Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Applied Herme-what?

Hermeneutics is the science or art of interpretation. It occurred to me that this is a suitably open-ended concept to use in a name for an open-ended blog such as this.

her·me·neu·tics \-tiks\ n pl but sing or pl in constr (1737) : the study of the methodological principles of interpretation (as of the Bible)
- Webster’s Dictionary.

hermeneutics [n] the science of searching for hidden meaning in texts; exegetics, exploration, interpretation, investigation, literary criticism, psychoanalytic criticism, revealing, unmasking
- Roget’s Thesaurus.

hermeneutics
Philosophical tradition concerned with the nature of understanding and interpretation of human behaviour and social traditions. From its origins in problems of biblical interpretation, hermeneutics has expanded to cover many fields of enquiry, including aesthetics, literary theory, and science. The German philosophers Wilhelm Dilthey, Martin Heidegger, and Hans-Georg Gadamer were influential contributors to this tradition.
- Hutchinson’s Multimedia Encyclopedia.

At one time, I’d entertained the idea of calling this blog, “Such As It Is”. Thus I might refer to it as, “My blog, ‘Such As It Is’”. And others might refer to it as, “Jacob’s blog, ‘Such As It Is’”.

Other names considered included “The Echo Chamber”.

For no particular reason, I went with “Applied Hermeneutics”.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

you shoulda stuck with echo chamber. dumbarse

21/10/05 1:11 PM  
Blogger Jacob A. Stam said...

Ever the teacher, Father Park.

9/12/05 12:48 PM  

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