Hermeneutics is one of those archaic and refractory, yet fashionable words which seem to crop up in so many places that they take on a power all their own. E. D. Hirsch has observed that the word has become “a rather vague, magical talisman.” For better or worse hermeneutics has entered into the theoretical controversies of literary criticism, history, sociology, anthropology, political science, philosophy—not only the theory of the humane disciplines but even the theory of the natural sciences.