Expanding Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics as a type of interpretation theory has traditionally been thought to apply primarily to texts, linguistic phenomena, and processes of reading; in early European history hermeneutics became a theory of interpretation applied to sacred texts. As modern science emerged and matured, hermeneutic processes were relegated to the "human science, while it was widely held that very different explanatory processes evolved within the "natural sciences".

Don Ihde's Expanding Hermeneutics examines the history and contemporary development of interpretation theory, with a special emphasis on how science in practice involve and implicates interpretive processes. Ihde argues that the sciences have developed sophisticated visual hermeneutics that produces evidence by means of imaging, visual displays, and visualizations which rely particularly upon the holistic abilities of perception primarily visual perception. From this vantage point, Ihde demonstrates how interpretation is built into science's technologies and instruments, and how this has contributed to the development of a means of self-correction and multiperspectival enhancement.

Expanding Hermeneutics will appeal not only to philosophers but to readers from the humanities, who will be surprised about the degree to which science in practice is "humanistic", and also to readers from the sciences, who will be equally surprised to discover the influence of hermeneutic traditions on many of their practices.