Philosophy, Science, and History

A Guide and Reader

Lydia Patton, Lydia Patton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781136626883
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Philosophy, Science, and History: A Guide and Reader is a compact overview of the history and philosophy of science that aims to introduce students to the groundwork of the field, and to stimulate innovative research. The general introduction focuses on scientific theory change, assessment, discovery, and pursuit. Part I of the Reader begins with classic texts in the history of logical empiricism, including Reichenbach's discovery-justification distinction. With careful reference to Kuhn's analysis of scientific revolutions, the section provides key texts analyzing the relationship of HOPOS to the history of science, including texts by Santayana, Rudwick, and Shapin and Schaffer. Part II provides texts illuminating central debates in the history of science and its philosophy. These include the history of natural philosophy (Descartes, Newton, Leibniz, Kant, Hume, and du Châtelet in a new translation); induction and the logic of discovery (including the Mill-Whewell debate, Duhem, and Hanson); and catastrophism versus uniformitarianism in natural history (Playfair on Hutton and Lyell; de Buffon, Cuvier, and Darwin).

The editor's introductions to each section provide a broader perspective informed by contemporary research in each area, including related topics. Each introduction furnishes proposals, including thematic bibliographies, for innovative research questions and projects in the classroom and in the field.

CHAPTER 1

Editor’s Introduction

The history of the philosophy of science (HOPOS) is an interdisciplinary endeavor. It may have begun as the project of tracing the developments of the philosophy of science from the discipline’s origins in the Vienna Circle in the early twentieth century. Much recent work in the field, however, now predates, or is not strictly relevant to, the philosophy of science as a subdiscipline of philosophy. Instead, HOPOS is far-reaching and, from a philosophical perspective, staggeringly open-ended. At HOPOS conferences, which have taken place every two years since 1990, papers are presented on Carnap, Reichenbach, and Hempel, but also on Aristotle, Boyle, Malebranche, Leibniz, Feynman, Hilbert, Dedekind, Haeckel, Darwin, and many others from the history of science. Work in HOPOS encompasses even disciplines that might not have been considered scientific at the time, and disciplines, such as mathematics, that are even now not considered empirical sciences.

The flexibility of HOPOS as a disciplinary endeavor has made it strong. On the email list for HOPOS: The International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science, Alan Richardson, George Gale, and others have debated whether HOPOS can count as a Fach in the German sense, that is, whether it has its own special subject matter, sometimes referred to as a canon, and a distinctive approach to that subject matter. On whichever side one comes down in the debate on this issue, it is significant that the question came up, and that it was debated so carefully. The open-endedness of HOPOS has enriched and strengthened the community of scholars, but has also put in question the cohesion of that community and of the research tradition at its core.

In my view, this is a situation that HOPOS shares with science itself. The demarcation problem, of how to distinguish science from non-science, is not easy to solve. The difficulty of finding a solution surely is attributable at least in part to the fact that science evolves constantly, and thus that any attempt to list its characteristic features a priori might be falsified by the evolution of science in practice. To use an example that already is becoming well-worn, string theory may fail several demarcation criteria that have been used in the past. But it is not abandoned as non-science on those grounds, because it has virtues, including mathematical fruitfulness, that scientists value in practice. Some (Chang 2012, Is Water H₂O?) have suggested that, far from listing demarcation criteria, we ought to encourage pluralism about scientific methods, theories, and approaches.

Similarly, how ought we to define HOPOS, and to distinguish it from related intellectual pursuits? The account of HOPOS as history of the philosophy of science at least provided a time limit for the subject matter it investigated, and a clear notion of the cast of players. On this account, HOPOS is an inquiry into the history, influences, motivations, and arguments of the Vienna Circle and associated philosophers, who founded the philosophy of science. Questions relevant to this view of HOPOS include, then, the changes to the views and interrelationships of the Vienna Circle philosophers over time, the influence and impact of their views, the material and intellectual conditions that influenced their careers and thought, and the like.

Present-day HOPOS manifestly does not limit itself to anything like this list of topics, though they are central to the research of many HOPOS practitioners. If you glance at a recent HOPOS conference program, or the contents of a HOPOS journal such as Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, you will see papers that investigate the origins of, influences on, and justifications of specific scientific results, papers that analyze the history and influence of instrumentation on scientific theories, papers that focus on scientific development and change, papers that focus on theory building or theory choice, and papers that appear to be mainly philosophical and that have very little historical content.

Work in HOPOS is also marked by methodological pluralism. Among the methods that can be observed in recent work in HOPOS, History and Philosophy of Science (HPS), Integrated History and Philosophy of Science (&HPS), Science and Technology Studies (or Science and Technology in Society (STS) and related fields can be found:

•  Using the methods of history, sociology, and other social sciences to investigate the sciences. This work sometimes is done in other, related research programs as well, including Science and Technology Studies programs. For instance, in some HOPOS and STS programs, doctoral students who wish to focus on the historical practice of HOPOS are required to obtain a Master’s degree in history.

•  Using philosophical methods to analyze the scientific and philosophical contributions of scientists in history. This is sometimes referred to as HPS or &HPS. This strain of research advocates a thoroughgoing integration of the history and philosophy of science, rather than choosing primarily to take an historical approach and to allow some philosophical influences, or choosing to take a philosophical approach and to include a few case studies. &HPS advocates building a truly integrated and coherent discipline, rather than merely allowing distinct disciplines to inform each other.

•  Contributing to the history of logical positivism and logical empiricism, which some consider the first tradition of philosophy of science properly speaking. This was among the impetuses for the institutional founding of HOPOS: The International Society for the History of the Philosophy of Science.

•  Non-contemporary philosophical accounts of science, which might mean any text that takes a synthetic look at scientific traditions and their philosophical consequences. Galileo’s Two New Sciences, Berkeley’s The Analyst, Boyle’s Skeptical Chymist, and Whewell’s Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences would all count as early HOPOS texts in this sense.

•  Examining accounts of scientific change, for instance, using scientific methods. Probing the empirical and deductive foundations of philosophy of science itself. This is arguably not HOPOS, but some work that appears indistinguishable from HOPOS work is done in this vein—for instance, using historical case studies to test conjectures or hypotheses about the origin or development of a theory and its philosophical consequences. Donovan, Laudan, and Laudan, Scrutinizing Science, is an example of this sort.

•  Other methods and traditions may well be available to a student who looks further.

I do not seek to make any normative recommendations here. I find this methodological and thematic pluralism to be one of the stimulating and bracing elements of HOPOS research. And it for this reason that the publishers and I have chosen—at the recommendation of one reviewer—the open-ended title: Philosophy, Science, and History: A Guide and Reader. Moreover, HOPOS and the allied pursuits of &HPS, HPS, STS, and the like change as science changes, and as the political and social contexts change.

That said, it is eminently possible, and necessary, to tell the history of HOPOS itself as a discipline, and to put one’s own research into this context. I have organized the Parts of this book with the aim in mind of pointing out some major features of the development of the discipline, especially those that may be useful to a student who is encountering the material or the standards for HOPOS work for the first time. The Introductions to the material, especially, aim to place classic texts and debates in a wider context and to give references to further reading.

One of my secondary aims was to introduce those new to the discipline, whether students or not, to the basic elements that one is expected to know if one is traveling in HOPOS circles. I know that I have left out some of the rarer and more interesting flora and fauna, but I have tried to make this a reliable field guide.

Beyond remarking on this broad shift toward pluralism in HOPOS study, and beyond making a few remarks about the layout of the work, I will let the texts and introductions speak for themselves. However, I will point out in closing that this work has been conceived and constructed as a guide to the field as I know it, and as my advisors on the project felt it would be most effective. As such, it focuses mainly on the Western tradition, and on work in English, with a limited number of references in French and German.

However, the field is changing, and is growing. There is an increasingly international base of HOPOS studies. Israel and Hungary have long been sources of significant HOPOS scholarship. Mexico, Brazil, India, Spain, Turkey, South Africa, Portugal, and surely others have communities of varying sizes working in HOPOS or HOPOS-related fields. In 2011, Brazilian Studies in Philosophy and History of Science, edited by Décio Krause and Antonio Videira, appeared as volume 290 in the Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science series. The CFCUL in Lisbon is also pursuing a number of current projects; see http://cfcul.fc.ul.pt/projectos/. The history of Chinese and Arabic science and philosophy is too much neglected in Western scholarship, and is an area in which, one hopes, more work will be done in future.

A brief note on the texts, in closing. They were chosen with several variables in mind. One is whether the text is already available freely online: if an entire relevant text was available, often I limited myself to noting that fact in the introduction to the relevant section. Moreover, I include mostly what might be considered “primary” sources, with a few exceptions. My aim was not to select the best of contemporary scholarship in HOPOS, but rather, as I’ve said, to provide a guide to what one needs to know to work in the field, and to understand as much work in the field as possible. I have made an effort to give references to excellent more recent work, to key debates, and to ideas for further research or study, in the introductions to each part. In so doing, I am sure that I have missed a great deal of excellent work, but I have given a representative sample. If this book is being used as a textbook, the professor for the course surely will find it useful to supplement this material depending on her or his aims for a given course; the introductions are provided as a springboard.

Note

1.  With a few exceptions, the references in the footnotes to the primary texts can be found in the reference list in the Introduction to that Part.

PART I

Approaches to the History and Philosophy of Science

Themes

This part focuses on the methodology and argument of well-known approaches to studying the history and philosophy of science. To this end, I have excerpted those who defend the rational reconstruction of science as defining the limits of inquiry into what is properly called science (Hempel, Lakatos), and from those who argue that historical and sociological methods result in knowledge that is of independent value and validity (Rudwick, Shapin and Schaffer). The distinction between the contexts of discovery and of justification tracks this difference in approach (Reichenbach). Others argue that moments in science that are most productive, including revolutionary changes to scientific paradigms, are not susceptible to rational reconstruction at all (Kuhn), or give a naturalist argument that history is itself a blend of natural science and constructed categories (Santayana). Contemporary philosophers have developed research programs that incorporate analyses of material culture, experiment, theory change, and historical epistemology and methodology, which indicate potential for increased collaboration across the disciplines.

CHAPTER 2

Introduction to “Approaches to the History and Philosophy of Science”

Early History of Science

The history of science I will discuss here is the history of science as practiced in the contemporary discipline. Writing on the history of science more generally has a multifarious character. Practicing scientists who teach might incorporate materials on the history of science into their course syllabi, or might write books that deal with episodes in the history of science. Some write about the history of science for the popular press, as Dava Sobel did with Galileo’s Daughter (1999). Historical episodes in science serve as the source material for fictional narratives, as in the case of John Banville’s Revolutions Trilogy (2001). But here, we will deal with history of science as a modern discipline, as it is practiced in academic departments, including departments of HPS and STS.

Whewell’s History of the Inductive Sciences (1837) often is counted as the first Western history of science. The second half of the nineteenth century saw a definite increase in studies of science’s history, including Friedrich Albert Lange’s History of Materialism (1866, a history of science and of philosophy), Ernst Mach’s Mechanics in Its Development (1960/1883) and Paul Tannery’s For the History of Hellenic Science (1887). One of the most well known of the pioneers of the discipline is the Belgian historian George Sarton (1884–1956), who founded the journal Isis, and who wrote several books on the study of the history of science (Sarton 1927–48).

The development of the history of science over the nineteenth century was influenced by trends and developments in history proper. As Laura Snyder has emphasized recently, Whewell’s coinage “scientist” only came to be used in its contemporary sense relatively late, in the nineteenth century (Snyder 2012). Moreover, the nineteenth century was alive with debate about what counted as true science. Early in the century, Wilhelm von Humboldt, who founded the university in Berlin, had encouraged a pluralistic view of science (“Wissenschaft”), as a rigorous methodology applied to any subject matter studied by the four university faculties: law, philosophy, theology, and medicine. This tolerance gave way, toward the end of the century, to a well-known debate between Wilhelm Dilthey and Wilhelm Windelband about differences between the methods of the human and the natural sciences (the Geistes- and the Naturwissenschaften).

Dilthey, in his major work Introduction to the Human Sciences (1883), argued that the methods of the human sciences were independent of the methods of the natural sciences.¹ Dilthey employed methods of interpretation, along the lines of those used by Johann Herder (1744–1803) and Johann Gustav Droysen (1808–1884), to support a distinction between explaining (erklären) a subject of interest, whether an event or a phenomenon, and understanding (verstehen) that subject.² The human sciences, including history, can contribute to understanding on several fronts: illuminating the context of an event, of course, but also showing how distinct areas of knowledge can be investigated together. Moreover, weighing the influence of one theory on another involves an element of interpretation.

In 1894, Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1915) gave a rectorial address at Strasbourg, “History and Natural Science,” in which he responds to Dilthey’s arguments. As a neo-Kantian, Windelband appeals to Kant’s argument in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Sciences that only sciences with an a priori, mathematical basis of lawlike “principles” or rules have a truly scientific foundation. Windelband argues that the “human sciences” have a distinct aim and subject matter from the natural sciences. The natural sciences are “nomothetic,” or law-governed, while the human sciences are “idiographic,” describing particular events or specific phenomena. Not only can these analyses of the specific and particular not be generalized or brought under a universal law, Windelband argues, they cannot be objective, because they are relative to a specific historical or cultural context and thus essentially subjective.

In addition to the dialogue over the natural and human sciences, there are other trends in nineteenth-century history, philosophy, and sociology that had an impact on early approaches to the study of science. The topic of history more generally was central to key developments in philosophy. G. W. F. Hegel’s (1770–1831) idealist approach to history was challenged by the young Hegelians, including Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) and Karl Marx (1818–1883). By the end of the century in Germany, there was a more general division between naturalism, materialism, and empiricism on one hand, and idealism on the other.

The impact of materialist and positivist approaches to history is part of the backgroun...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Editor’s Introduction
• Part I Approaches to the History and Philosophy of Science
• Part II Debates in History and Philosophy of Science
• Index