Communicating with Technical and Scientific Artifacts between Hermeneutics and Sociology of Science

In this article an attempt is discussed to combine a traditional concept from philosophical hermeneutics with ideas from the sociology of science. The main aim is to describe a way of communicating with technical and scientific artifacts. Thoughts from the hermeneutic concept of the German philosopher Hans Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) will be combined with ideas of the French sociologist Bruno Latour (1947-2022) which he developed in his texts on the sociology of science and technology. Before this approach is developed, the embedding and differentiation from previous hermeneutic concepts is discussed. Especially the concept of material hermeneutics developed by Ihde and Verbeek is outlined in order to contrast the new approach. – The first task of the article´s main chapter is to show the similarities between the two concepts of Gadamer and Latour, which at first sight seem very different. The second task is to use these concepts for a better description of the interaction or communication between human beings and technical or scientific objects. An approach is shown and discussed that can help to analyse the process of creation and the roles of entities generated in the course of performing science and technology, which – released into the world – become independent entities in their own right.