Mediations of techno-science in science fiction

Résumé En

This article discusses the linguistics-based rules and procedures found in Ricoeur’s hermeneutic method for sorting out the consequences of multiple readings of written cultural expressions, and thencompares the reading to findings in social sciences. To his analysis of pre-understanding and interpretation it aims to add observations by cognitive science about the treatment of data making by mediations. It proposes a new method where a thought-experiment would enable us to see narrator and narrative sequence playing the role of mediations in the thinking processes. The results of a casestudy of a science-fiction novel which is itself steeped in the human-machine paradigm produce a possibility of an uncanny sensation arising from the thought experiment. The suitability of Ricoeur’s procedure and rules approach to science fiction argues positively for the so-called findings of science fiction in the current context in a debate where cybernetics and techno-science have become all but hegemonic.