The history of the philosophy of science: a broader perspective

Perspectives on Science, 2002

The four papers and the comment that make up the bulk of this issue of Perspectives on Science, originated in a session organized by Friedrich Steinle for a meeting of the History of Science Society in Denver in 2001. We were struck by the extent to which, in spite of their differences, each of the papers managed to surmount some of the obstacles that beset the delicate, and sometimes difªcult, relationship between history of science and philosophy of science. The authors have reworked their papers to highlight the intimate interactions in their work between detailed history of science and some core issue(s) in philosophy of science. The papers deal with different historical episodes and the authors speak from distinctively divergent viewpoints, but each of them develops speciªc ways of intertwining historical and philosophical work in ways that improve both the historical studies and the philosophical analysis. This is an accomplishment of no small importance. Attempts to bring historical and philosophical studies of science into close contact with one another have a relatively long history. During an important formative period for the philosophy of science in the nineteenth century, many authors, perhaps most notably William Whewell, sought to base general accounts of science on serious studies of its history (see The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded upon their History, 1840). Although the history and the philosophy of science have often proceeded in considerable independence of one another, ever since Whewell's groundbreaking work there have been notable attempts to provide a historical footing for general philosophies of science. One need only think of Duhem or Mach or, since the 1960s, Hacking, Kuhn, Lakatos, Latour, and Laudan-and many more. Recently, however, mainstream history of science and mainstream philosophy of science have gone in different directions. History of science

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science-Part …, 1997

At issue in this paper is the question of the appropriate relationship between the philosophy and history of science. The discussion starts with a brief sketch of Kuhn's approach, followed by an analysis of the so-called 'testing-theories-ofscientific-change programme'. This programme is an attempt at a more rigorous approach to the historical philosophy of science. Since my conclusion is that, by and large, this attempt has failed, I proceed to examine some more promising approaches. First, I deal with Hacking's recent views on the issues in question, particularly his notion of a 'style of reasoning'. Next, Nickles's reconstructionist interpretation of the development of science and his views on Whig history are addressed. Finally, I propose an account of philosophy as a theoretical, an interpretative and explanatory, enterprise. Thus, three alternatives to the Kuhnian paradigm are discussed, alternatives that share a recognition of the relative autonomy of philosophy from history. Hence, they assume a less tight relationship between philosophy and history of science than is the case within the Kuhnian paradigm.

The presented text focuses rather on enabling access to philosophical aspects and ideological residuals found in several scientific approaches and issues. It means, analyses of conceptual schemes but also of phenomena present in their implicitly perceived background are to be dealt with. It is essays on science, its roots, and essence but also on relations of science and philosophy and also on heritage which philosophers left in science that I thematize. And it is in this sense that the presented text represents a textbook. It should try to teach how to comprehend explanatory bases and limits of philosophical and scientific knowledge but also to view things creatively, in other than a traditional way. Its task is to make bases complicated and surmise boundaries, and also to find creatively inspirations and new possible outcomes. The text is a philosophical essay (in the original sense of this word: an examination, (re)consideration, experiment). It is an attempt to ponder on a nature of sciences, methods and procedures, evidences and also on axioms and explanatory bases, but at the same time it represents an attempt to assess them. From this viewpoint, it rather complicates issues than provides answers to them and that is what the author’s intention aspires to: to induce students not to take things for granted and to try to view the world differently from the way they perceived it before. A vision of the world, clarity, looking at and thematizing of an issue which represents amatter of course (and thus which is frequently implicit and beyond doubt), noticing of an issue scientists and philosophers thought and did not thought about, but also why they believed in what they believed that is what represents the main object of the presented research.

I argue that Kuhn was a historicist in two respects. First, he was a conservative in Mannheim's sense—tradition is important for understanding scientific change, and the evaluation of a scientific idea is relative to historical context. Secondly, Kuhn embraced determinism—there is a pattern to scientific change, akin to laws of scientific development. I show that Kuhn's determinism requires that he is an internalist about the causes of scientific change; Kuhn's internal-ism contrasts with the externalism that characterises much post-Kuhnian science studies. I conclude by considering how Kuhn's historicism relates to the philosophical purposes of Kuhn's history of science.

Akwa Ibom State University Press, 2016

Isis, 2008

In surveying the field of history and philosophy of science (HPS), it may be more useful just now to pose some key questions than it would be to lay out the sundry competing attempts to unify H and P. The ten problems this essay presents are grounded in a range of work of enormous interest-historical and philosophical work that has made use of productive categories of analysis: context, historicism, purity, and microhistory, to name but a few. What kind of account are we after-historically and philosophically-when we attempt to address science not as a vacuous generality but in its specific, local formation?

Akwa Ibom State University Press, 2013

2016

Perspectives on Science, 2005