the lifeworld and scientific interpretation

The Lifeworld and Scientific Interpretation

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Heelan, Patrick A. The Lifeworld and Scientific Interpretation, in Toombs, Kay (ed.), Handbook of Phenomenology and Medicine, (Dordrecht and Boston: Kluwer Academic Publ.

2002), pp. 47-66.

THE LIFEWORLD AND SCIENTIFIC INTERPRETATION

Patrick A. Heelan Georgetown University Washington, DC 20057

Abstract: The received view of science is critiqued via the phenomenological orientation of E. Husserl, M. Heidegger, and M. Merleau-Ponty towards the Lifeworld, and Heideggers hermeneutics of experience. This makes it possible to assign different roles to theory and practice, to scientific medicine and clinical practice. The aim of theory is technological design for the purposes of environmental control within the Lifeworld. The aim of practice is ontological understanding for the purpose of human culture in the Lifeworld. Scientific theories then have a Janus-like face. One side looks in the direction of computational and technological control and is merely a resource for multiple practices but is not constitutive of scientific knowledge. The other looks in the direction of human culture and is ultimately constitutive of ontological historical scientific knowledge. This bivalence underscores the prevalence of metaphor in scientific discourse where modern culture and the received view tend to mask its presence in such discourse. It is argued, however, that metaphor is as fundamental for true scientific discourse as literality is for the received view. Since the theoretical is mathematical and the practical is empirical, it makes no sense to predicate mathematical models literally of the Lifeworld; at best, mathematical models and the Lifeworld come together in some unambiguous but metaphorical way, guided by professional experts who in the spirit of (what Aristotle called) phronesis (prudent action) are conscious that they are seeking no more than a consensus about a set of relevant soluble empirical issues. These theses are illustrated in medical science, clinical medicine, and public health.


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THE LIFEWORLD AND SCIENTIFIC INTERPRETATION

Patrick A. Heelan Georgetown University Washington, DC 20057

The Received View of Modern Science Though some would still say that it was under the spiritual aegis of Plato,

current historical scholars prefer to hold that it was in fact under the aegis of a newly discovered mathematical Aristotle that something like the hypothetical-deductive account of modern science emerged in the 17th century and eventually became the received doctrine or view inherited by most professional scientific researchers today.1 The hypothetical-deductive method focuses on the permanence of the categorial inventory of things, the objectivity of mathematical ideas, and the necessity of the laws of Nature. Its privileging of theory is a legacy of the theological notion common to two millennia of secular and religious thought that the order in Nature comes from God (the ordering Demiurge or Creator) whose idea it expresses.

Many aspects, however, of Nature as we now experience it are left out of this account. Absent are historicity, contingency, contextuality, emergence, the role of religion and human culture, and most particularly, the embodiment of mind in the everyday life-world.2 These aspects pervade those new channels of research that are centered on evolution, development, history, anthropology, technology, culture, and especially medicine. We find them also in retrospect in anomalies associated with the old classical sciences. These new features refer to dynamic processes in Nature that change not just the states of a given thing but the things themselves, through evolutionary emergent processes, or they change things contingently but irreversibly as in quantum theory, or non-linearly (following small destabilizing changes) as in the butterfly effect. All of these effects are found in medical practice. In addition, reflective medical practice has to have some approach to the Mind/Body and Mind/Brain problem since the dualism underlying the received view can be the source of both blindness in clinical practice and systematic failure of the imagination in clinical medical research.

Human subjects and research communities are not apart from Nature,


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they also belong to Nature, for (despite the approach of the received view) there is no gap between Nature and Culture. Nature is the human ecological niche in the Cosmos, and Culture is the location of all that we know about Nature, including science. Through new technologies in the cultural life-world, researchers direct, shape, produce, and give meanings to new scientific phenomena and change the meanings of old phenomena. By these means the cultural life-world is changed with significant consequences of progress or decline both for individuals and for communities. It is in sciences relation to human culture that the traditions of phenomenology3 and Heideggerian hermeneutics4 can make a contribution -- indeed, I would say, a correction -- to the understanding of how modern science and its theories and technologies serve medical science and clinical practice.

Scientific medical research begins, is carried through, and eventually ends in the everyday life-world with the production of resources for medical practice, such as, pharmacological products and imaging devices. It is there that its nature is to be researched, and there that its long term influence is to be weighed. Since the life-world is where all inquiry begins and ends, philosophy also begins and ends there, and it is in relation to the contemporary life-world that philosophy is itself a resource. In contrast, the received view begins in the life-world and ends in a meaningful construction about the life-world that takes the form of an ideal representational model of Nature. The gap between the life-world and the scientific model of Nature is bridged by a postulate, let me call it the mirroring postulate, one of the same kind that is commonly thought to link geometry and the life-world. Just as geometrical objects float, as it were, off the page or blackboard and take their place in the ideal realm of the Mind, so too do scientific models or theories. The received view as a philosophy is, then, no more than a hypothetical-deductive theory like scientific theories and invented likewise on the basis of a postulate, as Brisson and Meyerstein (1995) so cleverly show in their comparison between the Big Bang Theory and Platos Timaeus. This, of course, does not lessen the value of a theory as the resource it has proved to be, but it limits the validity of philosophical claims often made for a theory.

I take a philosophical account to be universal and fundamental in its scope in the study of knowing, being, truth, goodness, etc. Clearly the received view satisfies neither the universality nor the fundamentality criterion since the basic mirroring postulate is not self-justifying. For the


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reasons given above, it is then important to be clear both why philosophy begins and why it ends in an understanding of the life-world. Phenomenology is a philosophical orientation that gives privilege to what is given (die Sache selbst) in the life-world (Heidegger, 1996, pp. 27-29 in the Niemeyer German edition). Moreover, since the life-world is the locus of the ups and downs of individual human lives as well as of core historical development, (a certain kind of ) hermeneutics is necessary to close the gap between life and understanding (see, e.g., Husserl, 1970, 1999; Kockelmans, 1993; Heidegger, 1996, pp. 27-39), theory and practice (Heelan, 1997, 1998; Heelan and Schulkin, 1998), being and language (see, e.g., Halliday and Martin, 1983, pp. 3-21; Bakhtin, 1986, pp. 103-131; Heelan, 1991b, 1994), history and change (see, e.g., Husserl, 1970; Ricoeur, 1981, pp. 43-62 and passim., Heelan, 1991a), and medical science and clinical practice (see, e.g., Duden, 1993; Leder, 1990; Miller, 1978; Sheets-Johnstone, 1990; Young 1997; Zaner, 1981).

The principal authors followed here are Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer, Merleau-Ponty and the philosophical orientation they brought. Since the strength of this orientation is in the human sciences and few writers of this orientation have been close to the grass roots problems of the natural sciences, this essay will have to go beyond what is presently found in the basic phenomenological corpus, to develop new themes about the way theory is related to praxis and how medical science is related to clinical practice. Husserl (1970) and Heidegger (1996, 1997a) criticized the ethos of modern science for a certain cultural bias it tends to encourage. This bias is in the way it privileges explanatory theories (ideas or mental objects) over life-world processes (phenomena), with the consequence that the cultural hegemony of (what Aristotle called) calculative thinking is promoted over the more foundational meditative thinking. Calculative thinking is ordained toward the management and control of things and people through rigid frameworks of organized thought. Meditative thinking has as its basic concern cultural meaning and meaning-change, and their consequences in terms of cultural progress or decline (Heidegger, 1968, pp. 3-35; 1966, p. 46, and Husserl, 1970).

No minimizing is intended, however, of the great benefits that can and do flow from the calculative thinking of scientific inquiry. I aim to address in particular the role of modern science in an important sector of the life-world, the world of medical practice, for the purpose of correcting some of the biases


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that inevitably follow from confusing the received view of science with a more general, I mean, philosophical, viewpoint.

Lifeworld and Being

We come now to the difficult task of specifying what our philosophical terms mean. Just as theory in the received doctrine means an ideal representational and computational model that virtually replaces the sensible phenomenon for the purposes of science, so the meanings of philosophical terms are derived from the practical context of philosophical inquiry (see, e.g., Husserl, 1970, pp. 121-147; Heelan, 1988). In phenomenology, the Lifeworld (I capitalize the term) is the practical and pre-theoretical field (space or domain) of and for human understanding, including philosophical understanding. One may enter into the understanding of the Lifeworld in a number of ways: 1. by a special reflection on the everyday life-world, 2. by a critique of Mind/Body or Mind/Brain Dualism presupposed by the received view, 3. by linguistics and a critique of language, and 4. by studying the essential embodiment of the human mind in the brain, senses, active physical bodily powers, and in technologies, Nature, and the life-world as a whole.

1. The philosophical notion of the Lifeworld can be derived by a special kind of reflection from the everyday life-world by dropping all abstract theoretical or explanatory thinking in the sense of the received view. Any affirmation that abstract entities, theories, models, categorial list of contents by abstract kinds exist is excluded except as tools and resources for practical activity. By a species of reflection of this kind one discovers ones Lifeworld. In it one finds oneself, as subject, (in Heideggers words) as having-been-thrown into this Lifeworld with others, located at some place and time in human history not by ones choice, and conscious of having no more than a finite lifespan (Heidegger, 1996, pp. 63-114, 236-263; also Natanson, 1970, p. 103; Husserl, 1970; Ihde, 1983). Each subject inherits among other things a practical language, a culture, a community, a set of cares-- perhaps, more than one of each-- that give meaning, structure, and purpose to the Lifeworld one shares with one or more communities. Although the Lifeworld is not of the subjects own creation or choice, it nevertheless permeates the subjects life experience at conscious and unconscious levels.

The Lifeworld is an attempt to show, to point out, the historical river of


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individual human existence. What is thus revealed is the ontological dimension of human experience, prior to (because a grounding condition of) the epistemological. This ontological dimension is the human being-in-the-Lifeworld, or being-in-the-world, for short. In it, the individual human is there-in-Being -- or Da-sein to use Heideggers term (1996, pp. 15-17).

2. The notion of Lifeworld can also be reached through a critique of the Cartesian Mind/Body or cognitive sciences Mind/Brain model that underlies the received view. This takes the Mind to be the home of all clear and distinct logical thinking and of the personal Ego, it is distinct and separate from the Body and Brain where the imagination lies that is the home of sensory images, perception, and emotions. This kind of dualism was attacked by Merleau-Ponty (1962) and others who applied this critique to the field of medical practice, such as, to mention a few, Duden (1993), Leder (1990), Miller (1978), Sheets-Johnstone (1990), Young (1997), Zaner (1981). The human-mind-as-embodied pervades not just the brain and body but also the Lifeworld (see Varela, et al., 1993; and Heelan, 1983a/1988).

3. The same conclusion has been reached through the functional linguistics, say, of Halliday and Martin (1993) and by Lakoff and Johnson (1999) who concluded that all discourse using abstract thoughts and scientific theories depends in metaphorical ways on the structures of the bodily senses and on converting action verbs denoting processes, into nouns denoting things, e.g., X moves into the movement of X. They claim there are no Cartesian clear and distinct ideas, and we do not have disembodied ways of thinking about disembodied ideas. All such thinking uses virtual bodily activities as a kind of lexico-grammatical metaphor for expressing and structuring abstract thought and abstract thought by the reverse metaphor derives its meaning from human systematic actions in the Lifeworld (Martin and Veel, 1998).

4. The notion of the Lifeworld can also be reached by studying the way the human mind is essentially embodied. Its embodiment is the living organism we call our body. But what is the body in question? There are a variety of answers: the mind is embodied exclusively in the brain, possibly also in the muscular tissues, or (the answer I prefer) the embodiment extends also into the environment that sustains life and provides the meaningful physical space in which we live our conscious lives in society (see, e.g., Merleau-Ponty, 1971; and Heelan, 1983a/1988, 1997, 1998). This critique of dualism often


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takes the form of a critique of the medical body, that is, of the body conceived as a material object constituted of separable physical parts that collaborate among themselves and with the outside environment in more or less independent ways to maintain the operational physical integrity of the body as a functional whole. In this view what is missing are the dynamic processes and physical exchanges that mutually transform the functional ontology of the bodily parts, as well as the engagement of the whole body in the Lifeworld through conscious and unconscious functional exchanges (see, e.g., Duden, 1993; Leder, 1990; Sheets-Johnstone. 1990; Young, 1997; Zaner, 1981).

Interpretation and Meaning

Human understanding functions by interpretation and the product of interpretation is meaning.5 Meaning is nothing physical. It is not a text, a behavior, a neural network, a computation, not even a sign or a medium, nor any relationship among things, though all of these may be generated by and are productive of meaning. It is not a private domain accessible only by some kind of introspection. But it is a public domain where people share the products of human understanding first by common habits of action (in which diverse networks are recognized) and then by the use of language and language-like media. Meaning is the public domain in which people understand one another, argue with one another, give reasons, establish goals, set up norms, define kinds, etc.-- more or less effectively according to the purpose, intelligence, language skills, and education of the parties involved. Meaning, moreover, is historical because language is constitutive of history; it is also deeply affected by human temporality and historical forgetfulness because the community/Lifeworld milieu in which it is transmitted has gains and losses over time. Meaning is local and social, because it is the product of active local interests and social communities and constitutive of their interests. It is then neither once-and-for-all fixed, nor ever in total flux. Finally, though subject to change under transmission, meaning is not on this account devoid of truth. But it is the place where truth makes its appearance.

The appropriate philosophical approach to the method or process of interpretation is the hermeneutical circle (or hermeneutical spiral) (Heidegger, 1996, pp.150-153; Gadamer, 1995, pp. 265-341). Briefly, following Heidegger, any inquiry is initiated by the unexpected breakdown of a


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life-world task, such as, to identify what belongs and what does not belong to (what is believed to be) a named life-world phenomenon (of a certain kind) but is poorly understood, or to understand why a life-world phenomenon that is thought to be well-understood, fails to occur under regular circumstances. On reflection, these failures involve the ontological structure of the Lifeworld where alone phenomena are generated and have their place.6 The hermeneutical circle has three phases. The first phase is the initial problem state (Heideggers Vorhabe).

As an illustration, it is worth turning to Flecks, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact (Fleck, 1979, German orig. 1935). Fleck was a Polish bacteriologist, serologist, historian of syphilis, and epistemologist of medicine from Lvov. In his book, he traces the change in the initial clinical picture of a group of venereal symptoms to the final invention of the underlying phenomenon, a disease-entity, syphilis. The initial stage he gives as comprising two points of view developed side by side, together, often at odds with one another: (1) an ethical-mystical disease entity of carnal scourge, and (2) an empirical-therapeutic disease entity (Fleck, 1979, p. 5). The former is the archaic thought style of astrology that related the planets to ethics, and ethics to good and bad blood; the latter is the group of blood related venereal symptoms for the treatment of which the therapeutic use of mercury ointment was helpful.

The second phase brought into play a variety of theory-based procedures (Heideggers Vorsicht). These were the diagnostic devices available at that time. The archaic thought styles entrenched in the thought collective of the research community were - had to be - maintained during the search in order to keep the elements of the problem in focus. They would gradually be re-shaped and transcended so as to be relevant to what would later become by invention a theory of syphilis. The theoretical part, however, was implemented with the aid of practical theory-designed diagnostic tests on the blood serum, such as were to become the Wassermann Test. Such tests usually involved some tentative theory or model of the underlying hidden dimensions of the task, and performing the tests ultimately became the function of a new set of expert practitioners, in this case, serologists. In line with this thinking, a causative pathological agent was discovered in the lymphatic ducts that was named, Spirochaeta pallida. The scientific model of syphilis was then complete, since by that time the other venereal symptoms, those of gonorrhea


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and chancre, had been re-classified as separate disease entities.

Fleck is quite insistent that the model is not to be interpreted literally, that it is not the disease, nor a simple mirror of the disease, and that the model needs to be prudently used by experienced specialists in the light of the general condition of the patient. When interpreted in this way, hermeneutically, a new phenomenological fact (Heideggers Vorgriff ) emerges in the Lifeworld, it is a new disease entity, syphilis. The solution is 1. the sought-for recognition of what makes the named phenomenon in question to be what it is (die Sache selbst), syphilis, and 2. the understanding of a set of theoretical conditions that ceteris paribus had the power to produce (die Sache selbst) syphilis.

If in the pursuit of a solution the first round or circle of inquiry is not successful, something nevertheless has been learnt, and a new phase or circle of the inquiry begins from there with a new Vorhabe, a new Vorsicht, and a new Vorgriff, and so on for as many circles as are necessary to bring success, assuming, of course, success in this case is possible.

Note that the interpretative process begins in the Lifeworld and ends in the production of a phenomenon (die Sache selbst) in the Lifeworld. It uses thought but does not end just in thought. Moreover, it seeks not primarily control, but an ontological solution in the production of a phenomenon (die Sache selbst). The outcome of the inquiry then is not just an abstract account, nor a theory, nor a model, though all of these are usually involved, but the understanding of a phenomenon that is culturally defined as the product of a successful experimental praxis. Since the design of the praxis is usually based on a theory, we are brought back to the question: what is the role of theories and abstract concepts in determining an ontological solution?

Truth and Meaning In the hermeneutical perspective, meaning is the product of a human

understanding that works through interpretation. Interpretation, however, functions through the construction of meaning by common action, theory, and language, with common action involving the human body which in science is allied also with technology. Theoretical meanings contribute an implicit abstract component (see below) and common action contributes a constitutive cultural or practical component.

Turning to the classical sense of meaning, it grasped the objects inner or essential intelligibility, abstracting from what was individual, variable,


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sensory-based, material, technological, and historical. This mental object was conceived as a universal representation of the kind of thing (the natural kind) it represented and was true if it conformed to reality. The function of Mind was to mirror the forms of Nature. Language and life did not enter into the shaping of what is so presented as meaning and truth. Powerful and historically significant as was the classical notion of meaning and truth, there came a time, however, when the function of language and culture eventually could not be ignored. Tarski, for instance, proposed to define truth as a property of statements. Thus, let p (Snow is white) be a statement, then: p (Snow is white) is true if and only if p (snow is white). From the hermeneutic perspective such an account turns out either to beg the question or to be vacuous. For consider, how is the meaning of the sentence p (Snow is white) arrived at? To be meaningful words need a context of use and a users community, but there are an infinite variety of contexts of use and of users communities for the sentence p (Snow is white), giving different meanings, yet none is specified in Tarskis definition. Turning to the other half of the definition, how is it determined that p (snow is white)? By experience, of course! But either experience presupposes an ability to use language correctly which begs the question or it is indeterminate and so cannot function as a criterion. Tarskis logical definition, however, was proposed within a philosophical framework different from the one used in this paper and within that framework was unquestioned until recently.

Returning to the duality of theoretical and practical meaning discussed earlier, Heideggers approach to truth was through his return to the Greek term, aletheia (literally uncovering), for truth (Heidegger, 1996, pp. 213-4, 1977b). It signaled, 1. a change in the notion of truth from the classical model of full transparency of natural forms, towards one of only partial transparency, that is historical, local, practical, and contextual.0 2. It made truth a property of the act of revealing, or uncovering, what is presented to the subjects, Da-seins understanding. 3. It is never complete, and what is given in a partial way is given to the extent that Da-sein is open to receive what is being offered, and is free to accept it. This is the truth, aletheia, that is at the root of logical truth (the truth of propositions) and the other forms of truth (e.g., the truth of names). None of these derivative forms of truth have validity without reference to the pre-conditions of authenticity, namely, openness and freedom, that govern speaking, writing, listening, reading, and related practices for the meaningful and truthful use of these or other media.8


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We do not then take Truth about things in the Lifeworld to be a classical conformity between a universal abstract mental representation and that which is represented categorially, nor a property of statements about it, but a property of meanings with individual, local, variable, sensory-based, material, technological, and historical origins and uses. The meanings we entertain about things are disclosed by praxes that are implicitly theory-laden, and usually over time multiply theory-laden, impermanent and changing. They are local, because expert communities are exclusive and gather locally around elite practitioners. They are technological because, if they are scientific entities, they are revealed only with the aid of technologies. They are historical because it happens that, when the particular theory-ladenness of the praxes becomes explicit, new, better or, at least, different, praxes can often be engineered with a consequent transformation of cultural meaning. It can happen, say, that a new electronic gun functions as a hammer, or that hammers eventually disappear entirely in a world of plastics and high tech. Such a spiral of meaning change turns endlessly within the historicality of Being (see Heidegger, 1996, p. 9) as such examples show. Such a process of theory-driven cultural change brings new historical perspectives into play and, through forgetfulness, inevitably puts old ones out of play. The big mistake of modernity was to commit itself to the classical notion of truth that could only be retained by supposing that scientific theory could be separated logically or ontologically from temporality and culture. Flecks study of the genesis and development of a theory and clinical praxis for syphilis illustrates the dependence of research on hermeneutics, temporality, and culture (1979).

Tradition and Meaning

Meaning is articulated and transmitted only through the medium of texts, speech, actions, empirical procedures, and other public signs expressive of meaning.9 While these serve as conduits for meaning, it is not the structure of the conduit that constitutes meaning.10 Nor are meanings transported in conduits like coal or water. Meanings have to be re-created by interpretation at each reading of the source texts by the addressees, or if by other readers, according to their interest in the source texts, etc. Consequently, if two readers belong to different communities, say, a professional community and a lay community, it is entirely possible that the meanings derived by perfectly legitimate processes of interpretation will not agree, yet each can yield a truth,


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say, one literal and one metaphorical, or both metaphorical in different ways, lexical or grammatical (see Lakoff and Johnson, 1999; Halliday and Martin, 1993; Bazermann, 1988, pp. 291-297)

Although there are many ways in which words and texts are used, it is not the case, however, that anything goes. Scientists like Einstein and Heisenberg were well aware that rational hermeneutic inquiry acknowledges the existence of traditions of interpretation that give todays readers and inquirers a version of the meaning of past sources that is culturally privileged by the current goals of the linguistic and cultural environment of the community with special ownership rights in the subject matter. Such traditions of interpretation from the short term perspective tend to possess a static quality that from the long term perspective shows up as an inauthenticity to be overcome for the sake of growth of knowledge (cf. Heidegger, 1996, p. 9; Heelan, 1975a). Within the sciences such traditions of interpretation approximate to what Fleck (1979, pp. 125-145), and Duden (1993) called thought styles, T.S. Kuhn (1970) called paradigms, and Crombie (1994) called styles of scientific thinking.

Hermeneutics of Theory and Praxis

Returning to the role of theory in the received view: it is important to understand how in this view theory serves to explain a phenomenon and how an explanation is used to solve a scientific problem by computation or calculation. It does so, say, by predicting the occurrence or non-occurrence of a phenomenon. A theory then explains by providing an ideal computational model that purports to represent the causes, conditions, and circumstances relevant to the occurrence (or non-occurrence) of the phenomenon. The model (as an objective ideal reconstruction) replaces the Lifeworld phenomenon for scientific purposes, and these purposes are achieved by using the model computationally to predict real Lifeworld outcomes. The fact that the beliefs surrounding the received view work successfully for prediction and control in broad ranges of scientific phenomena, does not, however, imply that scientific theory works for the reasons set forth in the received view. It could be successful for other reasons. However, since the reasons given by the received view deeply distort our understanding of ourselves and our Lifeworld by misunderstanding the role of theory in shaping how we think about phenomena, it is well to probe what is really implied by the meaning of theory in science or ordinary life.


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I follow Heidegger once again (1996, pp. 69-70). He begins with a worker engaged in a building project, using a hammer, and the hammer unexpectedly breaks. Let us suppose that a replacement cant be found and that he has to have one made. His problem: what are the specifications of a hammer (of the kind he needs to finish the job)? The answer to this question will be a theory (about hammers) that explains a hammers ability to do the hammers job. What is a hammers job? It is the meaning of a hammer. In this case it is a cultural praxis-laden meaning within the context, let us say, of the building trade. Note that without a specification of context, the question is relatively indeterminate. In the context of the received view, however, the hammer is a physical entity specified by a theory that lays out the physical specifications under which it can become the host of the cultural meaning of a hammer, but whether or not it is so assigned this function is a separate and contingent matter. This second meaning is a theory-laden meaning. The two meanings are not independent for the theory-laden meaning makes sense only if a local contingent existential condition is fulfilled, namely that the hammer-referent is praxis-laden in the conventional sense.

If this condition is fulfilled, the hammer is a public cultural reality, constituted by a socio-cultural meaning. But what if the existential condition is not fulfilled? It would not be a hammer, it would not be theory-laden, and would have no more title to being listed in the hammer category among any categorial listing of the furniture of the Lifeworld than any old boot that could be used to drive in a nail. It would become (in Heideggers words) a mere resource (Vorhanden or Bestand) for hammering or other indeterminate functions, or just nothing in particular (1996, pp. 42-43; 1977a).

Despite the fact then that (hammer-) theory explains (hammering-) praxis, the language of theory and the language of praxis belong to different though locally and contingently coordinated perspectives. Coordination does not imply, however, isomorphism between the two perspectives,11 for someone working on a carpentry project could, perhaps, be served on this occasion by an old boot or something other than a hammer. Since theory and praxis are merely coordinated but not isomorphic, they can be taken as axes for a kind of cultural phase space within which there are zones of uncertainty between explanatory theory and Lifeworld praxis, suggesting a Heisenbergian indeterminacy principle in the theory-praxis phase space.

Reflecting on the fact that individual things in our experience are never


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without a possible human purpose, everything in our experience, including scientific entities, bears some resemblance to a hammer, or other tool or equipment. There are then (at least) two perspectives on everything in the Lifeworld: (1) a praxis-laden cultural perspective that is constitutive of the Lifeworld, and (2) a theory-laden perspective possibly multiply theory-laden -- that explains this cultural perspective but does not constitute it. Being, as we said above, is not represented by theory, but by the Lifeworld. And the Lifeworld is a humanly meaningful contingent process that is subject historically both to possible development and possible decline.

When Theoretical Entities Are Also Cultural Entities of the Lifeworld The theoretical entities that enter into scientific theories of the human

body, e.g., carbon or sodium atoms, water molecules, genes, proteins and their properties, energy, momentum, wave length, spin, and much more, belong in the first place to the imaginative or fictive world of scientific models. Some in addition, however, belong to public fora of the Lifeworld. Which? The criterion of belonging to the Lifeworld is the possibility of realizing the theoretical entity as a Lifeworld phenomenon.12 This is achieved in the first instance by standard processes of measurement, because when a variable is measured it shows itself as present under the aspect measured. It is then a phenomenon in the Lifeworld and one shaped by the practices associated with the standard measurement setup (see Heelan, 1989, 1983b). In addition to the public Lifeworld forum of basic laboratory research, there are other public fora in which the theoretical entity has a presence with the status of a cultural phenomenon. These feature, for example, technology, clinical medicine, pharmaceuticals, finance, politics, religion, art, media. All of these fora -- like that of the basic laboratory -- are local fora in which a scientific entity, always in some technological context, can play the role of a dedicated cultural resource (for the life of clinical medicine, pharmaceuticals, finance, politics, religion, art, media) and by this means can become part of the local furniture of the Lifeworld. However, there is a difference between measurements (a) that are invasive and destroy the local interfaces with the living organism (e.g., by fixating and dying a cell), and (b) those that do not (e.g., certain imaging techniques, such as fMRI). It is clear that the products of the former are no longer living parts of the body and so are mere resources with multiple uses like any tool or equipment. Only the products of the latter are living


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phenomena since they retain their role as functioning parts of a living organism and, under the Lifeworld criteria stated above, may not actually have (or have the use of) all the phenomenological properties accessible only under invasive conditions (a). This suggests a Heisenbergian phenomenological indeterminacy principle between measurable profiles of type (a) and measurable profiles of type (b).

In all such local public fora, the scientific entity and its data are meaningfully bivalent and emulate the relationship between theory and praxis in the study of a hammer. If removed from actual or dedicated association with all such local fora the putative data are no longer data at all since they no longer have the capacity to make manifest in the Lifeworld the functioning presence of anything specific.13 Having no determinate Lifeworld meaning, they should be treated possibly as indeterminate resources -- or, perhaps, just as noise.

By way of illustration from the classical sciences, consider that when new theory-based technologies are added to the Lifeworld, as happened in Italy in the quattrocento with the invention of perspectival projection and the camera obscura, terms of a new kind, scientific and theoretical, came to be introduced into everyday language with new practical measurement-based cultural meanings, particularly, in this case, for space and time. The techniques of mathematical perspective, for instance, revolutionized the Lifeworld of Italy and later of Europe, through art, architecture, urban planning, navigation, warfare, and much more. The geometry-filled productions of craft skills in optics, astronomy, map making, painting, music, weapons design, and other arts and skills prepared the way for the elevation of artistic craft skills to scientific theory skills, where the product of the new art came to be regarded not as works of art, but as works of geometrical reason or science (Crombie, 1994, pp. 499-680). Among other things the works of geometrical reason changed the public urban space of Europe from a quilt of diverse local spaces and times into a single universal space and uniform cosmic time based on measurement with rigid rulers and mechanical clocks synchronized with the stars. For those who looked for a unified cosmology, the way was prepared for Galileo and the Copernican revolution (see Heelan, 1983a/1988, chap. 11). It was Galileo who helped convert works of thoughtful art -- his deft experiments, such as, timing balls rolling down an inclined plane -- into a world of science and reason, a move on which we now look back with


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more critical eyes.

It follows from what has been said that the furniture of the Lifeworld is not fixed with respect to categorial kinds. Along with natural physical phenomena, such as trees, it comprises invented cultural phenomena. Among them are those created by institutions, such as the Wassermann Test created by medical research laboratories. Some are categorized resources but not functionally assigned (Bestand or Vorhnde), such as, chemicals, reagents, and appliances in central storage available for a variety of uses (Heidegger, 1977a; 1996, pp. 42-43). Others are functionally assigned (Zuhnde), such as those actually used in surgery (Heidegger, 1996, p. 69). Only the latter enjoy a meaning in the Lifeworld that is actually specified for definite tasks and, consequently, are part of the furniture of the Lifeworld.

Metaphor and the Janus-like Face of Scientific Entities Fleck, in his history of the scientific theory of syphilis, recognized the

fact that in establishing the meaning of the new scientific term, syphilis, some special usage had to be negotiated between scientific terms normed by the thought collective of the research community and everyday terms normed by the thought collective of everyday life. To quote Duden:

... as a practising bacteriologist, [Fleck] knew that his eyes were caught, not only in the norm imposed by the collective of the laboratory, but equally by the thought style characteristic of his everyday family life. It is this double anchorage in the laboratory and at the table that makes the scientist a conduit through which scientific facts become confused with cultural interpretations. As a result, scientific facts ... have a Janus-like face (1993, pp.69).

What would result if the Janus-like face of a scientific fact were to go unnoticed or were to be flouted or ignored by convention in public fora of communication? This happens all too frequently, partly as a consequence of the widespread acceptance of the received view and partly because of the limitations on public discourse caused by the difficult subject matter. The result is distortions in communication. Two systematic errors become possible. Each, in its most innocent form, leads to the more or less conscious use of a figure of speech, something like a metaphor. (1) The post-scientific praxis-laden perspective of the laboratory Lifeworld zone is simply re-


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described metaphorically in terms of the theoretical scientific meanings (see Halliday and Martin, 1993; Bazermann, 1988, pp. 201-299). Under such conditions, theoretical descriptions replace practical descriptions. But if the metaphorical character of the predication is not recognized, it is easy to take the replacement to be exclusive and ontological, and to think that the Lifeworld conditioning of phenomena no longer exists, and that only the theoretical scientific world exists. For example, perceptual space is assumed to be modeled by Euclidean geometry, colors by electromagnetic wavelengths, sounds by pitch and loudness, and syphilis by a positive Wassermann Test, when all such predications are no more than metaphors apart from the collaboration of the human senses, language, and cultural environment. Perceptual space, color, sound, and syphilis exist only as the product of interpretation through which they in their Lifeworld involvement become intelligible as phenomena of human experience. Modern scientific medicine then has been often charged with a weakness for reducing patients to a bundle of anatomical parts and physiological processes, each having its scientific model at the level of chemistry, molecular biology, or physiology, and with little regard for the human life in which they are engaged and that uses such systems to cope, well or ill, satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily with the challenges of the patients Lifeworld. All would agree that, ultimately, scientific medical models should not replace the Lifeworld of the patient and should be at the service of the patients quality of life as lived in and tested by his or her Lifeworld.

(2) The theory-laden perspective of the scientific zone is simply re-described metaphorically in terms of pre-scientific (naive or folk) Lifeworld meanings. In other words, since the scientific terms are not well understood in many public fora, they are simply filled with the old familiar pre-scientific Lifeworld meanings that the received view wants to replace, possibly with a more or less conscious sense that this involves a metaphorical construction. From this awareness comes a warning, generally heeded by historians of science and medicine, that needs, however, to be heeded also by ethicists, media pundits, and public policy makers who, confusing the context of science with that of Lifeworld ontology, so easily and offhandedly fill scientific terms with prescientific Lifeworld meanings in their public discourse. For example, in such discourse, scientific terms such as cells, organs, and bacteria are treated as (naive or folk) things like machine replaceable parts violating their natures as integral parts of a living organism, for unlike machine parts


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these organic terms are constituted by the continuous flow of chemical exchanges across their interfaces with surrounding tissues.

What follows from the non-recognition of these (at their innocent best) metaphorical transitions is, for instance, confusion in the public debate about such contentious practices as abortion, cloning, disease prevention, AI (artificial intelligence), and much more, where scientific model terms, such as, fetus, genotype, bacteria, and neural networks, are filled in public discourse with meanings taken from related practical everyday (naive or folk) contexts, making them falsely synonymous with the everyday uses of the related everyday terms. In this case, the everyday terms would be child, adult, cause of disease, and intelligence, etc., respectively. This usage may be good politics, but it is itself a form of cultural disease.

Despite the problems created by possible metaphorical usages due to the complementarity of explanatory scientific theory and preventive medical practices, scientific theories have been a very positive force in shaping the contemporary Lifeworld. There is no need to press this point. The bacterial theory of infection led to a host of new cultural practices dealing with food handling, personal hygiene, sewage and water systems, the urban environment, and the treatment of bacterial diseases. But these practices, of course, have to be carefully designed and prudently implemented. However, as scientific theories grow and change, a train of new and often contentious practical problems are emerging: for instance, genetic theory has led to noisy debates as to whether or under what conditions genetically modified (GM) foods should be admitted to the food chain. New cultural practices found to be effective also lead in their turn to new scientific theories, which in turn lead to better medical practices, which may lead to better scientific theories, and so on. Though often treated by public fora and sometimes even by the medical profession as stripping the mystery from Nature and as exposing what is constitutive of what really is, scientific theory is in fact no more than a tool for, or a way of coping with some living function of the human body constituted as meaningful by a lifestyle in the patients Lifeworld. Because of the zone of uncertainty between theory making and cultural practices, and another between pre-scientific and post-scientific Lifeworld terms, there is an inescapable tension is the public mind that can -- and often does -- result in changes, possibly also in confusion, concerning conditions for meaning-fulfillment and concerning policy norms. Noting such changes, one captures something about the


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historicity and contingency of hermeneutic truth.

A critical example from medicine illustrates how the multivalence of scientific descriptions can create new moral perplexities in the Lifeworld. Barbara Duden (1993), historian of the womans body in clinical medicine, questions the scientific term fetus that belongs to contexts of scientific imaging and biology, and asks whether it is being abused in public fora of discussion when substituted for the term child that is used in the Lifeworld context of pregnancy and maternity. Has the separateness of contexts between model-scientific, pre-scientific Lifeworld-processes, and post-scientific Lifeworld-processes been illegitimately suppressed in our medical culture, in the media, and in public policy discourse? The terms fetus and child are, of course, correlative (each in its own context reveals something about what the other term refers to) but they are not isomorphic and interchangeable. A fetus is a term whose primary owner is the medical profession. A living fetus is recognized by sonographical and other imaging techniques apart from the mothers context in the everyday life-world. Even while inseparable from the living tissue of the mother, the fetus is generally described as a thing, as if, like a pre-scientific machine part, it had an existence separate from the mother. Duden notes with some concern that ethical rules and legislation in Western countries concerning pregnancies are presently being written in terms of the fetus where that term slurs the difference between the fetus as part of the scientific model, the fetus as an organic part of the post-scientific Lifeworld, and the child as an element in the mothers (usually) pre-scientific pregnant life. Duden is unhappy with this and asks: should the difference between the two cultural perspectives be recognized and an accommodation found that defers to the special cultural role of the mother in decision-making about the child?

Summary

In the assessment of scientific theory and practice, medical science and clinical practice, the critique of the received view of science made via the phenomenological orientation of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty towards the Lifeworld and Heideggers hermeneutics (or interpretation) of experience has made it possible to assign different roles to theory and practice: technological design for the purposes of environmental control to theory, and ontological understanding for the purpose of human culture to practice.


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Scientific theories then have a Janus-like face, one side looks in the direction of computational and technological control which is not constitutive of scientific knowledge but is merely a resource or tool for multiple practices, the other looks in the direction of human culture which is ultimately constitutive of ontological scientific knowledge.

This bivalence underscores the prevalence of metaphor in scientific discourse and, in particular, in medical science whether inside and outside the scientific community under conditions where modern culture and the received view tend to mask the presence of metaphor in such discourse. It was shown, however, that under the broader analysis of phenomenology, metaphor is as fundamental for true scientific discourse as literality is for the received view (see Bazermann, 1988; Fiumara, 1995; Heelan, 1998; Hesse and Arbib, 1986; and Lakoff and Johnson, 1999). Since the theoretical is mathematical and the practical is empirical, it makes no sense to predicate mathematical models literally of the Lifeworld; at best, the two must come together consciously in some unambiguous but metaphorical way guided by professional experts in the spirit of (what Aristotle called) phronesis (prudent action), aware that they are seeking no more than a consensus about a set of relevant soluble Lifeworld issues.

Acknowledgments: This paper owes much to helpful discussions with B.

Babich, H. Byrnes, E. Hurley, J. Schulkin and many others.

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NOTES

1. The received view is the name given to the analytic/empiricist mainline Anglo-American tradition in the philosophy of science that stems from the influence of Descartes, Kant, and particularly, the Marburg School of Neokantianism (cf. Friedman, 2000), whose principal exponents in America were R. Carnap, C. Hempel, H. Feigl, and the contributors to the Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science Series and the Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science Series. For an account of the received view, see the Introduction in Suppe (1977).

2. The life-world or everyday world are terms used in a non-technical sense. In the technical phenomenological sense, I use the term Lifeworld (see below).

3. The phenomenological tradition goes back to Edmund Husserl. Among those most important to mention within the context of this paper are, B. Babich, R. Crease, H. Dreyfus, B. Duden, T. Glazebrook, J. Grondin, A. Gurwitsch, D. Ihde, T. Kisiel, J. J. Kockelmans, D. Leder, M. Merleau-Ponty, M. Natanson, O. Pggeler, J. Rouse, R. Safranski, A. Schutz, K. Young, and R. Zaner

4. Hermeneutical phenomenology stems chiefly from M. Heidegger. I have been guided also in a curious way, by the works of B. Lonergan (1971, 1994) in developing Heidegger beyond what he said in order to lay out a more detailed position than Heidegger himself gave.

5. From the point of view of contemporary functional linguistics, see, for example, the work of Halliday and Martin (1993), Bakhtin (1986).

6. I am assuming Husserls analysis of a phenomenon as the object of a noetic-noematic intentionality-structure, where the structure is group-theoretic relative to the connected set of variations (e.g., perceptual profiles) that maintain the invariance of the interest the subject has in the phenomenon, see Husserl (1999), pp.163-185, and Heelan (1991b).

7. See, for example, Heidegger (1996), pp. 34-39. Polanyi, probably influenced by Heidegger, seems to say the same in different terms: the explicit meaning conceals a tacit meaning; see Polanyi (1964), pp. x-xi.

8. The Heideggerian notion of authenticity, openness, and freedom connect with Bakhtins interest in how the heteroglossia of meanings and the polyphony of voices in any community of speakers can be reconciled with universal reason. He writes: But [in any dialogue] in addition to [the] addressee (the second party), the author of the utterance, with a greater or lesser awareness, presupposes a higher superaddressee (third), whose absolutely just responsive understanding is presumed ... In various ages and with various understandings of the world, this superaddressee and his ideally responsive understanding assume various ideological expression


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(God, absolute truth, the court of dispassionate human conscience, the people, the court of history, science, and so forth). Bakhtin (1986), p. 126.

9. See the work of Bakhtin (1986), Bazermann (1988), and Halliday and Martin (1993) who address these questions from the functional linguistic standpoint. Also relevant are the writings of other scholars, such as, M. Holquist, T. Givon, who share this point of view.

10. However, the structure of the conduit gives rise to what scientists call information. Following Shannon and Weavers information theory, scientific information is defined as the capacity of a signal channel to encode messages. It does not connote the interpretation of the signals nor for what purpose this message-encoding capacity is used.

11. By isomorphism is meant a one-to-one translatability of any statement in one language into a unique statement in the other language. The two context-dependent languages refer to the same things but from different, often interacting and mutually interfering, perspectives. I have argued that these languages are related among themselves within a lattice structure which includes a least upper bound (lub) and a greatest lower bound (glb) as well as complements. This thesis is presented in Heelan (1983a/1988), chaps. 10 and 13; see also Heelan (1975b).

12. For a fuller account of what constitutes a phenomenon in Husserlean phenomenology, see also Heelan (1983a/1988; 1991b), and cf. Heidegger (1967).

13. There is the alternative strategy of re-evaluating the interpretive context of the experiment to pursue another goal. For a detailed study of data, see Heelan (1989), also (1983a/1988).

the lifeworld and scientific interpretation

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