SCIENCE AND THE "END" OFEPISTEMOLOGY: THE SIGNIFICANCE OFTHE POSTMODERN PHILOSOPHICALHERMENEUTICS FOR AFRICA

Abstract

The emergence of science as an autonomous discipline separate from philosophy was coeval with the ascendancy of epistemology as a theorizing about knowledge. The modern period, as the “Age of Reason” enthroned science as the very paradigm of institutionalized rationality. This paper undertakes a critical analysis of the challenge posed by the occupation of the epistemic cultural space by the symbiotic relationship between science and epistemology. The result was that epistemology created a permanent, neutral, trans-historical, trans-cultural algorithm for the legitimization and justification of all knowledge claims. Employing expository, historical and analytic methodologies, the paper then goes on to discuss how postmodernism, with its twin doctrines of plurality and relativism, posited hermeneutics as a principle that will keep the cultural space said to have been created by the demise of epistemology open for dance and display for all cultures. The paper then goes on to analyze the significance of the opening up of this epistemic space for Africa, and concludes by arguing that the relativism of postmodern hermeneutics is safer and easier to handle by our world when we compare it to the evil brought up on humanity by the dominating and regimenting ideologies of epistemologism and scientism