Hermeneutics is the science of explanation and interpretation. I’ve been having a quick look at it for background research re metadata etc and makes you think about the Semantic Web/MetaWeb/whatever you want to call it in a number of different lights.
The below is basically a summary of an article in The Encyclopedia of Artificial Intelligence by John C Mallery, R Hurwitz and G Duffy. Some of it’s pretty heavy going, so don’t say I didn’t warn you …
Brief history:
1) Interpreting the Bible, the Koran, the Talmud, and others.
– Hermeneutics are commonly associated with theologians and interpreting passages of text in different ways.
– In days of yore, the religious method was take principle A (e.g. Adultery is a sin) and text B (e.g. a bit of the Bible) and show how principle A is evidenced by text B.
– That in itself puts an interesting spin on Luther and the Reformation. Here was some German bloke suggesting this was wrong, and that instead you should take text B and derive your own conclusions from that. No surprise that the pope et al said that the Bible was too obscure to read without their guidance.
2) Schleiermacher, Dilthey and Empathy
– Somehow, out of this clash of Protestant “follow the text” vs Catholic “follow the themes” came the idea that interpretation relies on empathy. The interpreter has to imagine being the author.
– Schleiermacher wanted to join classical philology (focused on grammar and style) with the traditional religious concern for themes.
– He saw interpretation as part understanding the rules of language/communication and part understanding what it is like to be human/the author.
– This seems richer than the modern idea that communication is just about encoding and decoding information. Communication has both mechanical and psychological facets.
– Dilthey extended Schleiermacher’s ideas to develop a “philosophy of method” for the humanities which could produce objective knowledge.
– This verstehen(“understanding”) was distinguished from the erkennen(“explanatory knowledge”) at which science and its reductionists excelled.
– The more interpreters knew of the author (life, motivations etc) the more valid the interpretation became.
3) Heidegger and Ontological Hermeneutics
– Heidegger brings hermeneutics from a theory of interpretation to a theory of existential understanding.
– He argued that it was impossible for an interpreter to fully empathise with an author.
– We continually develop and refine personal rules based on experience to help them navigate the world.
– If we didn’t , we’d have to think objectively about situations all the time and this is enough to make anyone go back to bed for a year.
– Sadly, the more we develop these rules, and the more experience we have, the harder it is to see something objectively.
– As interpreters, we necessarily categorise authors based on some, at least, of our own rules, and so necessarily can’t see things objectively. (e.g. Dickens, he’s English – like me, hurrah!, very well thought of, Dad was a debtor so poor Charles probably had “issues”, prolific writer, Victorian – oh dear, bit stuffy, … )
– So, if you’ll pardon my German, ontological hermeneutics are those where interpreters are self-conscious and aware of the prejudices (however innocent) they bring to bear on the text/author.
4) Gadamer and Philosophical Hermeneutics
– Gadamer was one of Heidegger’s pupils.
– For him, to understand something you have assimilate new experiences through the window of you own cultural traditions and personal experience.
– This window is your “effective history”; it by definition excludes some interpretations and encourages others. (Gadamer further extended the range of this in-built prejudice to scientific understanding as well.)
– So while empathetic hermeneutics identifies the meaning of a text with its author’s intentions and seeks to decipher the text by uncovering the world-view behind it, philosophical hermeneutics is less concerned with what the author is trying to say.
– The key point is because you are always broadening your horizons via new experiences each time you read a text you will understand it differently.
Links:
Schleiermacher – http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schleiermacher/
Dilthey – http://www.mythosandlogos.com/Dilthey.html
Heidegger – http://www.ar.utexas.edu/students/cadlab/brand/phenomenology/heidegger-frame2.htm
Gadamer – http://www.svcc.cc.il.us/academics/classes/gadamer/gadamer.htm