Scientific Journals as Narrative Objects of the Sciences

Abstract

Using a referential framework that integrates the hermeneutic philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricœur, the critical theory of Herbert Marcuse and Jürgen Habermas, and the traditions of the history of the book and reading with the works of Roger Chartier and Martyn Lyons, among others, this essay aims to understand scientific journals as narrative objects of the sciences. These journals bring together communities that share common ways of interpreting the world and shape agreed-upon forms of narrating that common understanding. From this perspective, scientific journals interlace the rationality present in the conversations that occur in the narrative dimension with the conversations of their social environment. These conversations mutually influence one other, and in that dynamic converge both macro-social actions related to political, technical, economic, cultural, and/or religious dimensions, as well a series of mediating practices that operate at the micro-social level, linked to editorial knowledge, formal and informal channels of circulation, collaborative networks, and operational capacities, with the potential to legitimize, delegitimize, or even nullify the circulation of certain conversations.