Hermeneutic Philosophy of Science

Ginev obtained his MA in History of Art and Philosophy in 1980 and his PhD on a hermeneutic construal of Kuhn's notion of paradigm in 1983 at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. The question that fascinated his intensely philosophic Dasein related to the historical collisions and possible interactions between hermeneutics and epistemology. As a prestigious Visiting Research Fellow at the Center for the Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, he articulated his program of »hermeneutic realism« for the first time. Ginev argued that scientific research has intrinsic resources allowing it to overcome an externally imposed view of the scientific enterprise directed exclusively by an instrumental form of rationality. Ginev's philosophical interests were unusually broad: the dialogue between continental and analytic philosophy; hermeneutic philosophy of science; hermeneutic phenomenology; holistic epistemology; philosophical theories of communicative rationality; contemporary transcendental philosophy; theories of modernity; hermeneutic theories of language; theories of discursive practices; the post-Diltheyan tradition of hermeneutic logic; philosophy of human studies; post-metaphysical thought; methodology of double hermeneutics. Over the years, Ginev published extensively in English, German, French and Slavic languages. He published over 20 books, edited or co-edited 7 volumes, and published a great many journal articles and book chapters.

Nietzsche and Heidegger pose important philosophical questions to science and its technological projects. The resultant contributes to a classically articulated 'continental' philosophy of science, featuring both phenomenological analysis and hermeneutic reflection. More than a thoughtful reflection on science, the heart of philosophy -- what it is and what it can be -- is also at stake in such reflections. The author argues that if Nietzsche proposes the resources of art to 'defend' us against truth (as he claims) along with the deadly insights of what he names 'tragic knowledge,' then Nietzsche's more arresting claim is his equation of science and art, quite as Heidegger for his part aligns techne and poiesis. For Nietzsche, science and art draw upon the same creative powers and both science and art are directed to life.

Below is an analysis of the teaching of philosophizing in children
and adolescents, specifically in high school or high school or se-
condary level and if it is necessary to make a defense of Philosophy.
Firstly, a dissertation is presented on the difference between Philosophy and philosophizing or philosophical thought, later, the contrary
positions on the teaching of this area of human knowledge are
exposed, on the one hand the normalizing teaching based on subjects and on the other the model of space open or free circulation based on transversality, which are opposite. Therefore, in this article an alternative proposal is offered from a parrhesiastic-phronetic approach, that is, a formation of care and self-government that leads to self-knowledge through a certain practice (asceticism) that implies the formation of judgment, it is
therefore a question of another type of teaching, based on the proposals of Michel Foucault and Mauricio Beuchot, respectively.

All of Brentano's students recall the burning sense of a mission to render philosophy a science that permeated the core of their mentor's being and teaching, but what kind of science does Brentano defend for philosophy in his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874) and new science of descriptive psychology which he subsequently elaborated in his lectures in philosophy at the University of Vienna in the 1880s? Brentano would like us to believe that he is continuing the perennial science of philosophy as inaugurated by the ancient Greeks, and by Aristotle in particular, into the nineteenth century. This article, however, argues that once Brentano accepts the status of the newly emerging natural science of psychology and adopts in the 1870s a Humean philosophical approach to the mind and its contents, he cannot, despite his best efforts, establish the continuity of philosophy as philosophia perennis that exists before and after the modern conception of natural science. He thus defends for the science of philosophy instead, a psychology from an empirical standpoint that is fully modern in temperament, yet one that is neither fully empirical or rational in Hume or Kant's sense nor a capitulation to the method of the natural sciences in general and fledgling natural science of empirical psychology in particular.

Physics and Mathematics share a deep, dialectic yet not at all trivial relationship. From the ancient Greek natural philosophers to Newton and to 1990 Fields medals this relationship has been ever-present with all its tensions and contradictions yet repeatedly producing impressive results. Its many successes made the physics-math connection seem absolutely natural and self-evident. However, the basis of it is rather ill-understood and to these days we conceive it primarily in a phenomenological way. In this essay a different approach is proposed. Examining the analogy between Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems we argue that both sciences, being much more than human inventions, are obliged to incorporate the same fundamental restrictions and the tendency to deal with the same issues as reflections of their common origin, Nature, thus, in this context, the striking effectiveness of mathematics in fundamental physics comes as no surprise at all. E-ma...

I feel uneasy stepping into the great territories opened up by Nancy Moules (2017) and Kate Beamer (2017) at the tail end of last year’s Journal of Applied Hermeneutics . It is not (yet) a territory I have endured as deeply. That bracketed “yet” is little more than a feeble attempt at trying to remember not to forget what surrounds us all, whatever its proximity.

Quando o mineiro Ivan, em seu livro, Filosofia no Brasil, fala do ideal do “filósofo cosmopolita globalizado, o polímata, o homo universalis, ou o pensador de largos horizontes – figura especulativa e sondagem do futuro”,  ele explicitamente sugere sua corporificação filosófica ao estilo da nossa Clarice, passando pelo nosso Machado até o tipo místico-metafísico do nosso Rosa.  Na esteira dessa sugestão, proporei que esse filósofo, homo universalis nativo, se revista da virtude da humildade. Para tanto, traço um rápido retrato fenomenológico do caso humildade e apresento hermenêuticas que me levaram, aqui, a tecer uma reflexão sobre a identidade e as vantagens dessa virtude para a práxis filosófica.
Em em âmbito coloquial, o termo humildade ecoa a impressão de fraqueza, ineficácia, desimportância e até de inutilidade. No terreno filosófico, causa certa estranheza destacar sua atualidade e vantagens visto que nele impera a pretensão, nada modesta, de compreender e encontrar o fundamento do real e ainda apontar modos de agir com o mesmo diapasão. Além de raramente ser abordada, ela não tem também o status de importância de virtudes como a justiça, a coragem ou a prudência. O jogo das vaidades e a petulância  que perambulam pela academia levou Pascal, com toda a razão, “a criticar a soberba dos filósofos”.

After the seminal works of Lakoff and Johnson (1991, 1999), linguists and philosophers concurred that the use of meta- phors is widespread in everyday communication. However, it is also common knowledge that its occurrence and impact on scientific texts have long been controversial topics. Only recently, specialists have begun to focus on describing and explaining the nature and functions of metaphors in scientific communication. This paper pro- vides arguments in order to support the relevance and suitability of a linguistic approach in this field of research. My corpus is based on texts from various disciplines and discursive genres, where I examine and explain the frequent and multifunctional nature of metaphors in the different scenarios analyzed, and their value as a strategy of recontextualization.

Patrick Heelan, with background in quantum theory and in hermeneutic phenomenology, investigated not only the hermeneutical philosophy of science but to parallels between quantum mechanics and human experience in general and to the logic of changes of worldview. Heelan's closeness to Aristotle and Lonergan, often neglected, is discussed. Issues concerning Heelan's treatment of the social context of science are raised.

En el presente trabajo tengo como objetivo argumentar que los modelos científicos (los cuales sirven para representar una parte de la realidad) no deben ser entendidos como obras de ficción (tal como Giere demuestra) porque aunque sean ontológicamente iguales y surjan de la imaginación, el contexto en el cual se usan (la práctica) es distinta. De esta manera, propongo (siguiendo a Rivadulla) que los modelos científicos pueden ser entendidos mejor como metáforas sobre el mundo que como obras de ficción ( no todos pero si muchos de los modelos en ciencia puedan ser metáforas sobre el mundo). Para lograr este cometido, me basaré principalmente en dos lecturas: i.) ¿Por qué los modelos científicos no deberían ser considerados como obras de ficción? de Ronald Giere y ii.) Metáforas y modelos en ciencia y filosofía de Andrés Rivadulla.

Beginning with a relection on 'conceptual schemes' and 'very' ideas and proceeding to examine diferent approaches to thinking philosophy of science not only with Kant but also between traditional analytic and hermeneutico-phenomenological approaches, this essay features a review of Kant's 1755 solar nebular hypothesis and a reading of Nietzsche and Kant on cosmology along with a relection on chemistry and the properties of cinnabar. Overall it is argued that a philosophy of science must be critical rather than normative/prescriptive. Seeking to raise the question of science along with the question of truth (via Nietzsche and Kant), the essay also raises the question of esoteric historiography in science, including alchemy.

Complimentary full PDF here: https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s10516-021-09599-8?sharing_token=BDTEGEW68tf-M8iK9DFlMve4RwlQNchNByi7wbcMAY6VJ7iI62MuKf2d4CxliYshuVqhdT_wUCw5urVlc5qG6znWUeOwSLsFVTRoLKaQ9aEabhRW2R4X6nzOWi9np_wBLhXp2AymnS3iRILIX-dWmfg99BgeBb2BRMcS44og1HQ%3D

As happened in the conflict between Wilamowitz and Nietzsche, even today there are philologists who do not believe that philosophy is a respectable science. One of them is Tom Shippey, a scholar of English and Germanic philology. In this paper I want to argue two things. 1) that in the golden age of philology, the major philologists were directly influenced by the philosophers. 2) that in a reform of the faculty of Arts and Humanities it would be possible to improve the syllabus of Philology linking it to philosophical texts, and to improve the syllabus of Philosophy by immersing it in the history of philosophy and its texts.

THE CRISIS OF SCIENCE AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY IN THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC στο: Ελένη Γκαστή (επιμ.), δόσις ἀμφιλαφής. Τιμητικός Τόμος για την Ομότιμη Καθηγήτρια Κατερίνα Συνοδινού, Ιωάννινα 2020, 17-34.
This paper aims to explore the German Altertumswissenschaft in the general crisis of science following the shock of World War I (Forman thesis). The defeat of Germany, the sense of decline and diffuse pessimism (Oswald Spengler), the distance from rationalism and the re-emergence of an intuitive neo-romanticism puts into question the vigorous school of philological historicism that dominated in the 19th century (U. von Wilamowitz). The study examines the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche's cultural critique and the philosophy of life movement (Lebensphilosophie) on the young classical scholars who returned from the fronts of the War, the request for evaluation in the territory of the humanities (Geisteswissenschaften) as opposed to the objectivity of the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften), as well as the critique of scientific positivism by the representatives of aesthetic fundamentalism in the field of literature (George – Kreis). Finally, there are presented the orientations that Altertumswissenschaft received in Germany under the influence of the above developments within the intellectual environment of the Weimar Republic. Particular focus is given to Werner Jaeger's controversial and finally frustrated attempt to revive the ideals of ancient Greek education (Paideia) and to make them living principles of the modern German educational and political process.

Nos interesa ver en el caso de Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy 2010), cómo un camarógrafo aficionado expone su obsesión por el registro de la práctica de artistas callejeros. Nos enfocaremos en cuestionar este paradójico juego del arte y del registro audiovisual, en indagar cómo en estos “actos de cultura”: Street Art, registro del acto creador y cine documental, se genera una puesta en abismo de la mirada que devela la ya tradicional crisis del arte y la condición vertiginosa de la cultura visual.

Introductory discussion of introductions as such re David Hume's collections of his own essays (as of collections dedicated to his essays, in this case, 'Of the Standard of Taste').  Includes a discussion of Hume's irony, Lucian's parodies, and Hume's deathbed reading of Lucian, filtered through Annette Baier's discussion of Hume, death and character, and hence Adam Smith, and others on this and related topics.

Also includes summary references to the contributions in the book collection: Reading David Hume's 'Of the Standard of Taste'

Paperback released end of December 2020

Un altro inizio della filosofia: Levinas e la fame dell’altro

Da dove prende inizio la filosofia? In modo provocatorio, Emmanuel Levinas avanza un’ipotesi diversa da quella canonica: la filosofia non deve iniziare dalla meraviglia, ma dalla fame dell’altro, modello di ogni altro bisogno umano. Il tentativo di Levinas è quello di pensare un inizio del pensiero per il quale l’etica, originaria relazione di differenza e di non-indifferenza nei confronti dell’altro, assume il ruolo di “filosofia prima”. Ciò comporterà un profondo mutamento nel modo di intendere la filosofia, fino all’iperbolica, quanto provocatoria, proposta di un’altra possibile etimologia: non amore della sapienza, ma «saggezza dell’amore», quell’“amore senza concupiscenza” che è responsabilità nei confronti di ciascun altro. Che la filosofia cominci dalla fame dell’altro, significherà, quindi, mettere al primo posto non la Verità, ma la Giustizia; non una teoresi contemplativa, ma l’ispirazione etica di una politica che sappia trovare, attraverso la «saggezza dell’amore», le forme concrete per diventare “sempre più giusta”.


A different origin for Philosophy: Levinas and the hunger of the other

What is the origin of philosophy? In a provocative way, Levinas puts forward a hypothesis at odds with the canonical one: Philosophy does not originate from wonder, but from a "hunger of the other", the model of every other human need. Levinas endeavor is to conceptualize an origin in which ethics plays the role of "first philosophy". This will bring about a profound change in our way to think about philosophy, leading to a hyperbolic new etymology: philosophy not as "the love of wisdom" but as "the wisdom of love", a form of responsibility towards any other.
To claim that philosophy originates in the "hunger of the other" therefore leads to emphasize Justice rather than Truth, to focus not on contemplative theoresis, but on the ethical inspiration of a form of politics able to discover new concrete ways to become

Los caminos espinosos en la construcción del conocimiento son un cometido al que solo el animal humano se ha enfrentado. El uso de un lenguaje proposicional le ha permitido iniciar construcciones racionales, que dan origen a las teorías más complejas en pos de comprender los enigmas del universo, y con ello iniciar la separación tajante entre episteme y doxa. Los discursos más enmarañados, rígidos y rigurosos convocan a científicos y epistemólogos. Enunciados con términos que, en ocasiones, se tornan oscuros y poco comprensibles a quienes inician sus procesos formativos en el campo de la ciencia y la filosofía. Tal vez por ello se presenta un contraste actual en la enseñanza de las ciencias: por una parte, quienes apuestan por enseñar la rigidez de los enunciados científicos, y la conciben bajo un lenguaje unívoco, neutral y de carácter lógico-deductivo; y por otro lado, quienes la humanizan desde dinámicas móviles y cimentaciones semánticas artificiosas, las cuales, se alejan —como lo expone Héctor Palma en el prólogo del libro Bestiario epistemológico. Metáforas zoomórficas y de otras entidades en la enseñanza de las ciencias y la epistemología– de los enunciados depurados y se valen de nuevos discursos desde el ámbito literario, en los que abundan las metáforas.

In spite of the many efforts made to clarify von Neumann’s methodology of science, one crucial point seems to have been disregarded in recent literature: his closeness to Hilbert’s spirit. In this paper I shall claim that the scientific methodology adopted by von Neumann in his later foundational reflections originates in the attempt to revaluate Hilbert’s axiomatics in the light of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems. Indeed, axiomatics continues to be pursued by the Hungarian mathematician in the spirit of Hilbert’s school. I shall argue this point by examining four basic ideas embraced by von Neumann in his foundational considerations: a) the conservative attitude to assume in mathematics; b) the role that mathematics and the axiomatic approach have to play in all that is science; c) the notion of success as an alternative methodological criterion to follow in scientific research; d) the empirical and, at the same time, abstract nature of mathematical thought. Once these four basic ideas have been accepted, Hilbert’s spirit in von Neumann’s methodology of science will become clear.

Rozważając problematykę kulturoznawstwa warto spojrzeć na problem kultury z perspektywy interdyscyplinarnej, wykraczającej poza tradycyjną ramę współpracy nauk humanistycznych i społecznych. Jeśli na kulturę spojrzeć jako na pewien zestaw wzorców zachowań będący skutkiem życia wspólnoty a jednocześnie na powrót regulujący owo współbycie, badanie kulturoznawcze może oznaczać namysł nad autoadaptacyjnymi układami złożonymi w ogóle, niekoniecznie jedynie takimi, gdzie zbiorowość ma wyłącznie ludzki charakter.

Artykuł stanowi wprowadzenie do całej serii publikacji, wydrukowanych w numerze 5/2007 czasopisma "Pomiary - Automatyka - Kontrola", będących pokłosiem ogólnopolskiej konferencji naukowej odbywającej pod hasłem: "Informatyka - sztuka czy rzemiosło". Autor zdecydowanie opowiada się za poglądem, że informatykę można rozważać jako rodzaj sztuki, a dodatkowo broni jej jedności. Artykuł dowodzi jedności informatyki, niepotrzebnie wewnętrznie dzielonej na obszary. Przytaczane są argumenty, że obszary te w istocie składają się na jedną dziedzinę, mającą jednak - zgodnie z tytułem artykułu - wiele barw.

A curious feature of medical literature on the evaluation of diagnostic accuracy is the frequent deployment of circular arguments. Using a case study from the medical literature on the diagnosis of child abuse, I argue that this occurs because researchers fail to distinguish what Ludwik Fleck called the ‘active’ and ‘passive’ elements of knowledge. I review the scholarly literature on this aspect of Fleck’s epistemology to try to understand why it has not been put to more use in the medical literature. Scholars have admitted that Fleck’s account of the active and passive elements of knowledge has confused them, and it has been read in at least three different ways: as an extreme form of relativism, as a form of realism, and as a ‘middle way’ in-between these poles. I argue that this ‘middle way’ view is both more congenial with the bulk of Fleck’s work, and more palatable to medical practitioners.

Themes discussed include a hermeneutic of hermeneutic philosophy of science, along with the hegemony of analytic style in university philosophy in the US and Europe as well as the rhetoric of power, highlighting the politics of mockery using as illustration Alan Sokal's hoax as this sought to secure the exclusion of other voices in the academy, especially within philosophy of science. In addition to reviewing Sokal's attack on Bruno Latour, Latour's own " biography " of an investigation is read as articulating a doubled hermeneutic reflection on modernity including both field ethnography and lab-ethnography. The further question of the viability of a hermeneutics of science in general, both natural and social is raised, thematising Patrick Heelan's " readable technologies " as metaphor for scientific research practice. Including a discussion of peer review and the editorial vicissitudes of journal publication, this chapter also addresses the politics of scientific models using the metaphor of immortality, zombie-style.

Discussions of Heidegger and education, particularly as expressed by those interested in the philosophy of education, take a number of perspectives as thematic foci. Questioning is key to Heidegger’s thinking from the start of his 1927 Being and Time, calling into question the foundations of what we suppose ourselves to know. Thus questioning involves a reflection on education, that is: both teaching and learning.

Heidegger himself thematizes education and scholars engaged these thematizations beginning with his 1933 “Rectoral Discourse” as well as an essay purporting to be a "translation" of Heidegger's thoughts on the “Art of Teaching” and, perhaps most importantly, his lecture course: "What is Called Thinking?" 

In addition, Heidegger‘s reflections on questioning also include a meditation on both phenomenology and hermeneutics in “The Question Concerning Technology” in which he famously describes “questioning as the piety of thought.”

Our concern with the pathological phenomenon comes within the framework of building a new approach to understanding disease by reconsidering the concept of interpretation and its mechanisms practiced by cultural rights. This indeed is one of the duties of anthropologists when they embark on studying disease as a cultural and social phenomenon and as an abstract image in the mind of the patient. Historically, disease has garnered its interpretations from different cultural contexts and semantic systems that are as various and multiple as cultures and beliefs that produce them and as multiple as the perspectives that have been used to look at the conceptuality and semanticity of disease, such as those that have focused on its entity, content and causes or on the biomedical, religious and moral visions (like plague, curse, punishment). Therefore, the search in the interpretiveness or hermeneutics of disease is, in fact, a conceptual study because we are dealing with a semantic field where dispute occurs between different approaches and cultures due to the link of sign concept to the multiplicity of meaning that has received no consensus nor is considered an established term. Hence, the search in the hermeneuics of disease, as an interpretive method open to a field of symbolic understanding and mental perception, is a necessary epistemological knowledge so as to avoid attempting to limit and imprison disease in the old perception and in a one-sided interpretation and using one sense to explain and attribute to it multiple meanings, symbols and interpretations (magical, religious, social, scientific, empirical, natural, etc) that are provided and produced by individuals and groups. Every culture has its own explanatory models and perceptions that distinguish it from other cultures in determining the understanding of the disease and its interpretation, on the one hand, and the reactions towards it, on the other. Since the dawn of time, a close-knit relationship has been formed that links religion to health and disease, where the practice of medicine was common in temples and, as such, disease was usually interpreted from religious and metaphysical perspectives. However, with the development of biological and medical sciences and with the emergence of genetics, in particular, disease is treated in separation from the patient and from the cultural values and beliefs that are produced by the patient community about the disease. This has given birth to new concepts of diseases that are hereditary and genetic, such as the concept of potential disease or that is in a state of latency, hidden in the cells and of which the patient is unaware, i.e., without pain or symptoms nor signs. It is also called the concept of potential patient, which is the genetic condition of the patient. What are these interpretations, explanations and meanings of the disease? What are the various therapeutic practices and rituals approved by the patient and the symbolic meaning for the hidden thing that each one of them takes? In a transdisciplinary study between medical sciences and anthropology, medical anthropology reflections reveal themselves as a contemporary perception of cultural influence on the concepts of health and disease associated with perceptions and interpretations so as to be suitable to reconcider the hermeneutics of disease, moving from the state of communication with the patient and his humanization to a state of separation from the patient and his objectification and automation. Likewise, it is a reaction against the dominance of scientific discourse and the dead-end curricula that monopolize the authority of understanding and explanation.

This article sheds new light on Bruno Latour’s sociology of science and technology by looking at his early study of the French writer, philosopher and editor Charles Péguy  (1873–1914). In the early 1970s, Latour engaged in a comparative study of Péguy’s Clio and the four gospels of the New Testament. His 1973 contribution to a Péguy colloquium (published in 1977) offers rich insights into his interest in questions of time, history, tradition and translation. Inspired by Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy of difference, Latour reads Clio as spelling out and illustrating the following argument: ‘Repetition is a machine to produce differences with identity’. However, in contrast to Deleuze’s work  (together with Feélix Guattari) on the materiality of machines, or assemblages [agencements], Latour emphasizes the semiotic aspects of the repetition/difference process. As in Péguy, the main model for this process is the Roman Catholic tradition of religious events. The article argues that it is this reading of Péguy and Latour’s early interest in biblical exegesis that inspired much of Latour’s later work. In Laboratory Life (Latour and Woolgar, 1979) and The Pasteurization of France (1988) in particular, problems of exegesis and tradition provide important stimuli for the analysis of scientific texts. In this context, Latour gradually transforms the question of tradition into the problem of reference.  In a first step, he shifts the event that is transmitted and translated from the temporal dimension (i.e. the past) to the spatial (i.e. from one part of the laboratory to another). It is only in a second step that Latour resituates scientific events in time. As facts they are ‘constructed’ but nevertheless ‘irreducible’. They result, according to Latour, from the tradition of the future. As a consequence, the Latourian approach to science distances itself from the materialism of Deleuze and other innovative theoreticians.