The sculpture and the electron: Hermeneutics of the experimental object

Abstract

Martin Eger establishes a role for hermeneutics in science by observing that student and researcher face different “books” of science but that the boundaries between these two books are blurred. Another important dimension of hermeneutics in science has to do with the production of the experimental object, or with act rather than text hermeneutics. In experimentation, a back-and-forth takes place between anticipations of what one produces and what emerges — in classroom training, the production and recognition of new phenomena, and in the preparation of an already familiar phenomenon to be measured or further manipulated. Further development of the hermeneutics of the experimental object is essential to eludicate the meaning of technique.