hermeneutic phenomenology) is at odds with the behaviorist way of separating the subject from the cosubject, on the one hand, and from the object, on the other. What Apel fails to take into consideration is the situated transcendence of “subject”, “cosubject” and “object” within the interpretative medium. In my view, it is this failure that impedes the elaboration of a coherent spectrum of types of science within the framework of transcendental pragmatics. My discontent with Apel’s conception concerns first and foremost the restrictedness of his “hermeneutic dimension of cognition”. The doctrine of transcendental pragmatics is an intersubjective extension of classical (based on Cartesian dualism) epistemology. As a “context of Verständigung” the hermeneutic dimension is restricted to a supplement to the subject-object relation of cognition. In fact, however, both the relation of communicative counderstanding and the epistemic relation of objectifying cognition are constituted

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within the open horizon of existential possibilities. Both relations rest upon the appropriative interpretation of understanding as projected possibilities. Furthermore, both relations take place within the hermeneutic medium of everyday (routine) discursive practices. To restrict the hermeneutic dimension to the thematic involvement of the co-subjects in the constitution of research objects amounts to missing the point in an effort to develop a spectrum of types of science. To be sure, the “communication community” belongs to the hermeneutic medium of doing research. Yet each form of intersubjective understanding and consensus-formation presupposes a milieu of shared discursive practices. The hermeneutic medium of scientific research is brought into play by the interrelatedness of research practices. To the medium belong all “equipmental settings” of the research process as well. The self-reflection on one’s doing research within the medium of practices is a dimension of the constitution of research objects. It is this self-reflection that “inserts” the hermeneutic medium into a domain’s thematic field. The hermeneutic medium continues to be a medium of scientific research, but it becomes at the same time an object of this research. As a result, the cognitive content ceases to be decontextualized “objective knowledge”. It becomes rather a juxtaposition of objectifying reflection and interpretative selfreflection. (Since the interpretative self-reflection is upon the discursive-practical fore-structuring of a domain’s cognitive content, it does not violate the tenets of “hermeneutic internalism” as I discussed them in Chapter One.) In a tententative manner, I will state that it is the balance (between objectification and self-interpretation) in this quasi-Fichtean juxtaposition that provides a basis for differentiating types of science. To set forth my further “macro-hermeneutic discussions”, I will make use of the “metaphorical concept” of reading a text. On my basic assumption, the juxtaposition of interpretative self-reflection and objectifying reflection can be elucidated as a phenomenon built upon the model of a “reading process”. Leaning on Paul Ricoeur’s (1981, p. 146) definition (“the text is a discourse fixed by writing”), I will state that the text is discursive practices fixed by (analytical and empirical) procedures. The text is the procedural embodiment of discursive practices. In case of scientific research, these are procedures of getting cognitive content identifiable by semantic criteria such as those suggested by the nonstatement views about scientific theory. Ricoeur makes it clear that the text “produces a double eclipse” – of the reader (who is absent from the act of writing) and the writer (who is absent from the act of reading). In the same manner in which the text replaces the relation of dialogue (between the writer and the reader), the research objects (the structure of a ready-made cognitive content that is open to further readings) replace the relation of a direct contact between the discursive-practical fore-structuring and the articulation of a domain’s cognitive content.

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Because of their place within the interplay of changing configurations of research practices and cognitive content, the research objects (as quasi-texts) cannot be isolated from the reading process. Following the paradigm of constitutional analysis advanced by hermeneutic phenomenology (the interpretative appropriation of projected possibilities), the reading process is at once productive and reproductive. It is, on the one hand, a constitutive process of realizing projected possibilities which become embodied in a domain of research. The productive aspect consists in projecting (outlining) the “thematic whole” of a scientific domain. (Since Ricoeur is preoccupied predominantly with the opposition between reading and writing, he does not do full justice to this aspect.) Once outlined (mathematically, theoretically, conceptually, and instrumentally), a scientific domain “contains” only theoretical objects in whose existence a scientific community believes. (Without this belief, a “reproductive reading” through using all interpretative techniques of scientific research cannot start.) More specifically, an outlined domain of research is a projection of a theoretical and a practical horizon of “reading theoretical objects”. This is the “minimalist picture” of a scientific domain, seen from the perspective of hermeneutic phenomenology. Once the horizons are projected and possibilities for objectifying thematization are set up, a reproductive reading comes into play. Reading theoretical objects within an outlined domain indicates the reproductive aspect of the process under discussion. Reproductive reading (as embedded in all particular research practices) coincides with the totality of a normal scientific everydayness. It is the reading that makes constantly use of “readable technologies” (in the sense of Patrick Heelan 1983 and Martin Eger 1992, 1993, 1994) of instrumentation, experimentation and measurement. Reproductive reading involves all possible (practical and theoretical) manipulations with the theoretical objects. It is carried out by all “language games” of doing research in which theoretical objects become “operationalized” as (identifiable through particular procedures) research objects within normal science. (To be operationalized means to be laden with meanings that depend on the particular situations of the research process.)14 The “operationalization” proceeds as an interplay of changing configurations of research practices and articulation of cognitive content. In this interplay, theoretical and practical horizons are fused in a common horizon of reproductive reading. The research objects do not have meaning (or only have an “inappropriate meaning”) beyond a domain’s scope of reproductive reading (or, a domain’s range of possibilities for objectifying thematization). This is the scope of all possible “normal scientific language games” and manipulations with theoretical objects. (Reproductive reading from the standpoint of a non-statement view about the structure of scientific theory amounts to providing semantic interpretations of theoretical objects in terms of data-models. Hence, reproductive reading can be depicted in terms of a

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“hermeneutics of scientific instrumentation and readable technologies” as well as in terms of a holist epistemology based upon a non-statement view.) In the non-essentialist paradigm of constitutional analysis, productive and reproductive reading are not chronologically separated. The projection of horizons and the application of interpretative techniques of reading models, instruments, calculations, experimental results, etc. always go hand in hand in scientific research. Productive and reproductive reading are aspects of the interplay of hermeneutic fore-structuring and articulation of cognitive content. By implication, the “dynamic unity” of producing a text (theoretical objects) and reading it by normal scientific research takes always place “within” the narrative temporality I discussed in Section (c). This unity has its own possibility, defined by a thematizing project. The latter is a “global projection” through which a reading process of a given type (characterized, in particular, by the “fusion of theoretical and practical horizons”) becomes possible. A thematizing project is not a “global horizon” imposed externally on the medium of the research process. It is rather stable (trans-situational) fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception arising out of the fusion of theoretical and practical horizons of the productivereproductive reading. The preceding deliberations provide the opportunity of deepening the discussion of the distinction between “theoretical objects” and “research objects”. The possibilities of articulating a scientific domain’s cognitive content and the possibilities of configurating research practices in various situations are “inscribed” in theoretical objects. Productive reading consists in projecting both kinds of possibilities as (theoretical and practical) horizons of normal scientific research. Compared with reading of written text, productive reading corresponds to the projection of text’s whole meaning before the articulation of particular meaningful units takes place. The ongoing actualization of both kinds of possibilities is the counterpart of the “operationalization” of theoretical objects within normal scientific research. (As a result of this operationalization, theoretical objects become identifiable through normal science’s criteria of existence. In other words, they become identifiable as research objects.) Reproductive reading of data, models, experiments, diagrams, equations, measurements, instruments and so on, by means of which a scientific community “manipulates” the research objects of its normal scientific everydayness, corresponds to the articulation of meaningful units in reading a written text.15 Since the constitution of a scientific domain is built upon production and reproduction of objects, the reading process is coextensive with the research process. More specifically, the former is a “hermeneutic metaphor” of the latter. Ricoeur goes on to hold that the reading process situates interpretation (involving the act of self-reflection) and explanation (serving the function of objectifying reflection) along a unique “hermeneutic arc”. The concept of reading (as recov-

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ery of meaning) unifies the opposed attitudes of explanation and interpretation. I should like to add to this claim that the reading process succeeds in this synthesis since it moves (circulates) between the interpretative self-reflection upon the projected whole of meanings (for understanding a text) and the explanatory (objectifying) articulation of meaningful units. Applied to the productive and reproductive reading of objects, this claim stresses the circularity between selfreflection upon the hermeneutic (discursive-practical) medium of doing research and decontextualizing objectification that represents the particular research objects as “units” of a scientific domain. Against the background of this conception of the reading process, I am in a position to specify the notion of a thematizing project. It refers in the first place to a persisting historical tendency of a constitution of research objects guided by a given type of objectifying thematization. (In the present discussion, the expressions “type of scientific research” and “type of objectifying thematization” have the same meaning.) Each thematizing project implies a reading process with characteristic fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. In a macrohermeneutic perspective, “thematizing project” and “reading process” are “equiprimordial” and inter-definable notions. (Every one of the types of scientific research I am going to discuss is to be identified as an ongoing historical realization of a thematizing project.) The situational horizons of research everydayness mediate (on a “micro-hermeneutic level”) the interplay of particular configurations of research practices and cognitive results as outcomes of particular situations. The thematizing projects do not set up something like a “second order mediation on a macro-hermeneutic level”. They are rather the stable and historically long-standing hermeneutic fore-structures emerging within the normal scientific interplay of research practices and cognitive content. It is these fore-structures that permit the identificaton of macro-historical types of objectifying thematization. A thematizing project is a historical horizon of a “productive-reproductive reading process” that constitutes research objects of a given type. Against the background of this definition, I am in a position to provide a two-dimensional description of the “situation of reading”. The first dimension is that of objectifying (or decontextualizing) reflection. It represents the research objects as entities that exist in accordance with epistemological criteria of objectivity. The second dimension is that of (interpretative) self-reflection upon the normal scientific medium in which the operationalization of theoretical objects as research objects takes place. This self-reflection takes into account the “productive reading” qua projection of horizons that “ensures” the transcendence and infinity of theoretical objects. (As I stated in Chapter Two, without a scientific community’s belief in the existence of objects that are transcendent and infinite, there is no normal scientific everydayness.)

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The normal scientific (reproductive) reading of research objects is a complementarity of objectifying reflection and interpretative self-reflection. Granted that such a complementarity can be specified for each thematizing project, it seems to me justified to attribute a characteristic hermeneutic situation (of reading) to each type of scientific research. In other words, there is a specific complementarity of objectifying reflection and interpretative self-refection that perpetuates the (macro-historical) realization of a thematizing project. It is the routine reading (of theoretical models, mathematical equations, experimental results, empirical data, instruments of measurement, symbolic representations, and so on) that reproduces a characteristic hermeneutic situation in the particular normal scientific situations. The former is constantly repeatable in the research of a given type. This is why the situation of reading assigns an interpretative specificity to the particular configurations of practices in the research process. (This is precisely the hermeneutico-ontological criterion for differentiating types of scientific research.) Through the objectifying thematization this specificity becomes “expressed” by the research objects constituted within the thematizing project. (See Fig. 3.) The characteristic hermeneutic situation of reading is both the starting point and the final outcome of a reading process within the horizon of a thematizing project. In this regard, it is a characteristic of the situatedness of the constitution of objects within the process of “productive-reproductive reading”. (I mean the situatedness that remains invariant with respect to the changing situations of normal scientific research.) The complementarity of interpretative self-reflection and decontextualizing reflection specifies in an important way this situatedness. The research process of a given type “transmits” the characteristic situation (the “balance” between “interpretation” and “explanation” in Ricoeur’s sense), and thereby makes possible the ongoing realization of the thematizing project. More specifically, due to this transmission, there is a persisting forehaving, fore-sight, and fore-conception of a long-standing reading process. The talk of “macro-historical narratives” in science’s development becomes meaningful also as a result of the long-standing transmission of a specific complementarity of interpretative self-reflection and objectifying reflection in the constitution of research objects. If the hermeneutic situation remains constant, then the “history of the reading process” that proliferates in various thematic fields would be something like a “self-sufficient historical line of development”, or a “macro-historical narrative” of a given type of scientific research. Let me return to the issues of science’s hermeneutico-ontological diversity (i.e., the diversity of thematizing projects and “macro-historical narratives”). Following my comment on Stent’s conception, I am going to state that the pole opposite to total objectification is that of the total involvement of the researchers’ self-reflection on the “hermeneutic medium” of their research everydayness

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in the constitution of research objects. The differentiation of types within a spectrum is to be now achieved through an analysis of the characteristic hermeneutic situations as they persist in macro-historical reading processes. Before unfolding the new concept of the spectrum of types of science, I should like to pause at a preliminary criticsm of a deficiency of Being and Time that precludes the opportunity to develop such a spectrum through the constitutional analysis of Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology. On my central point of this criticism, the existential conception of science does not handle the diversity of characteristic hermeneutic situations of (the types of ) scientific research. (See Ginev 2002d). The researchers’ self-reflection upon their hermeneutic medium – a reflection which is more ontological than ontical – is completely ignored in Heidegger’s existential conception of science. Ironically, the need for its implementation is to be accounted for in the same manner in which Heidegger gives an account of “the ontological possibility of theory”. For him, the genesis of the theoretical attitude as objectifying and decontextualizing reflection is due to “dysfunctions” within “the equipmental totality of the current equipment-world and the public environment which belongs to it.” (Heidegger 1962, p. 410) The objectifying reflection is appointed to eliminate the dysfunctions through transforming the “circumspective deliberation” that accompanies the routine practices withinthe-world into operations of representing objects as present-at-hand. More specifically, this reflection decontextualizes the “entities” that supposedly cause dysfunctions within certain contexts of equipment. The decontextualization of items within-the-world requires that the representation of what is isolated from the equipmental totality be expressed in a predication. In this regard, the objectifying reflection compensates the inability of the everyday (pre-scientific) equipmental totality to function only by means of the interrelatedness of routine practices. To sum up, the objectifying reflection fulfills its compensatory task to the extent it is successful in pushing aside its own discursive-practical forestructuring. On the existential conception from Being and Time, science is only possible on condition that its theoretical attitude is “not thinking” its own “discursive-practical genesis” and situatedness within a “world” (hermeneutic medium) of scientific research. (Heidegger’s later dictum that “science does not think” is rooted in this assumption of the existential conception.) This is why he rejects any relevance of scientific research to the “ontological questioning”. And this is why he displays reluctance to take into consideration the diversity of types of science. Even the distinction between explanatory (deductive-nomological) science and interpretative science seems not to be of great importance for Heidegger. He admits that the human sciences are objectifying the contexts of equipment that are ready-to-hand as “something present-at-hand”. In other words, the human

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sciences also “deworld” what they study. However, the “deworlding” does not concern particular entities (like the organisms studied in vivo or in vitro in laboratories) but holistic realities, like historical types, complexities of social interactions, styles of cultural life, “texts” in the broadest cultural-theoretical sense of the term, and even whole modes of being-in-the-world (e.g., Byzantine culture, baroque Zeitgeist, the ethos of early modern academic life, or the late medieval urban way of life). The decontextualization (and deworlding) runs in this case as objectification of whole contexts. Thus, in Heidegger’s view, these sciences do not cross the threshold of “ontic questioning”, although what they study does exist before the objectification not only as particular entities (in their pre-thematic status as “something ready-to-hand” within “equipmental settings”) but as integral “existentiell realities”.16 Heidegger shows in Being and Time that he is not inclined to admit a philosophically significant distinction between objectifying thematization and interpretative thematization. Whether his position can be justified or not, depends crucially on the question of whether there is a continuity between everyday appropriative interpretation (that accompanies the “concernful dealing withinthe-world”) and thematic interpretation built upon procedures and models of a variety of methodological hermeneutics. This is a too complex question that requires a separate investigation, which I am not going to undertake here. Regardless of this question, however, there is another essential argument against Heidegger’s rejection of a significant cut between objectifying thematization and interpretative thematization. According to this argument, through integrating paradigms of constitutional analysis, many research programs in the human sciences (like “thick description”, theory of structuration, “existential psychiatry”, phenomenological sociology, reception theory, and so on) approximate the “ontological questioning” of hermeneutic phenomenology. The point is that the methodology of “double hermeneutics” (discussed by authors like Giddens, Dreyfus, and Geertz) requires making use of constitutional analysis. More specifically, the objects constituted by means of “double hermeneutics” (thematic interpretations of appropriative interpretations within horizons of “autochtonic” modes of being-in-the-world) continue to demand a non-empirical reflection on issues related to the constitution of meaning (i.e., issues of hermeneutic ontology). It is the immanent “hermeneutico-ontological aspect” of the interpretative sciences that makes the “natural science – human science” distinction a philosophically significant fact.17 In the natural sciences, there are also several cases of scientific research that retain the status of “something ready-to-hand” of the research objects. I will try to show that various research programs of the natural sciences exemplify kinds of interpretative attitude, which also bring into play an “ontological questioning” within the scope of objectifying thematization. As I mentioned, one is not

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compelled to invoke old neo-Kantian and/or Diltheyan distinctions in order to demonstrate that all “non-classical” natural-scientific domains are (for completely different reasons as compared with the interpretative human sciences) studying entities that retain their status of “something ready-to-hand”. By implication, self-reflection upon the hermeneutic medium of scientific research plays a crucial role in the constitution of research objects. In my view, both the doubly interpretative research programs in the human sciences and the “nonclassical” programs in the natural sciences that make the situatedness of the research process part of their objects of study (along with many other programs) show science’s ability to thematize under certain conditions what Heidegger calls “the horizon of awaiting and retaining an equipmental totality and its involvement-relationships”. Between the radical naturalist objectification and the “minimal objectification” that proceeds through interpretative thematization of the horizon that reveals the situatedness of scientific research, there are a lot of types of scientific research characterized by different “degrees of objectifying thematization”. If so, then there is an indication that the spectrum of types of science can be located between the pole of “ontic objectification” and the pole of “ontological interpretation”. Against the background of these considerations, let me reiterate my previous claim: The objectifying reflection (as conceived in the existential conception of science) compensates for deficiences and dysfunctions within a given regime of routine performance of discursive practices. Yet, as I tried to point out, the selfreflection upon the hermeneutic medium serves a compensatory task as well. It compensates for the impossibility to disentangle entirely certain research objects from the research practices that constitute them. Due to the juxtaposition of objectifying reflection and self-reflection, there is (in several types of scientific research) a progressive effacement of the demarcational line between research situations and research objects. (To reiterate, the principle of complementarity is an example of how one might use interpretative self-reflection in coping with contextualized research objects that are entangled in their discursive-practical fore-structuring, retaining thereby the character of the readyto-hand. The integration of interpretative self-reflection in the research process grounds all kinds of complementarity Niels Bohr referred to, such as phenomena realizable only in physically incompatible experimental situations, causal and space-time descriptions, wave and particle models of atomic phenomena, precise position and precise momentum, and other physical properties.) Interpretative self-reflection compensates for the deficiency of the “purely ontic objectification” to cope with research objects that “incorporate” in their constitution the situatedness of the research process. The complementarity between the two kinds of reflection might be characterized as a “generalized version of the complementarity principle”. The use of the latter is indispensable in all cases,

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in which the constitution of research objects requires having recourse to the situated transcendence of scientific research. To sum up, the “amendment” of the existential conception of science I am suggesting extends the idea of compensation as it is related to the “genesis of the theoretical attitude”. Roughly speaking, the theoretical compensation of the deficits of practical involvement in the “totality of equipment” is complemented by an interpretative compensation of the deficits of objectifying and decontextualizing reflection in the constitution (as a “productive-reproductive reading”) of more complex objects. In leaning on this image of “double compensation”, one is in a position to specify the aforementioned idea of the spectrum of types of science between the pole of “ontic objectification” and the pole of “ontological interpretation”. The differentiation between such types on a “macro-hermeneutic basis” is a task I will handle in this study in quite a sketchy fashion. I should like to avoid the introduction and the discussion of some technical notions. In fact, I am going to comment on the main types of scientific research only for the sake of illustration of the idea of “ontico-ontological spectrum of scientificity”. In so doing, I will follow the order of the ten thematizing projects, exhibited at the end of the preceding section. According to the main premise of the upcoming sketch of a “taxonomy of science in macro-hermeneutic terms”, the ongoing realization of a thematizing project informs a type of scientific research through incorporating a characteristic hermeneutic situation in all “modalities of reading”, like reading of observations, experimental data, instruments, data-models, hypotheses, theoretical concepts, mathematical idealizations, and so on. Research practices as specified with regard to the dominant modality of reading can be regarded as “language games”. The notion of “language games” will play a special role in the next section when at stake will be the issue of the non-reductionist unity of science. As Schatzki (1996, p. 95) points out, Wittgenstein applies the notion to a remarkably diverse range of human goings-on with language, including reading. Indeed, in the present discussion I am using the terms “reading” and “reading process” not (only) as a particular “human going-on with language” but in the much broader context of a phenomenological constitutional analysis. Nevertheless, it seems to me that Wittgenstein’s notion is quite relevant in treating the implementation of a thematizing project (as a process closely related to the operationalization of theoretical objects) within the discursive practices of normal scientific research. Paraphrasing a Wittgenstein’s dictum, the term language game is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the involvement in a language is part of a reading process that articulates meaning which is always already projected.18 In a language game, one (being engaged in a certain type of objectifying thematization) applies tools for reading what is always already projected. In

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operationalizing theoretical objects in normal scientific research, language games “operationalize” (or better, “instrumentalize”) at the same time a thematizing project within the everydayness of a given type of science. When language games of the research process are “designed” in accordance with a characteristic hermeneutic situation (the juxtaposition of objectifying reflection and interpretative self-reflection), they transmit through all modalities of reading a thematizing project. Thus, in recognizing the main characteristic hermeneutic situations within configurations of research practices, one can get a principle of differentiating basic types of objectifying thematization between the poles of “ontic objectification” and “ontological interpretation”. Closest to the ontic pole are purely taxonomic scientific domains. The aim of the research process in these domains is the elaboration of criteria for grouping particular “entities” that are completely decontextualized. Notoriously, the debate between the adherents of the “natural taxonomy” (the view that classificatory systems reflect in such a manner real affinities and differences in the natural world that they can reveal something like Platonic “archetypes”) and the advocates of the “natural order” view, which places more emphasis on convention and convenience in the classificatory work, has been won by the latter. This event has opened the door to grounding (after Carl Linnaeus) the taxonomic systems upon models of genealogical descent-relations. As a consequence, the taxonomic scientific domains were no longer limited to the production of catalogues and to “natural history”. Nowadays, there is a tendency towards redefining these domains as evolutionary scientific disciplines.19 This is also a tendency towards a decline of the purely taxonomic type of science.20 When the constitution of research objects leads to a thematization of a certain dynamic system, then one undertakes the first step of restricting the full decontextualization that is closest to the pole of “ontic objectification”. At stake in this type of science is the systems’ temporal trajectory, whereby one is operating exclusively with the abstraction of mathematical (reversible) time. The type is represented in the first place by all domains of classical physics. The causal mechanism of a system’s dynamics is characterized as a trajectory within a multi-dimensional state-space – the set of all possible states of the system. Each state is defined by the values of a system’s parameters (e.g., the instantaneous positions, masses, and velocities of the bodies for a system studied in classical mechanics), and each parameter is a separate dimension of the statespace. The act of measuring the value of a given parameter is independent of measuring the other parameters with arbitrary accuracy. The transition from one state to another does not violate the principle of determinism. By implication, if one knows the exact values of a system’s parameters at the initial moment of its temporary evolution, one can calculate the state at any later moment. The initial state determines all the others.

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A further step of constituting more complex research objects through weakening the decontextualization and extending the horizon of theorizing would require the notion of a dynamic system that is not committed to strong causality and determinism. In the very genesis of statistical mechanics (whose domains represent something like a classical probabilist type), there is a tendency to constraining that strong decontextualization of the research objects from the contexts of carrying out research practices, which is exhibited by causal-determinist thinking. Thus, Liouville’s theorem (as an important moment of the “probabilist revolution”) imposes mathematical constraints on calculating the trajectory of the phase point. Stronger restrictions on the decontextualization provides Boltzmann’s holistic approach to the statistical study of gas systems, based on the thesis of the equiprobability of all microscopic configurations of the gas. By deriving the equations of the state of ideal gases from conservation of energy and momentum, one constitutes research objects within a “constellation” of theoretical presuppositions and research practices. As a consequence, “the existence” of the objects remains contextualized within this constellation. The possibility of a notion of a dynamic system that is not subjected to strong causality and determinism was demonstrated for the first time by Boltzmann’s formulation of the ergodic hypothesis. (Causal determinism cannot “work” without admitting that the trajectory of a gas system is selective, i.e., the system will pass periodically only through some of the microscopic states, and hence some states will be impossible. By holding that the gas will pass through all microscopic states in the course of time, the ergodic hypothesis is incompatible with indeterminism, but it postulates a kind of “holist determinism” that characterizes the objects constituted within the classical probabilist thematizing project.) Of course, the statistical character of the domains developed under the guidance of statistico-holist determinism is compatible with the validity of the principle of causality. A decisive step of restricting the decontextualization in the constitution of research objects is undertaken when one proves the incompatibility of the use of a statistical method with this principle. Notoriously, von Neumann provides such a proof (that hidden variable theories are impossible) for quantum mechanics. Although he is often accused of not distinguishing be tween the principle of causality and the principle of determinism, his proof defines a firm criterion for the autonomy of a probabilist-indeterminist type of science. The domains representing this type are characterized by statistical methods that follow from relations of uncertainty and a principle of complementarity. From an epistemological point of view, these methods exclude the possibility of a complete knowledge of the objects. Another distinctive feature of this type of science is the way quantities are mathematically represented. In the domains constituted by the previous types of objectifying thematization quantities are represented by parameters or real-value functions while in the

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case of a constitution within the probabilist-indeterminst thematizing project they are represented by classes of operators (e.g., operators on a Hilbert space). Since these operators have a certain algebraic structure, the domains’ basic logic is always non-classical, i.e., excluding the validity of a law of the classical logic. (The prominent example in this respect is the incompatibility of one of the axioms of the classical conjunction with the non-commutative algebra of projection operators.) The types of scientific research (or, the types of objectifying thematization leading to the constitution of research objects) discussed so far are “working” with the abstraction of mathematical (be it absolute or relative) time. It is a sort of “mathematical substance” that is reducible (the “Leibnizian approach”) or irreducible (the “Newtonian approach”) to physical processes. Minkowski’s space-time does not change this “interval-picture” of time since it again attaches (the idealization of ) time to interval, which is an invariant of the Lorentz group of transformations. By contrast, the domains guided by the evolutionary idea of time reject the possibility of using the interval-picture. The notion of time is related to irreversible processes and cannot be defined in terms of invariants and groups of transformations. The irreversible processes of evolution imply an asymmetric picture of time. (Somewhere in-between the constitution of research object by means of interval-picture of time and through asymmetric picture is the notion of time implemented in general relativity.) When in 1941 Bernhard Bavnik urged biologists to place the concept of measurable and countable quantity in second place, the concept of Gestalt in the first place, he actually pronounced the “ideological credo” of a new morphological (neo-Goethean) type of science. In fact, the evolutionary theories in 19th century geology and biology initiated this new type. Of course, these theories were rather metaphysical doctrines (or, to make use of Popper’s expression “metaphysical research programs”) than scientific enterprises. The emergence of a genuine evolutionary-morphogenetic type of science is to be traced back to the first studies into nonlinear dynamic systems. Generally speaking, certain classes of nonlinear effects are often conceived as triggering off evolutionary processes (i.e., processes in a “real”, irreversible time) and/or morphogenesis. In focusing not on quantitative complexity but on “qualitative stability” (Rene Thom), one thematizes the evolution of a system by studying various kinds of nonlinearities within this peculiar “non-Newtonian” thematizing project. Accordingly, strange attractors (including chaotic attractors), which lead neither to a stable state nor to a stable pathway to change, inform the evolution’s direction. As a rule, the evolution of a nonlinear system involves several tem poral regimes. The mathematical description (for instance, by means of catastrophe theory) focuses on finding functions for the evolution of the system that . search for such functions take into account the irreversible factors . 21 The

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requires a continuous self-reflection upon those situations in which the research objects are “changed”. To mention some of the reasons for a self-reflection: altering (during the investigation) complex periodic states, realizing the possibility of direct transitions from one pattern of nonlinearity to another, revealing branching structures between periodic states, establishing connections between different kinds of analyses of nonequilibrium behavior, etc. Through interpre tative self-reflection, one tries to fit different groups of data (related to different temporal regimes) quantitatively to elementary patterns of irreversibility. The issue of whether teleological accounts in evolutionary domains are explanatory or are only serving “pedagogical” functions was for a long time at stake in the emancipation of a new type of scientific research. In recent years, the view has gained currency that in many biological domains “teleological explanations” are circular and/or non-necessary in character. Nevertheless, even the severe critics of teleology are inclined to admit that there are “holist domains” in which teleological explanations are of significant importance. Population ecology is a case in point. (Michael Boylan [1986] points out that in this domain one should rule out teleological explanations only when they do not capture the dynamics of a given situation. By differentiating between microand macro-levels of explanation and designing the explanatory process as a teleological functional analysis that specifies the relationship between the levels, the teleological accounts show greater explanatory power than the nonteleological ones.) The teleonomic type of constituting research objects shares with the evolutionary type the abstraction of irreversible time. Yet even the concept of strange attractors does not entail envisioning an element of teleological explanation that cannot be extracted from a merely causal account of functions in the research process guided by the evolutionary-morphogenetic type. In integrating such an element in objectifying thematization, the teleonomic type is much more radical in contextualizing the objects through interpretative self-reflection. Compared with the constitution of research objects within the classical probabilist, statisticoindeterminist, and evolutionary thematizing projects, the constitution of “teleonomic objects” is with the lowest degree of decontextualization in objectifying thematization. In this case, the adoption of a theoretical attitude in the research process does not entail a full suspension of the practical use and purpose to which the researchers might put the researchee. There is a significant peculiarity with this type of scientific research that should be discussed briefly. The articulation of cognitive content is contextualized not only within the proper practices of scientific research but also within a texture of extra-scientific practices. However, the thematization within this project does not violate the hermeneutic internalism I advanced as an alternative to the new forms of externalism. It does not open scientific research to external influ-

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ences. The thematization leads rather to a scientification of extra-scientific practices. In order to shed more light on this claim, let me return to the notion of the “potential of translatability”. Roughly speaking, it is not an extra-scientific policy that “finalizes” the constitution of objects within the teleonomic thematizing project. On the contrary, the scientification of such a policy often leads to domains with “artificial objects” (Herbert Simon) or to “hybrid objects” (Kevin Lynch). The fact that there is no clear demarcational line between science and technology in this type of scientific research is due in the first place to the high “potential of translatability” of technological interests. (To reiterate a statement I discussed in the Introduction: Translatability connotes the potential of scientific research to transform all significant external influences into “cognitive factors” of its own mode of being-in-the-world, i.e., to internalize them within the interplay of hermeneutic fore-structuring and articulation of cognitive content.) Objectifying thematization within the teleonomic project involves a “scientific translation” of the intrinsic “rational strategy” of a system’s behavior. The strategy can be either “natural” (e.g., populations, ecosystems, etc.) or “artificial” (e.g., that of the systems studied in cognitive science) or one in which natural and artificial are melted (for instance, that of the socio-morphological systems analyzed in urban studies). However the intrinsic strategy is designed, its translation is always guided by an interest in intervening in a system’s dynamics. (The objectifying thematization of ecosystems is not to be disentangled from a certain eco-policy; the intention of exercising control is incorporated in the constitution of dynamic systems as research objects in cognitive science, etc.) The system’s teleonomy hinges on the interest in intervening in a system’s dynamics. Its integration in objectifying thematization is part of the aforementioned scientification. In other words, a system’s teleonomy is “composed” by its intrinsic strategy and the interest in regulating and manipulating the system. The researchee within this thematizing project is purposeful in two respects: First, its immanent dynamics is goal-oriented (or, exhibiting goal-directedness, or adaptability); and, second, its constitution through objectifying thematization is guided by researchers’ “in-order-to motives”. Yet this does not imply that the behavior follows two separate paths. The teleonomy of a system is a function of the “dialogue” between a system’s intrinsic strategy and a motivation of controlling the system’s behavior. It is this dialogue that makes the “teleological trajectory” of a system’s dynamics a homogeneous one.22 Since Herbert Simon’s classical book The Sciences of the Artificial (1969), the teleonomic type is extremely prolific in domains where the modelling of an optimum purposive behavior of a dynamic system is at stake. These are above all administrative, socio-technical, and economical systems. Thus, in the last three decades the teleonomic type has conquered territory in the social sciences as well. Nevertheless, this type plays first and foremost a crucial role in

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domains of AI. In facing the problem of understanding the behavior of a complex system, the researchers in these domains introduce the image of contextuality as an essential dimension of their research objects. To the contextuality belongs not only the notion of the “context-dependence in revealing the levelrelativity of the complex systems’ dynamics” but the notion of the “regime of interaction” with the system under study as well. For a long period, Herbert Simon’s idea of “bounded rationality” provided the framework for relating teleology to contextuality. (See also Russell 1989, pp. 17-20) The idea is a response to situations in which an exact solution to the optimization problems cannot be reached. In these situations, one has to cope with sources of cons traint referring either to the limits on the calculation capabilities or to uncertainties about the environment of a system’s dynamics. On Simon’s account, strategies for bounded rationality are heuristic strategies for guiding problem-solving. The contextual rationality of a goal-directed dynamics of a complex system is both descriptive and normative. Ron McClamrock generalizes the idea of bounded rationality by elaborating further on the notion of “satisficing”. In trying to shed more light on the plurality of teleological strategies of dynamical behavior, he goes on to say that “to ‘satisfice’ is to set some particular standard of outcome as ‘good enough’ and to constrain the costs of inference and information search by stopping once you get an outcome at least that good. Although this is surely one way to structure a strategy for boundedness, it’s hardly the only one: setting limits on time, making inferences from the usefulness of the search so far, setting limits on propagation of information through a network, or some hybrid of these and/or others – all are possible bounded strategies.” (McClarmock 1995, p. 70) Now, the teleological approach in cognitive science based upon the idea of bounded rationality (and its modifications) is still strongly committed to the representationalist paradigm in AI. Its adherents do recommend modelling the dynamics of complex systems by employing the idea of planning grounded upon symbolic representations (plus model-theoretic semantics). When such representations (that by necessity presuppose a firm distinction in kind between the mental inside and the world outside) designate or denote, they are called patterns. Thus, the teleological approach in cognitive science offers a sort of “naturalizing epistemology” since the representational concept of the epistemic subject is translated into languages of cognitive science. In other words, the approach based upon the idea of bounded rationality operates with a concept of knowledge as a “copy of the world” that can be translated into cognitive science’s theories of learning, symbolic transfer, planning, and so on. The emancipation of the next type of scientific research in the natural sciences is to be traced back to the rebuttal of the representationalist paradigm in cognitive science.

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What I have in mind is a type of constituting research objects by making explicit reference to ideas of hermeneutic phenomenology. In the early 1980s the idea of non-knowledge-based systems in AI gained currency. According to it, by keeping internal representation to a minimum and interacting with the world directly rather than with “copies” of it, one can avoid intractable computations implied by the complexity of a behavior guided by representational models. Authors like Terry Winograd, Fernanando Flores, Stuart Dreyfus, Beth Preston, Philip Agre and David Chapman associated this view in the 1980s with the starting-point of a “Heideggerian AI”. (See Winograd and Flores 1986, Chapman 1987, Agre and Chapman 1987, Agre and Chapman 1991, and Agre 1993) For these authors, there is an important compatibility between connectionism (as a suitable computational medium) and the Heideggerian approach. A complex system’s behavior does not make plans but acts within-theworld in an opportunist fashion. The idea of contextuality coincides in this case with the idea of routine everydayness as a primordial mode of being-in-theworld. (Indeed, the different variants of a Heideggerian approach in AI does not [and cannot] break in a radical manner with naturalism. According to them, the world is just given and not an ongoing constitution within the “contexts of equipment”. If they went so far as to deny the naturalist assumption of the givenness of the world, they would be in need of introducing in their programs an onticoontological distinction.) The “immanent philosophy” of the non-knowledge-based programs in cognitive science rules out subjectivism, representationalism, and foundationalism. Influenced by Hubert Dreyfus’ prominent critique of classical (mind-oriented) AI, these programs do not start with the givenness of the (individual or collective) epistemic subject. Like hermeneutic phenomenology, their starting point is rather the “ek-static unity” of subjectivity and world. Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores (1986, p. 5) argue that human-computer interaction “must be understood in the context of communication and the larger network of equip ment and practices in which it is situated.” If so, one needs a kind of “scientification” of the existential analytic. The complete self-reflective contextualization of “situated action” (here as a designation of a type of research objects) in the “equipmental totality” of being-in-the-world approximates the “ontological pole” of constitution by means of objectifying thematization. It is a minimized objectification in which the researcher is not standing outside the situations and equipmental contexts under investigation. The research process is a task of an interpretative self-reflection within these situations and contexts – a task that can never be entirely completed. The constitution of research objects within the horizon of the teleological (and/or the structural-functional) thematizing project would be only possible for an “independent observer” who from a distance can evaluate all the alternative strategies of behavior. For many systems of human interaction with techni-

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cal equipment such an observer cannot exist. The interpretative self-reflection of minimized objectification presupposes a hermeneutic ontology. It deserves mentioning that Winograd and Flores make use of motifs of the existential conception of science when observing that a thematization of “situated action” is due to “breakdowns” in the equipmental contexts of interaction. By accomplishing complex tasks with little planning, one appeals to objectifying thematization that is a “special version” of the existential analytic. All programs in cognitive science that stem from construals of this dictum are germs in the formation of a situtational-constructivist type of constituting research objects. Until now I only focused on types of scientific inquiry that are guiding the constitution of research objects in the natural sciences. Three other types dominate the objectifying thematization in the social and human sciences. The structural-functional type, which is originally associated with the struggle against psychologism in the social sciences, is close to the teleonomic type. (In contrast to the latter, the former is not so much appealing to teleology as to the structure of the dynamic systems under study. The use of structural categories compensates for the impossibility to devise systems of dynamic equations for modeling empirical systems’ behavior.) Scientific domains whose research objects are constituted by the structural-functional type are treating various aspects of hu man action through models of means-end hierarchies, each one mediated by beliefs and desires. A paradigmatic example is Parsons’ models of human action. The type of scientific research characterized by employing methodologies of constituting ideal types as research objects and the interpretative type of science (illustrated in the first place by the “thick description” in cultural anthropology) are modes of objectifying thematization that are closest to the “ontological pole”. The ideal-typical and interpretative thematizing projects approximate different aspects of the existential analytic. The discussion of the corresponding types of research requires entering into methodological issues of the social and human sciences, which I am not going to undertake here. Each type of scientific research is a specific “scientific mode of being-in-theworld”. Furthermore, each type is characterized by a “worldness of normal scientific everydayness” and a specific interplay of research practices and cognitive content. And to each type might be attributed a constituted “world of research objects”. (A phenomenological theory of such a world would be something like what Husserl and Heidegger call a “regional ontology”.) In the next section, I will make the case that although the idea of regional ontologies is no longer tenable, the ontological approach to the types of scientific research suggests a way of treating the problem of science’s disunity by avoiding the specters of relativism and unificationist reductionism.

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f. Non-Reductionist Unity and Non-Relativist Disunity of Science Against the background of the considerations from the preceding sections, it seems reasonable to formulate something like a “hypothesis of the division of labour between hermeneutics and epistemology”. According to it, the task of (ontological) hermeneutics is the constitutional analysis of scientific research, while a (non-foundationalist) epistemology has to take into consideration the holistic analysis of the ready-made cognitive structures. As I will argue, this hypothesis is plausible, but it is not obligatory for the strong hermeneutics of science. In other words, there is a version of constitutional analysis of scientific research (illustrated in particular by Joseph Kockelmans’ work), which can avoid any “cooperation” with epistemology. Yet the exploration of the hypothesis offers interesting issues, which otherwise are difficult of access. This is why I am going to discuss it briefly. An immediate impetus (and challenge) to the search for a cooperation (or, at least a dialogue) between (non-foundational) epistemology and (ontological) hermeneutics was Rorty’s well-known claim from Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature that “edifying hermeneutics” is not a program of “achieving the sort of results which epistemology failed to achieve.” (Rorty 1979, p. 315) Neopragmatists have no use for a post-epistemological version of a theory of scientific rationality. In their view, neither epistemology nor philosophical hermeneutics is “something sublime”. Rorty’s deep motivation to reject both philosophical discourses (cum any kind of transcendental position) and to denounce that the dialoque between hermeneutics and epistemology may provide a new perspective to the philosophy of science is informed by his belief that there is no middle ground between nominalistic pragmatism and the modes of professing philosophy by means of a certain version of transcendental logic. At the same time, the non-philosophical “edifying hermeneutics” is conceived as a response to the predicament of modern epistemology. The very emancipation of the latter is due to the wrong idea of foundations of (scientific) knowledge – an idea that is a product of the choice of perceptual metaphors. For Rorty, the search for a “philosophy without mirrors” by means of edification should lead to a farewell not only to epistemology but to that kind of (strong) hermeneutics which provides a constitutional analysis of the meaningful being-in-the-world as well. Rorty’s idea of edification (a project of “finding new, better, more interesting, more fruitful ways of speaking”, Rorty 1979, p. 360) opposes every sort of philosophical essentialism which (as a “master-vocabulary”) permits “commensuration of all discourses”. Foundational epistemology, transcendental philosophy of language, and essentialist philosophical anthropology are among the most prominent examples of this

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essentialism. They define human being as a creature whose essence consists in discovering essences. But what about those variants of philosophical hermeneutics which permit commensuration of completely different discourses, and nonetheless deny any validity of philosophical essentialism? (They insist on commensuration since from a hermeneutic point of view there is no discourse whose fore-structuring is isolated from a potential fusion with horizons [fore-structures] of other discourses. Commensuration in this case does not imply a consensus-formation. Since the fusion of horizons is more an event of Sein [being] than of Bewußtsein [consciousness], there is no conflict between hermeneutico-ontological commensuration and the state of dissensus of “life forms”. See Ginev 2003b) In my view, the program from the Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature does not have resources to argue against the possibility of a “master-vocabulary” that in a non-essentialist way defends the commensurability of all basic (scientific) discourses, without committing consensualist dogmatism. In other words, Rorty does not forge arguments against a master-vocabulary constructed under the condition that all cognition is situated – a fact that implies an openness of the “horizonal boundaries” of all discourses. This is why he is not able to cope with hermeneutic phenomenology whose constitutional analysis of discursive practices can serve the task of a non-essentialist defence of commensurability. Rorty is convinced that philosophy will have no more to offer than common sense about objectivity, rationality, and truth of scientific knowledge. Philosophy does not have a special knowledge about something which nobody else knows so well. In hermeneutic phenomenology’s critical response to this claim of Rorty, situated transcendence of all (culturally specified) modes of being-in-the-world is that something which nobody else is able to thematize in a proper manner. The paradigms of constitutional analysis are that “philosophical technique” which provides the opportunity to have a special kind of knowledge about the ways in which situated transcendence conditions the constitution of “meaningful artifacts”. Rorty’s program cannot exclude philosophical hermeneutics as a successor of epistemologically centered philosophy that in its own terms figures out something like a “hermeneutic unity of science”. In what follows, I will subscribe ( pace Rorty) to a “philosophy without mirrors” that may speak in a non-essentialist manner (more specifically, within the “context of constitution”) about the rationality of science. From the angle of this philosophy, there is indeed no “best explanation of the success of science”. Yet there is an “explanation” of why science is only successful when its cognitive autonomy is not threatened. There is also an “explantation” of why the picture of science’s epistemological diversity does not contradict the view of science’s hermeneutic unity.

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To develop a philosophical hermeneutics that is able to remove the predicament of “modernity’s epistemological project” would be a first step in figuring out a critical response to Rorty’s neopragmatist deconstruction of (any) philosophical theory of scientific rationality. Being engaged in a “postmetaphysical critique of modernity”, such a hermeneutics would suggest also an alternative to modern science’s philosophical identity articulated in terms of representationalism, foundationalism, and cognitive essentialism. In this undertaking the door to a dialogue between philosophical hermeneutics and non-representationalist, non-essentialist, and non-foundationalist epistemological views remains open. Notoriously, Rorty binds epistemology on the rules of reaching rational agree ment and appoints hermeneutics to deal with conversations which presuppose no patterns uniting the speakers. In opposing the distinction between unifying epistemology and pluralist hermeneutics, my aim is to argue that the aforementioned dialogue reveals unity within the disunity of the types of scientific res earch (or, modern science’s thematizing projects). Achieving this aim would be a final step of the critical response to Rorty’s dissolution of epistemology and philosophical hermeneutics in an “epistemological behaviorism”. But by no means the only possible response. Another interesting and promising alternative to the “edifying deconstruction” of both discourses was suggested by Herman Philipse (1994). For reasons which will become clear later, I will start my discussion in this section with an examination of Philipse’s conception. This conception is developed as a result of a historical reconstruction of the rise of modern epistemology. Philipse’s undertaking contradicts in a crucial way Rorty’s genealogy of modern philosophy. In exploring the consequences of his historical analysis, he draws the contours of a “meta-ontology as postmodern metaphysics”. According to him, the latter is “more specific and less edifying than Rorty’s ‘hermeneutic’ notion of philosophy.” (Philipse 1994, p. 3) Philipse is successful in arguing that the attempts at surmounting epistemological foundationalism ought not to imply a destruction of epistemology itself. In his credo, we should accept that foundationalism in some sense is not misconceived, if we are not willing to transform philosophy into a kind of “post-philosophical culture”. Philipse’s rehabilitation (and revision) of foundationalism traffics with a version of Quinean ontological relativism. In his view, one may articulate the ontology of a certain scientific theory by putting the theory in the logical standard form of the first-order predicate calculus. He then concedes that in each basic scientific discipline, such as particle physics, linguistics, cultural anthropology, law, mathematics, and theology, there is one best fundamental theory. Hence, by excavating the Quinean ontologies one will be able to make explicit (sometimes by empirical research) the meta-ontological relations between basic theories’ ontologies. It is this hypothetical meta-ontological framework that Philipse calls “postmodern conception of metaphysics”. Presumably, it will help us not only in illuminating the complicated relations between natural

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science and human studies, or between evolutionary biology and theology, or be tween the relativist programs in cultural anthropology and the universal claims in ethics. The postmodern meta-ontology will also satisfy our need for an intellectual Übersicht, or for a Weltanschauung under postmodern conditions. A full-scale critique of Philipse’s conception would be out of place here, but a few critical remarks are necessary for developing my own thesis. First of all, Philipse conception is grounded upon the wrong presumption that each scientific theory with an empirical status can be put in the form of the first-order predicate calculus. This is a Quinean illusion. Nobody can succeed to present in such a form even the most elementary theory, say, in molecular genetics, quantum electrodynamics, or cultural ecology. Indeed, the ontological commitments (in Quinean sense) of science can only be made clear by formulating scientific theories in terms of a first-order language. But in fact, it is impossible to reduce even the existence of all sorts of mathematical objects to the existence of classes. To translate the fundamental empirical theories into the language of first-order logic will be simply an empty task. As Charles Chihara (1990, p. 11) vividly puts it: “So it is useful to ponder just how one would go about constructing such a first-order theory. Would one take up various physics journals and textbooks and simply translate what one found there into a first-order language in the way one does in beginning logic courses? Apart from the well-known problems of translating English prose into logic, there are particular problems connected with the nature of physical theories and laws. Even such a fundamental law as Columb’s Law, a version of which states that every point charge produces a surrounding spherically symmetric electrodynamic field, raises serious problems: straightforwardly translating Columb’s Law as a first-order sentence results in something that is clearly false.” Now, my principal argument against Philipse’s meta-ontological conception concerns not the technical difficulties with the universalization of the extensional first-order language, but the reductionist view that there must be only one best fundamental theory in each basic scientific discipline. Accordingly, I oppose the corollary to this view that to every discipline corresponds one Quinean ontology. I think that the claim of one-to-one correspondence between fundamental theory and scientific discipline is in a drastic disagreement with (what I earlier called) the “interpretative-ontological rationality” of science. A scientific discipline with one established fundamental theory (and ontology) which does not have alternative would be a symptom of a “degeneration of the discipline’s rational potential”. Moreover, it is hard to find such a discipline in real science. One can even go on to say (borrowing arguments from Popper, Lakatos, Feyerabend, or Agassi) that a discipline with one fundamental theory and one Quinean ontology is threatened to degrade to a non-scientific doctrine. It is a common place of various theories of scientific rationality that a discipline is

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prolific when there is not a single best theory but a proliferation of competing fundamental theories, which are (eventually) grounded upon an interplay of alternative ontologies. (See Stefanov and Ginev 1985) The most categorical version of this view is perhaps the “principle of counterinduction” as it is formulated in Feyerabend’s epistemological anarchism. So, if Philipse (1994, p. 11) is accusing Rorty of neglecting philosophy of science in his genealogy of modern epistemology, one should accuse Philipse of maintaining views that are in apparent conflict with leading ideas in philosophy of science. To sum up, the “postmodern conception of metaphysics” restores the spirit of the positivistic “unity of science”. Indeed, Philipse agrees with Rorty that there is no such thing as a “language of united science”. Yet the rejection of linguistic universalism remains a mere declaration, since the meta-ontological compatibility of the excavated Quinean ontologies requires a neutral (not committed to a fundamental theory) meta-language. (Thus, if one is looking for a compatibility between Everett-DeWitt “many-worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics and Bultmann’s program of demythologization, one has to admit a meta-ontological language into which the languages of quantum mechanics and theology can be translated. To be sure, this is an imaginary example that is perhaps extravagant but nonetheless consonant with Philipse’s tenets.) Having tackled the difficulties with the “postmodern meta-ontology of science”, I can now turn to the following question: Which are the consequences from the disunity of science for hermeneutic ontology? The question leads to an exploration of the multidimensional meaning of the expression “disunity of science”. As a reaction to the united science’s linguistic universalism of logical positivism, the initial attempts to advocate a disunity within the scope of philosophy of science were tied to the thesis of the irreducible pluralism of languages of science. What the analytical philosophy suggested as a further development of these attempts did not cross the threshold of frameworks-thinking: Science is split into disunified frameworks, each of them distinguished by specific basic language, methodology, cognitive axiology, variety of procedures, and historical dynamics of knowledge-production. No doubt, the disunity of science, viewed in the perspective of frameworks-thinking, is a generalization of the incommensurability thesis. Peter Galison (1996, p. 14) is right when stressing that in all analytical conceptions of the disunity of science, “the morethan-metaphor of nontranslatability has been the touchstone of argumentation: mere translation would never reconcile the conflict accross the paradigm gap of separate ontologies, epistemologies, and nomologies.” To be sure, the nontranslatability is an important feature of contemporary science. Think, for instance, of the predicament the followers of a certain teleological-functional research program in immunology, endocrinology, or enzymology are facing when trying to translate their results into a mechanistic-

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reductionist theoretical language. In fact, in the three mentioned disciplines both kinds of doing biological research – teleological functionalism and mechanistic reductionism – are represented by interesting and promising research programs. But due to the growing divergence with regard to theoretical models, modes of explanation, and aims of the research process, the nontranslatabilty proves to be an irreversible state of affair. It seems as if both groups of biologists – the believers in the intentional structure of the immune, endocrine, or enzyme system’s action and those who only admit a mechanistic account – are closed in their frameworks. In addition, the frameworks-thinking of “disunified science” is supported by the failure of the most ambitious unifying research programs in science itself. The fact, say, that none of the Grand Unified Theories in highenergy physics had found broad acceptance provides a crucial intra-scientific argument against any version of the unification of science program.23 By suggesting a special “context of disunity” for spelling out arguments against reductionism, Peter Galison undertakes a decisive step towards a coherent picture of science’s plurality. Disunity is to be established not only with regard to objects of inquiry, normative methodologies, languages, styles of reasoning, repertoires of research practices, epistemic purposes, types of explanation, theoretical structures, logical forms of laws and forms of argumentation. Galison’s work on disunity concerns the heterogeneity of the subcultures of science. In so doing, he does not succumb to the incommensurability dogmatics. At stage in his conception are the local cognitive territories that lay between the basic disciplines’ categories. The “exchange” of discursive practices and the ongoing confluence of research contexts create a dynamic and mosaic unity of science despite its disciplinary-categorial disunity. This unity does not need a linguistic universalism. It is the local coordination of practices that “works out” intermediate languages serving mediating capacity. There are in the mosaic unity of science clusters of research practices that are immune to revision, and radical reconfiguration. Galison champions the “strange idea” that “heterogeneous assemblage of the subcultures of science” is precisely what structures science’s strength and coherence. In opposing the frameworks-thinking of the disunity of science, he makes it clear that the different subcultures of science do work out “local trading zones” in which they (if not cooperate at least) coordinate their research practices. Galison approaches a new continent of investigation, when instead of basing a picture of scientific knowledge on disjoint but internally coherent frameworks suggests that “we see science as a stone wall or rope, composed of disparate and heterogeneous bits, where strength follows just from the circumstance that component parts are not precisely matched, but are intercalated.” (Galison 1996, p. 15) Yet in one respect I essentially disagree with Galison’s views. What I cannot accept is his picture of a radical particularization of science. Indeed, there is a

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growing tendency of fragmentation of science which nowadays looks like a heterogeneous assemblage. The possibility of larger and more significant scientific (non-local and non-contingent) cultures rests, however, not only upon the coordination and convergence of research practices belonging to the different subcultures of science. In order to clarify this claim, one has to differentiate between the particularization of practices, language and methodological games, contexts of doing research, forms of a decontextualization of the research results, etc., and the level of the ontological assumptions of the various types of science (and scientific rationality). In my view, Galison fails to work out such a differenttiation. As a result, the disunity of science collapses (solely) to an assemblage of contingent subcultures. (By no means, this “contingent disunity”, nicely depicted by Galison, contradicts a “deeper disunity”, which he ignores.) In this regard, Philipse’s efforts (despite all aforementioned shortcomings) to excavate basic Quinean ontologies of science seem to provide more appropriate picture of the “deep structures” that disunify science. In delineating a territory between hermeneutics and epistemology, my task is now to elaborate (by avoiding frameworks-thinking) on the ontological level of the disunity of science. At stake on this level is the plurality of thematizing projects. I will approach the issue of the “ontological foundations” of the types of scientific rationality, while retaining Galison’s layer of the trading zones and partial, local, and specific linkages between disciplines and domains. The thematizing projects provide basic linguistic frameworks of objectifying thematization. (See Ginev 1984) These frameworks inform general (syntactic and semantic) “parameters” of the constitution of research objects. More specifically, the historical realization of a project (as a macro-historical process of appropriation of projected possibilities) sets up (through the actualized possibilities) a linguistic framework which is to be spelled out in syntactic, and semantic terms. A thematizing project is identified (most easily) by a formal structure of objectifying thematization. Thus, the operations of the dynamic symmetry groups define a formal scope of the constitution of research objects within the dynamico-determinist thematizing project. All mathematical formalisms which remain invariant under these groups form the “syntax” of the corresponding type of scientific research. Departing from the formal structure of objectifying thematization, one can delineate the structure of any “possible world” (here, in van Fraassen’s sense) of research objects constituted within the dynamicodeterminist project. The possible worlds (models) of causal-dynamical behavior are the “semantics” of this type. Constructive empiricism is a typical conception that restricts the image of science to syntactic and semantic parameters. As a program antithetical both to any kind of linguistic reductionism in philosophy of science and to the metaphysical notion of “laws of nature”, constructive empiricism is a reliable platform

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for carrying out analyses on the level of constructing and interpreting theoretical models in scientific research. It is the happy marriage of a nonfoundational epistemology with a semantic approach in van Fraassen’s program that prompts the study of the syntactic and semantic parameters of the types of research. Yet constructive empiricism deals – to continue my criticism from the preceding chapters – with the structure of scientific knowledge and not with the dynamics of research practices. In The Scientific Image, van Fraassen (1980, pp. 56-59) speaks of “the hermeneutic circle in the interpretation of science”. However, he restricts, in an epistemological manner, the meaning of this circle solely to the empirical and theoretical procedures of “saving the phenomena”. The hermeneutic circle (between theoretical models in which phenomena are embodied and the theories themselves) has to help one to overcome the representation of scientific knowledge by means of an observable/unobservable distinction of vocabulary. (At the same time, there is a hint in The Scientific Image at another [generalized] construal of a circle of co-interpretation between syntactic and semantic parameters. This circle, however, is not worked out in the program of constructive empiricism.) In van Fraassen’s view, the analysis of the hermeneutic circle has to replace the image of science based on the philosophy of perception. Since the relations that constitute what one admits as observable are intertheoretical relations, the hermeneutic circle is “enclosed” within theory. It is a kind of “intratheoretical circle”. Van Fraassen avoids the degradation of the latter to a vicious circle by contending that though the delineation of what is observable is within the theory, the observable is a theory-independent entity. Yet, again, van Fraassen ignores the “practical side” of scientific research. (For him, paraphrazing Clausewitz, all research practices are only the continuation of theory construction by other means.) The “observable” is not only a theory-independent entity within an intertheoretical hermeneutic circle. It is above all the outcome of the interplay of discursive-practical fore-structuring and articulation of a domain’s cognitive content which is mediated by a research everydayness. In other words, the event of “saving a phenomena” is the outcome of a hermeneutic circle between theoria and praxis. The hermeneutic circle, devised by constructive empiricism, “acknowledges” only a theoretical horizon of scientific research. Practices of measurement, observation, experimentation, instrumentation, and so on get their meaning (as a “continuation of theory construction”) within this horizon. By contrast, the talk of an interplay of changing configurations of research practices and articulation of cognitive content admits an “equality” of theoretical and practical horizons of the research process. This is why the hermeneutic circle corresponding to the interplay is at once a circle of a theory-ladenness and a praxis-ladenness. It is a circle that takes place within the medium of language games of normal scientific

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research. More specifically, the “horizonal boundaries” of this medium are defined by the ongoing fusion of theoretical and practical horizons of doing research in a scientific domain. Thus considered, it is a medium in which the “productive-reproductive reading process” (as interrelated interpretations of instruments, experimental data, equations, theoretical models, etc.) is carried out. As I pointed out in the preceding section, the fusion and the unity of a theory-ladenness and a praxis-ladenness at once informs and is informed by a thematizing project. (To reiterate, the reason I am speaking of “language games” and not of “configurations of research practices” is my intention to place more emphasis upon the “pragmatic instrumentalization” of the thematizing projects’ linguistic frameworks in the research process.) Following this claim, one approaches the pragmatic (along with the syntactic and the semantic) aspect of the objectifying thematization within a thematizing project. The aforementioned linguistic frameworks (that can be described in terms of a non-statement view) are only “partial and secondary manifestations” of the thematizing projects. They remain within the projects’ open horizons of nonactualized projected possibilities. Like Kuhn’s paradigms, the linguistic frameworks do not have an a priori status. They are only outcomes of actualized possibilities within fore-structures of stable anticipations, expectations, and orientations of scientific research. A thematizing project always transcends the linguistic framework of that type of scientific research which it “fore-structures in a macro-historical perspective”. As a “horizon that transcends”, a thematizing project is a potential infinity of language games (“making use” of tools and “following rules” inherent in practices that actualize projected possibilities). The linguistic frameworks set up general parameters but they do not impose essential restrictions on the “language games”. On the contrary, the general syntactic and semantic parameters of a type of scientific research take shape within the medium of language games. (From the perspective of hermeneutic phenomenology, the pragmatic aspect of “application” through language games is “existentially more primordial” than the syntactic structuration and semantic interpretation. Since the latter are only confined to the actualized possibilities, they are “reifications” within the medium of language games. The pragmatic aspect is ascribed neither to speech acts, nor to a “linguistic behavior” as an exteriorization of deep syntactic and semantic structures but to the phenomena of projection and appropriative interpretation.) By “language games”, more precisely, I mean the “situational instrumentalization” of a thematizing project through “making use” of all possible (analytical, experimental, conceptual, etc.) tools for carrying out research practices. Language games, initiated not only within a given project, but within projects with divergent strategies of objectifying thematization are related (on the level of using tools and following rules inherent in practices) to one another in many

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different ways. The general linguistic frameworks become articulated through the most repeatable configurations of research practices typifying the thematizing projects’ strategies of objectifying thematization. Because of “family resemblances” between language games of different types of scientific research, the medium does at once “effectuate” the syntactic and semantic parameters of objectifying thematization and “transgress” constantly the basic linguistic frameworks. As a “complicated network of similarities” (Wittgenstein) overlapping and criss-crossing the types of scientific research, the medium of language games constitutes a dynamic (and non-reductionist) unity of science. Now, this is also a pragmatic and a hermeneutic unity of science.24 The unity I am speaking about differs first and foremost from the kinds of unifying science by means of epistemological and logical analyses, which do not require taking into consideration the basic hermeneutic situations of (the types of ) scientific research. To do justice to the notion of “hermeneutic situation”, however, demands the introduction of issues related to the “protonormativity of scientific research”. These issues I will address in the next chapter. Before closing, let me recapitulate the conception developed in this section. I am employing the expression “pragmatic aspect” neither in the sense of Charles Morris’ “pragmatic semiotics” nor with a connotation borrowed from a some variety of neopragmatism. My intention is rather to stress the Gadamerian moment of application in the constitutional analysis of scientific research. In a hermeneutico-ontological perspective, application coincides with interpretation since the appropriation of projected possibilities is to be only attained through a practical involvement in-the-world. In the case of scientific research, the interpretative appropriation of possibilities proceeds as a continuous application of various “practical” and “theoretical” tools in contingent language games. It is this application that effectuates the syntactic and semantic parameters and instrumentalize a thematizing project. The research process (as changing configurations of practices and articulation of cognitive content) is “situated” within the medium through the instrumentalization of a thematizing project in the particular situations. As I stressed several times, there is in each situation a “surplus of possibilities”, which indicates that the medium (as containing not only actual but possible language games as well) always transcends what is defined by stable syntactic and semantic parameters. The relation between medium and application (appropriative interpretation), which is grounded upon a hermeneutic circle of theory-ladenness and praxis-ladenness, is a relation of “situated transcendence”. What is situated (along particular practices and cognitive constructions) within the medium is the basic linguistic frameworks. (The instrumentalization of a thematizing project within the language games goes always beyond its linguistic

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framework. The medium of language games is at once inside and outside the linguistic framework that is set up by the “syntax” and “semantics” of a type of scientific research.) The medium does not have “borders”. It is a “continuity” of overlapping language games, in which the uniting role of Galison’s “trading zones” is growing. In raising this claim, however, I am not going to content that the medium is amorphous. It is always (fore)structured by the characteristic hermeneutic situations of the thematizing projects. The diversity of basic frameworks unfolds science’s ontico-linguistic plurality, whereas the ubiquity of the medium of language games makes possible science’s “hermeneutic unity”.

Chapter Four THE NORMATIVITY OF NORMAL SCIENCE: HERMENEUTIC CONTEXTUALISM AND PROTO-NORMATIVITY

a. A Historical Note Before turning to the possibility of developing a hermeneutic alternative to normative epistemology, one more historical note. To be sure, the author of the pioneering work on the interpretative constitution of theoretical objects and “scientific facts” in the research process is Ludwik Fleck. Indeed, his position is committed to the conventionalist philosophy of Poincaré and Duhem, and not to a certain branch of philosophical hermeneutics. Nevertheless, the main subject of Fleck’s work is the hermeneutic situation of acceptance, modification, or rejection of knowledge by “thought collectives”. The horizon of persistent intellectual interaction within such a collective “fore-structures” the constitution of knowledge. Fleck calls this horizon a “thought style” and relates it to implicit values, principles, standards, and norms. It is projected upon thought collective’s practices of delineating the relevant conceptual means, and it “is characterized by common features in the problems of interest to a thought collective, by the judgement which the thought collective considers evident, and by the methods which it applies as a means of cognition.” (Fleck 1979, p. 99. See also Fleck 1983, pp. 59-83). All “objective knowledge” is constituted within the thought style of thought collectives. Because of the fore-structuring of scientific practices by a thought style, the spirit of conservatism dominates the work of every established thought collective. The prevailing thought style in such a collective serves the protonormative function of a “pre-judgment” (Fleck uses the term “pre-ideas”), which 191

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exerts compulsive force upon the “cognitive acts”. Wojciech Sady nicely makes the point that for Fleck scientific knowledge “is meaningful only in relation to a thought collective.” (Sady 2001, p. 198) In reformulating this claim in hermeneutic terminology, one is to assert that the structures of scientific knowledge are only meaningful within a collective’s style as a “horizon of structuring”. Interestingly enough, Fleck’s concept of style refers both to the horizonal aspect of the collective nature of scientific thinking and to the ready-made cognitive content. Because of this double status, style’s normativity is both a precognitive and a cognitive phenomenon. By focusing on the hidden normativity of thought styles, Fleck treats the unity of science’s cognitive and social dynamics as a specific cultural system. The most important successor to his efforts in this regard is Yehuda Elkana (1976, 1986) who raises the claim that science as a cultural system is like any other institutionalized form of collective experience characterized by interpretative attempts in search of meaning. Long before the rise of Rouse’s “politics of postmodern philosophy of science as cultural studies of science”, Elkana was seeking to transform philosophy of science into studies of those “webs of significance” (Clifford Geertz) which scientific research produces. The webs of significance are at the same time “the source” of proto-normative regulation, which constitutes science as a “cultural system”. Elkana is convinced that Geertz’s “thick description” is the only method for studying the elementary rules and norms of science’s research everydayness. Notoriously, in cultural anthropology this method proceeds by unfolding hermeneutic circles between the “emic” and the “etic” of ethnographic investigation. By the same token, Elkana is after hermeneutic circles between the context of discovery and the context of justification. Proto-normative regulation belongs neither to the former nor to the latter context. It is rather involved in the hermeneutic circles of a thick description. With this conclusion in mind, let me turn now to ideas of philosophical hermeneutics which will play a central role in elaborating on the notion of “protonormativity”.

b. Between Wittgenstein and Heidegger As has been noted in the Introduction, the view of scientific rationality that I take to be basic to strong hermeneutics of science is at odds with normative epistemology. A philosophy of science beyond the context of justification should not postulate epistemological norms and rules independent of the interrelatedness of research practices. There are two perspectives of looking at the “practical normativeness” of scientific rationality associated accordingly with late Wittgenstein and early Heidegger. To grasp how one can consider the proto-

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normative phronesis of scientific research neither as a problem of empirical sociology nor as an issue of rational reconstruction, it is important to draw some parallels between Wittgensteinian and Heideggerian approaches to the hidden normativity of everyday practices. Of course, my aim is not to try to show how these two approaches can be combined into a single story. In what follows, I will lean upon some “points of convergence” (stressed also by various schools of thought in ethnomethodology, cognitive sociology, practice theory, and post-analytical philosophy) that promote ideas in the strong hermeneutics of science. Of particular interest in this regard is Robert Brandom’s construal of a community as “discursive scorekeepers”. The aim of this construal is to present conditions that are sufficient to ensure that interpreting the community as engaged in “implicitly normative practices” is interpreting the discursive scorekeepers as “taking their speech acts as expressing the sorts of semantic contents.” (Brandom 1994, p. xviii) The aforementioned “points of convergence” between Wittgensteinian and Heideggerian approaches are at the core of Brandom’s conception of norms implicit in practices. This is why I will start my discussion by stressing the peculiarities of both approaches. In a Heideggerian perspective, the “primary source” of the normalizing regulation of everyday activity is to be related to the existentiale of falling. More specifically, this source is the “falling-away” as a concernful absorption in a “work-world” which lies closest to human beings as practitioners. In this absorption, practitioners are taking up “for-the-sake-of-whichs” of their everyday activity. Being absorbed in a work-world, they are constrained (in their possible everyday doings and sayings) by the “towards-which” of serviceability, and the “for-which” of usability of what is “ready-to-hand” (the instrumental equipment within-the-world). The implicit normative conditions of serviceability and usability (as hidden prescriptive factors) determine the situational room of maneuver in practitioners’ everyday activity. This is why they “know without reflection” the range of possibilities in the current situation. To say in a Heideggerian perspective that practitioners are familiar with the room of maneuver in their everydayness amounts to holding that everyday activity is “normalized” with respect to the serviceability and usability of elementary practices involved in this activity. The “normalization” that occurs within the workworld brings to the fore the hidden normativity of a particular everydayness. It regulates practitioners’ coping with a current situation of a normalized every dayness. In a Wittgensteinian perspective, the reflection upon the implicit normativity of language games (which is analogous to the Heideggerian work-world’s normativity) draws in the first place upon the role the pragmatic theory of meaning plays in the treatment of the forms of life. Peter Winch has a historical priority

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in arguing that the public character of following a rule invites us to forge a concept of the social based upon the rule-governed constitution of linguistic meaning. In an (already) classical study, Stanley Cavell epitomizes those aspects of Wittgenstein’s concept of following a rule which paves the way of studying social practices’ normativity without hypostatizing norms and rules as “independent entities”. He writes that “‘following a rule’ is an activity we learn against the background of, and in the course of, learning innumerable other activities – for example, obeying orders, taking and giving directions, repeating what is done or said, and so forth ... Like any of the activities to which it is related, a rule can always be misinterpreted in the course, or in the name, of ‘following’ it.” (Cavell 1962, p. 72) Cavell adduces that at the heart of Wittgenstein’s concept lies the emphasis upon the plurality of “therapeutic methods”. The life-forms’ hidden normativeness can neither be grasped by a single method of empirical investigation nor by a single transcendental method, though there is room for both empirical investigations and transcendental reflections. Both early Heidegger and late Wittgenstein are dealing with the “normativity of normalization” of practices, and not with the normativity of epistemological justification. They both address the implicit norms of the constitution (of modes of being-in-the-world and forms of life), and not the explicit norms of an a tergo estimation (and reconstruction). Roughly speaking, Brandom’s conception of norm-instituting social practices combines Heidegger’s “concernful dealing within-the-world” and Wittgenstein’s “following a rule”. More specifically, Heidegger’s view of understanding, underlying (in an “ecstatic” manner) the serviceability and usability of what is ready-to-hand within-the-world, and Wittgenstein’s descriptions of mental acts and states as referring to social practices governed by implicit rules, are united by Brandom in a kind of normative pragmatics. Leading in Brandom’s way of thinking is the thesis that discursive practices are games in which each participant exhibits various deontic statuses. The interrelatedness of practices conditions the manner in which practitioners treat themselves as having diverse commitments and entitlements. Brandom introduces in this context the notion of “deontic score” – the way in which practitioners attribute to each other and acquire deontic statuses. Of special importance for my further analysis is his conclusion that the “normative significances of performances and the deontic states of performers are instituted by the practice that consists in keeping score by adopting attitudes of attributing and acknowledging them.” (Brandom 1994, p. 166) This conclusion expresses Brandom’s formula of the “inferential articulation” of the normative significances discursive practices involve. The chief aim of his combination of normative pragmatics (dealing with “deontic scorekeeping”) and inferential semantics is to describe

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discursive practices as sufficient to institute normative significances. Though Brandom is highly successful and original in integrating the theory of language games and the theory of the “pre-predicative dealing within-the-world” in his conception of norm-instituting practices, he does not leave the instrumentalist paradigm of linguistic philosophy. More specifically, as a (post)analytical philosopher Robert Brandom remains committed to a kind of linguistic reductionism. In particular, he maintains the position that discursive practice can only be linguistic practice. Furthermore, he makes the point that only performances which function as assertions and speech acts can constitute discursive practices. According to inferential semantics and normative pragmatics, language is to be understood as a tool that practitioners use. In working out the conception of discursive practice as deontic scorekeeping, Brandom introduces a particular model of language use that reduces the performance of a discursive practice to making a claim. He goes on to assert that the “basic explanatory challenge faced by the model is to say what structure a set of social practices must exhibit in order properly to be understood as including practical attitudes of taking or treating performances as having the significance of claims or assertions.” (Brandom 1994, pp. 141-42) To the linguistic reductionism of the notion of discursive practice corresponds in Brandom’s model a pragmatist reductionism of the medium of discursive practices to “concernful intentional states” and the sentences used to express them in speech acts. In opposing both forms of reductionism, my aim is first and foremost to assign the implicit normativity of discursive practices to their own medium. Roughly speaking, I will argue that not the participants in a routine everydayness keep score on deontic statuses, but discursive practices keep score on their proto-normative interrelations. The know-how of each practice opens a horizon of possible configurations with other practices. In the perspective of hermeneutic phenomenology, it is the medium of discursive practices that “speaks” through the performers of speech acts. (“Discourse” and “understanding” are equiprimordial characteristics of “care” that are constantly fore-structuring the speech acts.) The idea of discursive-practical medium is especially useful in obviating the problems of linguistic reductionism. Jeffery Bineham (1995) works out a distinction between a dualist notion of a medium (a middle factor that stands between objects existing independently of one another) and the hermeneutic concept as an amalgam of language and tradition that encompasses forms of life. In the former case (elaborated within the instrumentalist paradigm of linguistic philosophy) the discursive medium is a tool that practitioners use, while in the latter it is the medium that “normalizes” (and thereby shapes and reshapes) all doings and sayings within it. Though I would not agree with Bineham’s allusion that a medium (conceived in nondualist terms) is a “pervasive and enveloping substance”, it is my contention

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that the ontological construal of discourse is the best way to address the implicit normativity of discursive practices. In this context, the term medium does connote the ontological dimension of discourse. The medium is an encompassing environment within which a community’s everydayness takes place. This medium ensures a transparent transmission of a community’s “prejudices”. In serving this function, it is (what in philosophical hermeneutics is called) “the anonymous authority of tradition”. It is precisely this authority that “normalizes” the research everydayness of a scientific community. (According to a claim that is in need of argumentation, explicit methodologies of scientific research receive their legitimacy from this authority.) The instrumentalist paradigm of linguistic philosophy conceives of discursive practices in a reductionist manner because it conceives of them in terms of subject-object relations. By contrast, an ontological construal of the medium (i.e., its construal as ontologically prior to the particular practices) would conceive not only of discursive practices but also of their intrinsic regulation in terms of immanence-transcendence relations. Though ontologically prior to the particular discursive practices, the hermeneutic medium does not exist apart from them. The hermeneutic medium is transcendent in so far as it “normalizes” and regularizes situationally what is immanent to it. Particular discursive practices and hermeneutic medium are involved in normalizing relations of “immanent transcendence”. These relations are predicated on a hermeneutic circularity. The implicit normativity of a community’s everydayness resides in this circularity. By implication, it is not (pace Davidson and Brandom) the intentionality involving both mental states and linguistic performances that grounds the norm-instituting practices. In reaching this conclusion, I should like to return for a moment to Brandom’s views. Following Davidson’s idea that neither language nor thinking has conceptual priority, Brandom works out a “relational linguistic theory of intentionality”. On its main postulate, “the contents of the intentional states attributed to a community of language users can be understood as conferred on their states, attitudes, and performances entirely by the practices of those community members.” (Brandom 1994, p. 152) The ontological construal of the hermeneutic medium opposes Brandom’s postulate by raising the argument that the relational unity of intentional states and linguistic performances is fore-structured by the hermeneutic medium of discursive practices. As a consequence, the source of implicit normativity lies in this fore-structuring. To avoid the reification of the hermeneutic medium (as an “enveloping substance”), and to see the connection between fore-structuring and implicit normativity requires taking again into account the triad of discursive-practical fore-structure, everydayness, and cognitive content of scientific research. The role being played by this medium is that of the proto-normative constitution of

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the research process’ directedness. In other words, the hermeneutic medium “situates” (in a proto-normative manner) the everyday doing of research within the transcendence of an open horizon of projected possibilities. The same protonormative role is played with respect to the formation of a domain’s cognitive structure. The directedness (and more generally, the perspective) of the research process is constituted in each particular configuration of practices, which is distinguished by characteristic fore-sight, fore-having, and fore-conception. The “appropriative interpretation” of the projected horizon realizes out possibilities as a cognitive content of the research process. Within the triad of discursivepractical fore-structure, everydayness, and cognitive content, proto-normativity is to be ascribed to the situational fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception, on the one hand, and to the nexus of understanding and appropriative interpretation whose interplay constitutes the cognitive content. Under this analysis, the hermeneutic medium is not an inert space embracing the research process’ dynamics. The fact that it is the unity of hermeneutic forestructure, research everydayness, and cognitive content means that it is in a constant status nascendi. The medium shapes and reshapes itself in accordance with the changing configurations of discursive practices. Let me recapitulate. First, the problem about the coupling of praxis and discourse in normal scientific everydayness is at the same time the problem of how “hidden prescriptive factors” (instituted by everyday activities) regularize the interrelatedness of research practices. I call them “hidden” or “latent” because the practitioners do not reflect upon them when doing normal scientific research. In other words, they remain unnoticed in the research everydayness. Second, a specific dimension of normal science is the circular relationship between particular situations and the hidden prescriptive factors ascribed now to the very projection of a horizon (and respectively to the nexus of understanding and appropriative interpretation) of a scientific community’s experience in a domain of normal research. (The factors specify particular configurations of practices, while performing practices activates particular networks of rules, instructions, and patterns in a scientific community’s research everydayness.) Third, the hidden prescriptions (in contrast to the norms, rules, and principles being imposed by an “external authority”) are engendered by that “pressing into possibilities” which accompanies practical understanding and interpretation in each particular situation. In this case, the hidden prescriptions define the conditions of the “existential choice” of given possibilities. Finally, the space of projected possibilities constrains in a non-essentialist way the articulation of cognitive content in a given situation. In what follows I will proceed in two steps. First, by criticizing Laudan’s normative naturalism I will address the hermeneutic dimension of those (implicit) methodological prescriptions which “regularize” and “normalize” scientific

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research.1 This step does not require leaving the space of epistemological reflection. It can be undertaken within the framework of a holistic epistemology (or, the framework of what Bohman calls “weak holism”). The view of “hermeneutic contextualism” I am going to propose (in connection with the critique of normative naturalism) brings to the fore the immanent hermeneutics of normative methodology. The second step is in line with Bohman’s “strong holism”. Its purpose is to develop a conception of the proto-normativity embedded in science’s routine research practices. Speaking in a lapidary manner, protonormativity is what “normalizes” normal scientific research. This conception goes beyond the scope of epistemology. In elaborating on it, one can specify the notion of the hermeneutic medium in two respects: (a) the medium as a “regime” of practices that regulate themselves through their interrelatedness; and (b) the medium in which contextual methodological norms and rules become explicit through the situational instrumentalization of a thematizing project. Situated within the totality of community’s research everydayness, the hidden prescriptive factors precede (and direct) the formation of scientific community’s normative mentality. What unites both plans of specifying the notion is the construal of protonormativity as an intrinsic characteristic of the part-whole interplay of the horizon of practical understanding and the particular configurations of practices in scientific research.

c. The First Step: Normal Science’s Normativity in Terms of Holistic Epistemology This step can be described as an attempt to overcome the normativism-naturalism dilemma (in epistemology and philosophy of science) without succumbing to Laudan’s (1987, 1990a, 1990b) normative naturalism. My aim is to show that by stressing the importance of a methodological rule, one is referring to a network of prescriptive factors. Between the particular rule, standard, criterion, principle or norm, and the contextual network there is a kind of hermeneutic circularity that cannot be replaced by a scheme of hierarchical justification or by a causal relation expressing a “natural kind”. This hermeneutic circularity, however, takes place in the structure and dynamics of scientific knowledge. Though oriented towards “normalization” of activities and practices, the circularity being discussed concerns the intrinsic normativeness of knowledge, and it is an entirely cognitive phenomenon that has to be studied in an epistemological framework. The first step I am going to discuss refers to the “hermeneutic normativeness” that is inherent in holistic epistemology.

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The most significant feature of normative naturalism is its refraining (in contrast to all other versions of naturalized philosophy of science) from making use of the replacement thesis. Laudan’s central claim is that all methodological rules are (to be formulated as) hypothetical imperatives asserting empirical links between following rules and realizing the associated cognitive aims. He rejects the interpretation of these rules as categorical imperatives. The rules must be construed in a manner that allows reference to the values which bring the rules into existence. The formulation by means of hypothetical imperatives has to include an antecedent-statement, which is the elliptical expression of the mandated action. Suppose we have a rule that is formulated by means of the following categorical imperative: (R0) “Do not accept a mathematical formalism which by imposing restrictions on the applicability of classical logic requires a change of the empirical content of the theory’s concepts.” With respect to the present debates in the philosophy of physics this is rather a conservative rule. It is, at least, not in harmony with the prevailing view that mathematical formalisms based upon non-classical logics extend a physical theory’s ontology. In this view, the exclusion of a given law (a formally true proposition like tertium non datur) of classical logic weakens the restrictions on the existence of types of research objects. (See, e.g., Mittelstaedt 1984) Thus, the ontology (here in the sense of Gegenstandsbereich) of a theory, whose formalism is based on quantum logic, permits the existence of objects, which the ontological assumptions of the classical physical theories prohibit. By the same to ken, an (imaginary) theory with a “quantum-intuitionistic syntax” (formalism based on a kind of intuitionistic quantum logic) does have a “broader ontology” than a theory based on a quantum logic. Though I am not going to suggest special arguments, I admit that the rule (R0) opposes the aforementioned correlation between basic (non-classical) logic and a physical theory’s ontology. The reformulation of (R0) in the form of a hypothetical imperative says: (HIR0) “If one wants to develop a theory which is resistant to the changes of the empirical content of its basic concepts, then one ought to avoid mathematical formalism that imposes restrictions on the applicability of classical logic.” Laudan holds that in recasting rules and norms as hypothetical imperatives one is “naturalizing” the methodological enterprise because in so doing the prescriptions are interpreted as a part of empirical knowledge. They can be tested in a way similar to the way statements expressing statistical laws can be tested. It seems that by means of these imperatives the stubborn normative-empirical dichotomy is surmounted. The normative dimension of the methodological rules

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“acquires” an empirical status. By implication, one need not reduce the rules and norms to empirical data obtained by natural-scientific research. Against Laudan’s conception John Worrall (1988) levels the accusation that the way of naturalizing methodology by means of hypothetical imperatives fails to retain the traditional normative force of methodological criteria unless supplemented by some non-naturalist (“axiological”) account of what the acceptable aims for science are. On this accusation, Laudan’s normative naturalism is incomplete without employing traditional epistemological (i.e., non-naturalist) considerations. In order to complete the program of normative naturalism (by specifying which of the cognitive values are really values of science) one has to acknowledge restrictions on the class of permissible cognitive values that do make sense only in an “axiological” framework. While accepting such “axiological arguments” against normative naturalism, I reject any rehabilitation of methodological or epistemic apriorism (even a minimal apriorism as it is defended from essentially different positions by John Worrall, Karl-Otto Apel, or Roderick Chisholm). To the traditional a priori justification of methodological rules and norms I oppose the view of “hermeneutic contextualism”. This view is incompatible with any kind of representational epistemology, but it does not imply a transition to a strong (ontological) hermeneutics of science. Hermeneutic contextualism might be “inscribed” in the framework of a holistic epistemology. My aim, however, is to show that the very inscription poses challenges to the epistemologically-centered philosophizing, which demand a move towards an ontological hermeneutics of scientific research. The critique of normative naturalism concerning the way of constituting methodological rules provides a welcome opportunity for clarifying further the complementarity between the hermeneutic approach, which is peculiar to practice theory, and the non-foundational approach to science’s cognitive structures. A significant shortcoming of normative naturalism is its disregard for the holistic nature of scientific methodology. According to the view I will put forward, the contextual networks of methodological standards, rules and norms preclude the possibility of formulating hypothetical imperatives. At the same time, in putting the contextual networks first, one dispenses with the traditional paradigm of normative reconstruction (and justification) of scientific knowledge. In a contextualist perspective, at issue is the constitution of methodological normativeness within the process of scientific research. To stress once again the main point of hermeneutic contextualism: No philosophically significant methodological rules can be specified in the form of isolated hypothetical imperatives. I would like to clarify this claim by having recourse to a methodological rule that plays an important role in quantum mechanics. The rule states:

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(R1) “In constructing a physical theory look for a mathematical formalism with a surplus structure, for only such a formalism can provide the means most suitable for modifying or adjusting the theory.” This rule is tacitly applied by von Neumann in his “impossibility proof”. In order to show that the statistical ensemble realizes its potentialities, one needs a formalism with a surplus structure regarding the analysis of a state as subensembles without dispersion. It is this structure (related to features of Hilbert space) that “demonstrates” why the states do not pre-exist and are potential states. In a similar vein, Erhard Scheibe (1997) applies (R1) when analyzing those possibilities for a choice of time and length units within special theory of relativity, which are encoded in Minkowski geometry. Now, which is the cognitive value that should be associated with (R1) in order to formulate a hypothetical imperative? Obviously, it must be expressed by the statement, (S1) “The best physical theories are those that can be modified and adjusted.” Yet, if one formulates a hypothetical imperative whose antecedent is (S1), one would not specify (R1) but would rather trivialize it. A genuine specification of (R1) would rather require a step-by-step relativization of it to a contextual network of cognitive values, goals, standards, criteria and other rules. To begin with, in a first step one should ask about the rationale for supporting the “surplus structure”, which does not have a physical interpretation. One can realize that this structure makes the theory more “flexible” in explaining new phenomena without introducing ad hoc hypotheses. The analytical S-matrix theory in elementary particle physics is an appropriate example in this respect. Thus, in a first move (R1) is to be specified in connection with another methodological rule which says, (R2) “Prefer physical theories that while avoiding ad hoc hypotheses explain new phenomena through internal mathematical transformations.” By following this line of reasoning one will discover that (R2) is interconnected with the metatheoretical standard (M1) for a non-direct axiomatization of physical concepts, which tolerates all methodological rules governing the procedures of adaptation of these concepts to the respective class of mathematical structures. In this second move of specifying (R1) one realizes that the interconnection between (R2) and (M1) is, for its part, related to a certain criterion for completeness of empirical theory (C1). Undoubtedly, it is a criterion which opposes the criterion of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen argument that every element of physical theory must have a counterpart in physical reality. A positive formu-

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lation of (C1) has to be provided in terms of the specific mathematical apparatus of the theory. Thus, the completeness of quantum mechanics is provided by the algorithm that involves the representation of the statistical states of the theory by a certain class of operators in Hilbert space. A tacit assumption of formulating (C1) in this way is that the working logic of quantum mechanics is a non-Boolean logic. Obviously, it is incompatible with (R0) and (HIR0). This assumption is intimately associated with the belief that quantum mechanics is irreducibly statistical theory. Both the assumption and the belief are tied up to a cognitive value that has to be expressed by the following statement: (S2) “The best physical theories are those whose mathematical formalisms and underlying logical structures defy model-representations in 3-dimensional space.” In opposing representational realism, this cognitive value tolerates the “mathematical freedom” in constructing physical theories. Permissible is even a drastic disagreement between mathematical formalism and the most familiar representations. Nevertheless, mathematical freedom is constrained through the requirement that even the intermediary magnitudes appearing in the formalism must be observable. An illustration in this regard is Heisenberg’s matrix method, where the defence of (S2) is associated with the epistemological principle of avoiding equations that contain unobservable magnitudes. Now, the advocacy of (C1) (plus the related assumption and belief) and (S2) can be carried out in several (partially conflicting, partially complementary) ways. Let me mention two of them. First, it might be entangled in the whole framework of a certain Kantian epistemic stance characterized by the claim that the logical structure of the mathematical apparatus governs the process of getting empirical knowledge. While changing (in conjunction with the principle of complementarity) the basic logic (into a kind of “quantum logic”) of theorizing, this stance does not take leave of the classical interpretation of notions like position and momentum. In a Kantian manner, theorizing is seen as a human act carried out from a specific point of view, but based upon invariant categories. The second way makes crucial the redefinition of such notions in accordance with an essentially new situation of the research process. (Think, for instance, of Heisenberg’s redefinition of “position” and “momentum” in the framework of matrix mechanics, based upon his identification of a coordinate with an array which is not a number but an infinite Hermetian matrix.) In contrast to the former way of advocating (C1), the second one gives priority to the research situation over the formal coherence of theorizing.

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Furthermore, the triangle of (R2), (M1), and (C1) is dependent on a whole cognitive axiology (system of values) and not on a particular cognitive aim (say a kind instrumentalist interpretation of quantum theory). To reveal this dependence is the next move in specifying (R1). On this level of articulating the implicit normative network, one faces problems like how to relate physicists’ “metaphysical beliefs” to the demands of a certain (orthodox or realist) interpretation of quantum theory. The task to be accomplished on this level is to reveal, say, why and how a particular belief demands demonstration or refutation of the existence of hidden variables, or why the choice of a given mathematical formalism is informed by a given world-view. Against the background of the interconnections being indicated, the normative-naturalist tenet that each methodological rule ought to be formulated as a hypothetical imperative proves to be an extreme (and unacceptable) simplification of the actual complexity of interconnected prescriptions in the research process. Behind normative naturalism lies the wrong idea (which it shares with traditional normative epistemology) that there is an one-to-one correspondence between the set of methodological rules and the set of cognitive values. The normativity that can be expessed by means of such explicit correspondences is only the top of the iceberg of the normative network operating in the production of scientific knowledge. Laudan is right in stressing that the norms and rules do not emerge in a vacuum but are always specified with respect to basic aims and goals of the research process. Yet he fails to suggest how to fill this vacuum. Every methodological prescription has contextual presuppositions which remain implicit when the mandated action is effectuated. The demand to formulate particular empirical claims about the links between rules and values means “smashing to pieces” the contextual network of methodological and axiological ingredients. To make the presuppositions explicit while preserving the picture of a “holistic methodological regulation” of scientific inquiry is the task of hermeneutic contextualsm. In applying a particular rule or norm in a relevant context, one prompts or “activates” the interconnections in the network of prescriptive factors. The very application singles out a hermeneutic circle between the rule and the network’s contextual configuration. The hermeneutic circle “exists” only through the application of a rule or norm in a given context of doing research. The application promotes the articulation of hermeneutic circles within the intrinsic methodological normativeness of scientific knowledge. By reaching this conclusion, however, one moves beyond the scope of epistemological reasoning. By integrating the “contextual application of rules and norms” in the reflection upon the “normativity of normal science”, one goes on to take into consideration the hermeneutic fore-structure of scientific research.

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d. The Second Step: Towards a Hermeneutic Theory of Proto-Normativity A community’s research everydayness is always normatively organized, but it is never governed by a “codex of epistemological norms and rules”. What “normalizes” this everydayness (in particular, by promoting and constraining novelties in it) is the whole of equipment and practices in which the research process is situated. Being in a research situation means that the “source of normalization” is not standing outside the situation and hence is not an imposed codex of justification. It is the situated transcendence of scientific research that normalizes its everydayness. In this concluding section, I wish to examine the claim that the hidden normativity of normal scientific practices is to be attributed to the hermeneutic fore-structure (in its relations to the everydayness and the cognitive content) of the research process. Behind my considerations lies the idea that the constitution of meaning through interpretative appropriation of projected possibilities serves the function of “normalizing”. Thus, it is a function of the very (modes of ) being-in-the-world and not of a “normative mentality”. This gives us a preliminary indication that the “source of normalization” is an issue of hermeneutic ontology and not of epistemological justification. The constitution of meaning “normalizes” that kind of everydayness in which it takes place. The constitutional analysis suggested by hermeneutic phenomenology unfolds an intrinsic normativity of the routine involvement within the “thrown project” of the modes of being-in-the-world. This normativity, which is not amenable to a rational reconstruction and a codification in algorithms and regulations, is generated by the projection that always presses forward into possibilities. What I have in mind is also the opportunistic normativity of a “concernful deliberation and dealing within-the-world”; a normativity that “defines” the range of possibilities available in each particular situation of the research process. Proto-normativity is a term that I should like to reserve for the prescriptive elements of the everyday know-how of a community’s normal scientific research. This know-how is not expressible by procedural rules. Proto-normativity comes to the surface as anticipations, expectations, inclinations, preferences, and orientations of the participants in the research process. Yet what comes to the surface is not to be ascribed to (pace Brandom) participants’ normative-methodological attitudes, but rather to the dynamic interrelatedness of research practices. Proto-normativity is associated with the pre-thematic (and non-representational) knowing what to do in the particular situations of that process. The key to a design of doing research in a certain situation lies in the “normalizing understanding” of the conceptual, mathematical, and experimental tools that are

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ready-to-hand. Proto-normativity is to be ascribed to the fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception of scientific research’s discursive-practical fore-structuring. Furthermore, it is the intrinsic normativity of the “reading process” I discussed in the preceding chapter. In this process, a thematizing project becomes situationally instrumentalized as a “proliferation” of language games. The latter are emerging within the thematizing project’s linguistic framework. Nevertheless, they constantly “transgress” (and partially deconstruct) the framework. To repeat a statement from the preceding chapter: The medium of language games, within which the appropriative interpretation (the “reading process”) proceeds as “application” of conceptual, analytical, experimental and other tools, creates science’s hermeneutic unity despite the ontological plurality of thematizing projects. It is this “interpretation-application” (or, the pragmatic side of appropriative interpretation), to which proto-normativity has to be attributed as well. Normal scientific proto-normativity cannot be “extracted” from the changing configurations of discursive practices. “Proto” does not simply mean a nonarticulated normativity that precedes the articulation of methodological norms, standards, and criteria. By the same token, proto-normativity does not denote inexact and vague formulations of the explicit normative-methodological and normative-epistemological regulatives and correctives of scientific research. To be sure, there are such formulations that sooner or later (by means of logical analysis and rational reconstruction of scientific language) undergo transformations into explicit prescriptions which can be cast in terms of categorical imperatives (the case of traditional normative epistemology) or hypothetical imperatives (the case of Laudan’s normative naturalism). The essential difference between proto-normativity and methodological normativity of the (theories of) “rational scientific behavior” does not concern the linguistic formulations. The difference is to be rather derived from the basic difference between constitution (as a central issue of hermeneutic phenomenology) and normative reconstruction (as a central issue of prescriptive epistemology). In contrast to the basic epistemological norms (which are presumably invariant and decontextualized), proto-normativity does not exist outside the changing configurations of interrelated practices. Now, in this preliminary vision of proto-normativity one has to differentiate between two basic aspects that should be treated separately – one related to the research everydayness, and another to the characteristic hermeneutic situations and thematizing projects. (Roughly speaking, the differentiation between both aspects corresponds to the distinction between micro- and macro-hermeneutics of science.) When the loose talk of hidden (implicit, latent) normativity is replaced by talk about proto-normativity that is inherent in the hermeneutic circularity of discursive-practical fore-structuring, everyday routine, and cognitive

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content of the research process, the essential topics that have to be addressed are the “regime” of arranging, carrying out, and accomplishing practices, the “predispositions” attached to the transsubjective horizon of doing research, and the articulation of explicit methodological norms and rules. The “source” of protonormativity is the very interrelatedness of routine research practices, whereby the anticipation of possible configurations of practices (fore-having), the expectation of cognitive results (fore-sight), and the orientation towards a possible outcome of a given situation (fore-conception) “normalize” and regulate “from within” the research process. To say that in each situation of normal scientific research there are tools appropriate for the actual purposes means in the first place that these tools do not create breakdowns in the interrelatedness of practices. The appearance of anomalies, disturbances, and breakdowns in the research everydayness poses questions that require the practitioners to make explicit certain implicit normative conditions residing in the interrelatedness of practices. It is my contention that the transformation of proto-normativity into explicit normativity runs in accordance with a basic hermeneutic situation of scientific research. (“In ac cordance with” does not mean, however, that it is “determined by” the situation.)This formulation (expressing the first aspect of proto-normativity) implies that within each situationally arranged configuration the research practices “normalize” (promote and constrain) each other. The mutual normalization of practices takes on the form of a normal scientific regime of ordering them in the research everydayness. Proto-normativity in this case is the unarticulated web of prescriptions underlying such a regime. It is not a regime planned in advance. Once a given practice is well learned, its carrying out is fitted into a configuration. Being involved in such a configuration, the practice is accomplished with little planning how to avoid the disturbances in the research everydayness. It is the mutual normalization of research practices that allows the practitioners to avoid disturbances and breakdowns. Each normal scientific practice defines implicit normative conditions of appropriateness and is “normalized” by the other practices. The research practices keep score of “normative places” within their interrelatedness. A particular practice is appropriate if it does not violate the “scorekeeping” in the research process, or, in another formulation, if it does not cause “breakdowns” in the situational configuration. Thus, the very involvement in a relevant interrelatedness of practices entails a proto-normative regulation. Proto-normativity can be defined by the situational compatibility of research practices in a “referential whole”. The latter is the background upon which practices can have a point. The first aspect of treating the notion of protonormativity concerns the know-how of answering questions of why and when to execute or to avoid a certain practice, or, under which conditions a procedure of

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scientific research may commence, should end, or has to be repeated. Protonormativity is attached to the function of “in-order-to” in carrying out a practice in a referential whole. Each practice must fit into such a whole. In another formulation, each particular practice of scientific research does make sense only within a self-regulating and self-normalizing interrelatedness of practices. The question of when an experiment is to be repeated, and the question of how the experiments end are cases in point. Several studies reveal the regulative and normalizing functions of a referential whole of practices concerning the design of various kinds of scientific experimentation. Thus, A. Franklin and C. Howson (1984) are successful in demonstrating that a verifying experiment which is identical to the original one cannot support it. Yet very often what makes a new experiment truly non-identical is not the procedure of experimentation and the experimental design but the new configurations of practices in which it takes place. This is why H. Collins (1984), in stressing the inapplicability of Franklin and Howson’s argument, puts more emphasis on the question of when scientists do feel the need to vary their experiments deliberately. The need depends on the whole regime of research practices. In controversial domains where discrepancies between lines of research come into play variation in experimental design is not highly valued.2 It is the regime of practices that suggests the know-how of normal scientific research. The participants of microbiological research “know how” to cope with different situations in the laboratory. They know how to design experiments and how to vary the conditions (e.g., acidity, nutrients, age of culture, and aeration) of experimentation. Furthermore, they know what is appropriate to do in each situation without distancing themselves from their “absorption” in what they are doing. The know-how is a pre-predicative knowledge since it is assigned not to an epistemic attitude, but to the very “concernful” involvement in the regime of practices. In this regard, the know-how is generated directly by the interrelated practices. It is the regime of practices that “decides” what kind of experiments are necessary in order to explore, say, the systems of lactose fermentation through enzyme chemistry. It is again this regime that “selects” relevant experiments as a systematic working out of theoretical ideas regarding the patterns of enzyme adaptation. Only under special conditions, which are “in principle” indicated by the respective characteristic hermeneutic situation, can the participants in normal microbiological re search cease to be “absorbed” in the regime of practices, and come to take a reflective stance towards their skillful coping with the laboratory equipment. Under such conditions, microbiologists need not only “unreflective understanding” (“know-how” for their skillful coping with the situations of normal scientific research), but a “self-reflective knowledge” about the meaning of their routine activities. Such knowledge can be obtained in different theoretical frame-

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works – technology of the experimental instruments, molecular biology, biochemistry, or even philosophy of biology. The role of the self-reflective stance is to give back the research community’s capability of sustaining the integrity of practices as a “situationally changing referential whole”. The proto-normativity of normal scientific research is intimately related to what I earlier called a “transsubjectivity”. Since the room for maneuver in each situation constrains the possibilities of doing research, normal science looks purposeful, i.e., it looks like an ongoing activity guided by explicit methodological norms and criteria for achieving certain goals. In fact, the projection of a horizon is not a conscious or unconscious aiming at goals. Normal scientific research looks like a purposeful activity since it is involved in the “world” as the unity of the “in-order-to”, “towards-which”, the “towardsthis”, and the “for-the-sake-of”. The transcendence of a “world” (of normal scientific research) makes the discursive-practical everydayness within-theworld to look like a purposeful activity. Because of this transcendence, the hidden prescriptive factors are trans-subjective and every member of a particular scientific community adheres to these factors when participating in a community’s normal scientific research. Per definitionem, transsubjectivity is the routine regime of everyday practices as it is driven by the hidden normativity of practices’ interrelatedness and not by personal or collective motivation and values. Transsubjectivity, in this regard, is the purposiveness of a routine everydayness without the practitioners having in mind a purpose. Transsubjectivity and hidden prescriptive factors of research everydayness are “existentially equiprimordial”. Since these factors are generated from the mode of discursive-practical being-in-the-world (and are not prescribed from an epistemological position external to the research process), the notion of transsubjectivity does not imply a kind of holist essentialism. It is the “implicit transsubjective normativity” that situates the doings of a scientific community within the totality of the research everydayness. At this point, I have to mention again the issue of “practical logic”. One may attribute a special kind of such logic to the regime of practices, which contains something like “proto-normative operators”. (Heidegger’s “in-orderto”, “towards-which”, the “towards-this”, and the “for-the-sake-of” are examples of such operators.) Its thematic focus would be concentrated upon how in their mutual calibration practices produce patterns of regularities. These are also patterns of stable configurations. Each pattern serves a proto-normative function as it lays down limits to possible interrelations of practices. Yet, in contrast to Bourdieu’s (1990, pp. 49-50; 1993, pp. 232-234) “dispositions” and “bodily schemes”, the patterns I have in mind are not features of the “homology of the habitus” (Bourdieu’s “source” of proto-normativity) of actors who share certain practice-established objective conditions. At the

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bottom of Bourdieu’s “practical logic” lies the assumption that practices perpetuate the objective conditions involved. The bodily schemes are objective entities of the same kind as the objective conditions, under which the selection of action takes place. (This is why he holds a sort of “anti-essentialist externalism” in treating the fields of cultural [including scientific] work: without relativizing and contextualizing the “internal content” of the cultural products as networks of relationships of texts, one would succumb to a form of essentialism. Internal content in this reading proves to be not the “ texts in themselves” but the intertextuality. In his opinion, the case of internalist essentialism is epitomized by Foucault’s account of the episteme.) In my view, the patterns of regularities are not structural units perpetuated through a long-standing performance of practices. The patterns are rather “moments of projection”, associated accordingly with fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. A further elaboration on this statement, which I am not going to undertake on this occasion, would require spelling out the links between the “proto-normarive operators” and anticipation, expectation and orientation as characteristics of the hermeneutic fore-structure. Notoriously, Bourdieu’s “objective conditions” of generation and selection of actions are highlighted in terms of statistical regularities. They are something that can be objectively thematized. The construal of protonormativity as “conditions of fore-structuring” is more akin to what authors like Georg Misch and Hans Lipps call a “hermeneutic logic”. A special issue of the latter involves the ways of making (partially) proto-normativity explicit. In the course of the research process, these ways begin to take shape. In other words, there is a tendency of emerging networks of (explicit) methodological and epistemological norms, standards, and criteria, with which I dealt (under the heading “hermeneutic contextualism within holist epistemology”) in the previous section. The specification of explicit normative factors is due to the actualization of the projected possibilities within the research everydayness. It would be wrong to assume that there is an unidirectional transformation of proto-normativity into explicit methodology. Indeed, the more advanced the research process, the more proto-normativity turns into normative methodology. Yet the increase of the research everydayness’ complexity – through emerging of new configurations of discursive practices – leads to “absorption” of explicit normative structures of doing research in the discursive-practical fore-structure. By implication, the reverse process – the transformation of explicit normativity into proto-normativity – also takes constantly place in the research everydayness. To be sure, a characteristic hermeneutic situation does not determine the transformation of the hidden prescriptive operators in particular situations of scientific research. Nonetheless, it informs the possible ways of making proto-

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normativity explicit. Thus, each one of the main types of scientific research is distinguished by a register of such ways. The more the weight of self-reflectivity grows, the more one is in need of explicit norms, rules and standards. This is why in the probabilist-indeterminist, teleonomic, evolutionarymorphogenetic and situational-constructivist types of scientific research the demand of explicit normativity is much more obvious than in the dynamicclassical or classical-probabilist types of research. More specifically, in the former types of research, there are situations in which the relationships between objectifying reflection and interpretative self-reflection demand a special regulation. Accordingly, one might hold that there are “special normativemethodological réglements”concerning the removal of discrepancies between objectifying reflection and interpretative self-reflection. Furthermore, these are reglements that establish the “normal state” of complementarity between reflection and self-reflection – a state that is in abstracto implied by a characteristic hermeneutic situation (of a given type of research). By implication, making proto-normativity explicit in a form of special normative-methodological reglements (re)actualizes (for the practitioners of normal scientific research) a characteristic hermeneutic situation. The explicit normativity of such a reglement prescribes how to cope with particular problems in particular situations. For instance, the rise of continental drift (in the form of plate tectonics whose research process is basically guided by the standards of the evolutionary-morphogenetic type) provoked a methodological regulation concerning the acceptance of “adequate mechanism” for explanation in historical geology. Why certain mechanism is to be counted as suitable or adequate is a question that can be answered by the practitioners’ interpretative self-reflection upon those situations in which dissonances (say, between the assumption of moving continents and observations of a static ocean floor) come to the fore. In this case, the normative criterion for adequacy (along with the respective network of other norms and rules) is made explicit through a self-reflection upon the practices of constructing geological theories in the 1960s and 1970s. By the same token, the problematic meaning of the notion of “whole ecosystems” provoked in ecosystems ecology a methodological regulation concerning the research situations in which one faces the need to treat the independence of the effects which a mutation may have on successive generations from the very mutation. Through such a regulation, biologists are able to construct empirically verifiable and falsifiable theoretical models of the goal-directed features of whole ecosystems without succumbing to a sort of metaphysical teleology. Now, the methodological reglements in question, whose discussion is closely related to the issues of the “hermeneutic contextualism”, have nothing to do with the (external) methodological codes of rational reconstruction. Though consisting in explicit norms

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and rules, the former are “practical tools” and stand in no need of justification. In this regard, they are examples of Wittgenstein’s “following a rule” that does not involve a process of justifying the rule. In other words, the situational transformation of proto-normativity into “contingent” methodological reglements does not require introducing other (external) rules to tell how the reglements are functioning. So much on the construal of protonormativity with respect to the mutual normalization of research practices. Let me move now to the second aspect of the notion of proto-normativity. Vis-à-vis the complexity of this aspect, I will restrict my analysis to a few general remarks. In treating proto-normativity in a macro-historical perspective, one might cast this notion as a component of a cluster of (macrohermeneutic) concepts, which were at issue in the preceding chapter. To begin with, each type of scientific research is distinguished by its own objectifying thematization (and interpretative self-reflection). In each type, more specifically, the experimentation serves functions of mediating between objectification and self-reflection upon agents’ involvement in the research process; mathematical formalisms are introduced at particular stages of the research process; one grants observational procedures a characteristic degree of autonomy; ad hoc revisions of dynamical equations are admissible under specific conditions; theorists and experimentalists coordinate in particular ways their calculational techniques; data-models and theoretical models are mutually adjusted in typical manners; the segmentation of a complex of measurements proceeds only in particular configurations of practices; hypotheses are tested only when characteristic discrepancies between practices arise, etc. A persisting complementarity between objectifying reflection and interpretative selfreflection underlies normal scientific regimes of research practices. Accordingly, proto-normativity does heavily hinge on the characteristic hermeneutic situation (defined by this complementarity) of a type of scientific research. To reiterate a claim I raised earlier, a hermeneutic situation (corresponding to a thematizing project) assigns a “specificity of reading” (experimental results, measurements, theoretical models, equations, reactualized hypotheses, and so on) to the particular situations of the research process. The very “balance” between objectifying reflection and interpretative self-reflection (as this balance is determined by a characteristic hermeneutic situation) plays a normative role in the constitution of cognitive content. This is a normativity that cannot be subjected to a “transcendental justification”. It shapes the way of appropriating those possibilities, into which the research process is pressed forward by a thematizing project. The foregoing considerations touch upon the final topic I should like to discuss in this study. Seen in a macro-hermeneutic perspective, protonormativity is at once a function and a milieu of the cognitive interests guid-

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ing the production of knowledge in the types of scientific research. From this perspective, such an interest is coextensive with (the realization of ) a thematizing project. More specifically, a basic cognitive interest is born in a characteristic hermeneutic situation. (Hence, the formation and the pursuit of such an interest is coextensive with what I called in the preceding chapter a “macro-historical productive-reproductive reading process”.) By implication, the formation of a basic cognitive interest in developing a type of scientific research is informed by a macro-historical (trans-situational) projection of possibilities as well as by a normal scientific actualization of the latter within research domains. Formulated in terms of hermeneutic phenomenology, a basic cognitive interest is an orientation of actualizing projected possibilities of objectifying thematization. The very orientation depends on how a characteristic hermeneutic situation specifies objectifying thematization. A basic cognitive interest keeps in itself the characteristic hermeneutic situation in which it is formed. Thus, an interest in producing scientific knowledge of a given type is at once born out of and expressing a characteristic hermeneutic situation (and a macro-historical hermeneutic fore-structure). At the same time, it “regulates” the operationalization of theoretical objects (as research objects) and the instrumentalization of a thematizing project within normal research practices. In serving these functions, a basic cognitive interest activates a “macro-historical normativity” inherent in the complementarity between interpretative self-reflection and objectifying reflection, i.e., inherent in the characteristic hermeneutic situation of a thematizing project. At this point, it seems to me reasonable to take up again a Kuhnian issue. Let me remind that the author of The Essential Tension makes it clear that “abnormal situations” (or anomalies) in routine scientific practices are displayed when normal research projects go consistently astray and when no usual techniques can restore them. According to Kuhn, the accumulation of anomalies in a regime of normal scientific research presents hidden complexities in dealing with a problem. This accumulation requires putting the problem aside in favor of another. “Abnormal situations” disturb the normal scientific reading process. They challenge the projected horizon of possibilities that delineates a particular scientific domain. Thereby, they challenge particular regimes of normal scientific practices which are strongly sustained by particular beliefs in theoretical objects. (To reiterate a claim I formulated in Chapter Two, these beliefs surround all configurations of routine practices in normal science. They are a necessary condition of routine research everydayness. Thus, the belief in the existence of theoretical objects like “conservative systems”, “internal forces”, “configurations of potential energy”, “the total momentum of a system”, and “the total angular momentum of a

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system” is a sine qua non for having regimes of normal research in the domains of classical mechanics. The belief in the existence of “enzyme adaptation”, “bacterial variability”, and “correlations between enzyme activity and viable cells” is a necessary condition for normal science in bacterial physiology.) Persistent anomalies, ruining a community’s belief in theoretical objects, may provoke a Kuhnian kind of scientific revolution. (Kuhn presents the following list of revolutions that are a response to a growing number of “abnormal situations”: “Newton’s new theory of light and colour originated in the discovery that existing theory would not account for the length of the spectrum, and the wave theory that replaced Newton’s was announced in the midst of growing concern about anomalies in the relation of diffraction and polarization to Newton’s theory. Lavoisier’s new chemistry was born after the observation of anomalous weight relations in combustion; thermodynamics from the collision of two existing nineteenth-century physical theories; quantum mechanics from a variety of difficulties surrounding black-body radiation, specific heat, and the photoelectric effect.” [Kuhn 1977, pp. 206-8] In all these cases, the revolution begins with a process of disctrediting a belief in the existence of theoretical objects.) Yet, however destructive effects they might produce, anomalies in regimes of normal research do not put into question the macro-historical productivereproductive reading guided by a basic cognitive interest. More generally, a scientific revolution in a certain research domain that is provoked by a growing number of “abnormal situations” cannot affect the macro-historical horizon of a thematizing project. In other words, Kuhnian scientific revolutions do not threaten the basic interests in producing types of scientific knowledge. At the same time, a belief in theoretical objects is only admissible if it does not get involved in a conflict with a basic cognitive interest. Yet a scientific community’s belief in theoretical objects is “underdetermined” by a basic cognitive interest. What I have in mind is the fact that cognitive interests legitimate beliefs in theoretical objects, but they are not powerful enough to dismiss such beliefs. Only the growing number of anomalies may “invalidate” a community’s belief in theoretical objects. Such anomalies, however, cannot “detract” basic cognitive interests. Anomalies in normal scientific everydayness are irrelevant to the thematizing projects that give birth to basic cognitive interests. Notoriously, the basic cognitive interests are a central subject for those who follow the tenets of Apel’s transcendental pragmatics. They are trying to define the notion of cognitive interests (in producing various types of scientific knowledge) within the framework of a non-individualist epistemology that is, in their opinion, beyond objectivism and relativism. I already focused upon the hallmark of this epistemology – the complementarity between signmediated subject-object relations and relations of communicative co-under-

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standing. Within the framework of this complementarity, three basic cognitive interests are differentiated. The interest in controlling states of affairs, events and processes by means of deductive-nomological theories (i.e., theories in which the epistemological dimension of subject-object relations strongly dominates) is a (in Apel’s terminology) “cognitive interest in objectification”. It is the leading interest in the natural sciences. The interest in disclosure and interpretation of meaningful contexts and symbolic artifacts in a social network is a “cognitive interest in interpretation”. This is the central interest in most social and human sciences. Apel (1969, pp. 38-43; 1992) associates it with the production of knowledge mediated by a double hermeneutics. Finally, there is (again in Apel’s terms) an “interest in critically-emancipatory self-reflection”, which is the leading cognitive interest in the so-called (by authors of the Frankfurt School) “reconstructive critical social sciences”. The adherents of transcendental pragmatics hold a kind of internalism, when stressing that cognitive interests (which do not map directly into types of science) are part of the background of research practices. (In their account, the transcendental construal “purifies” cognitive interests from speculative, confessional, political, exploitative, economical and whatever other kinds of extrascientific interests. Yet “transcendental internalism” has little to do with the hermeneutic internalism that I defend in this study.) Apel’s followers go on to assert that the three basic interests guiding the production of scientific knowledge depend on a priori conditions of the possibility of scientific research. They are to be revealed both as epistemological conditions (through a Kantian transcendental reflection) and as “social-anthropological conditions of the possibility of the constitution of theories”. (See, for instance, Kettner 1996) By contrast, hermeneutic internalism gets rid of both epistemological and anthropological apriorism (and essentialism). Against the background of the aforementioned postulates, champions of transcendental pragmatics have undertaken in recent years a radical attempt at saving the context of normative justification of science. In their account, the interest in critically-emancipatory self-reflection is not only a particular cognitive interest within science. It is also an interest in a “critical theory of science”, or more specifically, in constructing evaluative forms of social sciences that can be used in justifying normatively the relevance of all kinds of scientific research to modernity’s emancipatory self-reflection. To put it in Apel’s language, the interest in critical normative-reconstructive scientific programs and the post-Enlightenment interest in emancipatory self-reflection are based on the same “transcendental conditions of possibility”. By implication, the transcendental reformulation of the Frankfurt School’s brand of critical theory leads to a radically normative reconstruction (and justification) of science in accordance with the “emancipatory project of modernity”. In contrast

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to critical rationalists and other post-positivist philosophers, who only try to provide an epistemologcal justification of the “ready-made” scientific knowledge, Apel’s followers are after norms of justification of a “critically reconstructed science”. It is unclear how the normative transformations in the cognitive structures of the “objectifying sciences” engendered by such critical reconstructions would look like.3 At any rate, one can justify the normativity of the “critical reconstructive justification” of scientific practices only if one accepts the “transcendental turn” in the “ciritique of ideology”. Since this turn, however, suggests a new kind of epistemological essentialism, the normativity of the “cognitive interest in emancipation” is to be rejected from the viewpoint of strong hermeneutics of science. There is no transcendentalnormative foundation of a “critical reconstruction” of scientific research. There is no “source of normativity” beyond the “intrinsic normativities” of the characteristic hermeneutic situations.

NOTES

Preface: 1. On this claim see, in particular, Apel (1983). 2. On the tenets of Polikarov’s “heuristic realism” see Polikarov (1984), (1985); Ginev (2002d).

Introduction: 1. “What I as a physicist had to discover for myself, most historians learn by example in the course of professional training. Consciously or not, they are practitioners of the hermeneutic method. In my case, however, the discovery of hermeneutics did more than make history seem consequential. Its most immediate and decisive effect was instead on my view of science.” (Kuhn 1977, p. XIII.) 2. On the theory of “implied reader” and “the author implicit in the text” as a basic theory of Rezeptionsästhetik, see Iser 1976. Iser’s theory offers an alternative to E. D. Hirsch’s psychologism, which reduces the aim of interpretation involved in the act of reading to the discovery of the intention of the author. (In this regard, see Holdheim 1984, S. 252-270.) 3. See Ch. Taylor 1987, p. 466. Taylor associates modernity’s epistemological project with the expansion of naturalism and with the reductionist conception of “the self ” behind naturalism. All discursive practices that put into question this conception, suggesting thereby non-subjectivist views of personal agency, oppose “modernity’s philosophical identity”. Against this background, most of the practices of scientific research are par excellence practices contradicting modernity’s philosophical conception of “the self ”. Now, this claim is not self-evident. It demands a substantiation. The latter can only be conducted through a non-naturalist interpretation of (normal) scientific research. The hermeneutic reformulation of normal science addresses the task of this interpretation. Overcoming naturalism (and, more generally, modernity’s epistemological project) involves refuting objectivist, representationalist, and foundationalist images of science, elaborated within the traditional philosophy of science. Both the refutation of the traditional images and the construction of a science’s picture beyond modernity’s epistemological project are “duties” of the hermeneutic phenomenology of scientific research. This thesis, however, is not in line with Taylor’s tenets. According to him, naturalism is the under-

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lying conception not only in the (analytical) philosophy of the natural sciences but also in the search for achieving objectivity in these sciences. This is why Taylor discards the hermeneutic programs in the philosophy of science that aim at deconstructing the natural sciences’ objectivist-naturalist philosophical identity. The natural sciences – so his argument goes – have to grasp things as they are outside of the immediate perspective of human goals, desires, and activities. (See, for instance, Taylor 1985.) Following this view, Taylor (together with Dreyfus) defends a fundamental distinction between the natural and human sciences. In this book, I am going also to maintain that there is a need for such a distinction. Yet I will do this in a manner that has very little to do with Taylor’s argument. The demarcational line between the natural and human sciences is to be drawn not on the base of a contrast between the human sciences’ “dialogical researcher” and the natural sciences’ “monological explorer”. In my view, the demarcational line is not between naturalism and a kind of reflexive-dialogical involvement in-the-world. Rather, it is a line between two different modes of being-in-the-world, each distinguished by characteristic hermeneutic situations and hermeneutic circles of thematizing “the world”. Furthermore, the demarcational line itself is to be treated as a “hermeneutic phenomenon”. 4. The reading of the notion of “paradigm” in terms of (relativist) normative epistemology informs Kuhn’s earlier view of (non-local) incommensurability. In Kuhn’s Denkweg, there is a tendency of growing involvement of the “discursive-practical dimension” in the treatment of the issues related to the incommensurability thesis. In The Copernican Revolution, the explanatory framework is entirely constituted by conceptual schemes and not by “matrices” of routine practices of doing research. The global change in scientific development is regarded as a conceptual reorganization of earlier observed phenomena. The strictly conceptualist revolutionary idiom in this book prevents from speaking of changing regimes of such practices. Robert Westman succinctly points out that “missing from Copernican Revolution is the Structure of Scientific Revolutions notion of community-based science, with its radical view of the socially constituted scientific fact that Kuhn appropriated from Ludwik Fleck and transformed for his own purposes.” (Westman 1994, p. 89) Missing also from the earlier book is the interpretation of the notion of tradition in the context of normal science’s practical experience. In the spirit of conventionalist-holist historiography of science, tradition is still construed as concepts, laws, and observations enduring over long periods of time. In The Structure continuity is assured not at the level of cognitive structures but in the dynamics of normal scientific practices. A community’s belief in the existence of theoretical objects and scientists’ adherence to basic cognitive values are “derived” from the practical everydayness of doing research. The discrepancy between the two books of “early Kuhn” is generative for the subsequent pairs of conflicting lines in his work. On the one hand, this is the conflict between Kuhn-as-epistemologist and Kuhn-as-practice-theorist. On the other, there is a conflict between Kuhn-as-philosopher and Kuhn-as-historian. The idea of incommensurable normal scientific traditions (which differs essentially from the incommensurability of conceptual frameworks) was formulated only when Kuhn brought into play science’s discursive-practical dimension. 5. A case in point is the situation in contemporary historiography. There are several narrativist, post-structuralist, post-Marxist, and post-historicist “local paradigms” in this discipline. In putting into question even the demarcational line between fiction and non-fiction, these paradigms are no longer theoretical pictures of the historical reality. Rather, they create a multiparadigmatic state of research that promotes not only the fragmentation of conceptual frameworks in historical science, but also the deconstruction of the “historiographic metanarratives” engendered by the Enlightenment. More generally, the multiparadigmatic states of the human sciences are expressing the “legitimation crisis” of these disciplines in the age of postmodernity.

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6. To be sure, in several papers Kuhn does not make a secret of his commitment to a kind of relativism. However, there is also sufficient “textual evidence” of his defence of the interpretative openness of scientific research which is at odds with the position of cognitive (plus linguistic) relativism. The interpretative openness of scientific traditions is a persistent theme of Kuhn as a historian of science. Evidence in this respect gives his superb book Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity 1894-1912 – a narrative account of Planck’s invention of the black-body theory. Yet Kuhn never abandoned his philosophical commitment to the incommensurability thesis. The discrepancy between Kuhn’s philosophical credo and his studies in history of science is due to an insoluble conflict between cognitive relativism and the interpretative-narrative account of historical events. It is a discrepancy informed by the conflicting tendencies in reading the nature of normal science. Interestingly enough, Kuhn declared that the book being mentioned provides the “most fully realized illustration” of the concept of history of science basic to his historical investigations. (See Kuhn 1980) This book is at the same time the best document of the divergence between Kuhn the philosopher and Kuhn the historian. Notoriously, its author denies any essential discrepancy between his earlier philosophical conception of scientific revolutions and his narrative account of Planck’s invention. Kuhn is convinced that his narrative of the transition from classical physics to the quantum discontinuity fit the stage-theory of scientific development. For many commentators, however, the narrative way of treating the global cognitive change in the Black-Body is in conflict with the structuralist model of scientific revolutions. In the former case, the approach is a (re)interpretation of the stages in a gradual transformation leading to a global change. There is no room for a gestalt-switch of whatever kind. 7. Kuhn apparently opposes the conception of scientific rationality as a normative epistemological justification in his exchange with Hempel. (See Kuhn 1983) In repudiating the search for a global normative-epistemological justification of the choice between competing theories, he puts forward the view of “local holism”, which states that one has no rational alternative to learning from one’s situational and contextual experience. Consequently, there is no need for a justification of learning from experience by means of general epistemological criteria like empirical adequacy, conceptual simplicity, or efficacy in problem-solving. Rationality is not an epistemologically justified cognitive state of affairs, but the practical way of learning from situational and contextual experience. In philosophical hermeneutics this practical rationality of experience is associated not with justification but with “application”. (In this regard, see Pannenberg 1981, Herzog 1981.) A few years after the exchange with Hempel, Kuhn went on further in his attack against “external epistemological justification” and observed that “justification does not aim at a goal external to the historical situation but simply, in that situation, at improving the tools available for the job at hand.” (Kuhn 2000, p. 96) 8. By “unreflective” I mean a lack of reflective attitude towards motivations and orientations that are generated by the anticipatory horizon. As a result, in the process of carrying out practices unreflective understanding does not get elaborated as a specific phenomenon. 9. Actually, Kuhn coined his own notion for the prejudgments handed down by a tradition of scientific research. This is the notion of “dogma”, which is independent of the notion of “paradigm”. Indeed, the former is of special importance only in Kuhn’s earlier papers. See Kuhn 1963. 10. To be sure, various theoretical discourses – practice theory, constructivism, discourse theory, phenomenology – lay claim to carrying out different versions of such analysis. A particular aim of the present book is to outline the roles these discourses play in various paradigms of constitutional analysis. 11. In this regard, see also Babich 1997. She is defending a “radically hermeneutic philosophy of science” inspired by “Nietzsche’s recognition that although science represents the fulfil-

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ment of the modern project of a self-grounding ground, the problem of science as such cannot be posed on its own ground.” (Babich 1997, p. 27) Babich’s aim is a criticism of the established pictures of science within the (analytical) philosophy of science. Yet not this philosophy but science itself should be the target of a hermeneutic critique. Babich (2002, p. 75) writes: “The critique of science cannot be conducted by social scientists – neither historians nor anthropologists, neither sociologists nor rhetoricians for the good and simple reason that all of these specialist scholars, ‘social’ or not, are scientists themselves. Instead such critique, in order to be a critique must be the task of a philosophy prepared, for the sake of truth, reason, and science, to question rather than to assume the values of truth, rationality, and science.” From this standpoint, Babich follows a kind of reactualization of Nietzsche’s illumination of the “project of science” on the ground of art. 12. On the basic accounts of the place of the ontological difference in the whole project of hermeneutic phenomenology, see Kisiel 1993, pp. 357-397, von Herrmann 2000, pp. 131-142. 13. John Caputo (1993, pp. 220-248) defines post-metaphysical thinking as a metaphysics without a Meta-event. He calls this thinking “minimalism”. It is a philosophy that “lets event happen”, without trying to erase their complexity and ambiguity, or to hierarchize them. Minimalism is also the base for a theology without confessional fundamentalism. Thus, by keeping metaphysics to a minimum, Mark Tayor (1984) suggests the project of a postmetaphysical (and postmodern) a/theology. 14. This is why Fuller (1993, pp. 34-48), for instance, binds the “identity crisis” of the traditional philosophy of science (based on cognitive essentialism and normative epistemology) with the failure of internalism in historiography of science. The agenda of Fuller’s “social epistemology” is to retain the normativism of the traditional position, while getting rid of any internalist bias. 15. To be sure, a “hermetic isolation” of scientific research from the horizons and prejudgments of larger cultural-historical traditions is a fiction, sometimes a harmful one. According to the negative demand of the hermeneutic situation, however, the intrinsic interpretation embedded in research practices has to prevent from a “fusion” of science’s own theoretical and practical horizons and the extrascientific intellectual environment. The fore-structures of “scientific reason” must be located in this reason alone. More specifically, the difference between the interpretative fore-structure and the cognitive structure of doing research must only be produced by “scientific reason” (understood as a totality of hermeneutic fore-structure of scientific research, everydayness of research practices, and the cognitive content’s structure). The intrinsic interpretation (of theoretical models, experimental results, procedures of observation, mathematical formalisms, conceptual structures, idealizations, and so on) is to be attached to its own (theoretical and practical) horizons of doing research. 16. It was the conception of the finalization of science that outlined the possibility of a “cognitive externalism” – a scientification of “the external” (i.e., various areas of the contemporary society’s “life-worlds”). 17. In saying this, I am touching upon the immense cluster of issues concerning the relationship of metaphysical ideas and science. The peculiar rehabilitation of metaphysics in the postpositivist philosophy of science does not aim, in my view, at a kind of “metaphysical externalism” (not to speak of “metaphysical determinism”). In fact, this rehabilitation is quite congruent with the tenets of hermeneutic internalism. What post-positivists like Watkins and Radnitzky try to demonstrate with placing emphasis upon the “influential metaphysics” and “metaphysical preconceptions” of the research process is precisely science’s potential to translate metaphysical ideas into its own theoretical languages. Scientific research is not passively embedded in external (metaphysical) prejudgments. Scientific research actively select “metaphysical patterns” as ingredients of its own hermeneutic fore-structure. The more scientific research is

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selective in translating metaphysical ideas, the less the chance of deformations in science’s cognitive body. The selective translation of such ideas is the central issue of Gerald Holton’s analysis of the “thematic origins” of scientific thought. Holton (1974, p. 28) stresses that “themata” (“thematic concepts”, “thematic positions”, and “thematic hypotheses”) stems from metaphysical world-views. Yet they are certainly not “unapproachably synthetic apriori” in Kant’s sense. Furthermore, it is not necessary to associate them with “Platonic, Keplerian, or Jungian archetypes”. In my reading, Holton’s aim is rather to reveal in a structuralist fashion the “deepest layer” of scientific thinking. He suggests a structuralist analysis of science’s theoretical horizons. Though influenced by various religious, political, and metaphysical traditions, themata are internal structural categories and methodological orientations of the research process. More specifically, they are “theoretical and methodological prejudices” of individual scientists and of particular scientific groups. A task of the cultural historian of scientific thought is to bring into focus the pre- and extra-scientific origins of themata. Thus, the origin of Bohr’s prejudices are in Kierkegaard’s existential dialectics of complementarity; Einstein’s prejudices have much to do with Spinoza’s “pantheistic rationalism”; and Pauli’s thematic position and thematic hypotheses are rooted in a dynamic version of the doctrine of archetypes. By being committed to such prejudices, however, the research work of these scientists is by no means “laden” by metaphysical, religious, or moral traditions. Thus Holton’s thematic analysis is in line with the claim that prejudices stemming from non-scientific traditions are only “operative” in the research process if they are translatable into the languages of the research programs. The task of revealing the pre- and extra-scientific origins of themata does not imply an “externalist engagement”. Holton makes it clear that if the thematic analysis is committed to such engagement, it would degenerate either to ideology or to a sort of neometaphysics. 18. I argue this claim in a series of papers – see, in particular, Ginev 1994b, 1995, 1996, 1998. 19. On this position of social epistemology, see Fuller 1992, p. 423. 20. In opposing the link between cognitive essentialism and the normative doctrine of rational reconstruction, I am going to offer arguments in favour of another link – that between the effective history of scientific traditions and science’s cognitive specificity. 21. On the attempts to draw a strong parallel between Polanyi and Gadamer, see Weinsheimer 1985, pp. 15-40. The search for such parallels, however, is lacking often a clear distinction between historico-ontological hermeneutics and cognitive hermeneutics. Though Polanyi shares with Gadamer the rejection of objectivism and methodization of the research process by reflection, they differ essentially in treating the issue on the status of the nonobjectifyable prejudgments. Polanyi’s “subsidiary awareness” associated with tacit knowledge still resides in the knowing subject. By contrast, Gadamer stresses that tradition’s prejudices are beyond a (nonobectifying and objectifying) consciousness of any particular (individual or collective) knowing subject. 22. As I pointed out, practical understanding is contrasted with the various species of grasping an object thematically by applying procedures and methods. Practical understanding is protonormative inasmuch as it means being competent to do something by being involved in (without taking reflective distance from) the process of “concernful dealing”. 23. Perhaps, under the influence of Being and Time, Husserl characterizes in his last manuscripts the life-world as “work-world”. Only what is “workable” may exist in it. 24. Notoriously, behind the contemporary ethnomethodological studies of science lies Felix Kaufmann’s semi-phenomenological and semi-logico-empiricist conception of scientific methodology. These studies retain the unique combination of phenomenological anti-naturalism and positivist-instrumentalist construal of thinking as activities defined by procedural rules.

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Ethnomethodologists discard any kind of “explanatory model” of scientific practices since the introduction of such a model would open the door to a naturalism in coping with scientific rationality. At the same time, they profess a sort of “pluralization of rationality” since each particular scientific practice is guided by characteristic procedural rules. The pluralization of rationality contradicts the ontological assumption that normal scientific practices reveal something like a being-in-the-world. Speaking in Harold Garfinkel’s terms, a commitment to hermeneutic ontology would violate the “procedural policy of ethnomethodological indifference”. An ontological interpretation of practitioners’ self-interpretations – so his argument goes – would ignore the sense and intelligibility of the ethnomethodologists’ descriptions. Thus, by concentrating upon practitioners’ intrinsic “methods”, ethnomethodologists repudiate not only the naturalist dictum that the study of science must itself be a science but also that anti-naturalist ontology of scientific practices, which a doubly hermeneutic account presupposes. 25. For a discussion of the various lines of criticism of the traditional context-distinction, see Hoyningen-Huene 1987. 26. For the representatives of the “Erlangen school” of constructivism, all cognitive structures in scientific research stem from elementary pre-scientific practices. In the “methodical construction” of these structures, scientific research is subjected to the norms of everyday practices. Furthermore, the methodological conception of constructivism reverses the usual sequence of syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Since the logical rules of scientific argumentation are rooted in the “speech-act-schemata” of everyday practices, “practical logic” and rhetoric are methodologically prior to axiomatics and semantic interpretation. (See Gethmann 1989) My main criticism of this variety of constructivism is that it ignores the intrinsic practical and theoretical horizons of scientific research. Science’s cognitive content is grounded not in a prescientific life-world (in fact, the life-worlds of the contemporary societies are already “scientificated”), but rather in the “life-worlds” of research practices. This main claim of the strong hermeneutics of science contrasts with the “mono-linear” normative justification of science’s theoretical constructions by identifying the “life-world’s aprioris” of the research process. These aprioris give rise to the techniques of measurement, which in turn lay down the conditions for the construction of hypothetico-deductive empirical theories. (The relations between practices of measurement and the process of theory construction is the subject-matter of the constructivist proto-theories. Protophysics, for instance, is the constructive study of the basic theoretical concepts of physics as resulting from methodical generation of techniques of measurements. See Janich 1985) There is a high degree of stylization in the constructivist principle of “methodical order” that should illuminate in a normative fashion how science’s theoretical constructions are to be grounded in elementary linguistic distinctions and patterns of life-world’s practices. To a certain extent, this stylization was overcome in the 1990s through the transition to an extended version of constructivism called by its supporters “methodical culturalism”. (See Hartmann and Janich 1996) A particular goal of the Erlangen constructivism is to deconstruct the post-positivist demarcation of internal and external history of science. In this regard, the constructivists’ efforts are in line with Heelan’s insistence on the role the technological infrastructure of instruments plays in scientific research. These efforts are also congruent with the recent historical studies of experimental practices that take into account the development of technological innovations. (See, in particular, Galison and Asmus 1989, Chaloner 1997, and Fox and Guagnini 1998). 27. The first variant is discussed in Ginev 2003 c.

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Chapter One 1. On this move and the controversies surrounding it see Smocovitis 1995. 2. Pioneers of cognitive sociology of science like Barnes and Bloor regarded their enterprise as the extension of science to the study of itself. However, the naturalist attitude of practitioners of the sociology of scientific knowledge is in conflict with their political agenda to open up alternative visions of what science might be. Cognitive sociologists do not sufficiently ponder the ideological implications of their own naturalist ideology. Moreover, the following question remains to be answered: If scientific truth is amenable to thoroughgoing sociological scrutiny, then what about the status of the statement that cognitive sociology of science is the extension of science to the study of itself ? Does this statement express a scientific truth? Obviously, by taking into account these questions, one is touching upon the issue of the plausibility of applying the relativist-constructivist argument regarding natural scientific knowledge to knowledge generated by the cognitive sociology of the natural sciences. However, it is not my aim to enter here in the discussion of the “reflexivity” problem. What I only should like to stress is the possibility that a future sociological investigation of the construction of the sociology of natural scientific knowledge can unmask the belief that this sociology is the extension of science to the study of itself as a harmful ideological belief. Since neither the reflectivist nor the non-reflectivist cognitive sociology has a resource to rule out this possibility, there is a unremovable scienceideology paradox in the body of the sociology of scientific knowledge. The “anthropologists of science”, who do not commit to a naturalist attitude, are in much better position. They do not face science-ideology paradox since from the very beginning they postulate a sort of “pannarrativist” strategy. Thus, they are not trying to profess a particular scientific studies of science, but to “transgress the boundaries of academic writing decorum” (Sharon Traweek) and – by following Geertz’s critique of the colonial style of doing cultural anthropology, and Marcus and Fischer’s deconstruction of authoritative paradigms of anthropological study – to tell stories about how scientists construct their professional narratives. (See Traweek 1988) 3. Despite the essential differences in their doctrines, Apel and Gadamer share the view that the lack of a dialogical dimension in the feedback relations between a formalized theory and experimental data is a sufficient argument against relegating the natural sciences to the realm of interpretative (and communicative) rationality. Gadamer (1982, pp. 151-169) poses the question of whether “in the age of science” there is such a thing as philosophy in any form other than philosophy of science. In his view, it is the universal hermeneutics that can be “such a thing” and that, consequently, would not be the legitimating justification for “the fact of science”. It is hard to see whether Gadamer in his critique of scientific reason makes a distinction between a “hermeneutic critique of scientism” (as scientists’ ideological consciousness) and a “hermeneutic critique of the natural sciences”. 4. In fact, Gadamer’s picture of the natural sciences does not differ essentially from the picture that the naturalist doctrine of scientism advances. In both cases, one goes on to assert that the method of natural science provides the sole means of effectuating those epistemological norms which promote the genuine meaning of objectivity. And in both cases, the natural sciences are conceived in terms of their traditional epistemoligico-objectivist identity. 5. In their efforts to overcome historical objectivism, the human sciences are “empirical extensions” of practical philosophy. On several occasions, Gadamer stresses that practical philosophy offers something like a sachliche Grundlage for the human sciences. (See, in particular, Gadamer 1976b, pp. 26-38; 1997, pp. 31-40.) The “method of practical reason” underlies the construction of concepts corresponding to the second order hermeneutic situation. This “method” offers an interpretative movement within the tradition as opposed to an objectifying reflection

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that seeks historical objectivism. The task of avoiding historical objectivism (and to cultivate through the rehabilitation of sensus communis a “non-methodological consciousness” that is open to the situatedness in the tradition) requires elaborating on the view that it is impossible to have any (epistemologically) objective knowledge of one’s present situation in which past and future are fused. 6. In the course of this study I will make the case that Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology offers a paradigm of constitutional analysis. It is an important question of whether Gadamer’s transformation of hermeneutic phenomenology leaves a space for such a paradigm. Within the “pre-theoretical situated transcendence in the tradition”, understanding is always embedded in “application” (i.e., in the ways of carrying out routine activities). The only paradigm of constitutional analysis in Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics is to be found in the very kernel of his “practical philosophy” – the preconceptual operativeness of tradition that defines the hermeneutic situation of the constitution of tradition’s conceptual artifacts in terms of the interplay of understanding (interpretation) and application. 7. Openness to the cultural traditions the human sciences hand down does not mean the elimination of distance. Quite on the contrary, Gadamer is persistently insisting on such a distance. Yet the distance is not to be achieved by means of objectifying thematization. It is the conjunction of thematic knowledge and prejudice that creates a kind of “hermeneutic distance” which is especially important in the historical sciences with respect to the historian’s strategies of coping with the tension between past and present. In commenting on Gadamer’s critique of historicism, Joel Weinsheimer observes that the “historian is the guardian of difference, for his task of understanding the past as such involves exposing the putative identity of past and present. If they were identical, there would be no historical task per se ... Because the historian is concerned primarily with the past, he must see that past in tension with the present.” (Weinsheimer 1983, p. 193) The very constitution of research objects in the human sciences is mediated by present prejudices of the interpreter’s cognitive and cultural traditions. There is no “object in itself ” in the human sciences. These objects are mediated and fore-structured, on the one hand, by the prejudices and interpretations of the “first-order effective-historical consciousness”, and, on the other, by the traditions of human-scientific interpretations. In fact, however, this “double mediation” is involved in common hermeneutic circles of interpretation. These are the circles of the whole process of mediation in which the ongoing constitution of research objects takes place. (See on this point Ginev 1995.) 8. In the context of the constitutional analysis of scientific research, one achieves supposedly two principal effects. First, one defines and defends science’s cognitive specificity without succumbing to essentialism, representationism, and objectivism. Second, one deconstructs the self-imposed ideology of scientism through bringing into focus the effective-historical consciousness of scientific research. It is this consciousness inherent in the research process that preserves and transmits the cognitive specificity of the natural sciences. One of the main tasks of the strong (ontological) hermeneutics of science is to defend science’s cognitive specificity within the “scope of hermeneutic reflection”. 9. In saying this, it is not my intention to belittle the achievements of these authors. To be sure, they undertook essential steps in bridging the gap between the hermeneutic and pheno menological traditions, on the one hand, and the philosophy of science, on the other. Thus, Jean Cavailles poses the task of transforming the problematics of the logic of science into a problematics of the transcendental constitution of objective entities. He (1970, pp. 396397) observes: “The problem of phenomenology is a problem of constitution... The problem posed by logic is transformed into a problem of the transcendental constitution of objective entities. It is only then, and parallel to it, that the problem of a nature attained and defined by science can be fruitfully examined.” Cavailles seems to be the first author who makes use of

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(phenomenological) constitutional analysis in discussing the origin of particular scientific objects. More specifically, scientific thematization is regarded by him in terms of such an analysis. 10. In reflecting upon his own Denkweg, Kockelmans (1997b, p. 97) confesses that he has always been fascinated by the “dialectical movement” that helps one to bring into a “meaningful harmony ideas which stem from different currents of our Western, philosophical tradition.” Starting with a book on a phenomenology of physical science (Kockelmans 1966), he used the dialectical movement in elaborating on a paradigm of constitutional analysis that integrates ideas of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, and above all Heidegger. 11. The main subject in the exchange between Kockelmans and van Fraassen is the metaphysics implicit in empiricism. Kockelmans’ challenge was formulated by the question: Can constructive empiricism confront this metaphysics? In responding to this challenge, van Fraassen admits that the common denominator of all kinds of empiricism is the denial of the value of any philosophical account of science that starts with postulating that the putative true summary of the Laws of Nature is the essence of science. In van Fraassen’s version of empiricism, the rejection of essentialism concerning “the Laws of Nature” is strongly related to the view that the acceptance of a scientific theory involves the claim of theory’s empirical adequacy. His strategy against the conception that one needs a transcendental component in defending the position of constructive empiricism consists in arguing that the belief “that empirical adequacy is the point of the game of science actually played in our culture” does not involve a transcendental position or an implicit metaphysics. (van Fraassen 1994, p. 332) According to Kockelmans’ response to van Fraassen’s defence of constructive empiricism, the position depicted in the essay “Against Transcendental Empiricism” is only “a description of what from an empiricist point of view it means to be an empirical scientist.” (Kockelmans 1997, p. 196) Yet van Fraassen does not advocate constructive empiricism from the viewpoint of an empirical scientist. He not only admits a philosophical position, but also makes very often use of the philosophical notion of “phenomenon”. There is a tacit transcendental dimension of constructive empiricism. In claiming this and in arguing that constructive empiricism has to be complemented by a conception of how phenomena are constituted, Kockelmans (1997a, p. 203) defines his own (Heideggerian) concept of the transcendental – “the transcendental is defined in terms of Dasein’s standing-out and transcending in the direction of the world, and in and through the world, to ‘being’ as the totality of all meaning”. Let me quote also the following important confession: “My own view ... is close to that of constructive empiricism. Yet I still maintain that even from such a point of view it is necessary to speak about the truth of scientific claims that are made legitimately from the perspective of well-established scientific theories.” (Kockelmans 1997b, pp. 102-3) In this formulation, “well-established” means “established with respect to the hermeneutic situations of their constitution”. 12. See, in particular, Kisiel 1971, 1976, 1979. The exchange between P. Heelan (1972, 1974) and T. Kisiel (1974) concerning the construal of the metaphor of “the Book of Nature” is the oldest internal controversy in the tradition of the hermeneutics of scientific research. 13. This is the conclusion of Collins and Yearley’s (1992) celebrated paper. These authors criticise the reflexivity and actor-network approaches for excluding explanation in the descriptive languages they provide, and for disavowing their naturalistic credentials. In trying to surmount the shortcomings of both approaches, Collins and Yearley open the door to explanatory models in the sociology of scientific knowledge. The reflexivity and actor-network theory do not leave room for such models. By putting emphasis upon (naturalist) explanation, both authors bring to completeness the “naturalization of interpretation” in cognitive sociology. The search for a radical symmetry in the methodological strategies of science and its sociological exploration is also a road to radical empiricism. According to Collins and Yearley, if one

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concedes that the naturalization of interpretation is unattainable, then the “game of epistemological chicken” becomes inevitable. A non-naturalized interpretation would imply a “relativist regress” that leads us to have nothing to say. Not only Woolgar’s “reflexivity” and Callon’s actor-network theory but any kind of strong holism cannot allow explanation of why certain knowledge claims are accepted and others are not. Only a relativist program – so Collins’ argument goes – that leads to a “meta-alternation” can leave room for explanation. The champions of a strong hermeneutics of science accept the claim (raised by cognitive sociologists against the ethnomethodology of scientific practices) that a radically anti-theoretical view is a contradictio in adjecto. But they oppose the “sociological naturalism” (the dictum that the reflection upon scientific practices has to be incorporated in explanatory theories). In their view, one has to look for an interpretative theory that in its own terms can recast the “ontological difference” (interpretation of a self-interpretative constitution of theoretical worlds). In so doing, one is able to figure out a third way (beyond ethnomethodological descriptivism and sociological naturalism) in handling science’s research practices. 14. There are several lines in the studies of the rhetoric of science corresponding to the tenets of weak hermeneutics. On these lines see Gross 1990 and Gaonkar 1997. The former presents the line of the neo-Aristotelian rhetoric to scientific texts, while the latter tries to reveal the rhetoric of science as a discursive formation. On the convergence between Markus’ program and the rhetorical studies of scientific discourses see Ginev 1999c, pp. 249-254, and 2000, pp. 74-79. 15. In his first book on the philosophy of quantum mechanics, Heelan (1965, p. IX) points out that the “modern European continental philosopher feels closer to (Heisenberg) in spirit than does, perhaps, his Anglo-American counterpart.” Due to the “continentally based approach” to Heisenberg’s views, he developed the conception of the context- or horizon-dependence of all non-classical science. Heelan’s (1970a; 1970b; 1983, pp. 178-187; 1997, pp. 116-119) celebrated model (“context logic”) of the complemented lattice of (prescientific-visual and scientific) languages – a model that clarifies the idea of the entangled horizons of doing research in non-classical science – also springs from his construal of Heisenberg’s position. In fact, this model expresses Heelan’s hermeneutico-ontological version of the principle of complementarity. (See also Crease 2002). 16. In my view, this dynamic interpretation of the theory-praxis relation in the research process is a mutatis mutandis specification of the relation between understanding, prejudice, application and tradition as it is construed in Gadamer’s conception of effective-historical consciousness. More generally, Heelan’s treatment of the “hermeneutic spiral” between theoretical understanding and practical instrumentation provides a rationale for giving meaning to the notion of tradition-bound consciousness operative in the process of scientific research. Heelan’s distinction between theory-laden meaning and praxis-laden cultural meaning in the research process may be seen against the background of the attempt to integrate the idea of the indispensable finitude and perspectivity of the perceptual and mental activities in the philosophy of science. 17. In speculating about the historical meaning of Galileo’s metaphor of “the Book of Nature”, Heelan (1994) nicely places the discussion of the strong hermeneutics of science in a theological context. 18. It deserves mentioning that by the end of the 1970s, Don Ihde advanced his program for a hermeneutic phenomenology of technology. Since the issues of “instrumentation” occupy a central place in the current research into hermeneutics of scientific experiments (see Heelan 1983), Ihde’s program played a certain role in several hermeneutic conceptions of scientific practices. 19. It is Eger’s (1989, 1993b, 1995) conviction that science’s theoretical languages pervade its experimental practices. In his view, the main task of the hermeneutics of natural science is to

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make the “lifeworld context” of experimental practices to fuse with theoretical contexts of the “book of science”. 20. A similar critique of Rouse’s neopragmatist approach is suggested by Robert Crease. In accusing Rouse for not taking into consideration the cognitive dimensions of scientific research, he (1993, p. 193) writes: “While rightly insisting that science is an activity that discloses entities in the world, Rouse wrongly neglects the question of the being of the entities so disclosed. The small role played by theory in his account is symptomatic of this neglect... Rouse is evidently afraid that granting a large role to theory would force him to surrender the insights of hermeneutics and the disclosive effects of power relations. In effect, what Rouse has done is taken the traditional priority of theory over praxis and stood it on its head, when what is needed is a rethinking of that relation.” 21. In contrast to “practical understanding”, the articulation of cognitive content is devised within the ongoing structuration of a scientific domain. This is a fact that the champions of cultural studies of science are not willing to take into consideration. Yet, by recognizing this fact, one has to avoid the pitfall of practical-theoretical distinctivism. Practical understanding (as a horizon of carrying out interrelated research practices by what Heelan calls “local scientific communities”) and theoretical structuration of domains are not two separate layers of scientific research. The dynamic unity of practical understanding and theoretical structuration is the central theme of the strong hermeneutics of science. 22. Within the “post-analytical philosophy”, the best critical analysis of this claim is provided, in my view, by Arthur Danto 1980. 23. On the kinds of cognitive relativism see Sankey 1997, pp. 3-18. 24. At the same time, Shapere opposes any meta-methodological doctrine that postulates higherlevel methodological standards, themselves immune to alteration, which make possible the estimation of changes of lower-level standards. According to him, the middle way between Scylla of the relativist denial of the possibility to estimate the changes in the methodological norms, standards and criteria, and Charybdis of fixed scientific method is the “piecemealist” approach to the development of science: all levels of scientific practice and knowledge are open to revision, but change on each level is gradual. The potential falsification is universal in scientific enterprise, but one can always identify the reasons for each particular change. 25. Actually, there is only one attempt at such a transformation within philosophical feminism that promises some real results. This is Donna Haraway’s (1989) program of writing a history of primatology that has to change the patterns of constituting knowledge in that discipline. 26. Doctrine (e) implies an “essentialist internalism” concerning science’s development, whereas hermeneutic internalism corresponds to the view of cognitive existentialism I will discuss later. To be sure, notorious externalist stories (like those of Hessen, Merton, Needham, and Zilsel) identify the reasons for the development of certain kinds and styles of scientific research (and thereby, the reasons for particular aspects of science’s cognitive dynamics), but they are not concerned with the constitution of science’s cognitive content. This is why the position of externalism does not oppose the variants of cognitive essentialism that imply a narrative legitimation of science’s privileged status. (In fact, most externalists advocate such a legitimation by stressing the interests served by the different uses to which scientific knowledge was put.) 27. In the next chapters, objectifying thematization will begin to emerge as something that is both the process and the result of the interplay of hermeneutic fore-structure and cognitive structure of scientific research. Like objectifying thematization, a thematizing project is not an “independent cognitive essence”. It exists only within the interplay of hermeneutic fore-structure and cognitive structure. The thematizing project is the locus of the circular relations

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between the fore-structuring of scientific research as a mode of existence and the structure of scientific knowledge as manifested by the model-semantic structure of scientific domains. In analyzing this project in an interpretative manner, cognitive existentialism provides a methodological alternative to the strategies that seek to “explain” (i.e., to derive from principles) a science/nonscience demarcational line.

Chapter Two 1. See, for example, Livingston’s (1986) celebrated study of the Lebenswelt of mathematical proofs. The “living foundations of mathematics” are achieved through a “descriptive analysis” of the “natural accountability” of proofs. With regard to the comparison between the pictures of scientific research suggested respectively by ethnomethodology and hermeneutic phenomenology, Livingston’s study deserves a special attention. It is a study that operates with the notion of “transcendence” – a notion of prime importance for the strong hermeneutics of science as well. For Livingston, transcendence is accomplished within the actual (“at-the-board or with-pencil-and-paper”) work of doing mathematics. To describe the feat of transcendence is to reveal the work of a proof’s situated accomplishment without inquiring into “non-local circumstances” beyond the respective life-world of doing mathematics. Thus, the “local process” of a mathematical proof involves something that transcends the locality. The participants in such a proof (Livingston calls them the “production cohort”) try to focus upon the theorem as something static being progressively revealed. The theorem is a “projected gestalt” that at once transcends and is situated within the life-world of doing mathematics. Obviously, the idea of situated transcendence plays a central role in the ethnomethodological descriptive analysis. However, by no means this idea can be spelled out in terms of such an analysis. More generally, the ethnomethodology of the living foundations of doing mathematics does not have resource to reflect upon that “implicit ontology” of the process of a mathematical proof, which it presupposes. By implication, the status of the “projected gestalt” remains completely unclear. To say that within the life-world of doing mathematics the rigorous structure of a mathematical proof is predicated on a situated transcendence is to get involved in a circularity between the constitutive features of the proof (represented post festum as an “extractable method”) and the living work of theorem-proving. To be sure, this circularity is a predicament for all theorists who try to consider certain cultural artifacts as an ongoing structuration within the interrelatedness of discursive practices. The circularity is unavoidable when one refuses to admit a dichotomy between the process of construction and its outcome. Yet the philosophical challenge is to transform this apparent circularity into a hermeneutic circularity. The deficit of the ethnomethodological studies of science consists, in my view, in the lack of an (ontological) theory that can accomplish this transformation. 2. In saying this, however, I am not going to subscribe to the criticism of ethnomethodology raised by some sociologists of scientific knowledge. (See on this criticism Bloor’s [1987] review of Livingston’s [1986] book and Bloor’s (1992) later attack against the ethnomethodological reception of Wittgenstein’s view of the rule-following practice.) To integrate a paradigm of constitutional analysis in the praxiological studies of normal science – what is the purpose of the hermeneutic reformulation I am after – does not amount to rehabilitating the “causal explanations” regarding the production of science’s cognitive content, which are propagated by the representatives of the strong programme. More specifically, to assert that the investigation of the practical intelligibility of a particular cognitive procedure requires taking into consideration the interrelatedness of research practices (as a “being of normal scientific research”) does not amount to forging explanatory models in Bloor’s sense. Ethnomethodologists insists on the

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historicity of research practices, but they do not have conceptual resources to reveal the historicity of the articulation of cognitive content within the scientific work’s life-world. 3. There are “many origins” of practice theory in various philosophical traditions. Its main ideas are advanced in the first place by Anthony Giddens, Pierre Bourdieu, Hubert Dreyfus, Chantal Mouffe, Oswald Schwemmer, Theodore Schatzki, Robert Brandom, and Craig Calhoun. This list of authors alone shows the philosophical heterogeneity of practice theory. 4. On the possibility of “social ontology beyond methodological individualism and reificationist holism” see my 2003a and 2003b. 5. For a nice criticism of “practical holism” see Vogel (1991). 6. According to Douglas, a person is always performing a “linguistic ritual”, when she or he speaks in a restricted code. Furthermore, the very restrictedness of such a code forces all communicative partners to utilize their collective assumptions to decode the circulating information, and this, in turn, reaffirms the collective integrity which the assumptions constitute. Mary Douglas outlines this view only with respect to “what is said” in a community governed by a restricted code of communication. Now, this view is to be extended to “restricted” regimes and orders of discursive practices (including those of normal scientific research). The more ritual normal scientific practices, the higher the possibility of discrepancy and dissonances in the routine everydayness. Notoriously, based on her views about linguistic rituals and restricted codes, Mary Douglas developed (in collaboration with the sociologist of education, Basil Bernstein) the method of “grid/group analysis”. This method found some applications in historical studies of normal science. (See, e.g., Caneva [1981], and Rudwick [1982]. On a criticism of using grid/group analysis in historiography of science, see Oldroyd [1986].) 7. Stephen Turner generalizes the criticism of the reificationist tendency in various versions of practice theory. According to him, notions like Weltanschauungen, tacit knowledge, Sitte with causal powers, cultural patterns, paradigms and so forth are regarded in practice theory as ingredients of explanatory models. The epistemic problem with these notions is that they refer to “unusual objects”. Turner writes: “To make a very long discussion very short, the problem with these notions is this. They present themselves as natural objects, with natural powers. But the only access we have to them is through our own ‘culture’. From this point of view of what we can know about them, or how we can construct them, they are irremediably cultural facts. We need a starting point within culture or practice to recognize something else as practice... We are indeed locked within our horizons in this respect. We cannot distinguish nature from culture on a basis beyond culture...” (Turner 1994, p. 103) In fact, by outlining in this manner the central epistemic problem with practice theory’s basic notions Turner pinpoints the locus where the need of introducing the “ontological difference” comes to the fore. The epistemic problem he speaks about can be overcome, when one differentiates between ontic and ontological level of reflecting upon practices. 8. Since the term “discourse” in hermeneutic phenomenology connotes both the process and the outcome of the articulation of meaning, the notion of “meaning” has nothing to do with the “meaning” studied by the empiricist verificational theory. For logical positivists, there is no experience before utterring a sentence. According to a classical formulation suggested by Moritz Schlick and generalized by Alfred Ayer as a “verificational theory of meaning”, the process by which a sentence is given meaning (and thereby turned into a proposition) consists in defining through the method of verification the use of the symbols which occur in the sentence. As a consequence, all meaning is “imprisoned” in sentences (propositions, assertions, judgments). In the “verificational theory of meaning”, the predicate logic is presupposed as a foundation of all experience. (It is presupposed with good reasons for the logical positivists are only interested in meaning that can be logically reconstructed.) Meaning is defined by the possible observations that are relevant to the predication of a subject achieved by raising an experien-

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tial proposition. By contrast, in the framework of hermeneutic phenomenology, practical experience grounds all kinds of predication. Thus, the “discursive mode of appropriative interpretation of what is understood in conducting practices” articulate meaning that is independent of predication and predicate logic. It is the transformation of meaning and discourse generated by practical experience into propositions that creates “derivative meaning” studied by the empiricist verificational theory. 9. This thesis is a tacit assumption in the most studies of scientific discourse. The philosophical debates over the notion of “discourse” have numerous repercussions and highly intricate implications in philosophy of science, cognitive sociology, discourse analysis, ethnomethodology, linguistics of scientific publications, theory of scientific communication, rhetoric of science, and historiography of science. According to the “Sausserean assumption”, the grammar of a scientific language is the framework of a discipline’s basic theoretical terms whose syntactic relations are informed by a mathematical apparatus. Under this assumption, the corresponding discourse embraces all rhetorical tactics allowed by the grammar, when the language is activated for purposes of communication. At the beginning of the 1980s, a tendency of treating the notion of “scientific discourse” as a notion referring to a reality which is independent of the syntactical and logical structure of scientific languages began to gain currency. G. Nigel Gilbert and Michael Mulkay’s (1984, esp. Ch. 3) sociological analysis of scientists’ discourse and Karin Knorr-Cetina’s (1981, Ch. 5) study of the contextuality of scientists’ discursive practices launched this tendency, which deviated from the “Sausserean assumption”. These authors were preoccupied with the variability of scientists’ discursive practices as a terrain of studying the plurality of social contexts of producing scientific knowledge. Scientific discourse is no longer treated as an epiphenomenon of science’s cognitive structures. Furthermore, discourse is (in an ontological sense) “before” any linguistic frameworks and codes. 10. Kuhn’s earliest narrative account of a scientific tradition goes back to the beginning of the 1950s when he studied the tradition of the structural chemistry in seventeenth century. (See Kuhn 1952) 11. On this claim, and more generally, on the attempt to apply the idea of “effective history” in the studies of science’s development, see my 1997a, Ch. 2. 12. The clash between Kuhn-as-a-philosopher and Kuhn-as-a-historian is intimately related to the various interpretation of the incommensurability thesis. (On how the professional historians of science construe this clash see Klein, Shimony, and T. Pinch [1979], Williams [1980], and Heilborn [1995].) Notoriously, Kuhn’s Denkweg was directed towards receding from the “global” version of the thesis. (Howard Sankey and Paul Hoyningen-Huene [2001] describe the latter as a version that includes a semantico-logical and a methodological aspect.) In his later work (especially in [1983] and [1987]) Kuhn develops a conception of “local incommensurability”, which restricts untranslatability to local clusters of interdefined terms from competing theories. He gives the following example. In comparing the theoretical terms in eighteenth-century and twentieth-century chemical texts, one would recognize that only a small group of terms remains for which the modern vocabulary offers no equivalent. A case in point is the term “principle” that refers to qualities providing direct evidence concerning chemical composition. In contrast to terms like “phlogiston”, there are no “contextual translations” for that term. What is more important, terms like “principle” are not replaceable individually by some set of modern terms and phrases. The meaning variance is restricted to localized clusters of terms which refer to the whole lexical structures of the theories across a scientific revolution. Hence, there is at once a localized translation failure and an account of global revolution, which does not succumb to the absurd idea that all of the terms common to the theories function different ways before and after the conceptual change. Following this line of reasoning, one can state that the problems of (co)translatability between rival theories are not problems

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that concern the theories en bloc. These problems arise only for a small subgroups of interdefined terms. The local version is about meaning change of these terms. At the same time, the local version permits the construction of historiographic narratives that are not subjected to the schematism of science’s stages of development. Conceptual units that preserve their meanings across a scientific revolution provide a sufficient basis for a comparative appraisal of the theories. Hence, there is no conflict between defining intertheoretical standards of methodological appraisal and recognizing semantic incommensurability. Kuhn realizes, however, that this argument is still ineffective regarding those conceptions (proposed by authors like Davidson, Kitcher, and Putnam), which describe the outcome of interpretation as a translation whose success is incompatible with even localized translation failure. Since these conceptions follow Quine’s equation of translation with interpretation, the local version of incommensurability depends crucially upon the refutation of that equation. In Kuhn’s view, Quine’s “radical translator” (who is in fact an interpreter) strives to invent hypotheses. “Gavagai” and other examples suggested by the author of Word and Object are consistently misleading for they show not a process of translation but a process of acquiring a new language. By implication, Quine’s examples conflate interpretation and translation. By placing emphasis in his late work upon the contextual learning of language, Kuhn approximates something like a Wittgensteinian picture of local incommensurability. For him, the contextual (discursive-practical) learning of language is “the possibility of interpretation” and, in turn, interpretation is what a translator must do before translation can begin. Since translation cannot be reduced to interpretation, a theory of interpretation based on Quine’s theoretical holism and ontological relativity cannot be used for overcoming the incommensurability thesis. The destruction of referential determination through the universalization of translation (qua interpretative relationism and transitions between particular ontologies) is a price for refuting the thesis that those who admit a referential discontinuity in science’s development are not willing to pay. 13. On the notion of “scientific domain’s items” see Shapere 1984, pp. 320-323. 14. Despite the fact that late-Kuhn’s ideas about a “local untranslatability” are a successful response to the accusations of commitment to a kind of scheme-content dualism, he never gave up the neo-Kantian epistemological stance. 15. Among the “epistemologists” who associate the reading of “normal science” with the account of science as the construction and appraisal of theoretical representations Rouse mentions Israel Scheffler, Dudley Shapere, Abner Shimony, and Frederick Suppe. 16. I am unhappy with this reading of “radical Kuhn’s normal science” since it wrongly equates the contextuality and instrumentality of routine scientific work with the claims that science is primarily ways of manipulating and intervening in the world, and scientists are practitioners that do not need a “monolithic consensus” in their ongoing research. Among the members of a scientific community there might exist constant disputes and essential disagreements. Nevertheless a community’s doing-research-within-a-tradition is impossible without a basic consensus. At the same time, the projection of pre-judices and possibilities within a research tradition is an ontological condition for having a consensus in a scientific community. Since this consensus is informed by a tradition as a transsubjective phenomenon, it cannot be explained as an outcome of particular intersubjective “negotiations”. The basic consensus in normal scientific research is not “constructed” step-by-step through direct interactions among the community’s members. It is also not engendered by the "crossing points" of the problem-situations that different research teams in a given scientific domain are facing. It is a consensus informed by a “tradition’s authority”. As a rule, the transmission of discursive practices always “transcends” the situational and contextual dissensus and thereby provides the community’s members with an identity as a “collective of practitioners” working in a scientific domain. A hermeneuticophenomenological view of the scientific community’s basic consensus opposes all constructivist

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and pragmatist theories that “derive” this consensus from scientists’ capability to close down situations of indeterminacy through personal, contingent interpretations of the relevant contexts. Scientific knowledge might be constructed locally and independently from intersubjectively shared information. However, its construction is always governed by the tradition’s transsubjective authority. When one goes on to respect the latter claim, one has a clear dividing line between “construction” and “constitution”, i.e., between social constructivism and hermeneutico-phenomenological constitutional analysis. 17. The network of these practices is functionally self-sufficient. Each particular practice (carrying out an experiment, designing a system of differential equations, and so on) gains its functional significance in the context of practices related to it. When “dysfunctions” (Kuhn’s “anomalies”) in the interrelatedness emerge, the need for their elimanation calls into play the thematization. Very often, the dysfunctions come to the surface as a problem that inaugurates a new domain’s item. The thematization that introduces a new domain’s item becomes unavoidable in situations in which the routine practices cease to work. Robert Kohler (1985) calls such changes in the cognitive structure of a domain “innovations in normal science”. See also Winston (1976), and R. Laudan (1980). 18. Rouse believes that some versions of neopragmatism can usefully be regarded as attempts to universalize hermeneutics. Based on this belief, he goes on to introduce a ditinction between two forms of the claims of universal hermeneutics. On the first one, there is no pretheoretical facts of the matter, i.e., which can be used as a theortically independent empirical basis. This form admits that truth and meaning are covariant concepts. On the second form, the universalization of hermeneutics is guided by the claim that interpretation is the working out of the possibilities within a situation. The first version of universal hermeneutics tells us what is the case, whereas the second is concerned with what is the matter. The former is Quine’s theoretical hermeneutics that postulates that interpretation consists of forming hypotheses, while the latter is Heidegger’s hermeneutics of practice. The former is a “cognitive” universalization of hermeneutics, while the latter, according to Rouse, raises a claim of universality because any particular activity acquires its interpretative sense and intelligibility from the interrelatedness of practices (and their equipment) to which it belongs. The neopragmatic endeavour to universalize hermeneutics, to which Rouse subscribes, is a peculiar synthesis of Quine’s theoreical holism and Heidegger’s practical holism. More important, however, is the Heideggerian-Wittgensteinian view that discursive practices and the interpretations they embody hang together. Having in mind my previous criticism of Rouse’s conception, one can assert that this variety of neopragmatic universalization of hermeneutics is an outcome of a deontologization of hermeneutic phenomenology and its partial translation into the language of Quine’s theory of interpretation. According to this variety, the universality of interpretation is due to the ubiquity of (pre-cognitive) imitation and habit in all discursive practices. What Rouse’s neopragmatic hermeneutics misses is the constitutive role that (existential) interpretation plays in the meaningful worlds (and forms of life). The whole “existential-projective structure” of the nexus “understanding-interpretation” is reduced to pre-cognitive anticipations in conducting discursive practices. 19. Against the neopragmatist reading of “normal science”, I should like to stress that the flux of practices “creates” historically transmissible forms of transsubjectivity that inform a tradition-bound consensus. It is this consensus that “transcends” the situational and contextual interactions of practitioners involved in a common enterprise. 20. On an interesting philosophical analysis of the theory of classical hydrodynamics, see Böhme (1992, pp. 41-50). For a comprehensive historical study of classical hydrodynamics see Darrigol 2002.

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Chapter Three 1. Whether the issue of the completeness of a scientific domain can be equated with the issue of a theory’s completeness is a complex subject with too many technical ramifications in order to be treated at this occasion. One might find some interesting and valuable suggestions for its discussion in Shapere 1984, pp. 261-272, Darden and Maull 1977; Polikarov 1981 and 1995; Suppe 1988, pp. 118-151; van Fraassen 1989, pp. 318-346; Culp and Kitcher 1989; Balzer and Dawe 1997; Balzer and Lorenzano 2000. 2. On the analysis of the order of items and models of a scientific domain see Shapere 1984, pp. 320-324. Closely related to the discussion of the order of items of a scientific domain is the discussion of domains’ struggle for an institutional identity. See, for instance, Benson 2001. R. Whitley (1978) reveals important correlations between types of scientific research and the organization of work in scientific domains. 3. The domain’s main items are thermodynamic and stochastic models of nonequilibrium systems; theoretical readings of experiments on the response of macroscopic reacting systems to externally imposed oscillatory perturbations, bifurcations and routes of chaos; mathematical techniques providing functions for evolution of systems with multiple steady states; dynamical phase diagrams for analyzing transitions in reacting systems; and results of numerical studies of chemical reaction networks. 4. In comparing high energy physics and molecular biology, Knorr-Cetina (1999, ch. 4) draws the conclusion that the “small-science style” of molecular biology has not been changed in the 1990s by the human genome project. In her account, the lack of a change of the style of doing research is due to the fact that this project is itself far from being a centralized enterprise comparable to the experimental high energy physics. In addition, the genome project is not exciting since it does not promise to provide interesting changes in the cognitive structure of molecular biology. The same situation can be observed in the domain of chemical reactions far from equilibrium. Despite the rise of large “unifying” projects (some of them related to issues of applied chemistry), this domain does not change its “small-science style”. It continues to be dispersed in many research units, and there is a tendency to a further fragmentation into individual research groups. 5. The view that there are temporal reticulations across the situations of the research process opposes both (1) the trivializing reductionism of temporality to a non-configured chronology; and (2) the (mis)interpretation of temporality as a mixture of independent time-trajectories of particular research practices. In the former conception, the working process of a scientific community is a chronological sequence of events that are not temporally reticulated. The second conception is more sophisticated. (To a certain extent, this conception is held by Foucault in his “archaelogical description” of discursive practices. For him, there is no “uniform model of temporalization” in this description. Each discursive practice is characterized not only by its rules of accumulation, exclusion, reactivation, and its specific kinds of connexion over various successions, but also by its own regime of temporality.) This conception allows the existence of temporal reticulations, but explains them as mere coordinations of dynamic trajectories of simultaneously running discursive practices, ignoring thereby the interplay of discursive-practical fore-structure and cognitive content in the research process. The account of the temporality of scientific research I am trying to sketch out stipulates that the ongoing (situational) fore-structuring of that process is basically futural. Paraphrasing Heidegger’s well-known motif, in its involvement in a research process, a scientific community is constantly ahead of itself, but inconstantly anticipating the process’ direction.

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6. Against the background of this interpretation of past and present, one can shed more light upon the two kinds of future I distinguished. First, the “projective future”, i.e. the future that is open to all possibilities (possible lines of research) arising out of the research everydayness, is characterized by an “ontological primacy” over the past and the present. The projective future is informed by the (situationally changing) fore-conception of constituting a domain of scientific research. The “planned future” is related to the selective actualization of projected possibilities within the “thrown project”. This kind of future is intentional and teleological (oriented towards an expected actualization) and eliminative (because it forecloses possibilities). But first and foremost, it is a kind of “planned retrospection”. It revives possibilities once excluded from the actual research process. 7. By formulating this thesis, I obviously enter the terrain of a Polanyi-like cognitive hermeneutics. This problematics, however, requires a special study which I am not going to offer in this book. Only a short note is in place here. It concerns the significant difference between “background pre-understanding” and “background knowledge”. According to Popper, and many other adherents of critical rationalism, the background knowledge is “all those things which we accept (tentatively) as unproblematic while we are testing the theory.” (Popper 1963, p. 390) By contrast, background pre-understandings are not committed to particular procedures like testing theories. They are rather the implicit presence of the hermeneutic fore-structure in the cognitive content. This presence, however, does not take on the form of “ conceptually unarticulated knowledge”. It is rather a kind of what I called – in leaning on champions of practice theory – a scientific community’s unconscious. Background pre-understandings are in the research everydayness, and for that reason they mediate between hermeneutic fore-structure and cognitive content. 8. Elsewhere I dealt with the other two levels. (See Ginev 2000, pp. 44-56) The considerations concerning these levels should be guided by a narrative account devised within a phenomenology of a community’s time experience. (See Carr 1986, pp. 122-152) Main characteristics of a community’s experience are memory, unconscious, and making present. In Being and Time, “making present” is the “temporal scheme” of objectifying thematization. Moving from the level of past-present-future feedback relations of discursive practices to the level upon which narrative temporality is experienced by a scientific community has to make use of the notion of a “community’s unconscious” – experiences (Erlebnisse) that are “actually forgotten” or (in another formulation) “pushed aside” by the actual (present) experience (Erfahrung). These are experiences of practices that are “tacitly participating” in (just because they are pushed aside by) a community’s actual experience. As in the case of personal memory, the ability to constantly forget is the most important feature of a scientific community’s memory. The differentiation between the level (i) of past-present-future feedback relations of discursive practices and the level (ii) of a community’s experience (incarnated in situational experiences of these relations) is just an analytical tool. In fact, both temporal configurations (of practices and experiences) are manifestations of the unity of that ontological pre-narrativity, which is ascribed to the circular relations between hermeneutic fore-structring, everydayness, and cognitive content. 9. In “micro-hermeneutic terms” is spelled out also another line of argumentation in the existential conception of science. This line concerns the transition from the “hermeneutic as” of pre-thematic “circumspective deliberation” and “concernful understanding” to the “apophantical as” of science’s thematic assertions when “something ready-to-hand” turns into something about which the thematic assertion that points it out is made. 10. For Heidegger, the notion of hermeneutic situation refers to the task of “making secure beforehand” the totality of the “presuppositions” involved in an interpretation’s fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. (To my knowledge, he operates for the first time with this notion in the Natorp essay of 1922.) The hermeneutic situation includes a self-reflective dimension that obliges the interpreter to give a “phenomenal characterization” of her thematic

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fore-having within the scope of interpretation. Thus, a particular hermeneutic situation in the existential analytic is that of interpretation of the “meaning of the being of care”. Heidegger poses the question of what is the hermeneutic situation which is adequate for interpreting this meaning. He describes this situation in terms of that fore-having of Dasein’s existentiality which is covered up by the inauthentic mode of being-in-the-world. The adequate hermeneutic situation of revealing the meaning of the being of care is the situation of interpretative uncovering Dasein’s authentic being. The charge of circularity leveled at the existential analytic misunderstands this situation. In the present study, I bind the notion of hermeneutic situation with that of reading process. 11. To be sure, a similar task can be addressed in terms of Foucault “archaeology of knowledge”. In this case, one can describe several “archaeological traits” of (the regularities proper to discourse of ) a thematizing project. In modifying slightly Foucault’s (1972, p. 151) celebrated postulate, one can state that a type of scientific discourse is the path from one contradiction to another within a general episteme. Defined as implicit rules of formation common to the apparently unrelated domains of research, the episteme is an analogue to the thematizing project. For Foucault’s archaeological description, contradictions characterizing a type of scientific discourse are not secret phenomena to be uncovered. Archaeology of knowledge regards them as manifestations of a general episteme within the fields of discursive practices constituting a type of scientific discourse. In addition, the episteme defines the positions and functions that the “epistemic subject” of a given type of scientific discourse could occupy in the diversity of practices. 12. See in this regard especially Bitsakis’ 1997 succinct analysis. 13. Notoriously, the registration of one or the other property of a certain system depends exclusively on the situation in which a measurement of that property takes place. 14. This claim does not violate the analogy with the written texts since the latter are also modifiable within the effective history of their subsequent readings. 15. Quantum states in quantum mechanics are a research object. The reproductive reading of this object concerns the statements of the values of physical quantities that are of a statistical character. The productive reading is guided, in particular, by the belief in the non-existence of hidden variables in quantum mechanics. An example of a manipulation with this object is the implementation of a great number of measurements that change each particular state into one of a series of states which are connected with the measurements. In so doing, one is establishing the “non-causal evolution” of a quantum state. 16. In fact, he formulates for the first time the argument raised against the “neo-Diltheyan” defenders (like Karl-Otto Apel, Hubert Dreyfus, and Charles Taylor) of the “natural science – human science” distinction. On this argument, nothing about the specificity of the research objects of the human sciences does follow from the fact that human agents are self-interpreting beings and the outcomes (all cultural artifacts) of their self-interpretative activities take always place within discursive practices and fields of intersubjective meanings. This is not a fact about human beings as research objects of a kind of interpretative inquiry. (On this argument see Okrent 1984 and 1988, pp. 158-165. For Okrent, the neo-Diltheyan authors make use of Heidegger’s version of the hermeneutic circle for advocating the methodological specificity of the human sciences. To make use of this version in a methodological context is to misunderstand Heidegger's view about understanding and interpretation and their relation to meaning and truth.) 17. Elsewhere, I argue that “double hermeneutics” (as methodology of constituting specific research objects) involves by necessity a self-reflection. (See Ginev 1998, p. 263: “In my view, the research process in Geisteswissenschaften is characterized by interpretive self-reflection that determines an epistemic specificity. The interpretive study of a cultural phenomenon is assimilated to a knowledge-constitutive interest in dialogue with the Other through self-reflection

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upon how the interpreter becomes involved in this dialogue. The task for the human scientist is to reflect upon his/her own ‘situated transcendence’.”) The self-reflection upon the hermeneutic medium of the constitution of research objects in the natural sciences is provoked neither by the “dialogue with the Other” nor by the need for a coordination between “emic” and “etic” analysis, nor by the search for bridging the “experience-near” and “experiencedistant” concepts. This is why this self-reflection by no means approaches issues of a socialexistential ontology. By contrast, the kinds of constitutional analysis integrated in the interpretative human science are not to be detached from these issues. 18. A language game is an open-ended set of ways of using a tool into which a “binding interpretation” is woven. Each language game comprises two kinds of “reading” – a (trivial) reading of the ways of applying a tool and the possible response to the applications, and a (constitutive) reading related to the interpretative appropriation of possibilities through the tool’s uses. Although Wittgenstein comments, in an explicit manner, only on the former kind of reading (in his case, “understanding”), the contextual-instrumental approach suggested in Philosophical Investigations presupposes a “binding interpretation” of a language game’s openended set of ways of using a tool. It is this interpretation that bears a resemblance to a constitutive (productive-reproductive) reading. 19. For the formation of this tendency, see Ruse 1973, ch. 7. 20. Only a small number of scientific domains are constituted by theoretical models that are not dealing with systems’ dynamic behavior but with taxonomical, morphological, or structural aspects of empirical systems. As a rule, however, these domains are closely related to domains in which systems’ dynamic behavior is investigated. For instance, philogenetic systematics (as a typical taxonomical domain) draws essentially on dynamic conceptions of the domain of synthetic theory of evolution; studies in geomorphology (as a typical descriptivemorphological domain) depend crucially on results obtained in various domains in which the dynamics of physico-chemical systems is under inquiry. Finally, semantic syntax (as a structural domain based upon the theory of transformational generative grammar) is related (via devices like constraints on movement transformations, surface interpretation rules, anaphoric island constraints, and others) to theories in which the dynamic aspects of linguistic systems are at issue. 21. In the days of great enthusiasm about catastrophe theory, Woodcock and Davis (1978, p. 21-22) wrote that position of catastrophe theory “offers an alternative way of looking at the world – not more correct than Newton’s way, perhaps more complete, surely radically different. It points out qualitative similarities in a wide variety of processes, just as the analogies of ordinary language do, but with the advantage that its analogies can be rigorously classified and combined, using mathematics as well adapted for the purpose as Newton’s calculus was for analysing quantitative relationships. For three hundred years we have explored the world using maps of those relationships. Now, with new maps, there is a chance to see new territory: the landscapes of change.”. 22. In a hypothesis whose treatment requires a special attention, the teleonomic thematizing project is most strongly stimulating and promoting the complexity of processes and events known as a “knowledge-society” and described by authors like Bell 1973, Böhme 1994, and Stehr 1994. 23. Concerning the non-reductionist versions of united science see Ginev 1989, pp. 91-99. 24. In the perspective of a “rational reconstruction” of science’s historical dynamics, one can reverse the state of affairs by claiming that the thematizing projects can be identified by stable syntactic and semantic structures. Yet one could adopt this perspective only by ignoring that the syntax (formal structure) and the semantics (all possible models of interpreting the formal structure) acquire their pragmatic meaning only within the medium of language games.

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Chapter Four 1. Here I am not going to elaborate on the contrast between “normalization” and “regularization”. To be sure, however, such elaborations are an important step in the construction of a fullfledged hermeneutic theory of proto-normativity. Important in this regard are various methodological studies in the philosophy of the social sciences. Philip Pettit (1986a, 1986b, 1994) is the author who within the analytical philosophy works out most systematically the difference between normalizing and regularizing explanations. For him, the latter should show that the explained events are unexceptional elements of the world or routine operations in a recurring process. The normalizing explanations present the events as something that had to happen if the world continues to satisfy certain norms. See also Ginev 1994. 2. Following ideas advanced by Peter Galison (1987, ch. 5), experiments begin and end in a matrix of beliefs associated with expectations and anticipations. It is this matrix that defines criteria for determining when the experiments have to begin and how they end. The very matrix is engendered by a referential whole of normal scientific practices. Such a whole, however, presupposes a clear differentiation of the particular practices. Galison pays much attention to the historical bifurcation between theorists’ and experimentalists’ practices of 20th century physics. He speaks about “theoretical and experimental cultures”. He also shows the “segmentation of the experimental enterprise” in practices of structural engineers, electrical engineers, computer simulation experts, data analysts, and phenomenologists. Galison’s analysis is highly instructive for studying the changing patterns of proto-normativity arising out of the processes of differentiation and integration of research practices in a referential whole. Because of the pluralization of scientific work’s sub-cultures (not only those of the theorists and the experimentalists), the configurations of practices (belonging to different sub-cultures) create an “intercultural proto-normativity” in scientific research. The particular orchestrations of machines, materials, collaborators, interpretations, and judgments (Galison 1987, p. 244) are the source of this proto-normativity. Galison focuses primarily upon those anticipations and expectations, which help the practitioners to answer the questions of where theory exerts its influence in the experimental process and how experimentalists use theory as an utensil. Combinations of constraints stemming from different sub-cultures make a given experiment plausible. The virtue of dividing the constraints of scientific research with regard to the theoretical and experimental sub-cultures “is to avoid the traditional image of science as an inseparable web descending from high theory to observational regularities.” (Galison 1987, p. 255) The endeavour to unveil particular sub-cultures of scientific research characterizes also KnorrCetina’s recent work. More specifically, the proto-normative role of the referential whole of research practices is a central issue in her (1999) conception of the “epistemic cultures”. Unlike Galison, she does not draw a basic dividing line between theoretical and experimental practices. Her central opposition is between two types of “the construction of the machinaries of knowledge construction” – “the communitarian science of physics” and “the individual, bodily, testbench science of molecular biology”. Knorr-Cetina describes among other things the life-word’s constraints of both epistemic cultures. On the level of these elementary (proronormative) constraints several divergencies begin to take shape. Knorr-Cetina’s comparative optics displays the transitions from the laboratory everydayness of a given epistemic culture to the formation of stable patterns of producing knowledge. Another interesting perspective on the proto-normative arranging of scientific is offered by Hans-Jörg Rheinberger's valuable case study of the history of the early test-tube representation of transfer RNA as soluble RNA. In his account, a configuration of scientific practices (in particular, those included in an experimental

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system) can only be productive, if it is able to generate differences. (See Rheiberger 1997, pp. 26-37) 3. In their account, a cognitive interest can be revealed by a reflection upon the “internal conditions” of the possibility of scientific knowledge of a given type. Important in this formulation is the predicate “internal”. For many years, Apel has been aiming at a recasting (and generalizing) Lakatos’ opposition between external and internal history of science in terms of his critical-normative theory of science. At the same time, he is convinced that a Lakatos-like kind of internalist rational reconstruction is to be applied to all possible branches of intellectual history (as theories of historical rationalization process), and to the self-reconstructions of the reconstructive critical sciences.

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Name Index

Agassi, J. – 183 Agre, P. 178 Apel, K.-O. – 25, 160, 161, 200, 213-215, 217, 223, 235, 237 Asmus, A. – 222 Ayer, A. – 229

Bohman, J. – 13, 35, 36, 64, 198 Böhme, G. – viii, 15, 232, 236 Bohr, N. – 123, 142, 170, 221 Bourdieu, P. – 8, 102, 208, 209, 229 Boylan, M. – 175 Brandom, R. – 193, 194, 195, 196, 204, 229 Bultmann, R. – 158 Burke, K. – 33 Butterfield, H. – 154

Babich, B. – 73, 219, 220 Benson, K. – 223 Barnes, B. – 38, 58, 223 Bachelard, S. – 55 Balzer, W. – 79, 233 Bavnik, B. – 174 Bell, D. – 236 Bernstein, B. – 229 Bernstein, R. – v, 99 Berkeley, G. – 32 Bevilacqua, F. – 70, 71 Biagioli, M. – 13 Bineham, J. – 195 Bitsakis, E. – 159, 235 Bloor, D. – 38, 58, 223, 228 Blumenberg, H. – 158

Calhoun, C. – 229 Callon, M. – 66, 226 Caneva, K. – 229 Caputo, J. – 220 Carr, D. – 73, 135, 234 Cartwright, N. – ix, 39, 140 Cavailles, J. – 55, 224 Cassirer, E. 115 Cavell, S. – 194 Chaloner, C. – 222 Chapman, D. – 178 257

258

Index

Chihara, C. – 183 Chisholm, R. – 200 Chladenius, J. M. – 47 Cohen, I. B. – 154 Collins, H. – 38, 58, 59, 207, 225, 226 Crease, R. – 70, 71, 226, 227 Crombie, A. – 154, 155 Culp, S. – 233 Cushing, J. – 69, 71 Danto, A. – 13, 227 Darden, L. – 233 Darrigol, O. – 232 Davidson, D. – 35, 115, 196, 231 Davis, M. – 236 Dawe, C. M. – 233 de Broglie, L. – 122 de Kepper, P. – 137 Delbrück, M. – 123 Devitt, M. – 77 Dingler, H. – 33 Dreyfus, H. – 5, 61, 62, 73, 138, 169, 178, 218, 229, 235 Dreyfus, S. – 178 Douglas, M. – 98, 229 Duhem, P. – 117 Eger, M. – 69-71, 163, 226 Einstein, A. – 221 Elkana, Y. – 192 Ferma, P. – 155 Feyerabend, P. – ix, 22, 23, 79, 80, 183

Fine, A. – 82, 128 Fleck, L. – 191, 192, 218 Flores, P. – 178, 179 Forman, P. – 17-18, 20 Foucault, M. – 70, 233, 235 Fox, R. – 222 Fox Keller, E. – 38 Franklin, A. – 207 Frye, N. – 109 Fuller, S. – 220, 221 Gadamer, H.-G., – 1, 19, 21, 42, 43, 45, 46, 56, 134, 161, 221, 223, 224, 225 Galileo – 17 Galison, P. – 184, 185, 186, 222, 237 Gaonkar, D. – 226 Garfinkel, H. – 29, 221 Geertz, C. – 169, 192 Gethmann, C.-F. – 73, 222 Giannetto, E. – 70, 71 Giddens, A. – 102, 169 Giere, R. – 140 Gilber, W. – 155 Gilbert, G. N. – 230 Gonzales, P. – 146 Gross, A. – 225 Guagnini, A. – 222 Gurwitch, A. – 73 Habermas, J. – 161 Hacking, I. – 5-7, 78, 115, 116 Hald, A. – 155 Hanson, N. R. – 36

259

Index

Haraway, D. – 37, 74, 227 Harding, S. – 38, 83 Hartmann, D. – 222 Heelan, P. – vii, 65-69, 73, 86, 159, 163, 225, 226 Heidegger, M. – 5, 6, 26, 27, 30, 43, 44, 45, 50-59, 69, 70, 86, 87, 102, 105, 129, 144, 150, 153, 155, 156, 168, 170, 179, 192, 194, 234 Heilborn, J. L. – 104, 230 Heisenberg, W. – 133 Hempel, C. G. – 219 Herzog, R. – 219 Hesse, M. – 36, 160 Hessen, B. – 15, 227 Heuningen-Huene, P. – 222, 230 Hirsch, E. D. – 217 Holdheim W. W. – 217 Holton, G. – 221 Hopkins, F. G. – 140 Howson, C. – 207 Hume, D. – 32 Husserl, E. – 21, 26, 27, 53, 127, 179, 221, 225 Ihde, D. – 73, 226 Iser, W. – 2, 217 Jacobi, S. – 146 Janich, P. – 33, 222 Kambartel, F. – 33 Kettner, M. – 25, 214 Kerszberg, P. – viii Kisiel, T. – vii, 57-59, 62, 86, 220, 225

Kitcher, P. – 231, 233 Klein, M. – 230 Knorr-Cetina, K. – 58-59, 230, 233, 237 Kockelmans, J. – vii, 55-59, 62, 73, 86, 125, 180, 225 Kohler, R. – 139, 232 Kuhn, T. – 1-14, 62, 91, 93-96 98, 99, 103, 104, 105, 107-108, 110-121, 124, 154, 156, 188, 212, 213, 218, 219, 230, 231, 232. Ladriere, J. – 55 Lakatos, I. – 9, 21, 28, 77, 84, 106, 183 Latour, B. – 38, 66 Laudan, L. – 76, 79, 197, 198-200, 203, 205. Laudan, R. – 232 Linnaeus, C. – 172 Lipps, H. – 209 Livingston, E. – 228 Locke, J. – 32 Longino, H. – 83 Lorentz, H. – 122 Lorenzen, P. – 33 Lorenzano, P. – 233 Lynch, K. – 176 Lynch, M. – 29 Malpas, J. – 88-90 Markus, G. – 63-65, 226 Marquard, O. – 158 Maull, N. – 233 Maxwell N. – 76

260

Index

McClarmock, R. – 177 McGuire, J. – 73, 96, 109 Merleau-Ponty, M. – 59, 61, 66,

Prigogine, I. – 136 Putnam, H. – 231

69, 225 Mersenne, M. – 155 Merton, R. – 15, 227 Mink, L. – 107, 108, 146

Quine, W. – 76, 117, 231, 232

Misch, G. – 209 Mittelstaedt, P. – 199 Mittelstrass, J. – 33 Mouffe, C. – 13, 229 Moulines, U. – 79 Mulkay, M. – 58, 230 Musgrave, A. – 9, 106 Needham, J. – 227 Nernst, W. – 18 Newton-Smith, W. H. – 81 Ochs, E. – 146 Okrent, M. – 235 Oldroyd, D. R. – 229 Pannenberg, W. – 219 Pascal, B. – 155 Peterson, B. – 178 Pinch, T. – 230 Pettit, P. – 237 Philipse, H. – 87, 182, 184 Pickering, A. – 38, 60 Polanyi, M. – 22, 23, 118, 143, 159, 221 Polikarov, A. – viii, 28, 217, 233 Popper, K. – 32, 79, 106, 112, 183, 234

Radnitzky, G. – 220 Randall, J. – 154 Rheinberger, H.-J. – 237 Ricoeur, P. – 73, 135, 142, 149, 151, 152, 162, 163, 164, 166 Rorty, R. – ix, 33, 82, 83, 84, 180, 181, 182, 184 Rouse, J. – 37, 40, 71-80, 84, 119, 146, 147, 227, 231, 232 Rudwick, M. J. S. – 229 Ruse, M. – 236 Russel, B. – 32 Russell, S. – 177 Sady, W. – 192 Salmon, W. – 30 Sankey, H. – 78, 227, 230 Sartre, J. P. – 19, 150 Schaffer, S. – 38 Schatzky, T. – 97, 102, 171, 229 Scheffler, I. – 7, 231 Schegloff, E. – 146 Scheibe, E. – 201 Schlick, M. – 229 Schottky, W. – 18 Schrödinger, E. – 123 Schwemmer, O. – 229 Scriven, M. – 140 Shapere, D. – 78, 227, 231, 233 Shapin, S. – 16, 38

261

Index

Shimony, A. – 230, 231 Seigfried, H. – 73 Shils, E. – 111 Simon, H. – 176-177 Singleton, R. Jr. – 140 Smocovitis, V. B. – 223 Sneed, J. – 79 Stefanov, A. – 184 Stegmüller, W. – 114 Stehr, N. – 236 Stent, G. – 158, 159, 160, 166 Ströker, E. – viii, 73 Suppe, F. – 231, 233 Taylor, C. – 3, 78, 217, 218, 235 Taylor, M. – 220 Thom, R. – 174 Thompson, S. – 146 Toulmin, S. – 22, 23, 106, 107 Traweck, S. – 223 Tuchanska, B. – 96, 109 Turner, S. – 229

Vico, G. – 47 Vogel, S. – 229 von Herrmann, F.-W. – 220 von Mises, R. – 18 von Neumann, J. – 173, 201 von Weizsacker, C. – 133 Watkins, J. W. N. – 220 Weber, M. – 115 Weinsheimer, J. – 224 Westman, R. – 218 White, H. – 146 Whitley, R. – 233 Wien, W. – 17 Williams, L. P. – 230 Winch, P. – 193 Winograd, T. – 178, 179 Winston, M. E. – 232 Wittgenstein, L. – 171, 189, 192, 194, 211, 236 Woodcock, A. – 236 Woolgar, S. – 38, 226 Worrall, J. – 77, 200

Van Fraassen, B. – 56, 68, 82, 124, 125, 128, 140, 187, 225, 233

Yearly, S. – 59, 225

Vattimo, G. – 12-13, 44

Zilsel, E, – 14, 15, 227