Abstract

Martin Heidegger first adverted to the hermeneutic phenomenological orientation to nature and scientific observation in the scientist's laboratory practice in addition to the scientist's own reflective theoretical expressions. From the start, hermeneutic philosophy of science has focused not only on historical and current scientific texts, including scientific laboratory reports and communications, professional articles, and research protocols, but, even beginning with Heidegger, it has also attended to the scientist's own hermeneutic and phenomenological (that is to say: experimental) interpretation of nature. This includes the hermeneutic phenomenology of scientific observation‐“reading” scientific instruments. For Heidegger, a hermeneutic phenomenology is built into the world of scientific research. The range of approaches to the hermeneutic philosophy of science also includes Joseph Kockelmans’ studies of Maurice Merleau‐Ponty, in addition to a range of philosophers of science cutting across the contemporary analytic‐continental divide.