A concept borrowed from Gadamer's hermeneutics and applied to science: the idea that understanding occurs when the horizon of the researcher (their assumptions, methods, questions) fuses with the horizon of the phenomenon (its history, context, behavior) or with the horizon of another researcher. This fusion isn't about one horizon replacing the other—it's about creating a new, enlarged horizon that includes both. Interdisciplinary collaboration, cross-cultural research, even new paradigms emerge from these fusions. The Fusion of Horizons is science as dialogue, as meeting, as transformation on both sides.
"My Western medical training fused with my patients' traditional healing knowledge—not one replacing the other, but both transforming into something new. Scientific Fusion of Horizons: when you stop explaining and start understanding across difference, and neither side comes out the same."
by Abzugal February 23, 2026
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