Interpreting an Author's Words

The difficulty in understanding the written word is not the vagueness of the composition, but the elusiveness of the author. A basic problem in understanding an author's words relates to the language and culture. When words or thoughts are translated from one language and a particular culture to another the meaning changes. These changes often go unnoticed and individuals apply a current definition to the words. In fact the meaning of words is in people. This could be the reason English/European students read authors rather than subjects. Knowing the orientation of the author and the background, philosophy, and purpose of the composition increases the understanding of the written document. So rooted in the earliest awareness of a need for knowledge and the continuing search by generations of thinkers, the systematic process of investigation emerge, in spite of the hurdles of vested interests and lack of support from the general populous. The present concept of scientific methodology began to form during medieval times and developed into a full body of concepts and constructs in the modern age. As humans wrote down their observations, the effort to understand what was written began. To understand and interpret different aspects of human existence, various groups of scholars began to devise different schemes, but all used the basic methods of inquiry.