This study recapitulates basic developments in the tradition of hermeneutic and phenomenological studies of science. It focuses on the ways in which scientific research is committed to the universe of interpretative phenomena. It treats scientific research by addressing its characteristic hermeneutic situations, and uses the following basic argument in this treatment: By demonstrating that science’s epistemological identity is not to be spelled out in terms of objectivism, mathematical essentialism, representationalism, and foundationalism, one undermines scientism without succumbing scientific research to “procedures of normative-democratic control” that threaten science’s cognitive autonomy. The study shows that in contrast to social constructivism, hermeneutic phenomenology of scientific research makes the case that overcoming scientism does not imply restrictive policies regarding the constitution of scientific objects.

Bern, Berlin, Frankfurt/M., New York, Paris, Wien. Studies in the Intercultural History of Christianity. Vol. 111 General Editors: Richard Friedli, Jan A.B. Jongeneel, Klaus Koschorke, Theo Sundermeier, Werner Ustorf

Bern, Berlin, Frankfurt/M., New York, Paris, Wien. Studies in the Intercultural History of Christianity. Vol. 111 General Editors: Richard Friedli, Jan A.B. Jongeneel, Klaus Koschorke, Theo Sundermeier, Werner Ustorf

Reality and Illusion in New Testament Scholarship is a basic introduction to the theory of interpretation and theory of history for New Testament readers, students, and scholars. It offers an entry into the thought of the late, great Bernard Lonergan on insight and judgment, subjectivity and objectivity, horizons and changes of horizon, alienation and ideology. It focuses on what it takes to measure up to the literature of the New Testament. Book jacket.

This book explores the rapidly growing interdisciplinary area of hermeneutics and its significance for biblical studies, combining wide, fundamental, rigorous, and creative theoretical concerns with practical questions about how we read biblical texts.