Galileo, Luther, and the hermeneutics of natural science

Patrick A. Heelan

pp. 363-375

in: Timothy J. Stapleton (ed), The question of hermeneutics, Berlin, Springer, 1994

Abstrakt

Hermeneutics in the traditional sense which I call methodological or weak hermeneutics is a way—the way—of interpreting textual material. Beginning with the problem of interpreting the Bible, methodological hermeneutics later became the method characteristic of historians and then of (what the Germans call) the Geisteswissenschaften—a term hard to translate which designates both the humanities and the humanistic study of culture. In contrast, science, according to this tradition, dealt with facts rather than texts and sought for explanations (in terms of other facts) rather than in terms of what they signified for human life and history. Science according to this understanding is not, and need not be, hermeneutically involved.