Explanation and Understanding in the History of Philosophy and Ricoeur’s Theory
Abstract
In this article I will present the main ideas of those thinkers who argue that natural
sciences are receptive to a hermeneutical method of understanding. I will examine to
what degree understanding used as a method in natural sciences differs from
understanding used as a method in humanities and point out the universality of
hermeneutical experience. At the beginning, I will state the authors who set sharp borders
between the methods used in natural sciences and methods used in humanities. They
regard hermeneutics exclusively as a method used in social sciences that is not capable of
reaching the cognitive objectivity innate to natural sciences. However, by means of
several examples from contemporary philosophy of science it can be proved that this
classification is not valid.