Continental Philosophy Review 32: 143168, 1999. 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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On the hermeneutic fore-structure of scientific research

DIMITRI GINEV
Center for Culturology, Department of Philosophy, University of Sophia, Ruski 15 Str., Sophia 1000, Bulgaria

Abstract. The paper provides an overview of the hermeneutic and phenomenological context from which the idea of a constitutional analysis of science originated. It analyzes why the approach to hermeneutic fore-structure of scientific research requires to transcend the distinction between the context of justification and the context of discovery. By incorporating this approach into an integral postmetaphysical philosophy of science, I argue that one can avoid the radical empiricism of recent science studies, while also preventing the analysis of sciences discursive practices from collapsing into the frames of radical anti-epistemological critique mandated by some hermeneutic philosophers.

In what follows, I want to suggest a hermeneutico-phenomenological conception of natural-scientific research with the aim of showing how a philosophical interpretation of rationality of science beyond epistemological foundationalism is possible. I should make clear at the start that I will not be dealing with a large class of (rather technical) questions concerning the relationships between philosophical hermeneutics and (what one might call) post-foundational epistemology. My concern in this paper is only with delineating a context of studying natural-scientific research, in which a specific hermeneutic fore-structure of doing such a research can be revealed. Following the phenomenological concept of constitutional analysis, I will call this a context of constitution, opposing it to the context of justification and the context of discovery.

1. On the very idea of the hermeneutic fore-structure of scientific research An important consequence of reformulating the transcendental phenomenology of consciousness intentionality in a hermeneutic phenomenology of facticity is the rise of a new paradigm of constitutional analysis.

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Transcendental ego no longer plays the role of a privileged site of meaning constitution. It is rather the totality where this constitution takes place. On the new paradigm of constitutional analysis, there is a kind of interpretation which is an intrinsic moment of all human activities. This kind should not be confused with the concept of interpretation as a specific epistemic procedure. From the perspective of hermeneutic phenomenology, interpretation must be comprehended in the sense of a primordial existential act. The primordial interpretation brings to light the meanings constituted contextually within a particular activity. There is no meaningful Being-in-the world without interpretation. In the course of clarifying in what sense the projecting of understanding has its own possibility, Heidegger (1962, pp. 188189) writes: In interpretation, understanding does not become something different. It becomes itself. Such interpretation is grounded existentially in understanding; the latter does not arise from the former. Nor is interpretation the acquiring of information about what is understood; it is rather the working-out of possibilities projected in understanding. In rejecting the idea of an ultimate transcendental grounding provided by egos time-consciousness, one focuses on the temporal-interpretative self-constitution of human activities. In this perspective, the existential structure of the primordial interpretation (i.e., the structure revealed through Daseinsanalytik) involves three moments which Heidegger calls fore-having (Vorhabe), fore-sight (Vorsicht), and fore-conception (Vorgriff). Fore-having is the background of familiar practices in which an average understanding of the situations of everyday concernful dealing is embedded; fore-sight provides the orientation of the everyday involvement in concernful practices; and fore-conception is the anticipatory grasp of what is supposed to be an outcome of the concernful practices. Thus considered, the existential structure of interpretation is a hermeneutic fore-structure of the modes of being-in-the-world. Accordingly, each human activity is predicated on a characteristic hermeneutic fore-structure. Heideggers elaborations on the nexus understanding-interpretation provoke an interesting ambiguity in the way of construing the notion of hermeneutic fore-structure. On the one hand, this notion denotes everydayness as a mode of being-in-the-world that has a pre-epistemological status. Speaking in terms of Sein und Zeit, everydayness is the primordial mode of existence characterized by the concernful upon-which of a projection in terms of which something becomes intelligible as something that is ready-to-hand. This pre-epistemological constitution of meaning (as the upon-which of a projection) gets its structure from a fore-having,

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a fore-sight, and a fore-conception. On this reading, everydayness is opposed to all epistemologically specified modes of existence (represented typically by the different kinds of scientific research). By this expression I mean a mode of being-in-the-world characterized by epistemic procedures of thematizing the world. In transforming the readiness-to-hand into a thematically objectified presence-at-hand, every epistemologically specified mode of existence remains based upon the concernful constitution of meaning. The theoretical attitude of thematization modifies but does not eliminate everydayness hermeneutic fore-structure of meaning constitution. The latter becomes concealed in the cognitive structure of the former. In this regard, each epistemological specification of existence as characterized by a theoretical attitude of thematization presupposes a modification of everydayness. Thus, the hermeneutic fore-structure can be construed in terms of the contradistinction between primordial being-in-the-world and epistemologically distinguished modes of existence. In this perspective, it is a notion of a hermeneutico-phenomenological theory of everydayness. On the other hand, there is no being-in-the-world led by epistemological principles and methodological norms of a given theoretical attitude that is free from discursive-practical everydayness. A regime of everyday concernful dealing with the intramundane things (illustrated typically by a scientific communitys everyday life) is to be attributed to each secondary (epistemologically specified) mode of existence. By implication, the search for a hermeneutic fore-structure of a totality of (epistemologically distinguished) discursive practices is completely reasonable enterprise. This is why many important distinctions of Daseinsanalytik are to be applied not only to stressing the existential primordiality of non-thematizing behavior, but to the intrinsic organization of the modes of being-in-the-world-through-thematizingthe-world-theoretically as well. In particular, the distinction between the pre-predicative as-structure of seeing of the ready-to-hand and the thematic-predicative as-structure of seeing of the present-at-hand is applicable to the epistemologically specified modes of existence. Heidegger does not pay much attention to the intrinsic everydayness of these modes. The main theme of his early philosophy is the hermeneutic fore-structure of everydayness as average existence (durchschnittliche Existenz), since only the analysis of this fore-structure provides an access to Being. (To be sure, an extension of hermeneutic phenomenology to secondary modes of existence would not be acceptable for the author of Being and Time, because it threatens to dissolve fundamental ontology in a plurality of

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existential analytics of the specified modes of being-in-the-world. Consequently, this extension would transform hermeneutic phenomenology into a kind of interpretative anthropology of the diversity of cultural forms corresponding to the secondary modes of existence). From a hermeneutico-phenomenological point of view, scientific research is to be studied with respect to both meanings that a Heideggerian approach would ascribe to the notion of hermeneutic fore-structure. Scientific research is an epistemologically specified mode of being-in-the-world, and therefore, it has an existential genesis from the ontologically primordial everydayness. (This is the guiding idea of Heideggers existential conception of science in Being and Time). Yet scientific research is characterized by its own everydayness, called by Kuhn a normal science. Related to this everydayness, hermeneutic fore-structure is the notion of horizon of scientific research (carried out by the collective Dasein of a scientific community) as this notion is understood within the paradigm of constitutional analysis suggested by hermeneutic phenomenology. My efforts in this paper are concentrated entirely on the hermeneutic fore-structure of the normal-scientific everydayness (which I will call research everydayness). The hermeneutic fore-structure is always projected onto the wholeness of practices involved in a certain kind of human activity. In particular, there is always a hermeneutic fore-structure projected onto totality of discursive practices that build up the normal sciences kind of research of a given scientific community within a given scientific domain. This claim raises the question of how to distinguish between hermeneutic fore-structure and cognitive structure of scientific research. In trying to address this question, let me take as an example a particular situation of a hypothetical research process in chemistry. Suppose that the process is carried out by a community engaged in studying chemical reaction networks. In their research work, the communitys members employ a wide range of discursive practices: (i) preparing reports of various kinds of chemical reactions (e.g., transient chemical oscillations in closed systems, dissociation reactions, reactions at metal surfaces, enzyme-catalyzed reactions, etc.); (ii) elaborating on experimental designs that can bring to light new data (e.g., creating laser-illuminated systems, continuously stirred flow tank reactors, heterogeneous electrochemical systems, and so on); (iii) establishing specific patterns of dynamical behavior of reacting systems (in particular, patterns of nonlinear behavior like bistability, complex oscillations, nonequilibrium steady states, birhythmicity, bifurcations of limit cycles, and chaos); (iv) searching for formal techniques for a

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graphical description of dynamical behavior (like dynamical phase diagrams and crossshaped diagrams); (v) adjusting the new experimental data to theoretical models of the background knowledge; (vi) looking for new mathematical formalisms for reacting systems far from equilibrium; (vii) repeating experiments with the intention of checking whether the experimental data confirm the existence of a specific pattern of dynamical behavior; (viii) checking up the formal consistency of the theoretical models. The interrelatedness of all these discursive practices informs the integrity of the scientific communitys research everydayness. There are common meanings, implicit norms, ways of intersubjective experiencing, anticipations, inclinations, and orientations which are inextricable from the self-constituting totality of discursive practices. Looking at this everydayness, one can recognize within the interwovenness of practices a fore-having, a fore-sight, and a fore-conception of doing research. Yet one is unable to isolate these three moments as a static structure per se. They are recognizable only in the processuality of scientific research. Furthermore, they can only be thematized by reflecting upon the interplay between the totality of discursive practices and the structure of a scientific domain (following the example, this would be the nonlinear dynamics of chemical reactions far from equilibrium) constituted gradually by accomplishing the practices. (Later I shall try to demonstrate that there are several ways of thematizing and analyzing this interplay as a repetitive hermeneutic cycling. At this stage, I should like to point out that the totality of discursive practices is to be conceived as a text-analogue. Then, the hermeneutic cycling can be put in terms of part-whole relations: one is trying to establish a reading of the totality of discursive practices, and for this one appeals to readings of particular practices, which on their part presume a reading of the totality). What is constituted in the totality of discursive practices becomes (cognitively and socially) institutionalized knowledge of a scientific domain. In the cognitive structure of such a domain, one finds theoretical models of empirical data (e.g., models of nonlinear chemical reaction networks as dissipative structures), explanatory scenarios (e.g., explaining the strange behavior of chemical reactions in terms of nonequilibrium, thermodynamics), methodological codes of how to expand the domain through conceptualizing new empirical data (e.g., data from biochemistry and geochemistry) and constructing new theoretical models, and how to avoid ad hoc hypotheses (i.e., hypotheses that restrict the domains empirical content in order to save the validity of certain theoretical models). These components of the

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cognitive structure (and the very structure as a whole) are complete and closed from epistemological and semantic points of view. (In other words, for each component one can formulate epistemological and semantic criteria for completeness. Thus, for instance, a complete theory is that one which can no longer be improved by minor alterations; a complete methodological code is that one which excludes the possibility of being enriched with new normative principles, and so on). Of course, the cognitive structure of each scientific domain is liable to further modifications and revisions. The point, however, is that at any stage of the domains development one can get a reconstruction (in epistemological and semantic terms) of its structure as a complete and closed structure. By contrast, the processual totality of discursive practices, in which components of the cognitive structure come into being, remains always open for further readings. Clearly, the structure of knowledge in a conceptually, mathematically, theoretically and methodologically articulated scientific domain supervenes on the horizon informed by a scientific communitys fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. However, one must not confuse the processuality of constituting the structure of scientific knowledge with the very structure. This distinction precisely defines the demarcational line between the hermeneutic fore-structure and the cognitive structure of scientific research. To sum up, with respect to the established cognitive structure of a scientific domain, the interwovenness of discursive practices bears the character of a hermeneutic fore-structure. Fore here stands not for the presuppositional character of all cognition (in the sense of pre-understanding that accompanies each cognitive procedure; an aspect that is of prime importance for M. Polanyis ideas). Fore refers rather to the pre-cognitive, ontological conditions of having a cognitive structure of experience within a given mode of existence. The hermeneutic fore-structure does not chronologically precede the cognitive structure. 1 (The thesis that research everydayness interwovenness of discursive practices is a hermeneutic fore-structure pulls the further analysis in opposite directions. The first direction is towards the actual totality of practices that gradually constitute a scientific domain. The second direction is towards the negativity of this totality, i.e. the practices that become gradually pushed out, sedimented, and forgotten in the research everydayness processuality. Since these forgotten practices have a negative presence in the research process and can be (under circumstances) reactivated, they build up scientific communitys unconscious. In this regard, one may draw the conclusion that the research everydayness both

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reveals [as actual totality] and conceals [as negative presence] the hermeneutic fore-structure of scientific research. The programs of studying the discursive-practical constitution of scientific knowledge guided by the tenets of radical empiricism [like those of the cognitive sociology of science] pay attention exclusively on the research everydayness as actual totality. As a consequence, they miss important aspects of the formation of scientific domains. Later I shall return to this critique of the cognitive sociology). Hermeneutic fore-structure does not also mean a hidden essence behind the cognitive structure. This fore-structure is rather the discursive-practical processuality of structuring the cognitive structure. To put it in other words, fore-structure is not before, but it is the very dynamics of the cognitive structure. While the cognitive structure is to be rationally reconstructed, the enquiry of the totality of discursive practices as a hermeneutic fore-structure demands a completely other type of reflection. The latter is to be provided by the constitutional analysis of hermeneutic phenomenology. Before going on to see how the hermeneutic fore-structure of scientific research can be thematized and analyzed, I think it would be useful to set out more clearly what is the significance of this study for the attempts of universalizing hermeneutics as alternative to the epistemological project of modern philosophy. A genuine universalizing of hermeneutics would require a commitment to the view that there is no human activity which is not primordially predicated on a dialogical constitution of meaning. In other words, one has to demonstrate that there is no human activity which is not hermeneutically fore-structured. This claim contradicts the central tenets of the analytical philosophy of science. Both realists and antirealists make the case that scientific research is an activity predicated basically on a monological representation of the mind and external reality. In opposing naturalism, epistemological representationalism and foundationalism, the studies into the hermeneutic fore-structure of natural-scientific research are contributing to the genuine universalizing of hermeneutics. To be sure, the objects of natural-scientific research (like electromagnetic fields, genetic drifts, or enzyme-catalyzed reactions) cannot be regarded as partners in a dialogue, and can only be thematized by following the methodological standards, norms, and criteria of an objectivistmonological epistemology. Nevertheless, an important dialogical dimension of natural-scientific research is stressed by several authors (Bevilacqua and Giannetto 1995, Crease 1995, Eger 1995, Ginev 1997a,

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Heelan 1997b), who pay more attention to the instrumental context of this research. In this perspective, the instruments of the laboratory milieu are sui generis interpreters between researcher and nature. It is nature that inscribes a meaningful text on the instruments which the researcher has to read in a dialogical process. As I already pointed out, the whole research everydayness in natural sciences is informed by dialogical patterns of reading a meaningful text. Thus, like any other human activity, natural-scientific research can be interpreted as a completion-of-meaning process of reading. (Gadamer 1997, p. 51). In stressing this dimension of natural-scientific research, one succeeds in overcoming the image of science based upon epistemological foundationalism. Yet the hermeneutico-dialogical approach to natural-scientific research helps also in surmounting the neopragmatic deconstruction of sciences cognitive specificity. On this approach, it is precisely scientific researchs hermeneutic fore-structure that makes science a distinctive mode of being-in-the-world. To draw the implications of this thesis amounts to developing an alternative to the neopragmatic rejection of a significant science/nonscience cut within the whole of culture. In the perspective of the hermeneutic study of natural-scientific research, science gains its autonomous cognitive organization not because of having a normative code of epistemological rationality or because there are transcendental conditions of constructing specifically designed knowledge. The reason why science has a cognitive differentia specifica is to be found by scrutinizing the specificity of scientific researchs hermeneutic fore-structure.

2. Ways of analyzing the hermeneutic fore-structure of scientific research Let me start with some technical remarks. In the preceding section, I admitted tacitly that the structural unit of scientific research used for making a distinction between hermeneutic fore-structure and cognitive structure is the scientific domain. A scientific domain is a body of related information about which there is a problem, raised on the basis of specific considerations. On another definition (Shapere 1984), domain is each body of information constituted by items for which an answer to an important problem is expected. Examples of domains in earlier stages of science are Mendeleevs periodic table of chemical elements, Mendels genetics, Lavoisiers chemistry, Darwins theory of evolution, and classi-

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cal mechanics. Examples of domains in contemporary stages are special relativity, quantum mechanics, synthetic theory of evolution, molecular biology, and biochemistry. In view of the task of deepening the analysis of the nexus hermeneutic fore-structure cognitive structure, I am going to specify the notion of scientific domain in a manner that combines constructivist aspects (related to the way scientific research becomes objectified as a body of knowledge) and structuralist aspects (related to the semantic contents of this knowledge). While the constructivist aspects are to be elucidated from the viewpoint of a hermeneutics of scientific research, relevant to the structuralist aspects is the so called semantic conception of scientific theory.2 A central notion of this conception is that of theoretical model a model of the dynamical behavior of a certain class of empirical systems. From a semantic point of view, a theoretical model represents the dynamical behavior as a set of states and a sequence defined over that set. Each state is a simultaneous configuration of values of behaviors basic parameters. For instance, a state of a system studied in classical mechanics is a configuration of the instantaneous positions, masses, and velocities of the bodies included in the system. (Only a small number of scientific domains are constituted by theoretical models that are not dealing with systems dynamical behavior but with taxonomical, morphological, or structural aspects of empirical systems. As a rule, however, these domains are closely related to domains in which systems dynamical behavior is investigated). The theoretical models are intended applications of domains theory. In avoiding all technical details, one is to state that the totality of possible models of domains theory (or, the whole models-interpretation of domains theory) provides the semantic scope of scientific domain. The formal-semantic treatment of scientific domains cognitive structure does not contradict the search for a fore-structuring of scientific research. By contrast, this treatment reveals a wide range of issues that demand a reflection upon the hermeneutic fore-structure. The following description of the three main ways of analyzing this fore-structure represents a selection of issues. It is not my aim in this paper to dwell on the complementarity between the semantic reconstruction of domains cognitive structure and the hermeneutics of scientific research. The selection of issues I will offer should provide a rationale for delineating the context of constitution. (a) The first way to get to grips with the hermeneutic fore-structure is by studying the interplay between the stream of discursive practices (charac-

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terizing the research everydayness of a scientific community) and the gradual constitution of theoretical models that build a scientific domain. A historical priority in studying this aspect of scientific researchs fore-structuring is to be attributed to the school of methodical constructivism.3 Members of this school proposed different scenarios of illuminating how the conceptually articulated scientific domains are developed from the everyday practices of scientific research by a process of Hochstilisierung (based upon applying procedures of idealization and formalization). However, instead of looking for a hermeneutic cycling between the discursive practices and the arising (from these practices) theoretical structures, the constructivists, suggested the so-called principle of methodical order. On this principle, the complexity of discursive practices taking place in scientific research must be algorithmically reconstructed as a step-by-step order that leads from the elementary practices of the prescientific experience to the axioms and postulates of the scientific theories. Following this principle, the constructivists admit a strong unidirectionality of scientific research from pure prescientific instrumentation, through dealing with scientific instruments in which geometrical forms are technically realized, to pure theorizing. What methodical constructivists forget to take into consideration is the fact that all elementary practices (of doing measurements, using instruments of experimenting, reading experimental data, and so on) are embedded into a horizon of a certain research everydayness (or, a life-world of a scientific community), and this horizon is not to be separated from the cognitive structure of scientific domain. Hence, instead of step-by-step methodical order one has to search for a characteristic hermeneutic circle between practical instrumentation and models constructing theorizing.4 In this regard, the focus should be placed on particular forms of fusion of discursive practices that contribute to articulating a domain through promoting the creation of new theoretical models. (In order to illustrate this claim, let me return to my previous example. Suppose that for a long time members of the scientific community have studied experimentally chemical reaction systems that exhibit nonequilibrium steady states. Parallel to this research work, other members of this community have been preoccupied with finding equations that describe the time evolution of chemical systems far from equilibrium. Because of high diversity of the empirical data, on the one hand, and technical complexity of the equations, on the other, the discursive practices of the two groups have remained separated. Now, the situation changes, since a third group comes on the scene. The new group proves to be engaged in a discursive prac-

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tice that may bridge the gap between experimental data and mathematical speculations. More specifically, this discursive practice consists in a series of attempts to adjust mathematical descriptions of phenomena far from equilibrium and stochastic analyses of nonequilibrium systems to the background knowledge, which in this case is the thermodynamic of equilibrium fluctuations and its statistic methods. In the final reckoning, there is a fusion of the three discursive practices that leads to creation of theoretical models of the chemical systems with multiple steady states. These are the fluctuation-dissipation models, in which the thermodynamic entropy is generalized to a new function, restricted to the vicinity of nonequilibrium of steady states). I should like to call such fusions of discursive practices crucial situations of the research process. To stress again, a crucial situation is the site where a creation of new theoretical models of empirical systems dynamical behavior takes place. An important aspect of the crucial situation is the conspicuous increase of scientific communitys self-reflectivity. I would not say that this increase implies necessary a calling into question communitys normal science type of research. In most crucial situations, the predominance of self-reflective behavior has nothing to do with a revolutionary behavior. Self-reflectivity is rather a way of bringing into light preunderstandings (or, forgotten understandings) regarding the specific nature of what is under study. Such a self-reflectivity demands an actualization of the hermeneutic fore-structure of scientific research. In this actualization, preunderstandings become integrated into the process of constructing theoretical models. Following this line of reasoning, one might also say that the fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception of a research everydayness remain preserved in the theoretical models as integrated hermeneutic preunderstandings. Generally speaking, the more complex is an empirical systems dynamical behavior, the more hermeneutic preunderstandings are involved in the theoretical model. The function of these preunderstandings is to open the door for applying non-reductionistic devices in scientific research, when the reductionist standards of epistemological objectivism have only a restricted application (because of the complexity of systems dynamical behavior). Examples of such devices are: the principle of complementarity (when the systems complexity does not allow a joint specification of each pair of canonical coordinates, or a specification of commutation relations for such coordinates); the quasiergodic theorem stipulating that the trajectory of a systems dynamics may pass arbitrarily close to every point on the energy surface (when the systems complexity demands a probabilist approach); different kinds of

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coupled, nonlinear differential equations and methods of differential topology (when the system exhibits complexity typical of dynamical behavior far from equilibrium). Actualizing scientific researchs fore-having, fore-sight and fore-conception through integrating preunderstandings in theoretical models is a particular illustration of the interplay between hermeneutic fore-structure and cognitive structure. A crucial situation is to be treated as a structural unit of the research process carried out by a certain scientific community. In such a situation (because of the fusion of discursive practices) the inseparability of a theory-laden meaning and a praxis-laden meaning comes to the fore.5 Roughly speaking, theory-laden meaning is informed by procedures like idealization and mathematization, whilst praxis-laden meaning comes from procedures like experimental instrumentation and measurement. Yet these two groups of discursive practices are mutually reinforcing in the process of constituting theoretical models. This is why these models are an amalgam of praxis-laden and theory-laden semantic components, where the former correspond to the integrated hermeneutic preunderstandings, and the latter to the objective knowledge. A special aspect of this problematics provides the reflection upon the role of technology and engineering in scientific research. However, since the discussion of this aspect requires entering into the complexity of science-technology relations, I will leave it aside. (b) The second way of reflecting upon the hermeneutic fore-structure of scientific research leads us to focusing on the normativity that is to be attributed to the process of constituting domains of scientific research. I will call it proto-normativity, referring to all normative aspects of communitys research everydayness that cannot be reduced to (and formulated as) a codex of scientific honesty (in the sense of Lakatos). In using this hyphenated expression, I mean not simply the normativity (embedded in communitys totality of discursive practices) that precedes the articulation of methodological norms, standards, and criteria. Protonormativity does not denote inexact and vague formulations of these norms, standards, and criteria that later on (by means of logical analysis and rational reconstruction of scientific language) will be transformed into particular prescriptions. I have in mind prescriptions that can be cast in terms of categorical imperatives (the case of traditional normative epistemology) or hypothetical imperatives (the case of Laudans normative naturalism). Furthermore, proto-normativity does not only mean a prearticulated form of the explicit norms of rational scientific behavior.

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The essential difference between proto-normativity and methodological normativity is to be derived from the difference between constitution and reconstruction. Proto-normativity follows from the part-whole interplay as informed by the hermeneutic circle. By taking place in the totality of communitys research everydayness, this interplay constitutes gradually a specific domain of scientific research. Thus considered, proto-normativity is an ontological characteristic of scientific communitys being-in-theworld. It is inherent in communitys fore-having, fore-sight, and foreconception. By contrast, methodological normativity is to be restricted to the epistemological reconstruction of research process cognitive structure and dynamics. Reflecting upon proto-normativity makes the constitutional analysis (in the paradigm of hermeneutic phenomenology) irreducible to both empirical thematizing and normative reconstructing. In other words, because the hermeneutico-circular being-the-world is predicated on protonormativity, its rationalizing cannot be carried out by empirical thematization or normative reconstruction. In contradistinction to the methodological norms (which are presumably invariant and decontextualized), proto-normativity is not to be isolated from the particular situations of the research everydayness, in which the fusion of discursive practices takes place. Proto-normativity refers to the implicit requirements that the projected hermeneutic fore-structure imposes upon scientific research. Fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception determine the way the discursive practices (involved in scientific research) should be arranged and accomplished. In other words, there is an unarticulated web of prescriptions for making use of background experience; inclinations, preferences, and orientations attached to each discursive practice; and anticipations of what is coming when a discursive practice is accomplished. This web is incorporated in the totality of scientific research a manner that prevents any specification of particular norms or normative codes of scientific rationality. 6 On another definition, proto-normativity is a notion denoting the hidden normative arrangement of a scientific communitys research everydayness. In the course of the research process, an ongoing articulation of the proto-normative web in explicit epistemological and methodological norms, standards, and criteria takes place. The very articulation takes the form of a spiraling alternation between the projected whole of fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception on the research everydayness and the specified norms of the particular discursive practices.7 Thus, the

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more advanced is the research process the more proto-normativity of the hermeneutic fore-structure turns into explicit methodology and regulative epistemology of this process. A special issue in discussing proto-normativity of scientific research is the issue of the knowledge-guiding interests. Vis-a-vis the fact that the proto-normative hermeneutic fore-structure provides scientific research with a primordial orientation, which is the source of all secondary cognitive interests and orientations, there is no reason to hold that the basic knowledge-guiding interests are not intrinsic to scientific research. From the viewpoint of philosophical hermeneutics, there are no knowledgeguiding interests that are not constituted within the hermeneutic fore-structure of scientific research. This view opposes Apels (1968, 1977) conception of the interests, guiding the generation of knowledge in natural, social, and (what he, after Habermas, calls) critical-emancipatory sciences. On this conception, the three basic interests (the interest in controlling an objectified world; the interest in communicative understanding; and the interest in critically emancipatory self-reflection) are to be considered as normative conditions of the possibility of constituting objects of specified scientific experience.8 Apel also rejects the view that the knowledge-guiding interests may be equated with the external historical interests which promote and institute different types of scientific research. In so doing, however, he goes on to insist that the knowledge-guiding interests are a topic of a transcendental reflection which has to disclose (in Apels idiom) the apriori -structures of the validity claims raised in the argumentative discourses of natural, social, and critical-emancipatory sciences. By claiming that the interests guiding the three types of scientific-argumentative discourse must be (transcendentally) presupposed in the systematic account of the possibility of the constitution of natural-, social-, and critical-scientific objects of study, Apel actually hypostatizes the basic norms of validity associated with these interests. In so doing, he refuses to reflect upon their hermeneutico-practical genesis. An illustration in this respect is provided by the following programmatic declaration: Concerning the three fundamental interests of knowledge I would claim that they can be systematically grounded as normative conditions of the possibility of meaningful experience within the frame of a transcendental pragmatics of language games. And this implies the further claim that all conceivable internal, meaning-constitutive interests of knowledge may be derived, in a sense, from the three fundamental knowledge interests or from possible typical combinations or dialectical mediations of them. (Apel 1977, p. 431).

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In suggesting these elaborations, Apel is led by the conviction that the conditions of the possibility of argumentative discourse (or, the conditions of intersubjective validity) are on a deeper (foundational) level than the hermeneutic fore-structure of producing such a discourse. Consequently, the hermeneutics of discursive phronesis has to be replaced by a transcendental hermeneutics of the argumentative discourse. Yet this claim simply expresses an old-fashioned transcendental illusion. There are no meta-scientific (or transcendental) conditions of the validity-claims of scientific argumentation that lie behind (the situativeness and contextuality of) the discursive practices of scientific research.8 (c) The third way is to be described as an effective-historical interpretation of the dynamics of scientific research. In each new moment of the research process (or, after each new crucial situation) the hermeneutic fore-structure becomes more and more effaced by scientific domains cognitive structure. It seems reasonable then to assume that there will come a final moment, at which the research process will reach an ultimate (finished) cognitive structure. It seems reasonable then to assume that there will come a final moment, at which the research process will reach an ultimate (finished) cognitive structure, and consequently, the hermeneutic fore-structure will be totally objectified. Yet this abstract possibility can never become an actuality. The research process always remains predicated on an interpretative openness, and its hermeneutic fore-structure is in each moment a fore-structure of completion (in Gadamers sense). Indeed, one can introduce cogent epistemological (and semantic) criteria for a completeness of models, theories, fields, domains, etc. The point, however, is that this completeness (however it might be formulated) is relative to the never-ending interpretative openness of scientific research. In other words, there is a dialectic between closure and openness in the processuality of constituting scientific domain. On this dialectic, the hermeneutic openness in scientific researchs historical dynamics is absolute, while the epistemological/semantic closedness is always contextual and relative. The interpretative openness characterizes not only the research process but scientific domains cognitive structure as well. There is always a possibility to absorb and dissolve such an established structure in an ongoing process of discursive practices of an arising domain. (The development of modern physics provides many examples of absorption of supposedly theoretically finished scientific domains that become later recast in the discursive practices of new-arising domains). In the historical dynamics of scientific development the ef-

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facement of domains hermeneutic fore-structures and the absorption of finished cognitive structure go hand in hand, thereby providing an illustration of the interplay between hermeneutic fore-structure and cognitive structure. The priority of the interpretative openness of scientific research over the epistemic (and semantic) closedness of scientific knowledges structure is a specification of the priority of the practical rationality of prudence (phronesis) over the epistemologically justified rationality. Against the background of the foregoing considerations concerning the interpretative openness one can figure out how Gadamers conception of effective history is to be applied to natural-scientific research. Notoriously, Gadamer is not interested in the hermeneutic dimensions of scientific experiences cognitive dynamics. His conception of the effective history refers to the immanent history of the self-interpreting cultural traditions. Gadamers attack on Diltheys methodologism stresses the inseparability of human-scientific experiences cognitive dynamics from the cultural traditions effective history in which this experience is embedded. All objects of human-scientific research are formed exclusively by cultural traditions. There is no human-scientific research tradition disentangled from a multiplicity of cultural traditions. Of course, this view is not without qualification tenable for the natural-scientific experience. Most of the natural-scientific research traditions are completely independent of cultural traditions, which makes the demarcation between internal and external history reasonable. Notwithstanding, because of the interplay between hermeneutic fore-structure and cognitive structure, Gadamers conception of effective history seems most relevant to the internal dynamics of natural-scientific research traditions. (An idea which, I think, would be unacceptable to Gadamer). In trying to apply the conception of the effective history to natural-scientific research, one has to have recourse again to the notion of crucial situation. Each crucial situation in the research process is a specific configuration of discursive practices that makes possible the constitution of a theoretical model. From a hermeneutic point of view, what is formed as objective knowledge in a given crucial situation is not to be separated from what is handed down by the stream of fusing discursive practices. 9 In this regard, the fusion of discursive practices and the objectifying thematization of what is under study form an effective unity which can only be analyzed as a hermeneutico-historical process. At each particular moment, scientific research is situated, i.e. leading to a certain crucial situation in which the discursive practices are materialized

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and finalized as a constituted theoretical model. Yet at each moment scientific research (and this makes it a hermeneutico-historical process) transcends its situatedness by opening new possibilities for a fusion of discursive practices. In other words, at each, moment scientific research (like any other cultural activity) is predicated on a situated transcendence. If one generalizes the idea of scientific research as a hermeneutico-historical process with respect to the whole dynamics of changing crucial situations in the development of scientific domains, then one can gain a picture of what would be an effective history of natural science.10 Actually, the three ways of analyzing the hermeneutic fore-structure address three different (but closely interrelated) hermeneutic cycles characterizing the processuality of scientific research. All three cycles refer to particular aspects of articulating the cognitive structure of scientific research. First, there is a repetitive cycling between the hermeneutic fore-structure and the particular crucial situations in which theoretical models are, articulated. Second, the ongoing articulation of normative methodology of scientific research is the outcome of a repetitive cycling between the proto-normative hermeneutic fore-structure and the articulation of particular normative structures. Third, there is a repetitive cycling that takes the form of effective history (Wirkungsgeschichte) and informs the cognitive dynamics of scientific research.

3. Beyond the traditional context-distinction The three ways of analyzing the hermeneutic fore-structure of scientific research are closely interconnected. My aim in this section is to show that the integral framework they provide defines a specific philosophical context of reflecting upon science, which I should like to call the context of constitution. The delineation of an independent context of studying scientific research raises the important question about the validity of the traditional distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification. The hermeneutic fore-structure of scientific research is not to be cast in terms of the context of discovery, since the hermeneutic circles it involves are intrinsic to the cognitive dynamics of scientific research. Yet the fore-structure does not belong to the context of justification either, because it is not located in the finished structure of scientific knowledge that is the theme of all programs of rational reconstruction in the philosophy of science. The interpretative openness of the hermeneutic fore-structure shifts the focus from what is complete (in epis-

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temological and semantic terms) to what is in status nascendi (or, what remains to be completed). For many years the traditional context-distinction is under attack from different perspectives.11 It has been criticized for the impossibility of drawing a clear-cut temporal differentiation between discovery and justification. In fact, discovery and justification are not only intimately intertwined, but their inseparability is an essential feature of scientific work. Of course, there is no reason to conclude that the entire process of discovering must be completed before the process of justification can begin. (Sahnon 1970, p. 37). But nevertheless, the constant interplay between discovery and justification prevents the drawing of a clear demarcational line between studying scientific research (exclusively) in terms of a certain empirical discipline and judging the rationality of this research (exclusively) in terms of normative epistemology. Neither discovery nor justification can be extracted as pure processes. Furthermore, the disciplines that are supposed to constitute the two contexts are not so clearly divided as the context-distinction admits. On the one hand, psychology, sociology, and cultural history (the main disciplines that must constitute the context of discovery) contain significant logical and normative aspects, and on the other, normative epistemology presupposes empirical studies for delineating the context of justification. (Moreover, there is no normative justification that can be detached from the justifying psychological and social attitudes. Empirical processes are always shaping the normativity of justification). Finally, a necessary condition for defending the context-distinction is to claim the irreducibility of normative epistemology to empirical disciplines. But if this claim fails, as the champions of naturalized epistemology assert, then there is no room for separating the normative from the factual in scientific research. An attempt at a naturalist overcoming of the context-distinction deserves closer attention. I am referring to the attempt at getting rid of this distinction in the cognitive sociology of science. One should pay special attention to this attempt, for in many respects there are significant parallels between the studies in sociology of scientific knowledge and the studies in hermeneutic philosophy of science. Both enterprises aim at interpreting the relationship between the local settings in which scientific knowledge is produced and the cognitive and social standardization and institutionalization of this knowledge in units (like domains, specialties, and disciplines) that are relatively stable (with regard to the established cognitive structure) and socially reproducible. Despite the parallels, however, they suggest in an important respect antipodal pictures of scientific

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research. Notoriously, a basic tenet of the strong programme in sociology of scientific knowledge places emphasis on the necessity to consider both true and false scientific knowledge generation equally amenable to explanation in terms of empirical sociology. According to the representatives of this programme, there is no rationale for privileging an epistemological context of rational reconstruction, since all beliefs are on a par with one another with respect to the causes of their credibility. (Barnes and Bloor 1982, p. 23) Consequently, truth, method and rationality are no longer trans-empirical entities. All of them are social artifacts. Like any other component of scientific knowledge, they are, produced in local settings of scientific research. The representatives of the strong programme (especially David Bloor) are inspired by Wittgensteins rejection of the traditional epistemological notions in favor of the discursive practices (linguistic games) expressing particular forms of life. Accordingly, scientific research is construed as such a form of life. There is no cognitive specificity of science that is immune to empirical interpretation and sociological explanation. Hence, there is no need of delineation a normative-epistemological context of justification. A basic goal of the cognitive sociology is to reduce (without remainder) this context to the empirical study of collective processes of constructing scientific knowledge. At this point, however, it becomes evident that the cognitive sociology fails to defeat the argument of vicious circularity: By claiming that the study of sciences cognitive specificity must be relegated to science itself (in this case, empirical sociology), the whole enterprise of sociology of scientific knowledge bears upon the truth and rationality that are taken over from the cognitive structure of science which is supposed to be the object of study. 12 Two remarks are in place here. First, in order to avoid such a circularity, one has to take a critical distance from science itself. In other words, one needs such a distance in order to thematize the cognitive specificity of science without falling into vicious circularity. A possible way of gaining critical distance is by assuming that the truth, rationality, and methodological norms of objectivity have a transcendental status. Of course, from the very outset this way is precluded by the cognitive sociologists of science. Each transcendental assumption would tacitly justify the context of justification. In fact, the sociologists of scientific knowledge reject!: not only the transcendentaland/or normative-epistemological account of sciences cognitive specificity, but the very demand of achieving a critical distance. As a result, cognitive sociology does not suggest a theory of how the social networks

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produce the conceptual theoretical and methodological content of science. Despite the huge number of excellent case studies illuminating different social aspects of scientific research, there is no single example that shows how a cognitive sociologys theory works in explaining the generation of knowledges specific cognitive structure in particular social networks.13 The reduction of normative epistemology and the context of justification to empirical sociology does not succeed in bridging the Cartesian gulf. The traditional epistemological dualism remains preserved in the cognitive sociology of science. Now, in raising this claim I come to my second remark. Naturalizing the context of justification is not the only way to overcome the context-distinction. There is an opportunity to take a critical distance from science and to avoid falling into vicious circularity, without succumbing to transcendentalism and/or epistemological normativism. What sociology of scientific knowledge fails to develop is a theory of the discursive practices through which sciences cognitive content comes into being.14 This failure is intimately related to the lack of critical distance. Cognitive sociology of science does not succeed in explaining the social production of scientific knowledge, since by taking for granted the naturalist position it hypostatizes cognitive entities whose generation it has to thematize. Yet is this thematization possible at all? If it is accomplished in the framework of an empirical theory, then (as the case of cognitive sociology indicates) the vicious circularity is unavoidable. But it is impossible in the framework of normative epistemology as well, since the latter has only to do with the finished structure of scientific domain and not with the processuality of the discursive practices. Now, a third alternative remains still possible: a theoretical thematization of scientific research processuality in the framework of a theory that is beyond the traditional context-distinction. By implication, this would be also a thematization of the hermeneutic fore-structure of scientific research. It deserves to be mentioned that in his interesting critique of the sociology of scientific knowledge Michael Friedman (1998) stresses also the need of transcending the traditional context-distinction. He develops his view from the standpoint of the latter Wittgenstein. Friedman displays discontent with Barnes and Bloors attempt to replace the problematics of the context of justification (i.e. the traditional epistemological problems) with the problematics arising out of the sociological case studies of the local production of scientific knowledge. On his view, this replacement is due to a misinterpretation of Wittgensteins ideas. The author of

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Philosophical Investigations defends by no means a kind of socio-cultural relativism. Furthermore, he is not reducing philosophy (and the traditional epistemological notions) to the natural sciences. Wittgenstein holds with respect to the philosophy-science relationship a non-relativist antireductionisrn, while the practitioners of cognitive sociology of science are committed to a relativist reductionism. It is the latter view that creates the main trouble in the practice of sociology of scientific knowledge. A social-constructivist approach to scientific research is groundlessly asymmetrical in its treatment of the facts of this research and the facts invoked by the very approach. (This is why the authors supporting this approach are obliged to defend a kind of second-order realism with respect to the sociological theories that have to explain the social construction of the natural-scientific facts. The following confession summarizes succinctly the asymmetry in question: I am a scientific realist with regard to the discourse of the social sciences. By that I mean that the best explanation for the history of all of our knowledge enterprises is provided by the best social scientific theories. However, I am an antirealist about the discourse of the natural sciences, to the extent that I accept the validity of social constructivist accounts of natural scientific practices. [Fuller 1993, p. XIV]). Yet, because the cognitive sociology of science is itself a scientific enterprise, an asymmetrical treatment of natural and social reality would be a crucial testimony against the consistency of the social-constructivist approach. The two groups of facts (the facts about reality constructed by scientific research and the facts about the social-institutional networks in which this research takes place) should have equal status. In reflecting upon this predicament of cognitive sociology of science, Friedman suggests that the practitioner of this enterprise should scrutinize the historical contexts of formation of her/his own philosophical agenda that legitimizes the realism about the facts invoked by the social-constructivist approach. Doing empirical studies in sociology of scientific knowledge is also a multiplicity of linguistic games belonging to a certain form of life. Accordingly, if I am correctly understanding Friedmans suggestion, the whole enterprise of cognitive sociology of science should be transformed from an empirical (naturalistic) treatment of scientific practices into a kind of self-reflexive dialogue between two forms of life (social constructivism and natural science) which are on a par with one another. Does this suggestion eliminate the problem of reflexivity that is the Achilles heel of cognitive sociology of science? In other words, does Friedmans critique help in figuring out a third (Wittgensteinian) way (beyond the naturalism-normativism dilemma) of

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thematizing scientific research as a multiplicity of discursive practices? My inclination towards a negative answer is determined by the fact that Friedmans critique does not resolve the problem of the critical distance I mentioned above. His Wittgensteinian approach does not specify the dialogical relations between the discursive practices of the theory of sciences linguistic games and the discursive practices of scientific research. As a consequence, Friedman is not able to develop his approach as alternative to both epistemological normativism and second-order realism/naturalism. The solution of the problem to the critical distance hinges on the way of thematizing the hermeneutic fore-structure of scientific research. Indeed, since the task is to thematize the discursive practices as a self-constituting processuality of scientific research, the thematization can neither be designed as a traditional empirical study (like the studies in the context of discovery), nor can it follow the patterns of a normative rational reconstruction (designed in the context of justification). The focus is on the three hermeneutic circles and their interrelatedness. Studying scientific researchs self-constituting processuality is a sort of double hermeneutics: one has to enter into an investigatory hermeneutic circle in thematizing the discursive-practical texture of scientific research, which on its part involves constitutive hermeneutic circles.15 This double hermeneutics assures the critical distance from scientific research as an object of theoretical thematization. (The studies into the self-constituting processuality of scientific research are not guided by the epistemological standards of scientific research itself) In achieving this distance one succeeds to avoid vicious circularity by transforming it into a hermeneutic circularity. Thus considered, the theory of the discursive practices taking place in scientific research forms an independent context of studying science. It is this context of constitution in which one thematizes the hermeneutic fore-structure of scientific research. Like philosophical hermeneutics offers a perspective beyond the objectivism-relativism dilemma, the (studies into the) context of constitution offers a kind of reflecting upon science beyond normative-epistemological objectivism of the context of justification and relativism that follows from narrowing the perspective on science exclusively to the context of discovery. Let me finally point out, that the basic characteristics of the studies carried out in the context of constitution correspond to the three hermeneutic circles on which scientific research is predicated:

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Starting assumption of these studies is the ontological priority of the practical horizon of being involved in a research process over the theoretical attitude; The studies are neither empirical nor normative, but interpreting the proto-normativity of hermeneutic circles that are constitutive for scientific research; The studies are scrutinizing scientific research in its effective-historical interpretative openness. Delineating the context of constitution and thematizing the hermeneutic fore-structure of scientific research serves in achieving two aims. First, it allows to reformulate many important problems (e.g., the problem of scientific rationality, the problem of incommensurability, the problem of demarcating the internal from external history of science, and so on) posed by the standard (analytical) philosophy of science in an entirely new framework. Second, it opens up a horizon of new problematizing. In this regard, the context of constitution invites discourses (hitherto ignored or prohibited by the analytical philosophy) to dwell on various non-standard problems in elucidating the nature of scientific research.

Notes
1. The distinction between hermeneutic fore-structure of doing research within a scientific domain and cognitive structure of this domain is akin to Heelans recently suggested distinction between a praxis-laden context where the sentence refers to something that is in actual use or designated for use in construction and a theory-laden context where the sentence refers to the physical structure of something that is under study (Heelan 1997a, p. 280). On Heelans view, experimental observations should not be called semantically theory-laden but semantically praxis-laden like all cultural objects of lifeworld-experience. Thus, the semantic-practical ladenness that is generated from the lifeworld experience plays the role of a hermeneutic fore-structure of all theory-laden activities in the research process. The notion of theoretical model I am employing in this paper draws basically on Suppes (1988) version of the semantic conception of scientific theory. For a full discussion of development and variants of methodical constructivism, see Janich 1997. To be sure, this hermeneutic circle can be reconstructed and recast in terms of different kinds of (non-representational and post-foundational) epistemology. Thus, for example, Herfel and Hooker (1997, pp. 148153) conceive it as a circulative-regulatory mechanism that operates at many levels of constructing sciences cognitive content; Ginev (1992) suggests a kind of autopoietic episte-

2. 3. 4.

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mology in trying to bring to light sciences cognitive self-constitution. 5. This is another topics related to Heelans (1997a) distinction between theory-laden aspect and praxis-laden aspect of scientific research. 6. On this view, see Ginev 1997a, pp. 111121. 7. Proto-normativity can also be characterized as interwovenness of descriptive and prescriptive aspects in constituting theoretical models. Scrutinizing this interwovenness will show how the articulation of a normative methodology is related to the semantic articulation of a scientific domain. 8. On this kind of critique of transcendental pragmatics, see Ginev 1997b, pp. 61 73. 9. To reiterate once again, what is handed down remains partially preserved as hermeneutic preunderstandings in the constituted theoretical models. 10. A special issue in discussing the interpretative openness of natural-scientific research is the critique of incommensurability thesis. Regardless of how semantically complete the theoretical models are, there is always a potential for revisionist plasticity in the research process that opens up the models for further interpretations and reinterpretations. (See Ginev 1997a, pp. 6175.) There is no theoretical model that is beyond the fusion of horizons (in this case, the fusion of discursive practices). Even the classical theoretical models are embedded in the effective-historical dynamics of discursive practices, whereby they are not immune to interpretative modifications and revisions. In view of this revisionist plasticity, the semantic-epistemic gap between a pair of allegedly incommensurable models (say, a model in Newtonian theory of gravity and a model in general relativity) can be filled by studying the continuity of revisionist interpretations of the first model that leads finally to constructing the second model. The effective history of scientific research bridges all kinds of semantic incommensurability in the development of scientific knowledge. 11. For a discussion of the different lines of critique of context-distinction, see Heuningen-Huene 1987. 12. In addition, one can make the case that bearing upon the truth and rationality of science is taken from traditional philosophical approaches to science that sociology of scientific knowledge strongly criticized. (On this argument, see Brown 1989). 13. On this argument against cognitive sociology of science, see Cole 1992, pp. 80 85. 14. To be sure, most of the representatives of cognitive sociology of science are not satisfied with the Kuhnian view of the normative structure of scientific research. On this view, the norms that guide the decision making in the research process are made of the same stuff as the technical knowledge produced in this process. What the cognitive sociologists are looking for, is an explanation of the generation of methodological norms in terms of practices that precedes (somehow) the technical organization of scientific knowledge. (On this point, see Shapin 1995). But this seems to be only possible within the framework of a theory of the discursive practices, which is hard to be found in sociology of scientific knowledge. 15. On this formulation of the idea of double hermeneutics, see Ginev 1998.

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