ABSTRACT
The similarities between hermeneutics and current information theory are obvious yet many fail to see the vital differences. It is important to note in advance that the early Shannon-Weaver2 research is not concerned with human communication except in a remote technical way. In their structural format, an individual possesses a definite, more or less unambiguous, message that he must encode in some manner for transmission. In various random and nonrandom ways noise enters the system through such naturalistic creations as atmospheric conditions, electrical eccentricity, human error, or some technological breakdown. The message that emerges from the transmission is obscured or in some way not identical to the message encoded. The message available to the receiver, therefore, is different from the message sent by the initiating party.
