 Such holism in interpretation (like the holism of taking into account a whole geographical, historical, and social context) may seem to lead to a certain circularity: in order to interpret the part one needs to take into account the whole, but equally, in order to grasp the whole one needs to understand its parts. Herder agrees about this, but he considers the circularity involved benign. Specifically, he recommends interpreting parts in a provisional way in light of a general knowledge of the language in order thereby to generate a provisional interpretation of the whole, then applying this provisional interpretation of the whole in order to refine the interpretation of each of the parts, and so on, back and forth, indefinitely (see again the Critical Forests). This might seem like a mere pseudo-solution, but it is not: the key insight on which it implicitly rests is that understanding is not an all-or-nothing matter but instead something that comes in degrees. 