Hermeneutic Dimensions of Science and Technology

The editorial discusses perspectives for a hermeneutics of science and technology. It begins by appreciating the original antagonism between hermeneutics and science, between hermeneutics and technology. While the former signifies the struggle to establish the purity, transparency, and objectivity of science, the latter concerns the symbolic dimension of technology as well as practices of sense-making in human interactions with technology. And while the antagonism of hermeneutics and science persists, the latter can be dissolved by treating technical works on a par with artworks. If there is a hermeneutic of science and not just a hermeneutic historiography or philosophical reconstruction of science, it can be found in the technical process of modeling as a mutual attunement of theory and reality by way of the model as mediator or hermeneutic device. This conclusion for the hermeneutics of science leads on to conceptions of a hermeneutics of technical works, including models as material compositions that establish what can be done in the fields of theory and practice. — From among the twelve papers in this special issue, a first group of papers struggles with and against the «original antagonism» of science and hermeneutics, while the second group offers perspectives for a hermeneutics of technical works.