ABSTRACT
The two most characteristic interests of continental philosophy are its preoccupation with the problem of the "constitution" of knowledge, and the effect of the historical and cultural world context of science on the "social constitution" of scientific knowledge. Such constitution is "hermeneutical" when it essentially involves language and historical communities of interpreters. In contrast, the most characteristic interest of analytic philosophy is its concern with objectivity and truth, and its preference for the methods of formal logic. A philosopher of science in the phenomenological or hermeneutical tradition would be guided by a new thrust different from a philosopher in the analytic tradition, both in the choice of significant problems and in the manner in which these are treated. Hermeneutical phenomenology concerned with language and its extensions which provide both for mystery and for historical development in the uncovering of horizons of the world. Ordinary language assumes that the criteria of theoretical scientific language have a universal and overriding privilege.
