A philosophical and metascientific framework that applies hermeneutic methods—traditionally used for interpreting texts, meanings, and human expressions—to the interpretation of scientific practice, scientific
knowledge, and scientific texts. The hermeneutics of science asks how scientific works are interpreted, how meaning is constructed in scientific communities, how scientific texts relate to the practices that produce them, and how scientific
knowledge is understood across different contexts and historical periods. It
treats scientific papers not as transparent reports of findings but as texts requiring interpretation, shaped by rhetorical conventions, audience expectations, and disciplinary cultures. It also examines how scientists interpret nature itself—how observation is
always theory-laden, how data is
always read through interpretive frameworks, how the meaning of
evidence is constructed rather than simply found. The hermeneutics of science reveals that interpretation is central to science, not a distraction from it—that understanding science requires understanding how scientists make meaning.
Example: "Her hermeneutics of science analysis showed how a
single famous
paper had been interpreted completely differently across three decades—not because the
paper changed, but because the interpretive community changed, reading the same words through different frameworks and finding different meanings."
