Single Review on past events

The presentation held by Dimitri Ginev, Professor of Philosophy of Science and Hermeneutics, in the Jour Fixe on 21 June 2012 was quite abstract, but also enlightening. He tried to explain the specificity of scientific theorizing in the natural sciences in comparison to the human sciences. In this regard, it is quite important to respect the competing positions of realists and empiricists/constructivists, on the one hand, and of contextualists and objectivists, on the other, as well as the tension between structural and non-structural factors in interpreting scientific theories. Realists believe in scientific truth and objectivity, constructivists are only interested in the empirical adequacy of scientific theories. Dimitri Ginev argues that the objects of inquiry are not to be disentangled from the configurations of scientific practices in which they get constituted. This means that there is an ongoing contextualization in the constitution of objects of inquiry. The constitution itself is constantly projected upon open horizons of research possibilities. From that perspective, the reality under study in scientific research is the potentiality-for-being within open horizons.

Then he explained the concepts of hermeneutic fore-structure and characteristic hermeneutic situation of scientific research that are entitled to account the formation of the intrinsic epistemic norms and criteria in the research process. He argues that this formation takes place in the hermeneutic circularity between the whole of projected possibilities (of doing research) and the particular contextualized actualizations of them.

According to him, the great merit of the hermeneutics of scientific research (as a post-metaphysical program) is the new opportunities it offers for a new dialogue between the interpretative human sciences and the objectifying natural sciences. In conclusion, Dimitri Ginev stressed that the task of this hermeneutics is to overcome scientism by offering a new strategy to defending science’s cognitive specificity and the ethos of academic autonomy.