Navigate the mutual dependence between parts and whole in interpretation — understanding the whole requires grasping the parts, but grasping the parts requires a prior sense of the whole. Rooted in Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. Use when interpreting a text, codebase, requirements document, or any artifact where local meaning depends on global context; when initial interpretation keeps producing contradictions that may mean the pre-understanding is wrong; when needing to understand something genuinely foreign or unfamiliar; or when a system cannot be understood by reading linearly. Do NOT use for well-defined lookup tasks, procedural execution, or when the artifact is fully self-contained and locally interpretable.
Understanding is never a clean start. You always bring a prior sense of the whole — a "pre-understanding" — to any interpretation. The parts revise your sense of the whole; the revised whole changes how you read the parts. This is not a problem to overcome. It is the structure of all interpretation.
Gadamer's insight: you cannot step outside the circle. The question is whether you enter it productively.
pre-understanding of the whole
↓
read a part
↓
part confirms, extends, or contradicts the pre-understanding
↓
revise the whole
↓
re-read prior parts with the new whole
↓
repeat until the parts and whole cohere
This is not a linear process. Each revision of the whole casts prior parts in a new light, sometimes requiring you to re-read them. The circle spirals inward toward coherence — it does not complete.
1. Surface your pre-understanding explicitly. Name what you already assume about the whole before reading the parts. What do you expect this codebase / document / argument to be doing? Making the pre-understanding explicit is the prerequisite for noticing when the parts contradict it.
2. Read parts as evidence about the whole. Each detail is not just a local fact — it is also evidence that either confirms or disrupts your current sense of the whole. Ask: What would the whole have to be for this part to make sense in it?
3. When a part resists — stop. Contradiction is the most important signal. If a part cannot be reconciled with your current understanding of the whole, there are three possibilities:
Check all three before proceeding. The third is the most important and the most commonly skipped.
4. Revise the whole before continuing. Do not store contradictions as loose ends to resolve later. Each contradiction should trigger an explicit revision of the pre-understanding before reading further. Otherwise, unresolved contradictions accumulate and produce the feeling that something "doesn't quite add up" — which is usually the circle having been short-circuited.
5. Re-read earlier parts through the revised whole. A revision of the whole means earlier interpretations may have been wrong. Return to the most critical earlier parts and re-read them with the updated understanding. This is not inefficiency — it is the mechanism of genuine understanding.
Codebases: Enter with a hypothesis about the architecture. Each module is evidence. When a module does something unexpected, ask whether the architecture hypothesis is wrong.
Requirements documents: Enter with a hypothesis about the problem being solved. Each requirement is evidence. When requirements conflict, ask whether your hypothesis about the problem is wrong — not just which requirement to prioritize.
Arguments and texts: Enter with a hypothesis about the thesis. Each paragraph is evidence. When a paragraph seems irrelevant or contradictory, ask whether you have the thesis right.
Unfamiliar domains: Pre-understanding is unavoidably thin. Read for revision — expect the whole to change substantially with every part.
See gadamer-and-tradition.md for the philosophical background: Gadamer's critique of Enlightenment epistemology, the concept of the "fusion of horizons," and why objectivity in interpretation is a misguided goal.