Mining the human sciences: Some relations between hermeneutics and epistemology

Abstract

The word mining has two primary meanings. The first is that of excavating for the purpose of extracting valued resources; the second is that of laying explosives under something for the purpose of bringing it down. The two actions described are ordinarily incompatible yet both are important, I shall argue, in dealing with what has come to be called the human or the "interpretive" sciences. On the one hand, they provide rich and unique resources which have greatly enhanced our understanding of human beings, their artifacts, and their institutions, and progress in the social and behavioral sciences can be made only by assimilating those understandings. Yet on the other hand, the human sciences are sometimes seen as an alternative to scientific, "positivistic" epistemology, as a new method for the apprehension of truth. Because it has become somewhat of a touchstone for radical critiques of the "scientific" study of human nature, that assumption is worth criticizing if not exploding altogether. Hence, our two ways of"mining" the human sciences. Hermeneutics is a branch of scholarship devoted to the theory and practice of the interpretation of texts. Originally, the objects of interpretation were sacred texts or scripture but more recently the objects of study have included texts of any sort, ranging from ordinary discourse and literary texts to "honorary" texts such as human action (Ricoeur, 1981; Sullivan, 1984) or to whole cultures (Geertz, 1973). Further, the application of an interpretive stance to philosophical problems of action (Ricoeur, 1981), perception, and knowledge (Nicholson, 1984) has proven to be extremely revealing. But beyond this, as mentioned, is the possibility that the theory of interpretation may offer an alternative to the more objectivist or "positivistic" epistemology that dominates the social or behavioral sciences including psychology, anthropology, sociology, and educational studies. Hermeneutics, it is suggested, may provide an epistemology suited to the human sciences. The appeal of an hermeneutic epistemology is that it faces squarely the problems of human intentionality, rationality, and subjectivity as well as the making and apprehension of meaning, as these notions are fundamental to the interpretation of any text. Further, it articulates the important distinctions involved in interpreting a text and it suggests a method, the "hermeneutic circle," by means of which these distinctions may be applied in any particular case. We may think of this approach to the study of human beings as the "interpretive" or "understanding" stance. Epistemology is the study of the nature of human knowledge. Scientific epistemology is the branch of scholarship devoted to elaborating and examining the