Dear Jurgen and All,

Been following the thread with interest. The multiple perspectives on this are especially interesting in relation to an ancient tradition of inquiry, hermeneutics. By this, I don't mean the current philosophical hermeneutics that moves from Husserl and Heidegger through Gadamer, but the old traditional of hermeneutical inquiry and exegetics that began in classical rhetoric and philosophy, entering theology in the 1600s with Johann Conrad Dannhauer's Hermeneutica sacra, later migrating to legal studies and geography. These are related, but where the philosophical hermeneutics in an ontological position, exegetical hermeneutics is a research method and an epistemological position.

The term hermeneutics comes from the Greek word meaning "interpretation." The word probably derives from the name of Hermes, messenger of the gods. The god Hermes represented the function of communication, and he was thus the god of interpretation.

The first and best-known tradition of hermeneutical research involves Biblical interpretation. While many translators were found at the colleges of Athens and Pergamum, and at the libraries and research centers of Alexandrian, it was not until the Middle Ages that the art of translation came into focus as a study in its own right. The reason for this was the need to place lost and fragmentary manuscripts in the proper historical context that would allow for reliable redactions.

These problems came into focus with the growth of the first universities. The Fall of Byzantium and the flood of new manuscript materials into Venice and Western Europe placed a high priority on proper translation. So, too, did the increasing interest in academic theological inquiry and biblical scholarship based on the text itself rather than on dogmatic recension or priestly interpretation of the Vulgate.

Hermeneutics began as a research method allowing for the best and most profound understanding of the manuscripts then available. From the foundation of hermeneutical inquiry in theology and Bible studies, the methods of hermeneutics have been adapted to many other purposes.

(Merriam-Webster's 1993: 566) defines "the study of the methodological principles of interpretation," giving the Bible as a
key example. However, interpretation involves more than translations. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED 2002: unpaged) defines hermeneutics as "the art or science of interpretation, esp. of Scripture. Commonly distinguished from exegesis or practical exposition." I differ from this definition, in that exegetics is an interpretive art. Books such as Henri de Lubac's (1998, 2000) Medieval Exegesis or Anthony Thiselton's (1980) The Two Horizons: New Testament Hermeneutics and Philosophical Description offer valuable methdological insights that can be applied to design.

Bunge (1999: 120) brings the issue forward in philosophy, as "[a] text interpretation in theology, philology, and literary criticism. [b] Philosophy. The idealist doctrine that social facts (and perhaps natural ones as well are symbols or texts to be interpreted rather than described and explained objectively. [/] Verstehen. Philosophical hermeneutics opposes the scientific study of society; it is particularly contemptuous of social statistics and mathematical modeling. And, because it regards everything social as spiritual, it underrates the environmental, biological, and economic factors, and refuses to tackle macro social facts, such as poverty and war. Hermeneutics thus constitutes an obstacle to the search for truths about society, hence to the grounding of social policies."

Whether or not Bunge is right on philosophical hermeneutics, one can use text interpretation and Wilhelm Dilthey's approach to the human sciences to understand all things human and human-made, including objects. To get to this, I'll step back again to history. Following the advances of the seventeenth-century philosophers and theologians, Johann Martin Chladenius attempted to establish a general science of hermeneutics with the publication in 1742 of his Introduction to the Correct Interpretation of Reasonable Discourses and Writings. Wilhelm von Humboldt, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and others followed Chladenius with important contributions in the nineteenth century.

In the late 1800s, Wilhelm Dilthey made great advances in the theory of hermeneutics as a research method in the human sciences. After Dilthey's time, hermeneutics took two directions in philosophy. One follows Dilthey's position of verstehen - understanding - as a method of research in the historical and human sciences. While methods vary, this philosophical position helped give rise to George Herbert Mead's work, to Herbert Blumer's symbolic interactionism and to the research traditions to which these gave rise.

The other direction in philosophy grows out of Husserl's phenomenology, followed by Heidegger's work. Heidegger interprets
hermeneutics as an ontological event. This concept is too difficult to permit a short analysis, so I will not try.

There are three delicate issues to be considered in using hermeneutics as a research method.

The first is not to confuse hermeneutics with other methods. One of the problems of a young field such as design research is the confusion of terms by new researchers who have not yet read deeply enough to master the research vocabulary. While there is growing and genuine interest in hermeneutics in design research, there is much misuse of the term by people who confuse hermeneutics with literary criticism and with deconstruction. In too many cases, researchers conflate research methods based on qualitative, existential, phenomenological, or hermeneutical research traditions. They do this despite the many and distinct differences among these traditions. In their ignorance, they label them all as though they were one method
using the single confused term that sounds best.

Hermeneutics is a powerful research tool. To apply hermeneutical methods effectively requires discipline, deep learning, careful reading, and practice.

The second delicate issue involves understand what it is that hermeneutics is intended to do.

Hermeneutics is a research method created to reveal the voice of a subject other than the researcher. Hermeneutical methods seek to give each speaker his or her own voice, and not to impose the researchers view's or voice on the speaker. In terms of Jurgen's question, this raises an intriguing issue, because we may be talking about designers in two different ways here. In one sense, we are talking about designers as the "voices" that generate the discourse and objects. In another sense, we are speaking about researchers considering and reflecting on the discourse, including designers, and it is in this sense that we can apply hermeneutical research methods and inquiry to understand objects as a discourse.

This leads to a research problem central to Dilthey's methods and the schools of inquiry that follow from it. One of the confusions surrounding some subjective or phenomenological research methods is the notion of appropriate subjectivity. The
subjectivity of the researcher is not the issue in most design research. What we seek is the subjectivity and understanding of those whose world we seek to understand.

In some forms of philosophical or psychological inquiry, the internal world of the researcher is the central theme. This is so in
self-therapy, for example, and in many forms of artistic or poetic inquiry. If the researcher is investigating his or her internal
world, the researcher's subjective voice and experience is the focus. This is not generally the point in design research.

Those areas of design research that involve human beings are not about us. Those areas of design research are about those whom we serve. (Some areas of design research do not involve human beings directly. Such research areas include logistics, materials science, technology, operations management, and other such issues.)

When we seek the voice of others in research, the point of research should be THEIR subjectivity. It is THEIR subjective experience and not our own that hermeneutics is intended to reveal. This is true of all research that seeks the voice of the other: design research, history, human ecology, anthropology, social psychology, and dozens of other fields.

If our goal is simply hearing our own voice, we do not need a powerful and sophisticated research method such as hermeneutics. To voice our own thoughts, first-hand statements will do.

The third issue is the locus of good methods material in hermeneutic research.

The best resources tend to be the field of theology. There are more good philosophical background books than there are useable philosophical methods books. Good general volumes include Bleicher (1980), Mueller-Vollmer (1997), Palmer (1969), and Tice and Slavens (1983). These books generally do not offer a clear, usable explanation of methods.

In contrast, the books used in training theologians do. To use them fruitfully, it is necessary to look beyond the subject matter and to focus on methods, applying them to the new subject matter in appropriate ways. Those who can undertake an appropriate methodological translation will find hermeneutics an extraordinary tool for allowing others to speak in their own voice. Two good examples of this are Egger (1996) and Virkler (1981), and the Thiselton and de Lubac volumes offer helpful resources.

I've been puzzling over the question of how we can use hermeneutics and exegesis to understand objects and design for some time now. One of these days I hope to summarize what I've learned in a way that other can use.

If you want to do your own reading, do check the web site of Eerdman's, a publishing company that specializes in theology and Bible studies. If you can get beyond the subject matter to make use of the exegetical disciplines, there is a treasury of great titles on hermeneutics here:

http://www.eerdmans.com/default.htm

Best regards,

Ken Friedman

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS
Professor
Dean

Swinburne Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia

Telephone +61 3 9214 6755 
www.swinburne.edu.au/design


References

Bleicher, Josef. 1980. Contemporary Hermeneutics: Hermeneutics as Method, Philosophy, and Critique. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Bunge, Mario. 1999. The Dictionary of Philosophy. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books.

Egger, Wilhelm. 1996. How to read the New Testament. An Introduction to Linguistics and Historical-Critical Methodology. Edited and with an Introduction by Hendrikus Boers. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers.

Lubac, Henri de. 1998. Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture. Vol. 1. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Lubac, Henri de. 2000. Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture. Vol. 2. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Merriam-Webster, Inc. 1990. Webster's ninth new collegiate dictionary. Springfield, Massachusetts.

Mueller-Vollmer, Kurt. 1997. The Hermeneutics Reader. New York: Continuum Publishing.

OED. 2002. OED Online. Oxford English Dictionary. Ed. J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner. 2nd ed, 1989. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Oxford University Press. URL: http://dictionary.oed.com/ Date accessed: 2002 January 18.

Palmer, Richard E. 1969. Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in
Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer. Evanston:
Northwestern University Press.

Thiselton, Anthony C. 1980. The Two Horizons: New Testament Hermeneutics and Philosophical Description. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Tice, Terrence N., and Thomas P. Slavens. 1983. Research Guide to Philosophy. Chicago: American Library Association, 293-301.

Virkler, Henry A. 1981. Hermeneutics. Principles and Processes of Biblical Interpretation. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books.


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Jurgen Faust wrote:

Hi All,

I would like to know whether there is anybody who would support a statement that designers also maintain discourses on an object level? That means that designers generate objects; solutions to verify, change or transform existing solutions in better once? I am currently exploring the idea that textual matters in design comprehend also design solutions as objects. I am using the current transformation of the existing i-phone we see, when we look at all the proposed changes in competitive products.


Jurgen Faust

Prof. DIGITAL MEDIA
MHMK MUENCHEN