The term double hermeneutics is used in the epistemology and methodology of the social sciences to identify a particular problem in the social sciences : both the formation of theories and the collection of data are hermeneutic .
The term was coined by the British sociologist Anthony Giddens , who initially recalled the fact - also not unknown before him - that social phenomena are already meaningfully constituted even before they are professionally analyzed by social scientists. For him, this means that the condition for the social scientist who has acquired social phenomena to "enter" the field of sociological research is to acquire what actors already know and need to know in order to be able to `` find their way '' in the daily activities of social life .
The prerequisite for the hermeneutic duplication and its first step is first of all the acquisition of everyday social knowledge. This knowledge then experiences its technical transformation in the sociological research process. This transformation process is also expressed in the form of a special style of thinking with its special technical language.
In Giddens' structuration theory , methodological reference is made to the irreversible duplication of the "frames of meaning" of both forms of knowledge, since the mutual penetration of two frames of meaning is a logically necessary element of the social sciences, the meaningful social world as it is seen by acting laypeople and by the Social scientists introduced metalanguages is constituted; In the practice of the social sciences there is a constant 'exchange' between the two frames of meaning. Despite all mutual feedback processes and mutual penetration of lay everyday and professional scientific knowledge, both forms of knowledge could never be become identical to each other.
