GEOGRAPHICAL HERMENEUTICS: CONCEPTS, MODELS AND RESEARCH METHODS

Abstract

Geographical hermeneutics is one of the forms of hermeneutic metatheory, which includes philosophical, mathematical and informational hermeneutics. The latter includes geographical science, focused on the processing of spatially distributed data.Mathematical hermeneutics allows formalizing methods of explanation and understanding (insight, interpretation) of information objects (descriptions) through fibering procedures based on applied mathematical analysis of differential geometry. The input informationis interpreted as an unknown system function of variables – characteristics of a geographical object. Such a function reliably describesthe surface of the manifold, to which the tangent lines (planes) at each selected point generate a fibering space (fiber bundle) as polysystem, that in parts displaying the system function in each fiber (layer). The properties of the layer are uniquely determined by functionof the tangent point coordinates (norm) and the equation (model) of the tangent plane in relative variables. In hermeneutics, these normand model correspond to the semantic meaning and meaningful sense of the geoinformation processed. It is possible to interpret different models through the translation of knowledge from one system language to another one, and interpretation in order to give toabstract models the semantic meaning by immersing knowledge in a specific geohistorical environment according to the positionalityrule. Thus, the inverse problems of geographical hermeneutics through meta-analysis and the forward ones through metageosystemsynthesis are solved. Geohermeneutics distinguishes triads of sciences such as "physics – geophysics – physical geography" on abstractlaws of theories, the study of the spatially distributed action of these laws in the form of terrestrial fields and the spatial manifestationof laws, taking into account the peculiarities of the influence of the geographical environment.