Semiotic and structuralist criticism also have their roots in a widespread speculation according to which scientific inquiry does not exhaust the modes of human understanding, being unable to describe the world as we experience it.
We stand to this world (the Lebenswelt) in a relation not of observation but of ‘belonging’. From Kantian metaphysics and 19th-century anthropology arose the idea that a peculiar mode of understanding is reserved for this ‘human world’, a mode of understanding (Verstehen) which would show to be fraught with meaning what science displays as ‘neutral’ and ‘meaning-free’.
Meaning belongs to human acts and gestures; it also lies dormant in the world. Perhaps, then, there is a general method that will reveal the meanings of things. Such a method will be unconcerned with explanation and prediction, but it will be of universal significance nevertheless, relating us to artifacts, to art, to things and to one another in a way that restores the centrality of human thought and action. It may even re-create that necessary illusion which scientific explanation took away, the illusion of human freedom.
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