ritical thinking. This implies that its principal assumption is that experience and phenomena are meant to be scrutinized empirically, then critiqued and judged with reference to what is known. In this regard, Ferraris's (1996) demonstrated that the domain of interpretation has been universalized, or systematically applied to human and natural sciences รน all by way of philosophical epistemology. The focus on interpretation is consistent with cross-disciplinary analysis and critique, not only of specific experiences but also of the larger picture or structure of human experience, not least the social and cultural ideologies and assumptions informing such experience (Shafer, 1994).
The types of questions to be answered from the hermeneutics philosophical viewpoint are those that yield answers about meaning and about implications of prevailing belief systems for future public policy and social experience. From a term of Ricoeur's, the "hermeneutics of suspicion" (Shafer, 1994, p. 579), a critical attitude embedded into the research methods of hermeneutics may be inferred. Insights derived from the lessons of found experience interpreted could themselves point in the direction of transformed belief systems. Because the mode of inquiry is critical, analysis and conclusions appear to have a strong normative and ethical component.
The hermeneutics mode of inquiry always begins with some given (e.g., a text or a set of observable conditions such as the social and cultural environment in which experience or phenomena are investigated). What is known or understood is important, but equally important is the cultural context in which knowledge is derived. Accordingly, for example, Thomas Kuhn (1962) argued that the nature of scientific knowledge and practice changes (undergoes a paradigm shift) when prevailing scientific theory (e.g., pre-Darwinian creation theory) exhibits an "insufficiency of methodological directives, by themselve...