Levels of Generality
How general are principles of source criticism? Some principles are universal, other principles are specific for certain kinds of information sources. One may ask whether principles of source criticism are unique to the humanities?
There is today no consensus about the similarities and differences between natural science and humanities. Logical positivism claimed that all fields of knowledge were based on the same principles. Much of the criticism of logical positivism claimed that positivism is the basis of the sciences, whereas hermeneutics is the basis of the humanities. This was, for example, the position of Jürgen Habermas. A newer position, in accordance with, among others, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Thomas Kuhn understands both science and humanities as determined by researchers' preunderstanding and paradigms. Hermeneutics is thus a universal theory. The difference is, however, that the sources of the humanities are themselves products of human interests and preunderstanding, whereas the sources of the natural sciences are not. Humanities are thus "doubly hermeneutic".
Natural scientists, however, are also using human products (such as scientific papers) which are products of preunderstanding (and, for example, academic fraud).
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