Introduction
Evandro Agazzi’s philosophy of science has attained a special reputation for the originality of his theory of objectivity, which organizes in a coherent perspective the referential aspect of science grounded in its operational dimension (that links it with ontology and with the domain of truth), together with the linguistic aspect that makes possible all sorts of metatheoretical investigations (and links it with philosophy of language and epistemology in a strict sense), as well as its consub- stantial relations with technology (that are at the same time a strong support of a “realist” conception of it and an irrefutable evidence of its structural links with society).
There is, however, another element of originality in Agazzi’s philosophy of science that may risk to remain little perceived in the wealth of the historical, logical, semiotic, epistemological and ontological discussions that have marked the several decades of the elaboration of his speculation and are now systematically presented in his monumental life-work, Scientific Objectivity and its Contexts (Agazzi 2014). This very significant element of originality is the explicit recognition and discussion of the hermeneutic dimension of science. This fundamental dimension was already present from the very beginning of Agazzi’s conception of science, when he characterized every scientific discipline, and also every theory within a single discipline, as the development of a specific “point of view” on reality: this very way of speaking (repeated and refined dozens of times along his production), already contains the core of a hermeneutic conception, and the interesting fact is that it is not presented at variance with scientific objectivity, but rather as a precondition of it, simply because the standardized operations allow for the intersubjective agreement about the features of reality accessible from the chosen point of view. This fundamental original view has been then deepened in his development of a “perspectivist” view of science, in which also the notion of a Gestalt has been widely used and applied.This has been possible because Agazzi has correctly seen the priority of understanding with regard to explanation but, contrary to what have maintained several scholars, he did not assign understanding to the humanities and explanation to the natural sciences, but has strongly maintained that in whatever science both requirements must be satisfied. The priority of understanding can be expressed in a concise way by saying, as he does, that “it is not possible to explain something that has not been understood”, but, in a much more elaborated and expanded form, he shows how a theory (whose specific task is explanation) is always developed within the framework of a given interpretive Gestalt. Even “facts” are always affected in science by an interpretation that, however, cannot jeopardize their autonomy based on the operational criteria. We can dispense with resuming these positions of Agazzi since they are systematically presented in a rigorous way in Sect. 3 of Agazzi (2014), titled explicitly “The hermeneutic dimension of science”. We want rather to point out an interesting detail. Already in Agazzi (1985) is presented a very stimulating analogy between scientific knowledge and artistic interpretation, by comparing the work of a scientific discipline investigating certain
natural phenomena with the different interpretations of one particular musical score that are offered by different interpreters. This comparison (in which similarities and differences are highlighted) is also of interest for a discussion about the possibility of having objectivity in interpretation. Another particularly relevant point where Agazzi’s consideration of the hermeneutic dimension of science becomes very clear is his explicit consideration of the contexts of scientific objectivity, something that appears in the very title of his major work and is certainly not usual in the mainstream philosophy of science.
These contexts are especially “historical” in a broad sense, that is, they are “cultural” and constitute the precondition of every scientific “objectification”. Sections 1 and 2 of Agazzi (2014) are thematically devoted to this historical dimension of science. Whoever is familiar with hermeneutic philosophy knows very well how important is the role attributed to the consideration of the “context” in the performance of a correct interpretation, and this not simply concerning the linguistic context of a text, but (also in the case of a text) the appraisal of the influence of the broader cultural context. This is precisely what Agazzi has constantly stressed concerning science, and has called the “historical determinateness” of science meaning by this not a “deterministic” relation that would make of science a “social product”, but the more subtle situation of contingent conditions that constitute the background in which the creativity of the single scientists can give rise to hypotheses, theories, methodological innovations, and so on.It is this strong embedding of science in the cultural environment (that has the characteristics of a double-way feedback loop), that constitutes the foundation of the “cultural value” and “humanistic value” of science, and should inspire also the teaching of science. This is the idea and the ideal that has inspired Agazzi’s long commitment in educational issues, and in particular has represented the leitmotif of the dozens of editorials and articles he has written for Nuova Secondaria, the monthly journal addressed to high-school teachers that he has edited for 30 years and whose aim was to promote a “cultural” maturation both of the teachers and their students. According to Agazzi, the target of this cultural maturation in the young persons consists in helping them to attain critically accepted “criteria of judgment” and the capacity of performing personal conscious judgments. In the promotion of this capacity consists the work of “formation” (Bildung) of school education.
These various constituents of an hermeneutic conception of science are in a way diluted along the whole philosophical reflection of Agazzi, especially because they have been independently and originally elaborated by him mainly at times when his conceptual approaches and methodological tools were particularly linked with those of the analytic philosophy of science, whereas his intellectual and also personal contacts with hermeneutic philosophy came only later. Therefore it seems advisable to offer a kind of “complement” to his treatment by presenting a short systematic survey of the main points of hermeneutic philosophy, giving of it a historical and methodological portrayal certainly more concise than that devoted by Agazzi to scientific objectivity, but equally oriented to show the objective character of interpretation, This is the modest aim of the following considerations regarding hermeneutics.
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