Peter D. Usher
The Astronomy Quarterly Vol. 3, pp. 115-124, 171-177, 178-184 (1979)
Copyright Pachart Corporation, Pachart Publishing House, Tucson AZ
" . . . to be most human of all is to communicate cooperatively over the widest range of space and into the farthest reaches of the past and future."
Wendell Johnson Living with Change: the Semantics of CopingCONTENTS
I. HUMANISTIC ORIGINS
A. Mendacious Mercury
B. The Hermeneutic Dilemma
C. The Hermeneutic Circle
D. Hermeneutic-Dialectics
E. The Canons of Hermeneutics
F. Hermeneutic-Dialectical Convergence
G. Initial Conditions
II. SCIENCE AND UNCERTAINTY
A. The Scientific Method
B. Hermeneutics of Natural Science
III. HERMENEUTIC DIMENSIONS IN ASTRONOMY
A. Stellar Structure and Evolution
B. Galaxies and Cosmology
IV. POSTSCRIPT November 2002
[115/116]
Hermeneutics takes its name from Hermes, the wing-footed messenger of the Greek gods; his Roman counterpart is Mercury, whose facile wanderings in the twilight sky are the apotheosis of slipperiness and quicksilver.[1]
The elusiveness of Hermes was the envy of the grease-smeared wrestlers of antiquity, over whose athletic events he presided. With the aid of a tortoise shell, Hermes made the first lyre [2], and subsequently became a liar himself, being thereby eminently qualified to moderate the affairs of thieves, rogues, and scoundrels. His anointed task of messenger-boy to Jupiter and the gods of Olympus was well-suited to the evasiveness and shiftiness of his character. Building on a precociously established reputation for cattle rustling and fast talk, Hermes came ultimately to be regarded as the god of cunning, trickery, and theft.
Yet notwithstanding this proclivity to dissemble and deceive, the communicative skills of Hermes have come to be associated with a special function, whereby that which is beyond human understanding is transmuted into a form that mere mortals can grasp. Thanks to his silver tongue, Hermes became known as god of eloquence; his aptitude for bamboozlement thus also earned Hermes the doubtful honor of god of science - as it was known in antiquity. Through the duality of his mercurial temperament, we find Hermes entrusted with science and communication - skills which ideally should foster truth and understanding - despite his penchant for mendacity, unpredictability, and the foul canard.
The coexistence of probity and duplicity within a single character might seem puzzling at first glance. Yet according to Heraclitus, conflicting features are really only part of the same situation, just as Evil can be regarded as a lack of Good, and Ignorance as a lack of Knowledge. In like vein, the clown Touchstone [116/117] in Shakespeare's "As You Like It" asks the shepherd Corin whether he has any philosophy in him; Corin replies that all he knows is, that the more a man sickens the worse at ease he is, just as "a great cause of the night is lack of sun."[3] Paradise itself cannot escape duality. William Davis [4] writes that, just as silence can be deafening, so "the conventional vision of heaven strikes many people as hell; imagine spending an eternity listening to harps."
To Aristotle, there was a gradient of perfection from the nethermost world of chaos and hellfire, to the perfect harmony of the stars. The planets lay poised between the extremes, connoting a combination of good and evil, just as, in their kinetic vagaries across the face of the heavens, they occasionally exhibit the features of unpredictability and imperfection found among the lowly denizens of the earth. Mercury and the other trampstars are the apotheosis of the human condition, in which perfection and imperfection, constancy and change, and good and evil, coexist.
Strategically placed between heaven and earth, it was the task of Hermes to open the lines of communication between man and the gods. To this end, Hermes invented language and writing in order to promote human understanding, and thereby to help man grasp the meaning of his own existence, and that of his physical environs. Thus, since "hermeneuein" is the Greek verb "to say," "to explain," or "to translate," the function of Hermes at Mount Olympus was supposedly not unlike that of the priest of the Delphic oracle, or the astronomer priests of Ancient Chaldea, or of modern ministers, who must interpret the messages of Heaven and act as intermediaries between God and man.[5]
Hermeneutics then, is the study of the methodological principles of interpretation and explanation. The word does not often arise in common conversation, nor is it apparently a household word in either philosophy or literary criticism where its use is most frequent.[6] Dictionary definitions refer to the critical explanation of scripture, and historically in fact, Hermeneutics is associated originally with European Protestant theology, and Biblical exegesis in particular.[7]
More generally, hermeneutics has been concerned with the interpretation, meaning and understanding of literature as a whole, and of the individual texts that comprise that whole. Inherent in this formidable task is the challenge of coping with the difficulty of the so-called synchronic order of works which coexist at one time, as opposed to the diachronic sequence in which they are written, read, and interpreted, [8] for herein lie the causes of a remarkable quandary: How is it possible to define a particular literary genre (such as tragedy) before deciding on which works to base the definition; yet how can the works be selected upon which to base the definition before the genre has been defined? Moreover, the dilemma embraces even the understanding of a particular text, for how can one understand the individual parts before the whole text has been mastered, and conversely, how can one understand the whole work without[117/118] mastering the individual parts? Such is the nature of the hermeneutical dilemma, whose circularity invites ceaseless debate and, on the face of it, appears to sentence specialists to ages of fruitless labor.
If we cannot comprehend the whole or the parts without the help of the other, it seems that no progress is possible. The difficulty, however, is far from insurmountable. For to begin with, just as it is the trees that help us to see the forest, and vice versa, so the hermeneutical dilemma calls for both a microscopic and macroscopic approach, each in turn helping the other to achieve a totality of interpretation and understanding. And it is evident that to some degree or another, we all manage eventually to develop an appreciation for both woods and trees, by cycling information back and forth between the global and the particular.
This cyclic relationship between the whole and its parts is the basic rule of Hermeneutics. The concept is of such fundamental importance that it is called the Hermeneutic Circle.[9] Essential properties of the Hermeneutic Circle can be exposed through simple-minded metaphorical questions. For example, how does one find the light-switch in a dark room? Well, one gropes around in the dark, much in the spirit of scientific research; with the help of some foreknowledge, acquired, say, through previous experience, the circular interplay of trial and error, and hypothesis and test, eventually proves to be illuminating. Or, how do you find your spectacles when you can't see properly without them? As before, you grope around blindly, until the source of the difficulty is resolved. Or, how did early man learn how to make fire? No doubt he fumbled about with flint and friction until a spark kindled his imagination.
Yet again, circularity in problem solving is parodied in the well-known ballad, in which Dear Liza informed Dear Henry that There's a Hole in the Bucket. "With a twig you must plug it," she tells him. Unfortunately the twig is too big and needs to be cut to size. This requires a knife which must be sharpened. Therefore a whetstone is needed. But the stone is too rough, and water is required to smooth it. So how is Henry to fix the hole in the bucket when he has no water, which in turn cannot be carried in a punctured pail? The unspoken message is that a remedy would be forthcoming if Dear Henry were more than an artless simpleton, who manages to turn the interplay of hypothesis and test into a vicious circle.
In the Hermeneutic Circle is hidden a positive possibility of the most primordial kind of knowing.[10] In medicine, how is it possible to determine the effectiveness of a new drug in curing human ills, when there are ethical objections to experimenting on humans? In physics, how can we measure the velocity of an electron without disturbing the experiment? In research support, how can one be sure that a project is worth funding unless one has some idea of the results it will produce; but if the results can be foreseen, does this not often [118/119] diminish the reason for funding? In sociology, how is it possible to understand the makeup of a society or an individual without also understanding all prior history? In any interpretive or judgmental endeavor, how is it possible to avoid entanglement with personal or generally human pre- conceptions and prejudices?
A painting is understood as a whole with the help of its parts, each of which is better interpreted with the help of a whole. An artist, writer, composer, or researcher will more often than not, need to cycle back and forth between the microcosm and macrocosm of his creation, "stepping back" as it were, to assess the whole picture before once more returning to work on a smaller portion of it.
Kockelmans describes the Circle thusly: "The anticipated understanding of the whole is to be complemented and deepened by means of a better understanding or the parts; and yet, it is only within the light of the whole that the parts can play their clarifying roles."[11] So, in confronting a problem, the researcher must have sufficient foreknowledge that the existence of the problem is recognized to begin with; yet of course, at the same time, a totality of understanding must be lacking for a problem to exist at all.
When such conditions obtain, one method for furthering the quest for truth is the dialectical technique, which was already in use at the time of Socrates. Such is the power of this approach that, with liberal sprinklings of irony, it landed Socrates and others of like mind, in a great deal of trouble with those in religious or political authority. No better exemplification can be found in the history of astronomy than to compare the fates of the rabble rousing Galileo Galilei and his dialectical "Dialogue", with the comparably successful but more conservative English aide to Sir Walter Rayleigh, Thomas Hariot, about whom next to nothing is remembered.[12]
As early as the sixth century BC, the natural philosophers of Greece began to abandon mythical and supernatural explanations for natural phenomena.[13] They developed instead an objectivity toward nature through the use of definition and, above all, argument. Just so among the pre- Socratic philosophers, we observe the ebb and flow of the battles between rival schools of thought, followed by the resolution of the conflict when a third school would emerge as a consequence of the confrontation and supersede them both. Georg Hegel was the first to recognize the significance of this phenomenon, whereby thesis and antithesis are followed by synthesis. He was led thereby to his theory of the Dialectic, whose function he recognized as a means to overcome obstacles in the quest for truth. In essence therefore, the Hermeneutic Circle is a very general mode of the development of human knowledge through dialectical procedures, by means of which, like Socrates, we strive for the triumph of Good over Evil, or of Knowledge over Ignorance.
So it is that the Hermeneutical-Dialectical (H-D) is that "mysterious, even divinatory" process through which at any instant, something is understood with reference to other things, [14] all of which can be more fully comprehended in the context of their prior history. [119/120]
The Circle of Hermeneutics is the most important and general canon of the hermeneutical technique.[15] With two further canons [16] they will strike familiar chords in the minds of physical scientists.[17]
The first of these is the canon of the autonomy of the object or of the phenomenon under investigation; it encourages the view that "the things themselves" are the primary and sole guide for our interpretation and the understanding of them.[18] In other words, when facing a problem, the researcher is urged to maintain objectivity, thereby avoiding an articulation fraught with extraneous or subjective insights and conceptions. This canon is an idealization, inasmuch as theories and insights are of necessity generated by humans themselves. Thus it is to be expected that some degree of personal, subjective or basically human interpretation and understanding could result without the check of the first canon. The history of astronomy, for example, is replete with evidence attesting to man's confusion in unraveling the kinematics of the earth, sun and planets. And again, the "high-velocity" stars bear witness of the same difficulty on a grander scale. Yet again, decibels and the magnitude scale are evidence for subjective measures of flux.
In recognition of its utopian character, the first canon is mediated by a second, that, admitting the difficulty of total objectivity, encourages interpretations that are "maximally reasonable" or "good." This canon then acknowledges the frailty and fallibility of human insight, and says in effect that if one must be subjective, be reasonable about it. While what is reasonable or good in one view may not be so in another, the purpose of the second canon is partly to encourage entry into the Hermeneutic Circle; in turn, the open-endedness of this canon is balanced by the former canon, that of the autonomy of the phenomenon itself. For example, granted the initial reasonableness of, say, an anthropocentric world view coupled with a theory of epicycles of one sort or another, in the final analysis when the epicyclic machinery reaches such a level of arcane complexity that it comes to a grinding halt, then a more reasonable explanation must be sought which equals or surpasses the original in its ability to explain the phenomena themselves. Historically, in astronomy, reasonableness and simplicity have been touchstones of progress, even at the expense of time-honored traditions and cherished beliefs; the Copernican Revolution is a case in point.
The Hermeneutic-Dialectician proceeds from the perspective that understanding is referential and positional, and stands at a given point in time with reference to the past. Moreover, the hope for the future rests with the prospect of a greater refinement of understanding through the development of further links, and by the acquisition of wider knowledge, as the available pool of historical events, and prior successes and failures, increase. [120/121]
Speech and language lie at the heart of the process.[19] It is a common experience that the meaning of a word is divined with reference to the whole sentence, and reciprocally, the meaning of a sentence is grasped with the help of all its words. For the dialectical process to function, the speaker must possess some communicative skill, the listener some familiarity with words and idiom, lest sentences sound like gobbledygook, and dialogue be reduced to anthropoidal grunts, groans, and gestures. Nonetheless, we discern here the nature of the hermeneutical dilemma; it is necessary to "plunge" or "leap" into the non-too-vicious Circle, with no essential concern where or how the Circle is entered, as long as it is entered. Preconditioned by an assumed existence of such things as a modicum of intelligence and good faith, [20] H-D is then off and running.
When the gears of H-D are engaged, time is of the essence, since time measures progress from global prenotions toward the desired level of understanding. For instance, it has taken millennia for man's capacity for abstraction to evolve from primitive petroglyphs to the geometry of spacetime, just as it will take time (and a measure of good fortune) for binary-coded pictographs in space, and Project-OZMA-like enterprises, to culminate in interstellar dialogue with other beings.
In short, it is not so much a question of how to avoid the Circle of Hermeneutics, but how not to avoid it. If the desire is to learn how to swim, the question is how not to avoid the water! For H-D, the metaphorical acts of leaping or taking the plunge seem particularly apt.
So there must already exist "some global prenotions . . . without which one could not even start with any research tasks, nor conceive of any questions."[21] Under these conditions the process of feedback correction between a global preliminary understanding of the subject matter and interpretation of its parts can commence.[22] The Circle of Hermeneutics thus implies a dialectical procedure through which meaning is acquired in an ever-widening spiral of understanding.
Accompanying the ever-broadening extent of understanding is an ever-narrowing spiral of uncertainty. The Circle of Hermeneutics does not, however, address the question of the convergence to certainty, and indeed it is quite evident that the limit of a conclusive and all- inclusive interpretation can never be achieved in the social or literary sciences, any more than it can be achieved in the physical sciences; the passage to the limit is described by Kockelmans [23] as a quasi-infinite process of dialectics, but one in which a certain level of interpretation can be reached which, in most instances, genuinely can be said to be adequate, even though a complete solution is not at hand, and perhaps never will be.
The tacking, spiralling, or iterative process of H-D approaches but never reaches an ultimate answer. The final conditions of H-D are open ended, just as are the initial conditions. Philosophers have a phrase to describe this curious state of affairs; they refer to it as the dialectics of the open situation, in which functional and appropriate solutions are sought along an axis of time that emerges from the mists of the past, and stretches onward into a cloudy future.[121/122]
The reasons for mankind's long and traditional interest in the sky is more than merely utilitarian. To be sure, the flourishing of civilizations has been assisted by the ability of astronomer-priests to foresee astronomical events of practical significance to society, such as the flooding of the Nile and the changing of the seasons, and to perform other useful functions such as aiding navigation and mapping the earth. But in addition, the astronomer-priests served to protect the populace from impending celestial catastrophes, such as the continuing southerly drift of the sun before the winter solstice, and draconian appetites at the time of eclipses. All the methods used to arrest these portents of doom worked remarkably well, for the sun always returned to its appointed round. Secure in the knowledge that celestial calamities could be averted, people could get back to the business of the pursuit of prosperity, the successful consequence of which was they were able to afford the luxury of deeper contemplation of the meaning of their own existence, and that of the cosmos.
All cultures evidence a strong, if ill-defined and elusive feeling that personal existence is somehow related or tied in to that of the cosmos. Diogenes recalls how Anaxagoras responded when accused of lack of patriotism. "Be silent," he said, "for I have the greatest affection for my country," pointing up to heaven. When asked why he had been born, Anaxagoras replied, "For the contemplation of the sun, and moon and heaven." He cast human affairs into perspective by claiming that the sun was a ball of burning iron, even greater than the war-racked Peloponnesus. It was not surprising that Anaxagoras had so many critics. He comforted one of them who was dying in a foreign land by telling him that "the descent to hell is the same from every place."
For Aristotle, too, man lay poised between the perfection and eternity of the heavens, and the fire and brimstone of hell. Clearly it behooved mortals to aspire to the former, notwithstanding the burden of their humanity. Position was everything to Aristotle, with up being preferable to down.
The heavens strike different people in different ways. Zeno asserted that the substance of God is the universal world and the heaven; Boethius calls the substance of God the sphere of the fixed stars. For Immanuel Kant, it was not just the view of the starry skies above that filled him with awe, but also the moral law within.
Heidegger notes that each of us has been grazed by the hidden power of the question of Being, [24] even if not fully aware of it. There is a dim realization of the connection between personal existence and all that is or can be, yet the profound intractability just of the formulation of the right questions to ask, much less their solution, renders progress in understanding glacially slow.
So it goes without saying that the full arsenal of bicultural knowledge and techniques must be marshalled in order to make progress in understanding those intriguing and thorny problems which confront us when we think of initial conditions. The problem they pose is somewhat akin to that of the egg and the chicken. Some claim that there is no knowledge without foreknowledge, but [122/123] how then is the very first piece of foreknowledge to be acquired? Just as for example it is difficult to use a dictionary to find the spelling of a particularly refractory word such as gneiss, or Psyche, or chthonian, with the requisite prenotions of how it might be spelled, so it is difficult to contemplate the very first communicative grunt between a pair of our distant ancestors; and earlier still, the very first glob of matter that was alive, and the very first self-replicating molecule before that. Wie ist es berhaupt m”glich, dass es anf„ngt?
The origin of humankind - the questioners themselves - is one of titanic proportions, for like Atlas who was condemned to support the earth but had nowhere to stand while he did it, so the issue just of man's physical being, let alone his concern with the ontological, must devolve eventually and at least in part, to problems of cosmogenesis, of which we are still profoundly ignorant. Human ancestry can be traced back a few million years, yet from three billion years ago, only fossil algae are to be found. The oldest rocks are about a billion years older still, while the age of the solar system is all told about a billion years older than that. It is reasonable to suppose that the chemistry of the primeval solar nebula contained within it the seeds of the development of life. So every question that is asked about one epoch of time begs a question about an earlier epoch. Our somatic beings are comprised of the stuff of stars as it has been metamorphosed over the age of our Milky Way galaxy, which in turn has been evolving over the time scale of the Hubble expansion of the universe. Regardless of the manner in which all this material has been changing, we must still face the fact that we have next-to-no idea where it came from in the first place. And Science offers few clues as to why it came into existence, choosing to stop short with purely ontic conditions obtaining at this time when a pre-existing Primeval Egg hatched into the Big Bang of the expanding universe.
The open-endedness of the hermeneutic-dialectical process carries us of necessity into issues of cosmogony. Mankind's interest in the oldest science arises also from the need to understand self in relation to all that exists or can exist. [123/124]
1. Thomas Bulfinch. "Mythology" (New York: Avenel) 1978.
2. Daryl Hine.
"The Homeric Hymns" (New York: Atheneum) 1972; pp. 32-46.
3. William
Shakespeare. "As You Like it" (III. ii. 21-32).
4. William Davis, "What
Price Paradise" in British Airways High Life, March 1979.
5. Richard E. Palmer. "Hermeneutics" (Evanston: Northwestern U.P.) 1969; pp.
13-5.
6. Ibid., p. xiii, p. 4.
7. Ibid., p. 34. After the Reformation, the word recurs with frequency as
Protestant ministers sought hermeneutical manuals to supplant authority in
deciding questions of scriptural interpretation.
8. Paul Hernadi. "Beyond Genre: New Directions in Literary Classification."
(Ithaca: Cornell U.P.) 1973; p. 215.
9. Gerard Radnitzky. "Contemporary Schools of Metascience" (Chicago: Henry
Regnery Co.) 1973; p. 215.
10. Joseph J. Kockelmans. "Toward an Interpretative or Hermeneutic Social
Science", in Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal Vol. 5, pp. 73-96, 1975.
11. Loc. cit., p. 86.
12. John C. Brandt, and Stephen P. Maran. "New Horizons in Astronomy" (San
Francisco: W.H. Freeman) 1979.
13. Thomas W. Africa. "Science and the State in Greece and Rome" (New York:
Wiley) 1968, p. 19.
14. Richard E. Palmer. Loc. cit., pp. 16, 86.
15. Joseph J. Kockelmans. Loc. cit., p. 85.
16. Gerard Radnitzky. Loc. cit., p. 218. A third canon exhorts the
researcher to achieve the greatest possible familiarity with the phenomenon
whose meaning must be understood.
17. In seeing the structure of one discipline from the vantage point of
another, we are more likely to interpret its canons in ways which are more
suited to the other discipline. Thus one might attach different importance to
the canons in, say, astronomy, than in literary interpretation.
18. cf.
Joseph J. Kockelmans, "A First Introduction to Husserl's Phenomenology"
(Pittsburgh: Duquesne U.P.) 1967; and David F. Krell (ed), "Martin Heidegger,
Basic Writings" (New York: Harper and Row) 1977. The apprenticeship of the
existential philosopher Martin Heidegger with Edmund Husserl at the University
of Freiburg instilled in him an allegiance to "the things themselves,"
encouraged careful description of phenomena, and implanted the need for
the concrete posing of questions.
19. Heinrich Ott, "Hermeneutics and
Personhood," in "Interpretation: The Poetry of Meaning," ed. S. R. Hopper, D.
L. Miller. (New York: Harcourt, Brace, World), pp. 14-5.
20. An essential ingredient, pertinent it seems to the stability of H.D.
21. Gerard Radnitzky. Loc. cit., p. 204.
22. Ibid., p. 218.
23. Joseph J. Kockelmans. 1975. Loc. cit., p. 88.
24. Martin Heidegger. "Being and Time" (translated by John Macquarrie, Edward
Robinson) (New York: Harper and Row) 1962. "Sein und Zeit" was first
published in 1927. From an astronomer's perspective, it is interesting that
in that same year, Eddington was discussing "becoming" in his well-known
Gifford Lectures; Arthur S. Eddington. "The Nature of the Physical World,"
(Cambridge U.P.) 1927, chapter 5. [124/171]
The use of induction as a means for attaining fuller comprehension can be traced to the scientific age of ancient Greece, when astronomers such as Hipparchus, Aristarchus, and Eratosthenes appear to have incorporated it in their attempts to understand the cosmos.[25] The role of induction was ignored after the time of Ptolemy, until it was revived by Bacon and Galileo. Galileo brilliantly exemplified his recognition of the role of induction, by his research in two new sciences as well as the older science of astronomy, so much so in fact that he is regarded as the founding father of physics.
That Galileo was one of the greatest geniuses of this millennium there can be no doubt. Amongst other things, he was forced to consider the question of accuracy of the information which he acquired, thereby realizing that truth was not absolute. In this fashion he made significant advances over the later Greek natural philosophers, whose cavalier attitude toward mensuration amounted to a neglect of an important means by which the natural world, and existence itself, is to be understood.
It is evident that a great stumbling block to the progress of Greek astronomy was the tendency toward an axiomatic approach to the real world, and their general unwillingness to acknowledge measurement and error as bona fide philosophical pursuits. It required a series of revolutions, beginning with the Copernican, to dislodge the idea that questions were less accurately resolved by appeals to authority than by objective inquiry into the phenomena or things themselves.[171/172]
Thus the resolution of problems was approached in a deductive way, by appeals to ancient works which were endowed with almost scriptural verity. Contradictory evidence had therefore to be neutralized by rationalization; we recall Columbe's celebrated attempt to counter Galileo's claim of blemishes on the moon by postulating invisible (and therefore unobservable) crystalline material encasing the moon, whose surface was so smooth as to restore Aristotle's idea of the perfection of the heavenly bodies. Hypotheses are difficult to counter if they are constituted in such a way as to preclude experimental or observational test; from the standpoint of scientific inquiry, such theories might take eons to verify or disprove. In fact the Columbe hypotheses as such might only be considered to be false now that human beings have actually placed objects and themselves on the moon; Galileo however was not prepared to wait 350 years in order to puncture the argument of his detractor; instead he ridiculed the transparency of the hypothesis by insinuating that it had such merit as to suggest the very existence of lunar mountains and craters made of the same material, but even larger than the ones he could see through his telescope.
The drawback to the procedure whereby questions are resolved by appeals to authority is that the authority might itself be in error. In the same way, deductions from axioms may be false if the axiom itself is false, either wholly or in part. For example, if Kepler's First Law is the case (that all planets travel in elliptical orbits about the sun), and if Mercury is a planet, then a syllogism would lead to the conclusion that Mercury's orbit is elliptical, thereby depriving us of one of the strongest pieces of evidence of support of General Relativity. Evidently Hermes has much to divulge in his appointed rounds of the Sun, for there is more to celestial mechanics than "just mathematics."
What Hermes is saying is that we must devise a routine whereby the premises can be checked. Once this simple elementary step is taken, whereby we see a premise more as a provisional hypothesis or a tentative agreement, than an absolute truth, then a wholly different perspective is achieved. For we are now free to modify the hypothesis in order to accommodate all facts rather than risk turning them aside if they happen not to conform.
Nobody has expressed it better than Galileo himself, in reference to a particular case in his Two New Sciences: "Let us therefore take this at present as a Postulate, the truth whereof may later be established when conclusions deduced from this hypothesis are found to agree with experience." The scientific method so eloquently expressed is the reason why it is referred to as the systematic process of "learning from experience."[26]
The scientific method is not to be regarded as the sole province of what we today call "Science." For we must recall that modern Science is itself based upon the scientific method which at the time it was advanced by Galileo was a philosophical methodology concerned with problems of everyday existence. The pursuit of knowledge and understanding is not the sole bailiwick of science, but of all human disciplines.
By allowing the possibility that an hypothesis is wholly or partly in error, tremendous strength and fortitude is added to the process of human inquiry.[172/173] Perhaps what is to remarkable about this relatively simple idea is that the scientific method can be applied to itself, much like a mathematical operator which operates upon itself. This idea is quite startling, because it says that the functionality - and indeed the alleged superiority - of the hypothetico-deductive method is itself just an hypothesis, which is in itself subject to modification or abandonment if it fails to come up to expectations. The great power of the method derives, ironically, from the fact that it contains within it the seeds of its own modification, or even of its own destruction.
Induction is the process of generalization from the particular. Evidently the process, in isolation, can be just as misleading as the purely deductive syllogism. For example, just because a few of the citizenry might be brigands and rogues does not mean that they all are. In the same way, just because the position of Mars is found to fit an ellipse to within observational error, this is not to say necessarily that all planetary orbits are ellipses.
The danger in using purely inductive logic is that one cannot use pure thought to arrive at truths of a general kind, because these contain more information than "the sum of their known instances."[27] In order for a general statement to be endowed with believability it must be perpetually tested by the application of energy and effort in the quest for truth and meaning. In short, induction is useful only when coupled with deduction, test, and with modification and refinement based on the consequences of the tests. Otherwise, purely inductive thought leads astray into paths of fallacy, oversimplification, and misrepresentation.
The struggle for meaning and understanding can be undertaken in many different ways. Science does not claim to be the only way. Nor does it claim to provide final answers, only to approach a better understanding of the material universe as a function of time and the effort expended.
Science is primarily ontic, however, and rarely addresses the ontological; it is physical, rather than meta-physical. Physical sciences like astronomy must be seen from an ontological perspective if we wish to penetrate to deeper levels of intelligibility, because the totality of all possible meanings must transcend the ontic.
Eddington delivered a lecture at Swarthmore in 1929, two years after his Gifford Lectures in Scotland. Therein he extends the spirit of doubt that characterizes science, to any issue that concerns the human spirit. He describes science as a process of seeking and finding. Finding, he says, tarnishes rapidly unless it be preserved with an ever-renewed Spirit of Seeking, while in seeking we are always beset by doubt and self-questioning. The hermeneutical light of Eddington's philosophy illuminates the troubled times prior to World War II, when he asserts that there is in this Spirit of Seeking a kind of sureness that transcends the cocksureness of certainty.[28] [173/174]
Ott [29] suggests that hermeneutics is so broadly conceived that it may cover the whole of reality which surrounds us and concerns us in any way. If this is so, then the possibility exists that the natural sciences can be seen also in the light of H.-D. For, regardless of the theater of investigation, be it classroom or study, laboratory or observatory, the very act of asking a question raises the hermeneutical issue. To raise a question signifies that there is some knowledge, however trivial, and some understanding, however dim, otherwise the question could not have been formulated. On the other hand, it signifies also a lack of understanding, otherwise there would be no need to ask the question in the first place.
Consider for example the relation between jurisprudence and the jury system on the one hand, and the method for determination of eigenvalues in mathematical physics on the other.
In selecting the jury, counsel for the prosecution or the defense may object to one or all of the membership, thereby checking any effects in the selection process which might tend to produce a biased result; thus for instance it might well be inimical to the interests of Hermes if he were to be judged for purloining oxen by a jury of vegetarians.
The dialectical processes of testimony and cross-examination are in a hermeneutico-circular relationship to one another. By the same token, verdicts can be reached only by a fair majority of the members of the jury, each of which is tussling with the pros and cons of the arguments. The intent of the hermeneutico-dialectical process is to "solve" problems of ethics and morality within the spirit and letter of the law, by producing verdicts that are as much in accord with the evidence as possible, thereby minimizing uncertainty and injustice.
Eigenvalue problems are also (though less commonly) called "jury problems." In 1927, Richardson wrote that a jury problem is one in which the solution to problems involving differential equations must be determined by reference to both ends of the range considered together, just as the verdict has to satisfy all the jury together.[30]
It is interesting to note that the year 1927 was a particularly productive one in the field of uncertainty, for in that year Heisenberg in Physics and Heidegger in Philosophy were each in their own way progressing toward their principles of uncertainty, while the Weimer Republic was preparing to execute its theories of certainty with inevitably tragic results for all concerned.[31]
It is also noteworthy that by 1927 the need to employ the jury concept - and thereby implicitly to acknowledge the possibility of error and uncertainty - arose appropriately enough in the mathematics of weather forecasting.
The difficulty with achieving greater precision lies in the open-endedness of the situation, wherein, much like communication in the dialogical counterpart, the weather of today is dependent upon that of yesterday, and the day before,[174/175] and the day before that again. Furthermore, the weather here is dependent on the weather in the next county, and so on clear around the world. To model the weather here and now we must consider the entire phenomenon, as well as be concerned for the micrometeorological conditions that give rise to local variations. The method is much like that used by a jury of local peers who must reach a verdict on the basis of general principles and laws, while not losing sight of the conditions pertaining to the particular case under consideration.
It is evident that the Hermeneutic Circle has many aspects.[32] However until very recently, H-D has been the sole province of that which we might call the "sciences of the spirit" - the Geisteswissenschaften; but this is not to say that its applicability cannot extend beyond the borders of these disciplines, which are concerned with the inner life of mankind, like art and actions, and language, literature, and laws. For trial and error, and test and retest generate information, knowledge, and understanding; they break into the circle of hermeneutics, but they are also part and parcel of the scientific method.
Science becomes an on-going enterprise. Such a view is distinct from that once prevalent in circles that fail completely to grasp the intent of the methodological principle of scientific research. This view would label Science as the totality of true propositions, [33] a view challenged twice by the existential philosopher Heidegger, who writes that the definition is incomplete, and fails to reach the meaning of Science.[34]
It follows that there is an essential parallelism between H-D and the scientific method because they both contain the inherent feature that the refinement of understanding is a consequence of a quasi-infinite process of feedback correction and that absolute truth is therefore never attainable in a finite time. Such are the basic resemblances between the Hypothetico-Deductive method and Hermeneutic-Dialectics, that by happy semantic coincidence they might someday be known by the same shorthand abbreviation H-D!
The quest for unification or hybridization is in keeping with the goal of a universal hermeneutics sought by Martin Heidegger [35] and Hans-George Gadamer.[36] However there are difficulties which must be ironed out if that rare hybrid [37] - the hermeneutics of natural science - is to come to life. These are currently the focus of attention by such philosophers as Theodore Kisiel, Patrick Heelan, and Mary Hesse.[38] As Kisiel has discussed, [39] there is a revisionist movement in Anglo- American philosophy of science which sees science as ongoing research in historical context, a shift in direction of that which resembles the hermeneutical phenomenology of Heidegger and Gadamer. The movement had by the year 1966 become something of rebellion, perhaps even a revolution, which challenged the very foundations of logical empiricism that has held sway for several decades.[40] One of the consequences of this reaction has been that a family of new philosophies of science in the USA have sprung up which mediate between the old and the new.[41]
In attempting to see Science in light of hermeneutics, one major difficulty immediately emerges. Dialectics implies dialogue, insofar as it is generally regarded as the art of human disputation for the purposes of discriminating truth[175/176] from error, a process ideally conducted in conformity with the laws of logic. Thus while it is not difficult to give a hermeneutic interpretation to confrontations between opposing views, [42] such as the classical debate between Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis, [43] the problem of what constitutes dialogue or its equivalent in the actual process of research in natural science, is not so clear. But if we broaden the meaning of dialogue, to include any activity which asks a question of nature, be it through observation or experiment, then H-D and its canons can surely be counted among the assets of the physical scientist. For, just as in the humanities we find a further broadening of the definition of hermeneutics to include more than textual interpretation, but also any assemblage of signs that could be considered a text, such as dream interpretation and psychoanalysis, [44] so too the quest for hidden meaning can extend to the Physical Sciences.
Astronomers may regard the sky as the text and the stars as the words that need to be interpreted and understood. In a way, the dialogue with nature which a physicist establishes with the help of laboratory apparatus, or which an astronomer experiences when he (let us say) communes with the stars, is not much different than might be found between humans engaged in dialectics.
Thus the clicking of a Geiger counter becomes a language which the listener eventually learns to interpret; tracks in a bubble chamber carry meaning which the researcher learns to understand as if reading a text or listening to speech. Just so instrumental signals are in a position of a "text" to be "read" in "context".[45]
Kisiel writes [46] that the text of the Universe is always read in historical context; the metaphorical Book of Nature is now being read and interpreted in terms of such words as Space, Time, Matter, and Life. The very finitude of human perception renders the meanings of these words seemingly bottomless in their possibilities, for they open into what Heidegger calls the "abyss of Being."[47][176/177]
25. Arthur Berry. "A Short History of Astronomy" (New York: Dover) 1898
Section 54.
26. Wasley Krogdahl. "The Astronomical Universe" (New York: Macmillan) 1962,
p. 3.
27. Peter B. Medawar, "The Art of the Soluble" (London: Methuen) 1968, p.
136.
28. Arthur S. Eddington. "Science and the Unseen World," Swarthmore Lecture,
1929 (London: Allen and Unwin).
29. Heinrich Ott, Loc. cit.
30. Lewis, F. Richardson. "The Deferred Approach to the Limit, Part I -
Single Lattice." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London,
Series A, pp. 299-349, 1927.
31. The geographical, historical, and hermeneutical relationships between the
theories of Heisenberg and Hitler are contrasted by Jacob Bronowski, "The
Ascent of Man," (Boston: Little, Brown) 1972, pp. 364-67.
32. Gerard
Radnitzky. Loc. cit., p. 216.
33. Ibid., p. 381.
34. Martin Heidegger, Loc. cit., pp. 32, 408.
35. Ibid.
36. Hans-Georg Gadamer. "Wahrheit und Methode" (Tubingen: Mohr) 1960.
37.
Theodore Kisiel. "Commentary on Patrick Heelan's Hermeneutics of Experimental
Science in the Context of the Life-World." Zeitschrift fr allegemeine
Wissenschaftstheorie V/1, 1974, p. 124.
38. Patrick A. Heelan, "Toward a Hermeneutic of Natural Science," Journal of
the British Society of Phenomenology III, 252-60, 1972. Mary B. Hesse, "In
Defense of Objectivity," London 1973. Theodore Kisiel, "Zu einer Hermeneutik
naturwissenschaftlicher Entdecking," Zeitschrift fr allegemeine
Wissenschaftstheorie 11, pp. 195-221, 1971.
39. Theodore Kisiel. 1971, Op. cit.
40. Theodore Kisiel, with Galen Johnson. "New Philosophies of Science in the
USA: A Selective Survey" Zeitschrift fr allegemeine Wissenschaftstheorie
V/1, 1974, pp. 138-91.
41. Ibid., p. 139.
42. Patrick Heelan. "Hermeneutics of Experimental Science in the Context of
the Life World." Zeitschrift fr allegemeine WissenschaftstheorieV/1, 1974,
p. 123.
43. Allan Sandage, "The Hubble Atlas of Galaxies" (Washington: Carnegie
Institution of Washington) 1961. Charles A. Whitney "The Discovery of the
Galaxy" 1971 (New York: Knopf).
44. R. E. Palmer. Op. cit.
45. Patrick Heelan. 1974, Loc. cit.
46. Theodore Kisiel. 1974, Loc. cit. pp. 134-5.
47. Ibid.
[177/178]
There is a case to be made that the hermeneutic concept is particularly significant to Astronomy, because, of all the natural sciences, it is possibly the most inferential and inductive. This circumstance arises by virtue of the fact that the objects of study are inaccessible to direct and controlled experiment and manipulation. In this respect Astronomy bears some resemblance to such earthbound disciplines as Macroeconomics, Sociology, and Agriculture, which, though amenable to some controlled experimentation, are nevertheless subject to the capriciousness of human behavior or the whim of the weather.
The need for feedback correction, while present in all sciences, is particularly important in such cases where the train of connection between theory and observation or experiment is especially long and indirect; it is necessary to engage painstakingly in logically complex and involved oscillations between observations and the theories put forward to explain them. Such iterative cycling back and forth is inherent to the scientific method, and it is also embodied by the Hermeneutic Circle. For it is clear that the essential feature of scientific methodology, whereby the logical consequences of a mooted hypothesis must be verified by further observations, constitutes an ontological framework in which theory and observation are in a hermeneutico- circular relationship. Therefore in view of the preceding discussions, they are also in a dialectical relationship; for all human understanding is without exception finite inasmuch as it proceeds from some a priori synthesis, or from some perspective, or from some consciously or unconsciously adopted point of view, and thus scientific research is in effect no more than human interpretation of the Book of Nature.
The Hermeneutic process is not to be regarded as a course wherein researchers run around in circles getting nowhere; even if the runner completes a circuit with nothing of substance to show for his efforts, at least some familiarity with the[178/179] track will have been achieved. Very often instead, as we have noted, the path spirals in toward a better understanding, and in the long run it can be claimed that some degree of genuine comprehension has been achieved.
Thus though the way be long or roundabout, the tenacity of scientific researchers encourages us to believe that their objectives can be reached. Such optimism is the reason why we are all amused by the old story from Down East, according to which, when asked directions to a neighboring town, the doughty resident of the State of Maine replies, "You can't get there from here."
It is equally fallacious to conceive of a Circle of Hermeneutics existing in isolation. Much in the manner of vortices in a turbulent medium, so each and every spiral relationship interacts with and feeds upon its neighbors, and all these interactions must be seen in the context of history. Indeed the centripetal accelerations of the vortices of twentieth century science, and in particular of the Golden Age of Astronomy, have so far been so strong as to be suggestive of a metaphorical maelstrom.
Let us consider, firstly, the structure of stars of various but specified masses. It is generally agreed that the amount of matter found inside a volume that contains the center of the star, and the energy generated within this volume, shrinks to zero as the volume itself decreases to zero. These are two theoretical constraints based upon eminently reasonable expectations for the stellar center, just as, to be sure, we expect also that the pressure and temperature of the stellar material must tend to zero at the extreme outermost parts of the star.
But unlike the center conditions, the surface conditions are often more involved, amongst other reasons because it is not at all clear what constitutes the actual surface of a star. For instance, there is evidence in many kinds of stars for a streaming of material into space. Moreover to be precise, we should also consider the electromagnetic radiation which flows largely unimpeded from its surface, to be part of the star, as indeed it once was when it was still trapped by the more opaque parts of the stellar interior. Indeed, such considerations are essential if we are to explain why stars are able to decrease their entropy, sua sponte in apparent violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Inasmuch as the ages of most stars are not insignificant when compared to the age of the Universe (provided of course that the Universe is evolutionary as seems to be the case), it follows that the "sizes" of many "stars" are a fair fraction of the size of the universe itself.[48]
However for many purposes, we can think of the surface boundary as that layer where matter and radiation are essentially uncoupled, allowing the free passage of radiation into space. For stars notably bluer than the sun, it can be shown that the interior model structure is reasonably satisfactory if the surface pressure and temperature are simply assumed to be zero.[49] But even for these stars, and certainly for those redder than the sun, it is desirable to construct models for the tenuous outer layers before commencing a solution for the interior. In fact, the detailed interactions between the modes of energy transport and the gases of the outermost parts dramatically affect the entire structure. This theoretical construct enabled us for the first time to grasp more fully the[179/180] true nature of those red giant stars which, in their later life, swell to outlandish proportions as they exhaust the nuclear fuel of their interiors; and at the same time to derive the evolution of protostars along their Hayashi tracks after most of their molecular material has been dissociated and ionized.
It is clear that every part of a star has an effect on its adjacent parts, all the way from the center to wherever we decide the surface should be. These effects are described (in simple cases) by four ordinary differential equations, requiring four starting values in order to commence their solution. Now if all four of the boundary conditions had been at either the center or "surface" of the star, there would be little added methodological complexity in achieving a solution; other things being equal, we could commence the solution at one boundary and terminate it at the other. But since these known boundary constraints are split up, we must attempt a solution through trial and error or some other controlled algorithm, and in so doing it is necessary to shoot through the model step by step, and time and again, until all given constraints are tolerably satisfied. This "jury" process evidently resembles the cyclic iterations of the Hermeneutic Circle.
In effect therefore, it is necessary to consider simultaneously both the microscopic parts of the problem as well as the macroscopic whole. Thus we must take into account the atomic and subatomic processes occurring in the star, for unless these are understood and properly taken into account, there can be no reasonable expectation of a physically realistic macroscopic model.[50]
To some degree, all atomic processes in the star depend upon the proportion by which the different chemical elements are present, and how they are distributed through the star. The possibility that there might be an inhomogeneous chemical distribution does not arise so much from the implausible possibility of unmixed matter from which the star formed, but rather because stars derive most of the energy over their lifetimes from nuclear transmutations from hydrogen to heavier elements. These nuclear synthetic processes are highly temperature sensitive, so changes in the relative abundances of the elements tend to occur for the most part toward the centers of the stars, where temperatures are the highest. It is here then that the abundances of the elements are continuously changing. Depending on whether some part of the star is passing this nuclear energy on to the cooler outer layers through convection (which mixes the synthesized elements with material elsewhere which in turn may be undergoing or have undergone transmutations of different elements) or through radiation (which does not cause mixing), nuclear synthesis can result in highly complex structures, particularly in later stages of evolution.
Structural evolution results from the combined effects of changes in chemical composition and gravitational contraction, and this introduces a fourth dimension - time - into the problem. Thus in order to fathom the structure of a star at one instant, it is necessary to know its prior history. Moreover in the case of stars (like the sun) which we believe have been formed partly from material that has been processed by a previous generation of stars, it is necessary also to know their history, and that of their galactic environs. Stars of the first[180/181] generation are in turn affected by the primordial chemical composition of the Universe, whose relative Hydrogen-to- Helium content is set by conditions prevailing in the Big Bang.
The time scales of stellar evolution, like those of biology and geology, approach the Hubble time for the expanding Universe itself. Tests of stellar evolution therefore call for the development of an intricate phenomenology based on the taxonomy of observed properties of stars of assorted ages, masses, and chemical composition, scattered through the Galaxy. The continual interplay of theory with observations and the theories of explication, combine in a Hermeneutic-Dialectical whirlpool which ultimately leads to a better understanding of this facet of the Universe.
So to understand a galaxy we must first understand the stars and nebulae in it. Yet is only in the context of the whole galaxy that the stars and nebulae can play their clarifying roles.
It is evident that the study of stellar evolution increases our understanding of galaxies, since these attract our attention not just by the starlight they emit, but by the protostellar gases and obscuring matter within them. Broadly conceived, the problem of stellar evolution is dependent on the understanding of galaxies, which in turn cannot be understood without the help of stellar evolution. Just as stellar structure is the problem of stellar evolution at one instant, so galactic structure must be seen also in an evolutionary context. Both are part of a larger interaction that can be understood only hermeneutically.
Galaxies - like stars - are not objects that are readily approachable for purposes of experimentation and manipulation, so how can theories of galactic evolution be tested? Happily, due to the finiteness of the speed of light, galaxies at greater distances from the Milky Way are seen at earlier times of their evolution. So in the end, we must study galaxies at the most distant reaches of the Universe if we are to see them in their very youthful stages, and so compare their initial properties with theory. However, the farther away the galaxy is, the more it is affected by the geometry of spacetime, which we have to know in order to interpret our observations; but in order to ascertain this geometry, we must understand (among other things) how galaxies evolve.[51]
There is increasing evidence in favor of a continuum of properties from ordinary spiral and elliptical galaxies, to that most puzzling of modern astrophysical problems - the Quasi-stellar galaxies, [52] or Quasars as they are commonly called [Note added: see also Ref. 59]. Straddling the extremes are the Seyfert galaxies, [53] in addition to the BL Lacertae Objects [54] which in many cases known to date, appear to be morphological relatives of elliptical galaxies. Inside these objects events are occurring which are believed to be so energetic as to equal or surpass the radiation emitted by hundreds of Milky Way galaxies. The understanding of these phenomena constitutes one of the premier astrophysical problems of this century. It is possible that the source of energy of the Quasi-stellar, Seyfert, and BL Lacertae galaxies can ultimately be traced to the force of gravity; for[181/182] galaxies, unlike stars, have no significant internal source of pressure with which to counteract the mutual gravitational acceleration of their separate parts. So it is not clear whether in the course of their dynamical evolution, galaxies can escape the singular fate of the Black Hole. Consequently, a full understanding of galaxian evolution must of necessity embrace also an understanding of the BL Lacertae and Seyfert phenomena, and of the Quasars themselves.
How then is this problem to be tackled?
Concerning the Seyfert galaxies, Osterbrock [55] describes the hermeneutical dilemma involved in understanding the line spectra of these active galactic nuclei. He writes: "Ideally we should like to begin with a good working hypothesis as to the nature of an active nucleus, then on the basis of this hypothesis calculate all the observational consequences, make measurements and compare their results with predictions made on the basis of hypothesis . . . . In practice of course one difficulty is that we do not have a clear physical hypothesis to begin with, and so we must try to get some information on the basis of the observed spectral features . . ."
Hypothesis as to the nature of active galactic nuclei must also confront the existence of their variable luminosities, which are it seems more directly linked to the central energy sources which power the quasars. Consecutive outbursts at both radio and optical frequencies have been observed in the Seyfert galaxy 3C120.[56] In these particular sources, the separation in time between bursts, and the strength of the bursts themselves, are sufficiently great that their existence is evident over and above both the shorter term bursting or flickering that seems to be a common feature of these classes of object, and a certain but unknown level of background radiation. However, the major outbursts are not sufficiently separated in time that their individual characteristics can be fully and unambiguously ascertained. Not only do they overlap with following and preceding bursts, but they are superposed upon a background whose nature is itself unknown. To find the contributions due to the individual bursts, we need a theory for them and we need to know the nature of the background radiation; but to ascertain these, we must of course be able to disentangle the bursts.
The difficulty in interpreting the light variations at various frequencies, which is like that in understanding the line spectra of active galaxies, epitomizes the hermeneutical dilemmas faced by astronomers in their frequent confrontations with complex and unusual phenomena. Here, in order to unravel the light curves we need a good working hypothesis as to the nature of the outbursts, but in order to acquire this good working hypothesis, we need to unravel the light curves![57]
Distances of quasars can be estimated by measuring the redshifts of their spectral lines, and by then making the assumption that these redshifts are the consequence of their participation in the Hubble flow of the expanding Universe [Note added: the original article referred to these redshifts as "Doppler" shifts but with the discrediting of the local theory and this is changed here]. This assumption is open to question [Note added: see e.g. papers on the redshift controversy and the "local" theory of quasars by H. Arp and others], but there is evidence that no quasars have apparent brightness significantly less than bright galaxies at the same redshift. These quasi-stellar galaxies are thus on the average hundreds of[182/183] times more luminous intrinsically, than are galaxies, and thus can be seen by us at distances tens of times greater than the distances of the farthest galaxies studied. They therefore constitute potentially useful cosmographic indicators, by which might hope to ascertain the isotropy of their universal distribution, and the acceleration to deceleration of the Hubble flow. But two major difficulties emerge.
Firstly, as we study apparently fainter and fainter objects, we are observing them at greater distances and thus at earlier proper times (because of the light travel time), and we see them therefore at younger stages in their evolution.
Secondly, the fainter the galaxy or quasar and the more distant it is on the average, the more our observations of it are affected by the geometry of spacetime. Thus on the one hand, we must attempt to infer what the objects might be like at various stages in their evolution, while also interpreting this information in the context of a curved Universe.
Since observations of distant galaxies and quasars are affected by the cosmic geometry, we cannot fully comprehend them and their evolutionary stage, until we know the geometry of the Universe. But in order to ascertain this geometry, we must understand distant galaxies and quasars.
As Richardson [58] so aptly puts it: inside the Hermeneutic Circle, round and round we go!
I wish to express my thanks to Joseph Kockelmans for his interest in this endeavor, and for his constructive criticisms of this work in its various and sundry phases of composition. The hermeneutical feedback which he has kindly provided through the unstinting generosity of his time and effort has not only resulted in an improved manuscript; it has also encouraged and substantiated the view that, inasmuch as Philosophy is critical reflection on experience, one need not to be a Philosopher to philosophize.
I am indebted to Alan Knight whose breadth of interests lie so far beyond his specializations in the Humanities as to express interest over tea in the Kern Graduate Commons at Penn State in the state of research in Cosmology; and who, on learning of a central cosmological dilemma immediately recognized a parallel with the literary Circle of Hermeneutics, and forthwith introduced me to it.
It is a pleasure also to thank those who have planned and participated in the Penn State seminar series on Aesthetics, Criticism, and Literary Interpretation Theory, under whose auspices in October 1979 this paper was first presented; and other colleagues, of whose erudition and insight I have been the decided beneficiary.[183/184]
48. Arthur S. Eddington. "The Internal Constitution of the Stars" (New York:
Dover) Section 24, 1926.
49. Martin Schwarzschild. "Structure and Evolution of the Stars" (Princeton:
University Press) 1958.
50. John P. Cox and R. Thomas Giuli. "Principles of Stellar Structure" (New
York: Gordon and Breach) 1962. Vol. 1, "Physical Principles." Vol. 2,
"Applications to Stars."
51. Jerome Kristian, Allen Sandage, and James A. Westphal. "The Extension of
the Hubble Diagram. II. New Redshifts and Photometry of Very Distant Galaxy
Clusters: First Indication of a Deviation of the Hubble Diagram from a
Straight Line." Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 221, pp. 383-94, 1978.
52.
Allan Sandage. "The Existence of a Major New Constituent of the Universe:
The Quasi-Stellar Galaxies" Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 141 pp. 1560-78,
1965.
53. A. G. Pacholczyk and R. J. Weymann, eds. "Proceedings of the Conference
on Seyfert Galaxies and Related Objects" held at Steward Observatory,
University of Arizona, 14-16 February 1968 Astronomical Journal, Vol. 73 pp.
836-943, 1968.
54. A. M. Wolfe, ed. "Proceedings of the Pittsburgh Conference on BL Lacertae
Objects" (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh) April 24-26, 1978.
55.
Donald E. Osterbrock "Physical State of the Emission-Line Region." Physica
Scipta, Vol. 17 pp. 285-92, 1978.
56. I. I. K. Pauliny-Toth and K. I. Kellerman. "Repeated Outbursts in the
Radio Galaxy 3C120" Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 152 pp. L169-76, 1968;
William A. Dent. "Evidence for Spatially Independent Outbursts in Compact
Radio Sources" Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 175 pp. L55-8, 1972; P. D.
Usher, B. S. P. Shen, and F. W. Wright. "Yearly Variations of 3C120" Nature,
Vol. 225 pp. 365-6, 1970; no doubt it is coincidental that a paper that deals
with outbursts occurring at a more or less yearly rate should appear on
pages 365 and 366 of the journal.
57. Peter D. Usher. "BL Lacertae Objects: The Case for Synchronous
Optical-Radio Outbursts in OJ 287." Astronomical Journal, Vol. 84 pp.
1253-68, 1979.
58. William J. Richardson, S.J. "Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to
Thought" (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff) 1974, p. 620.
[184]
1. Also in 1979, Stegmuller [59] wrote that the problem of quasars in detemining the structure of the Universe is an example of the Hermeneutic Circle: "In order to be able satisfactorily to interpret the quasar phenomenon, one would have to be in command of the proper cosmological model, but one could not attain an adequate cosmological hypothesis as long as no one has found a correct interpretation of the quasar phenomenon."
2. In 1993 a letter by Zsoldos [60] expressed the difficulty in establishing the RV Tauri class of variable star. Taken as an item for philosophical discussion, this is a good exemplification of the Hermeneutic Circle. When R Sct was discovered in 1797, it was not known to be a member of the RV Tauri class because that class had not yet been defined. Even when the class had been defined, R Sct played no role in the definition because it turned out not to have properties typical of the class. Moreover other variables which would later fall into the RV Tauri class were mistakenly thought to be members of other classes of variable (e.g. the -Lyrae class). Such variables included R Sge and V Vul, which were discovered in 1861 and 1904. An important step in recognizing the existence of the new class of variable star was the discovery of RV Tauri itself in 1905. Seares was the first to recognize the similarity of RV Tau to R Sge and V Vul, and in 1912, Enebo named the new class after RV Tauri. The refinement of the definition of the class then enabled other candidates that had not been used to define the class, to be included in the class. In short, the new class of variable star could not be established without members to define its attributes, but the members cannot be selected to begin with without knowing the attributes by which to select them. In this case the "plunge" into the Hermeneutic Circle (Section I, F above) is Enebo's provisional hypothesis that RV Tauri is the archetype of a new class. Subsequent circuits of the Circle then enable the definition of the class to be refined. In the case of continuous distributions of attributes (e.g. like "color" or "spectral type" in normal stars) it is significant that limits to a class (e.g. F stars bounded by A and G stars) are established by the existence of other classes. Classification is heirarchical. No class exists in isolation but must be seen as part of a collection of other classes (e.g. variable stars belong to the class of all stars) which itself forms a class that is part of a larger class (e.g. stars belong to different stellar populations which occur in various proportions in different astrophysical structures), and so on.
3. In 1996 Sandage and Bedke [61] discussed the problem of circularity that is inherent in the quest for objective classification with particular reference to galaxies.
4. A problem in the Dialectics of the Open Situation (Section I, F above) may be framed as follows (see also Reference 59): if a quantity X depends on Y, but Y cannot be determined without knowledge of X, then one needs Y to get X, and conversely, one needs X to get Y; i.e. if X = X[Y], and Y = Y[X], then Y = Y[X[Y]], resulting in an apparent infinite progression: Y = Y[X[Y[X[...]]]]. The actual quantification of X and Y may be difficult and the problem becomes even more intractable when variables are multidimensional. There is the appearance of a "Catch 22", for the infinite progression seems impossible to resolve. The dimension of time seems inherent in the problem, and it is hard to avoid the conclusion that truth and understanding can only be achieved when the evolution of the universe has run its course, i.e. after an "infinite" passage of time. Thus argument about the nature of physical existents leads inevitably to metaphysics and the problems of creation -- why events in the universe do not all happen simultaneously, why there is a unidirectional flow of time, why physical existents and the fundamental constants of nature are as they are, and not some other way. Progress seems to slow if not come to a grinding halt whenever ontological questions are joined, but it appears that these questions must be addressed if there is to be a Theory of Everything.
59. Stegmuller, W. "Rationale Rekonstruktion von Wissenschaft und ihrem
Wandel." Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam p. 41, 1979. Translated in J.M. Connolly
and T. Keutner, (eds). "Hermeneutics vs. Science: Three German Views" (Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press), pp. 102-52, 1988.
60. Zsoldos, E.
"On the Origin of the Term RV-Tauri-type." Observatory Vol. 113, No. 1117, pp.
305-6, 1993.
61. Sandage, A. and Bedke, J. "Carnegie Atlas of Galaxies" (Carnegie Institute
of Washington) Vol. 1, Chap. 1, 1996. See also Reference 52.