ABSTRACT
Interpretation should have no mystique, and it is important to realise that it is not, in its essence, new. There are certain new factors, it is true. One is a general awareness that as we approach the twenty-first century the more highly civilised peoples of the globe are, as individuals, no wiser in their relationship to their world than earlier generations. This matters not just for people’s personal pleasure and self-confidence (though this is not to be undervalued), but for the world itself. A second novelty is the self-consciousness with which the process of Interpretation is now being analysed, refined and practised. Just as the casual study of animal behaviour has become formalised into the science of ethology, and interest in human inter-relationships has evolved into the discipline of social psychology, so the urgency of the need to communicate our understanding of the world about us has resulted in the discipline of Interpretation.
