The Past, Present, and Future of Integrated History and Philosophy of Science

Emily Herring, Kevin Jones, Konstantin Kiprijanov, Laura Sellers, Kevin Matthew Jones, Konstantin S. Kiprijanov, Laura M Sellers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780367786380
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351214803
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Weltgeschichte

Integrated History and Philosophy of Science (iHPS) is commonly understood as the study of science from a combined historical and philosophical perspective. Yet, since its gradual formation as a research field, the question of how to suitably integrate both perspectives remains open. This volume presents cutting edge research from junior iHPS scholars, and in doing so provides a snapshot of current developments within the field, explores the connection between iHPS and other academic disciplines, and demonstrates some of the topics that are attracting the attention of scholars who will help define the future of iHPS.

Part 1

Problematising the relationship between history of science and philosophy of science

1 Scientonomy: A bold new vision for an integrated history and philosophy of science

Gregory Rupik

In 1989 Larry Laudan penned a retrospective for the journal Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science appraising the state of the field of HPS twenty years after he and Gerd Buchdahl had together founded Studies. Laudan concluded that, while philosophers had generally come around to granting that a historically-informed philosophy of science is a valuable enterprise,

many (perhaps most) professional historians of science have refused to see the point. Indeed, the distance between mainstream history of science and the philosophy of science is probably greater now than it has ever been, notwithstanding it being the case that many historians of science still take philosophical issues seriously.

(Laudan 1989b, p. 12)

The chasm that Laudan described separating the history of science (HS) from the philosophy of science (PS) arguably remains an institutional, disciplinary, and methodological reality today. That is not to say that this unintegration has sat comfortably with everyone. Since Laudan wrote his remarks in 1989, a number of impressive studies have defiantly bridged the HS/PS divide, in addition to special issues, edited volumes, conferences, and communities dedicated to a ‘hyphenated’ or ‘integrated’ history-and-philosophy-of-science (iHPS).¹ Despite these efforts, however, no clear consensus has emerged either about (1) what an ideal iHPS should look like or, more importantly, (2) how an iHPS might address the historical reasons for its unintegration.

This chapter seeks to address both of these issues. In what follows, I propose that an empirical science of science can provide a fresh approach to the field of HPS, capable of fruitfully integrating key components of both HS and PS.² As evidence for this proposal, I will introduce the work currently being done by a community of scholars who have taken Hakob Barseghyan’s (2015) The Laws of Scientific Change as a starting point and the theoretical basis for an empirical science of science named scientonomy. My goal is therefore not only to articulate how scientonomy integrates HS and PS on a theoretical level, but to demonstrate precisely how this integration has already been operationalised in the scientonomy community. A fundamental strength of Barseghyan’s work is that it offers a compelling historical hypothesis for why HS and PS are unintegrated, and crafts a theory of scientific change that explicitly redresses the causes of this unintegration. To make the case for scientonomy as an iHPS, I will begin by elaborating on the aforementioned historical hypothesis, arguing that the distance between HS and PS in the 1960s was due principally to, on the one hand, the conflation of normative methodologies and descriptive theories of scientific change in the philosophy of science, and, on the other hand, the gradual acceptance of the dynamic method thesis. Next, I will sketch the ways in which scientonomy theoretically integrates features of HS and PS. Finally, I will provide practical examples of how the community of scientonomy has crafted an iHPS.

1.1 HPS: integration and unintegration

By the 1960s, universities from Princeton (1961) to Toronto (1967) were enthusiastically establishing departments for HPS, gathering historians and philosophers of science together under a common administrative roof. Despite sharing office space and funding, the label ‘HPS’ did not entail a shared approach to the history and/or philosophy of science. Indeed, while some scholars like Karl Popper, Imre Lakatos, Stephen Toulmin, and Thomas Kuhn laboured to weave history and philosophy of science together in their own ways – at least aiming at an integrated history and philosophy of science (iHPS) – HPS as a field seems never to have necessitated this approach. Ronald Giere (1973), among others, posited that the ‘marriage’ between HS and PS was nothing more than a ‘marriage of convenience’. Kenneth Caneva’s recollection of Thomas Kuhn’s HPS department in Princeton in 1967 could just as easily have been spoken by a graduate student in an HPS department today:

There was almost no contact between the [HS and PS] parts, let alone fruitful interaction. And no one seemed to care. When I think back on the situation, I suspect a tacit but strong attachment to a preoccupation with fostering a proper professional identity may have played a key role.

(Caneva 2012, p. 49)

Kuhn (1977) himself went further and argued that HS and PS cannot be practised at the same time. And while many today would doubtless agree that Imre Lakatos’ (1978, p. 102) creative appropriation of Kant – ‘Philosophy of science without history is empty; history of science without philosophy of science is blind’ – remains an excellent motto for any iHPS, few if any would agree that Lakatos’ strategy of rational reconstruction is a historically or philosophically adequate means of integration.³

In the following subsection I will argue that a principal cause of the typical unintegration of HS and PS has been the conflation of two distinct philosophical projects: the search for a descriptive theory of scientific change and the search for a normative methodology of science. To do so, I will first briefly describe the centrality of the static method thesis in the HPS practised from the end of the nineteenth century through to the 1960s. Second, I will demonstrate how the gradual acceptance of the dynamic method thesis posed a pivotal problem for the construction of a general theory of scientific change. Third, I will consider the implications of the dynamic method thesis and how the fate of both the normative and descriptive philosophical projects evolved. Finally, I will explain why the normative and descriptive projects have been uncoupled and will explore possible avenues forward.

1.1.1 The static method thesis: HPS before 1960

Generally speaking, historians and philosophers of science in the early twentieth century viewed science and its history as unique, progressive, and valuable. Some philosophers looked to science’s history to help them understand precisely what features of scientific inquiry had allowed science to become such a successful knowledge-generating endeavour. Late nineteenth century philosopher William Whewell (1840, p. 1) characterised this early philosophy of science in The Philosophy of Inductive Sciences: ‘The Philosophy of Science … [is an] insight into the essence and conditions of all real knowledge, and an exposition of the best methods for the discovery of new truths.’ For Whewell – and for many after him – PS’s task is both descriptive and normative: it uncovers and clarifies the essence of the scientific method, and ultimately proposes it as the best way of evaluating theories and establishing new truths.

Pre-1960 HPS tended to understand the Scientific Revolution as the widespread employment of this best method of theory evaluation, the so-called scientific method, which they maintained was the cause and guarantor of scientific progress.⁴ While the precise criteria of the scientific method were debated among those in the HPS community, most scholars agreed that it was some form of hypothetico-deductivism, requiring empirical confirmation of theories’ predictions before those theories could be accepted. Notably, while it was believed that the scientific method had historically emerged and spread in the early eighteenth century, the method itself was understood as an epistemological means of justification with universal purchase, and this is demonstrated by science’s progressive history. In other words, while they agreed that the hypothetico-deductive (HD) method of science may have debuted definitively during the Scientific Revolution, any genuine advance in knowledge through history was thought to have been due to its employment. This explains why traces of the HD method were sought even in the works of medieval and Early Modern scientists such as Avicenna or Galileo. As such, the scientific method was understood as static (fixed, transhistorical), and as central to gaining justified knowledge today as it had ever been. The adoption of this static method thesis had three major consequences:

1. Since the method was understood to have remained fixed (that is, outside the process of scientific change), explaining the changes in science amounted to explaining the changes in scientific theories alone. It was the criteria of this fixed method which were conceived of as the motor which drove scientists and their communities to accept some theories and reject others. The challenge of crafting an adequate theory of scientific change, therefore, amounted to discovering and accurately articulating that singular, universal method of science.
2. Historical episodes of scientific change could theoretically inform and correct the philosophical articulations of the method of science, and philosophers’ formulations of the method could help shed light on the logic of certain transitions in science’s history. Indeed, explaining any historical transition from one theory to another could be done by understanding how the criteria of the static method of science were employed by the scientists within the exigencies of a specific historical situation. (See Lakatos 1978.)
3. Philosophical attempts to articulate the fixed method of science produced a number of theories of scientific method – methodologies. These methodologies were meant to be both descriptive and normative, since they were supposed to both describe the criteria of the fixed method of science and prescribe the same criteria as the ones that we ought to employ if we want our knowledge to continue to advance (Nola and Sankey 2000, pp. 8–11).

1.1.2 The dynamic method thesis

By the mid-1960s, however, the foundations of the static method thesis had significantly eroded. The works of Kuhn, Ludwik Fleck, and N.R. Hanson, had begun to suggest that scientific change was not restricted to changes in theories, but rather that the expectations and criteria for theory assessment of science, that i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Origins, trends, methodologies and divisions – reflections on the past, present and future of iHPS: A keynote interview with Jon Hodge
• PART 1: Problematising the relationship between history of science and philosophy of science
• 1. Scientonomy: A bold new vision for an integrated history and philosophy of science
• 2. Understanding past research practice: A case for iHPS
• 3. Narrative explanations in integrated History and Philosophy of Science
• 4. Is a normative historically oriented Philosophy of Science possible?: A new horizon for integrated History and Philosophy of Science (iHPS)
• 5. Historical epistemology and the ‘marriage’ between History and Philosophy of Science
• 6. Obligation to judge or judging obligations: The integration of philosophy and science in Francophone Philosophy of Science
• PART 2: iHPS in practice
• 7. Experimentalist as spectator: The phenomenology of early modern experimentalism
• 8. Teleology: A case study in iHPS
• 9. The cybernetic origins of enactivism and computationalism
• 10. Towards a mutually beneficial integration of History and Philosophy of Science: The case of Jean Perrin
• 11. Revitalising a nineteenth century debate about life (which has been done to death): Or, how to live with historiographical pluralism
• 12. Between realism and constructivism: A sketch of pluralism for science education
• Index