ERASMUS – Ólafur Páll Jónsson – Teaching at the University of Granada – October 2015
Miércoles, octubre 21: Estética y presentación de sentido en ciencia y las humanidades
Abstract: In the early decades of the 20th century when the logical positivists claimed the
scene in philosophy of science and language some of the traditional concepts relating to
meaning where redefined. The most striking challenge to much of the philosophical tradition
came from members of the Vienna Circle who proposed a principle of verification in one form
or another (Ayer, Carnap, Hempel). In this spirit, scientific methods and understanding was
seen to lay the foundation for other forms of knowledge. And what could not be grounded
with scientific methods, was deemed meaningless. When the verificationism was finally given
up – in part because of criticism by the logical positivists themselves – the space was opened
for more varied grounds for meaning.
However, Hans Georg Gadamer suggests a radical rejection of the very idea of scientific
grounding either meaning or understanding, arguing that science actually rests on other forms
of relating to the world. I will discuss these ideas drawing on work by Monica Vilhauer.
[1] „We cannot ignore, Gadamer urges, that in all of these encounters “insights are acquired
and truths are known” (TM, xxi) that cannot be attained through the means of scientific
method. No “scientific” investigation of a stage-play, a painting, a song, a novel, an argument,
and so forth, can replace what is learned in our basic experiences of watching, listening, or
reading in which we become caught up in what is communicated to us; no examination of
“facts” can enable us to grasp the meaning that speaks to us through them, which reveals that
modern scientific method is, at the very least, a limited means of acquiring knowledge.“
(Vilhauer, Monica (2010). Gadamer's Ethics of Play: Hermeneutics and the Other (Kindle
Locations 312-317)).
[2] „In an even bolder claim, which radically calls into question modern science’s notion of
knowledge and spotlights its limitations, Gadamer asserts that the phenomenon of
understanding is something that “pervades all human relations to the world” (TM, xxii)—
relations that precede any deliberate methodical acts on the part of the subject or scientist.“
Vilhauer, Monica (2010). Gadamer's Ethics of Play: Hermeneutics and the Other (Kindle
Locations 317-320)).
[3] „states: “The hermeneutics developed here is not, therefore, a methodology of the human
sciences, but an attempt to understand what the human sciences truly are, beyond their
methodological self-consciousness, and what connects them with the totality of our
experience of the world” (TM, xxiii). Gadamer aims to show us that there is a very basic kind of
understanding that precedes and makes possible the kind of methodical knowledge we find in
science, which science, nonetheless, does not recognize.“ Vilhauer, Monica (2010-09-25).
Gadamer's Ethics of Play: Hermeneutics and the Other (Kindle Locations 607-610)).