Interpretation and Understanding

This essay discusses how the interpretive social sciences have some fundamental epistemic aim (e.g. “understanding”) that differs from fundamental aims of the natural sciences. I later realize that according to these philososphical terms, ‘mech interp’ is actually ‘mech explaination’.

The basic functions traditional natusral science serves are already recognized and agreed upon by scientists and society—to explain, to predict, and to manipulate. Yet starting from the 20th century, the emergence and development of the sciences of man make us return to the question of science demarcation and rethink what purpose science—especially social sciences such as politics, economics, and sociology—should serve.

Charles Taylor, in his thesis Interpretation and the Sciences of Man, argued that one aim of the social sciences is to provide an interpretation of social meanings connected to social practices in particular societies. After his paper was welcomed by many social science and philosophy students, Michael Martin spent a chapter in his book Readings on the Philosophy of Social Science criticizing Taylor’s theory for being too exclusive and even to some extent implausible. Stephen Grimm and Karsten Stueber both stressed the difference between the human sciences and the natural sciences, and noted that when it comes to the human sciences, psychological interpretations or understanding-as-taking-to-be-good is of essential importance.

To answer the question whether the social or human sciences have different aims from the natural sciences, my own stance is that the social sciences still share some aims—namely, explanation, prediction, and manipulation—with natural science, yet such aims may never be as successfully and precisely achieved as in the natural sciences. Apart from these aims, the social sciences possess unique aims like understanding due to the nature of the subjects they study. In this essay, I will first draw on different features of the social sciences and the natural sciences. After that, we can elaborate on how the aims of the two differ.

I. Different Features of Natural and Social Sciences

According to Taylor, hermeneutic sciences have three distinctive features. First of all, there needs to be an object or a field of objects of study. Such objects can be societies, institutions, actors, etc. Second, there needs to be a distinction between the meaning and the expression, in other words, a distinction between the interpreting and the interpreted. Finally, there also needs to be a subject. He also indicates that the last point is what demarcates hermeneutic and natural sciences. Taylor does not explicitly mention what sciences should be put into this category of hermeneutic science, but we can speculate that what he has in mind is all social science, for any social science more or less covers studies which satisfy all requirements. I admit that the above features are a good identification and description of social science, but using the name “hermeneutic” is too dictatorial.

The most striking difference between natural science and social science is what they study. In natural science, we talk about the motion of objects and the reaction between chemicals. These objects and chemicals have no desire, no ambition, and no free will. You may argue that in not all natural sciences do people study things without will: men are constantly occurring in research topics in biology and medicine. It is true though; in these studies, what the man in question thinks and desires is usually purposefully omitted. What we care about is not the man, but his heart, artery, tissues—you name it. In a word, in natural science, the studied thing is an object.

For an object, laws of nature can always be reliably applied and induction hardly ever fails. The moon came to be gibbous this month, last month, and every month before. And we can confidently say that the sun will rise tomorrow out of the belief that laws of gravity, motion, and the travelling of light are credible enough. Sam has jogged when the moon was gibbous this month, last month, and every month before ever since I knew him. But I cannot confidently say that Sam will go out jogging next time when the moon is gibbous. Sam could change his mind. He could get a serious disease which prevents him from jogging. I can never say for sure that Sam never failed to and will never fail to jog, for whether he jogs or not depends on his will.

Sam here in the example is a subject. And all social science studies incorporate investigations on subjects who have minds, and whose minds are shaped and influenced by their past experience and their social milieu. Social science is constructed upon these subjects it studies, and cannot desert the very basic premise that its subjects have will and desire as well as the power to make a change.

Based on this feature of the sciences of man, I agree that social science studies can’t avoid falling into the so-called “hermeneutical circle” to some degree. By “hermeneutical circle”, Taylor means that one cannot understand any part of the whole without referring to an understanding of the whole; on the other hand, the understanding of the whole depends on the understanding of its parts. In Martin’s piece of work, he rebuts that the hermeneutical circle is a feature possessed solely by social science by introducing Kuhn’s theory-laden argument. He says that in natural science, observations are usually influenced by established theories. For instance, if we ask someone to tell the suit of the card, and mix a black-coloured heart in it, the black-coloured heart is very likely to be identified as a heart or a spade. Yet on the other hand, the theory is established upon and checked by observations, just as the classification of the cards is first established upon observation. Martin claims that if the circularity of natural science can be overcome, the hermeneutical circle can be overcome in a similar manner, say by appealing to probability evaluation.

But this parallel between the circularity in natural science and the hermeneutical circle is inappropriate in the following two senses. First, as Taylor suggested, observations made in natural science are always presented in brute data, that is, empirical facts, yet the direct evidence for social science theories is scarcely presented in this form. In the proceeding of natural science, brute data serve as a breaking point of the circle: once data contradicting the theory are found, we can acutely sense that something goes wrong with the hypothesis. But with social science, there is barely any standard we can refer to in order to validate an interpretation, except the context from which that interpretation is generated. Secondly, since what is studied in natural science is objects and the causal structure of the natural world is rigid and fixed, applying the understanding-as-grasping-of-structure method to perform research is quite enough. Therefore, when there is a mismatch between the structure and the understanding, we can start to find fault with the theory with certainty. However, the research field of social science is constructed out of meanings, whose causal structure is always intricate and ever-changing, under which circumstance we have to employ the understanding-as-taking-to-be-good method. Such a method cannot be carried out without any reference to the context of a certain question.

II. Aims of Social Sciences

I said in the last section that equating social science with hermeneutic science is dictatorial, because there should be aims other than interpretation for social science. It also explains, predicts, and manipulates.

The explanatory function of the social sciences has been appropriately illustrated by Martin’s case of Marla N. Powers’s menstrual taboo research. Indeed, when social scientists question and work on the origin of social phenomena and particular events, when they wonder why a certain occurrence is the way it is rather than another, they are constantly tracing along a causal chain or a causal net of an existent event. Such a causal net does not necessarily have to be woven entirely by meanings. An anthropological study can provide strong evidence for this. Around the North Pole, anthropologists found there is an Eskimo tribe which has a custom of taking the elderly out and leaving them in the tundra to be eaten alive by beasts. The theory behind this terrifying ritual is that under the extreme climate and low productivity, the whole tribe would suffer extinction if they do not do so in order to save resources for the young. In this case, I would not consider the anthropological theory an interpretation. For it to be an interpretation, the theory should be something like “the convention of the tribe makes the young Eskimos feel urged to do so”, or “certain myths and beliefs in the tribe make the young Eskimos feel that taking the elderly out is a duty”, etc.

Also, social science can serve purposes such as prediction and manipulation. How mainstream economic theories work these days is very strong evidence for this. Economists make hypotheses, build models, collect data, and make predictions—much the way natural scientists would do in their fields. But economists, especially econometricians, can only do so based on the hypothesis that several properties or features of men are held fixed. In other words, men are treated like objects in these practices. But conducting social science in this manner has a price to pay. Because the approximation in the first place is inaccurate, the error of the result can never shrink to the same degree as in the natural sciences. And to cut down the error and make as good an approximation as possible, these social scientists ultimately still have to resort to interpretation.

Interpretation contributes to human society in three facets, which makes it a desirable aim for the social sciences. First, it helps us to organize the memories of the past, including common memories of a society or an institution and the memories of an individual. Once actions and events of the past are understood through interpretation, they would be retained more vividly and the storage of heuristic resources would be more abundant for us. Second, they help us empathize and feel empathized with. This empathizing function is based on the first memory-organizing function. The more past and strange events and situations we are acquainted with, the better we can articulate our own feelings and comprehend the feelings of others. Experiences as such are not rare: at the time we finish appreciating a tragedy, we suddenly feel that some repressed feeling of ours is released. When people can empathize with others better, it naturally follows that they know more about how to act properly under certain circumstances. Lastly, interpretation can explain and even shape the common meaning shared by a society, and foresee or even trigger revolution.

To conclude, social sciences share certain similarities with natural sciences in terms of certain aims such as explanation, prediction, and manipulation. Yet the former differs from the latter in the sense that the features of their study content are very different, making interpretation a very important aim of the social sciences.

References

[1] Taylor, “Interpretation and the Sciences of Man”
[2] S. Grimm, “How Understanding People Differs from Understanding the Natural World,” Philosophical Issues
[3] Karsten Stueber, “Understanding vs. Explanation? How to Think about the Difference between the Human and Natural Sciences,” Inquiry
[4] Michael Martin, “Taylor on Interpretation and the Sciences of Man” in Readings in Philosophy of Social Science (ed. Martin)