The number of coherent interpretations of a text may be infinite, but not all interpretations are coherent.
Texts frequently say more than their authors intended to say, but less than what many incontinent readers would like them to say.
Independent of any alleged intention of the author is the intention of the text. But a text exists only as a physical object, as a Linear Text Manifestation. It is possible to speak of text intentions only as the result of a conjecture on the part of the reader. The initiative of the reader basically consists in making a conjecture about the text intention. A text is a device conceived in order to produce its Model Reader. Such a Model Reader is not the one who makes the only right conjecture. A text can foresee a Model Reader entitled to try infinite conjectures. But infinite conjecture does not mean any possible conjecture.— Eco (1990, 148)
Eco follows this up with an example of how some conjectural readings of a passage in Finnegans Wake – which is ‘itself a metaphor for the process of unlimited semiosis’ (Eco 1979, 70) – are tested and refuted by invoking the principle of ‘internal textual coherence.’ The scientific method of ‘conjectures and refutations’ (Popper 1968) also takes coherence as a leading principle, although it also brings experience of the external world to bear on the question, by making observations which could refute even an internally coherent conjecture. The method of the artist is essentially the same, according to Gombrich (2002); he calls it ‘schema and correction’ or ‘making before matching.’ If the goal of a drawing, for instance, is an accurate depiction of an object, you have to make the drawing before you can see how well it matches the object.
A hypothesis is a model or theory on probation. An explicit model is a habit on probation; an established (‘fixed,’ ‘proven’) habit acts implicitly.