[1] The reciprocity between text and context is part of what Heidegger called the hermeneutic circle. Among the key thinkers who elaborated this idea was the sociologist Max Weber. (wikipedia)

“Hermeneutics  is a branch  of philosophy concerned  with the interpretation of texts. It involves  a careful,  self-conscious  analysis of the meaning  of texts that  keeps in  mind the historical or biographical background  of  the  authors,  their  intentions in  writing the  text,  the audience they intended to reach, and the specific vocabulary  they had available.” (p4) …  In a hermeneutical analysis, the interpreter needs to become aware of his or her own  biases. One may not be able to escape all such biases, but it is important to identify them and to lay them out on the table for all to see. One such bias is very basic: When  we went looking for experiences  of awe and  wonder,   we  already  had  some  conception of what we were looking for. We self-consciously decided on some working definitions. Although one of us (Bruce Janz) is well versed in the  history  of mysticism,  we took a more  pragmatic  (less  historical) route to defining awe and wonder, treating the definitions as tentative, preliminary, provisional, and open to revision. Still, these definitions guided our reading of the texts. However, we also found certain things of interest that did not fall into these categories, and so widened our scope  as we did our  analysis.  Here are the  working  definitions  with which we started.” (p6)

“Gadamer (1960/2013) may have a satisfying solution, however: the hermeneutic circle, in which one treats a whole with reference to its parts, while simultaneously mindful that each part exists in the context of the whole. Gadamer envisioned the circle as a dynamic and progressive “conversation” with data that builds consensus and is more accessible to practical application. This process is at the heart of the research methodology utilized by most of our authors.” (from Neil Greenberg in: Katherine Greenberg, Brian Sohn, Neil Greenberg, Howard R Pollio, Sandra Thomas, John Smith (2019) The Phenomenological Heart of Teaching and Learning.  Routledge (2019), Chapter 2: “Getting DEEP: The Integrative Biology of Teaching and Learning”)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeneutic_circle  (“Heidegger saw the hermeneutic process as cycles of self-reference that situated our understanding in a priori prejudices, Gadamer reconceptualized the hermeneutic circle as an iterative process through which a new understanding of a whole reality is developed by means of exploring the detail of existence. Gadamer viewed understanding as linguistically mediated, through conversations with others in which reality is explored and an agreement is reached that represents a new understanding.^[7]…”)

“Hermeneutics is the study of interpretation. Hermeneutics plays a role in a number of disciplines whose subject matter demands interpretative approaches, characteristically, because the disciplinary subject matter concerns the meaning of human intentions, beliefs, and actions, or the meaning of human experience as it is preserved in the arts and literature, historical testimony, and other artifacts.” …. “Hermeneutics opposes what can be described as the ‘vertical’ picture of knowledge at issue in epistemological foundationalism, focusing, instead, on the ‘circularity’ at issue in understanding. In epistemological foundationalism, our body of beliefs (or at least our justified beliefs) are sometimes said to have the structure of an edifice. Some beliefs are distinguished as foundations, ultimately, because they depend on no further beliefs for their justification; other beliefs are distinguished as founded, in that their justification depends on the foundational beliefs (Steup and Neta 2015, Section 4.1). This is a ‘vertical’ picture of human knowledge in that new beliefs build on established beliefs; new beliefs are justified on the basis of already justified beliefs, and these beliefs, in turn, are justified by still other beliefs, all the way down to the foundational beliefs. Inquiry, then, is an ‘upward’ pursuit, one that adds new ‘floors’ to the edifice of what we already know. [The Hermeneutical Circle, on the other hand, emphasizes “ the ‘circularity’ of understanding. … Broadly [construed], … the concept of the hermeneutical circle signifies that, in interpretive experience, a new understanding is achieved not on the basis of already securely founded beliefs. Instead, a new understanding is achieved through renewed interpretive attention to further possible meanings of those presuppositions which, sometimes tacitly, inform the understanding that we already have.^[2]   [In the older tradition of] text interpretation—[we are involved in a circular relation of whole and parts. This formulation derives from antiquity … On the one hand, it is necessary to understand a text as a whole in order properly to understand any of its parts. On the other hand, however, it is necessary to understand the text in each of its parts in order to understand it as a whole.”

In contemporary hermeneutics, the concept of the hermeneutical circle is rarely restricted to the context of text interpretation, and, too, the circularity of interpretive experience is not necessarily cast in terms of the relation of whole and parts. Nevertheless, as Grondin suggests, this older formulation can help to illustrate the circular character of interpretive experience (2016, 299). In text interpretation so conceived, our efforts to understand a text have no firm foundation from which to begin. Rather, these efforts unfold always in media res, through an interpretation of the whole of a text that proceeds from presuppositions about the parts; and, no less, through an interpretation of the parts that proceeds from presuppositions about the whole. Understanding, then, is not pursued ‘vertically’ by layering beliefs on top of foundations, but rather ‘circularly,’ in an interpretive movement back and forth through possible meanings of our presuppositions that by turns allow a matter to come into view. In this, the pursuit of understanding does not build ‘higher and higher;’ it goes ‘deeper and deeper,’ gets ‘fuller and fuller,’ or, perhaps ‘richer and richer.’

 (George, Theodore, “Hermeneutics”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2020/entries/hermeneutics/)

FOR A&O: AS YOU DEFINE your phenomenon, treat your definitions (like all definitions and in the best traditions of science) as tentative, preliminary, provisional, and open to revision.  You need to start somewhere, more-or-less shared understanding is essential to intersubjective communication, but everyone should understand that ambiguity enables flexibility necessary for continuing dialogue, necessary to enlarging and deepening shared understanding.  This understanding is not—can never be—perfect. We cannot even be expected to agree with ourselves as our experience and understanding grows and our provisional definitions are commensurately adjusted.  

 Gallagher et al 2015)

[2] S. Gallagher,  B. Janz, L. Reinerman, P. Bockelman, and J. Trempler. 2015. A Neurophenomenology of Awe and Wonder: Towards a Non-reductionist Cognitive Science. London: Palgrave-Macmillan.