“Rekonstruktionen”
23. bis 26. September 2005
Carl von Ossietzky Universitat,
Oldenburg, Germany
13. Tagung der International Society for Hermeneutics and Science (ISHS)
Session 1
• Ricardo Lopes Coelho
On the Conservation of Energy, Mayer and Joule (1842-51): A hermeneutic Study
Even though the interest in hermeneutics in relation to science rose in the 90s and the conservation of energy is a classical subject of the history of science, there is not, to my knowledge, any systematic application of hermeneutics to the texts concerned. I have tried to do this work dealing with texts on the subject, which have been published between 1842 (Mayer) and 1908 (Ostwald). At the Meeting, the theme of communication will be confined to Mayer’s and Joule’s texts from 1842 to 1851.
As a retrospective analysis is to be avoided, on account of the method used, textbooks, encyclopaedias of those times and the works referred to by Mayer and Joule have been used in the interpretation of their texts. These elements and the carrying out of the methodology led to a new insight into the texts studied. So it seems to be possible to contribute to the clarification of the concept of energy, which appeared later. This is interesting to physics in so far as physicists are saying that we do not know what energy is (Bergmann und Schaefer, Feynman, Dransfeld). The hermeneutic study leads as well to a new perspective on the influential factors in the discovery of the conservation of energy, which changes Kuhn’s thesis which were defended or developed by other authors.
From the historiographical point of view, it seems that this approach could be a complement to the existing historical research: it is an internal one, whereas the modern research in History of Science is more an external one.
• Josette Jacobs & Bart Gremmen
Plant Genomics and Reconstruction
For centuries plant breeders have developed crop plants that have many advantages compared to natural (wild) plants. Further improvement of crops requires knowledge of the bio-systems of plants in their environment and of the food production chain. The last decades the focus is on sustainable traits influenced by multiple genetic and environmental factors. New crops will be more resistant to diseases to reduce pesticides in agriculture. Natural traits related to health and food safety are the target of breeding programmes for consumer products. The new science of genomics provides the chance to unravel these so-called multi-factorial traits.
Plant genomics researchers of the Centre for BioSystems Genomics (CBSG) at Wageningen (The Netherlands) argue that marker-assisted breeding (MAB) and DNA fingerprinting allow a faster and much more targeted development of improved genotypes. However, to be successful the results of the plant genomics researchers need to be used by plant breeders in the development of new crop plants. Through a process of deconstruction and reconstruction of the in-silico work of the plant genomics researchers, the plant breeders incorporate genomics into their in-vivo work. Organic breeders encounter special difficulties in this process. The aim of this paper is to understand this deconstruction and reconstruction process by using a hermeneutical approach in describing and analyzing the different strategies that have been developed by the plant breeders.
• Barbara Zahnen
Geographical reconstructions?
In today’s Physical Geography (as well as in other earth sciences), the term reconstruction is mostly used with regard to the reconstruction of past climates, landscapes, vegetation covers etc., which amongst other uses serves for the validation of models that aim at predicting future environmental changes. Hence, in this context, the term reconstruction has a different nuance compared with its use in the field of the reconstruction of historical experiments, which the conference mainly focuses at: At first sight, it is about the reconstruction of something present [vorhanden] at a definite point in time rather than about the reconstruction of a process experimentally initiated and experienced by a human being. Having a closer look, however, it turns out that these two “kinds” of reconstructions have more in common than it seems at first. Because when taking into consideration the material, that is taken into account for the reconstruction of past “environments”, similar problems show up as should apply to experimental situations. The paper does not only aim at giving an insight into such reconstruction’s problems and conditionalities, but also at questioning the term reconstruction itself in this context. Doing this, the train of thought is also related to the question of the identity of geography.
• Viktor Binzberger
Hermeneutics of computer programming: the case of debugging
In this presentation I would like to present a case study to argue against the adequacy of the common representationalist view on computer science. My thesis is that representationalism captures only an atemporal snapshot of computer software, in contrast with the hermeneutical approach, which can show how the temporal dynamics of human interaction leads to these snapshots. I will show how naturally the actual process of computer software development and “debugging” can be cast in hermeneutical terms, and how this kind of analysis can yield more in-depth explanations about why particular software tools and certain programming methodologies developed. The case study will lay out the practical process in which symbols and objects in the programmer’s phenomenal world become meaningful, how their meanings evolve and how they sink back into oblivion. The interesting point is, that in events of breakdown, in order to fix the bug, the programmer has to use hermeneutical methods to reconstruct the forgotten context of meaning of the symbol. This is a process in which he tries to reconstruct part of the phenomenal world of his predecessor: his unarticulated intentions, the web of purposes in which the meaning-giving activity originally took place. He does this by making extensive use of notes, source code comments, manuals and various channels of personal communication.
Session 2
• Makoto Katsumori
Niels Bohr’s Complementarity and Derridean Deconstruction
In a paper read at the 2003 ISHS conference, I discussed Niels Bohr’s idea of complementarity and its conceptual intersections with Gadamer’s and Ricoeur’s hermeneutic philosophy. In the present paper, I will further investigate Bohr’s complementarity in its possible connections with Jacques Derrida’s project of deconstruction.
Bohr’s overall approach may be characterized as a project of questioning and dislodging the privilege hitherho accorded to the ’spectator’s’ detachment over the ‘actor’s’ involvement, and this constitutes its basic point of contact with Derridean deconstruction, which seeks to dismantle the system of hierarchical binary oppositions in the Western philosophical tradition. More specifically, however, what I call Bohr’s static conception of complementarity, which is directed against the hierarchy of ’spectator/actor’, but not against the binary framework itself, may only in a limited way be compared with deconstruction. His dynamic conception, on the other hand, runs more closely parallel to deconstruction - in a sense even more so than to hermeneutic philosophy: Bohr shares with Derrida the crucial idea that any access to the signified is subject to an indefinitely extensible series of signs in which the signifying structure is uncontrollably displaced.
My analysis also shows, however, a major contrast between the two thinkers’ overall approaches. In Bohr’s complementarity, the ‘actor’s’ involvement as a moment of proximity serves to disrupt the traditional primacy of the ’spectator’s’ detachment as a moment of distance, whereas Derridean deconstruction proceeds by virtue of ‘distancing’ moments such as différance to dismantle the primacy of presence as absolute proximity. In this way, the general strategic roles of proximity and distance in Bohr’s and Derrida’s projects are inverse to each other.
• Dimitri Ginev
Rereading Normal Science
My talk considers the relevance of a class of hermeneutic concepts to the philosophical reading of normal scientific research. I oppose the view that the notion of “normal science” can only be read in socio-psychological, sociological or ethnomethodological terms. By drawing parallels between Kuhn’s original readfing of puzzler-solving enterprise and Gadamers’s philosophical hermeneutics, a context of “Continental theories” for interpreting the dynamics of research practices is delineated. The rereading of normal science provides the opportunity for developing a hermeneutic alternative to the analytic philosophy of science.
• Reinhard Schulz
Ernst Cassirer about Reconstruction
Ernst Cassirer was not only a famous philosopher but also an outstanding historian of science of his time. For him, reconstruction is a key word, to combine philosophy and the history of science and to generalize Kant’s “transcendental method”. By the reconstructive movement of thinking the “fact of science” and the “fact of culture” shall get relationship. The question of the structure of the perceiving and recognizing consciousness cannot be explained by empirical, metaphysical or phenomenological description.
In contrast to this in the “reconstructive analysis” the reproduction of the content itself is bound to the production of symbols of this content. The experience of the consciousness itself in this process is free and independent. For Cassirer the process of acting (for example experimental acting in science) and the process of construction (of symbols) are separated from each other. In the reconstruction process they are interrelated and thus lead to elementary preconceptions of the “fact of science”, that means in other words to the (cultural) generalization of Kant’s “transcendental method.”
• Olga Kiss and László Ropolyi
Constructions and Reconstructions
Construction and reconstruction are fundamentally interrelated. Every construction - from another perspective - can be considered as a reconstruction and vice versa. Just think on the mental imagery of any “constructed” thing or on the necessity of effective constructive abilities in any reconstruction process. Our main aim is to present a hermeneutic analysis of this interrelatedness in two versions: performing a situation analysis to characterize it and creating an interpretation to understand it.
Constructions and reconstructions are situation-bound activities, they take place in given situations, so their understanding requires a kind of situation analysis. In the case of scientific instruments and experiments the components of situations consist of historical versions of different world views, scientific theories and practice, a collection of intentions, mental, physical, theoretical and practical traditions, social and everyday practice, etc. Using some ideas of Heelan, Ihde, Crease, Knorr Cetina, and Foucault, and some analogue situations in mathematics, music, and human sciences the structure and functioning of the situation of construction/reconstruction will be characterized.
Shifting the borderline between construction and reconstruction in a situation a deeper understanding of these aspects of the construction/reconstruction process can be reached. Following Gadamer, Heelan, Crease, and Habermas we will present some elements of the understanding of construction and reconstruction in scientific experiments.