Hermeneutics and Science: Taxonomies, Interpretations, Subjectivity

This article is written in response to a position that sees hermeneutics as not just a method of interpreting texts, but rather as a fundamental cognitive strategy that opposes the scientific type of knowledge. This approach implicitly includes the ideas of the essence of science, its language and subject as consequences. In short, we can call the position which opposes hermeneutic and scientific approaches the «hermeneutic-scientific divide (HSD)» view. The purpose of this research is to examine critically the ideas of the representatives of the HSD approach to science as an area of experimentally verified interpretations, the clarity of scientific language, which eliminates the need for interpretation, and the neutrality of cognitive subjects, where scientists act as intermediaries transmitting knowledge without changing their personalities. We also aim to show that hermeneutical approaches remain an integral part of science despite science's desire for objectivity. As an argument, we propose to consider examples from the history of science. These include the dispute between Camillo Golgi and Santiago Ramón y Cajal about the structure of the nervous system; Charles Walcott's research in taxonomy and paleontology; and the debate about the phoneme between the Leningrad and Moscow schools of phonology. These cases show that even when using the same methods and data, interpretations of results can vary depending on the assumptions of researchers. They also demonstrate the impossibility of neutral, unbiased language in science. The article concludes that scientific language cannot completely avoid interpretation, despite its efforts to be objective and formal. Scientific texts always contain hidden contexts related to the historical, social and methodological conditions of their creation, as well as the value aspects of scientific work and the implicit knowledge of the author, along with his subjective assessments. Hermeneutic analysis is also essential for the formation of a scientific identity and the transmission of scientific traditions. Interpretation remains a key element in scientific knowledge, while science appears as a dynamic process in which objective data and subjective interpretations go hand in hand to form new knowledge.