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International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Series | Book | Chapter

209615

Explanation and interpretation in the sciences of man

Jan Faye

pp. 269-279

Abstract

There is a long tradition for separating explanation from interpretation that has permeated the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the human sciences. The tradition was fuelled partly by the positivistic distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification, partly by Hempel's model of explanation, but mostly by the hermeneutic philosophy in the social and human sciences. These traditions may now have come to an end. In this paper I shall present a unitary theory of explanation and interpretation, a theory which I have argued for elsewhere, in which interpretations, or rather a group of interpretations, are considered as explanations of meaning.

Publication details

Published in:

Dieks Dennis, Hartmann Stephan, Uebel Thomas, Weber Marcel, González Wenceslao J. (2011) Explanation, prediction, and confirmation. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 269-279

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-1180-8_18

Full citation:

Faye Jan (2011) „Explanation and interpretation in the sciences of man“, In: D. Dieks, S. Hartmann, T. Uebel, M. Weber & W. J. González (eds.), Explanation, prediction, and confirmation, Dordrecht, Springer, 269–279.