[That's imaginative, not imaginary 
]
I’m trying to get to discussing a view of science-as-hermanteutic, but life is getting in the way of me pulling some thoughts together. So, as a stepping stone, here are some related comments from Kevin Vanhoozer (originally related to theology, but I’m borrowing the ideas!)
To see knowledge as a form of interpretation, then, is to expand and enrich the traditional notion of epistemology. It allows us, moreover to, to reclaim the imagination — the capacity to see things together, in terms of whole patterns. This self-conscious appropriation of the imagination is crucial…Right interpretation depends not only on having the right procedures but on having the right habits of perception as well as a desire to understand the whole. We often need to be trained in order to perceive things correctly.
Perhaps we can view science as a community where imagination — the ability to see the patterns — is trained into a particular way of perceiving. As always, I like the community emphasis in this view. I also like the fact that it emphasises the creative aspect of science. An obvious characteristic to those involved — I think — but not one that fits with the cliches.
(I guess this view can wander into Kuhn territory — with the scientific community training in a specific paradigm, but I’m not trying to go that far here. In heading towards science-as-hermaneutic, I want to tread the line between the hard modernist and post-modernist views — somewhere between science-as-pure-objectivity and science-as-pure-subjectivity.)
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