Correcting the OH↔ST Bridge
Objective hermeneutics and system theory do not observe the same object from different angles; they constitute different objects through different epistemic operations.
For objective hermeneutics, reconstructed latent structures are treated as generative social facts that explain why a text takes the form it does and how it normatively binds recipients.
For system theory, the same textual elements appear only as semantic selections within ongoing communication, relevant solely for the differences they make to subsequent operations.
Calling these outputs “compatible observations” risks a category error by smuggling reconstructive claims into a framework that is structurally indifferent to reconstruction.
The apparent overlap (“pioneer ethos,” “recognition,” “innovation”) is not shared substance but coincidental semantic reuse under distinct observational regimes.
What is genuinely shared is not an object but a site of irritation: each paradigm can treat the other’s output as environmental input without adopting its validity claims.
Undecidability is therefore not a residual ambiguity but the primary result: it marks the boundary at which translation fails and adjacency becomes analytically productive.
A disciplined OH↔ST relation consists in controlled non-conversion: placing reconstructions and re-descriptions side by side without expecting convergence.