Historiography Of Science And Epistemological Hermeneutics

The rise of the historicism in the philosophy of science hascriticized not only the science outlook of Logical Positivism, but alsothe science historiography of positivism which considers that thehistory of science is the pure objective reflection of science and itsprocess of development, and the researches of the history of science andnatural sciences have a lot in common in cognitive objects and methods,and the historians can get "objective", "true" cognition of ancientprocess of development by deep and close investigation.The historicismalso puts forth "theory-loadedness of observation", the constructivenature of scientific knowledge and the hermeneutic nature of naturalsciences and so on, which exhibits a tendency of combination withhermeneutics.Hermeneutics is a systemic theory on understanding andexplanation, which can be divided into epistemological hermeneuticsand ontological hermeneutics according to the different definitions ofthe concept of understanding. Epistemological hermeneutics holds thatunderstanding is a kind of conscious subjective activities in which thesubject learns about the object, and is a way of subject's (interpreter's)understanding of the object (text). Its purpose of understanding is topursue the objective original meaning of a text. However, ontologicalhermeneutics believes that understanding is a way of human existenceor the constitutive premise of ontology (or theory of existence), and is aprocess of interpreter's creating meaning continuously. On the basis of this division and analysis of views of historicism, the paper holds thatthe views of historicism especially historiography of science is relatedto epistemological hermeneutics.Based on the relations of historicism and hermeneutics, thisdissertation puts forward that overlapping point of the relations betweenhistoriography of science and epistemological hermeneutics lie inhistorical text, because the research object of Historiography of Scienceis the written history of science, which is historical text from theperspective of Hermeneutics. And the views of the text ofepistemological hermeneutics are similar to the basic issues ofHistoriography of Science. So the dissertation discusses the internalrelations between the Research Programs of the Historiography ofScience of Lakatos, who is considered one of the importantrepresentatives of historicism in the philosophy of science, andepistemological hermeneutics, and further puts forward three relations:the first is the similarity in understanding the historical text; the secondthe emphasis on the reconstruction of the historical text; and the thirdcircular demonstration of Historiography and hermeneutic circle.In the end, the dissertation thinks that overlapping relationsbetween Historiography of Science and epistemological hermeneuticswill benefit not only the understanding of Lakatos' Research Programsof the Historiography of Science but also the research of the change ofhistory of science, Historiography of Science and related academiccriticism, etc. Finally this dissertation presents the significance ofresearching relations between Lakatos' Research Programs of theHistoriography of Science and epistemological hermeneutics: firstly, itbreaks through the traditional research norm of the history of science;secondly, the subject is united together with the object dialectically;thirdly, it displays the trend and the problems of Historiography ofScience, which is the hermeneutic turn of the historiography of science.