In the occasion of the EPISTRAN preliminary meeting that will take place on July 2023, 13th and 14th (NOVA/FCSH + online), Pietro Gori will deliver an exploratory paper titled “Expanding the epistemological framework of natural science. Mary Hesse (and Thomas Kuhn) on Hermeneutics, Translation, and Interpretation“.
The paper will be focused on Mary Hesse’s hermeneutic approach towards scientific knowledge, in relationship/comparison with Thomas Kuhn’s reflections on translation and interpretation in science.
Responding to a challenge raised by Douglas Robinson in the conclusion of his book Translationality (2017: 200-202), the EPISTRAN project uses concepts, methods and theories from Translation Studies to investigate the semiotic processes (verbal and nonverbal) involved in the transfer of information between different ‘epistemic systems’. The main focus is on the relationship between technical ‘scientific’ knowledge (i.e. the kind of knowledge which purports to be objective, rational and universal) and the various embedded, embodied and subjective forms of knowledge that have served as its Others in different times and places. Starting from the assumption that these are different modes of discourse and thus susceptible to translational operations, the project seeks to investigate the mechanisms at work in three distinct areas:
Science and Humanities – how specialist science is reformulated into popular and educational science, or reworked into imaginative literature, audiovisual content or even works of art
Knowledges of the World – how forms of epistemic translation are/can be used to transmit scientific and medical knowledge to indigenous communities in the Global South, and, conversely, how indigenous knowledges from these regions are/can be translated into formats that are meaningful to the sophisticated North
The Invention of Science – the translational processes involved in the Early Modern transition to a scientific mode of inquiry
The research, which makes use of methods drawn from Descriptive Translation Studies, supplemented with considerations from recent work in the fields of multimodality, neuroscience and information technology, is conducted by a transdisciplinary team with a shared interest in translation.
Guido Tana will deliver a paper titled “Dogmatism, Knowledge, and Factivity”. The presentation will analyse and assess some proposed solutions of the dogmatist paradox and presents a possible, albeit revisionary, way out. Specifically, whether it really is irrational to be dogmatic in the way described above, and whether it is possible to utter genuine knowledge-claims while allowing for knowledge defeasibility. It will be argued that both approaches fail to solve the paradox.
Pietro Gori will develop some “Remarks on Mary Hesse’s hermeneutic account of scientific knowledge”. Aim of his paper will be to reflect on Hesse’s attempt to bridge the gap between the approach to knowledge exhibited by the natural sciences on the one hand, and the human or social sciences on the other, with an emphasis on the consequences that this comparison may have on the educational plane.
The complete programme of the conference is available here.