The paper presents a comparative analysis between hermeneutics and ethnomethodology of science. A careful examination of the approaches suggested by the two programs not only demonstrates that a non-essentialist inquiry of scientific practices is possible, it also reveals how the significant methodological differences between these (post-phenomenological) programs inform divergent pictures of science’s practical rationality. The role these programs play in the debates on science’s cognitive autonomy is illuminated by spelling out the idea of the internal criticism of scientific research they (...) advance. In contrast to the external criticism of social epistemologists, the internal one does not aim at a deconstruction of science’s cognitive autonomy. Its task is to promote the epistemic emancipation of scientific communities by stressing the reflexive dimension of scientific research. (shrink)

The paper provides an overview of the hermeneutic and phenomenological context from which the idea of a “constitutional analysis” of science originated. It analyzes why the approach to “hermeneutic fore-structure of scientific research” requires to transcend the distinction between the context of justification and the context of discovery. By incorporating this approach into an integral “postmetaphysical philosophy of science”, I argue that one can avoid the radical empiricism of recent science studies, while also preventing the analysis of science's discursive practices (...) from collapsing into the frames of radical anti-epistemological critique mandated by some hermeneutic philosophers. (shrink)