ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an argument in favor of strong pluralism by considering the long-standing divide between science and hermeneutics. It focuses on two examples of attempts to address this divide—the first between Andre Green and Dan Stern, the second between Irwin Hoffman and both Jeremy Safran and Morris Eagle and David Wolitzky. The chapter also presents a debt to those who have sought to defend the importance of pluralism in psychoanalysis, notably Eagle and Wolitzky; P. Luyten, S. J. Blatt, and J. Corveleyn; C. Strenger; and Robert Wallerstein. The commonplace notion that a divide exists between hermeneutics and science has its source in 19th-century debates that contrasted Geisteswissenschaft (literally, science of the mind or soul) to Naturwissenschaft (natural science). A half a century ago, this debate grew more factious with C. P. Snow’s famous distinction between “the two cultures” of literary and scientific culture, wherein they are regarded as rivals, rendering discussion across the boundaries difficult and frustrating.
