Log In

Sign up for access to the world's latest research

We provide an overview of three ways in which the expression “Historical epistemology” (HE) is often understood: (1) HE as a study of the history of higher-order epistemic concepts such as objectivity, observation, experimentation, or probability; (2) HE as a study of the historical trajectories of the objects of research, such as the electron, DNA, or phlogiston; (3) HE as the long-term study of scientific developments. After laying out various ways in which these agendas touch on current debates within both epistemology and philosophy of science (e.g., skepticism, realism, rationality of scientific change), we conclude by highlighting three topics as especially worthy of further philosophical investigation. The first concerns the methods, aims and systematic ambitions of the history of epistemology. The second concerns the ways in versions of HE can be connected to versions of naturalized and social epistemologies. The third concerns the philosophy of history, and in particular the level of analysis at which a historical analysis should aim.

Nach Feierabend 2013 hrsg. von: David Gugerli (Hg.), Michael Hagner (Hg.), u.a., 2013

This essay attempts to answer the question: What is historical epistemology? The essay does this in a number of steps, each building on the next. In the first step, the article provides a historical landscape of issues and challenges into which historical epistemology has been and will be assessed. These include the formulations of such challenges as the genetic fallacy and the naturalistic fallacy, and the problems posed by the relationship between philosophy and history. In the second step, the author explores the French background to historical epistemology. The third step will provide a concrete and well-accepted example: the emergence of probability. In the last and final section, a conclusion is drawn by laying out the general characteristics of historical epistemology, how it differs from the history of ideas and the history of epistemology, and how we might address the genetic and naturalistic fallacies given what we have learnt about the general characteristics of historical epistemology.

Historical epistemology is a new area of study which remains between at least three disciplines: sociology of science, epistemology and philosophy of science. History of science also remains in the background to provide material for supporting and illustrating the ideas and doctrines developed in this new research field. Because of its wider spectrum of subjects, many issues are discussed in relation to this new field. However, some of these issues have no relevance for the main purpose of this subject. For instance some “investigate the historically variable conditions under which fields of knowledge are formed.” (Kinzel 2011) I would like to argue that historical epistemology must be concerned with the epistemological conditions under which historically and socially variable conditions are unified in the fields of knowledge. If we take historical epistemology in this sense as a new area of study that constitutes a new discipline then we need to define its subject matter and main problems that need to be discussed. As an attempt I would like to offer my opinion as to how we need to define this discipline which require an approach from sociological, epistemological and historical perspectives.

Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science

Review of Bordoni, Stefano. When historiography met epistemology: Sophisticated histories and philosophies of science in French-speaking countries in the second half of the nineteenth centuryReviewed by Jean-François Stoffel

Romanticism, History, Historicism: Essays on an Orthodoxy, 2009

The article shows the strategic analogies, but also the differences between Bachelard and Canguilhem on the use of the history of science for epistemology. It emphasizes the importance of the ideology for Canguilhem, and the conceptual essence he recognizes in the history of science, which is read in its internal specific differences and in its complex articulations with life and reality. No concept in fact comes from nothing. The link between history and epistemology is not however of subjection, but of mutual influence. Canguilhem radicalizes the thought of Bachelard, and recognizes the historicity of every aspect of scientific knowledge, even of its less valued features and above all of errors. All aspects of Science are historical. The object of the history of science is not the object of the sciences, because it is always a discourse. This is why the history of science is inevitably linked to other forms of history. This opens up a pluralist conception of History and of Time, thinking of the sciences in their real body and no longer ideal or legal. Thus Canguilhem opens the way to the researches of Foucault and Serres. When we speak of " historical epistemology " we immediately think of Georges Canguilhem, 2 and consequently of Gaston Bachelard, because it would have been the latter to start the particular union between the history of the sciences and epistemology that bears that name. The revolutionary character of Bachelard's epistemology consisted precisely in the integration of the history of the sciences in the very heart of the epistemological argumentation in order to show not only its intrinsic dynamic and variable character, and 2 Canguilhem was not the founder of what has been called historical epistemology, as several scholars write instead (he was at most one of the representatives, but together with others who came before and after him), see for ex. (Debru 2004), who emphasizes how much Canguilhem has been able to connect epistemology to history much more than Bachelard. The common academic reference is L'épistémologie historique de Gaston Bachelard (Lecourt 1969).

Handbook for the Historiography of Science, 2023

This chapter explores the style of historical epistemology developed by Lorraine Daston. We show how the author elaborated a critical dialogue with the French tradition of historical epistemology (namely, Bachelard, Canguilhem, and Foucault) and with the field of science studies, intending to integrate the history of science into history tout court. Studying the series of collective books organized in the recent decades by the American historian and her institutional activities, especially in the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, in Berlin, we slowly see the emergence of a new research program around historical epistemology and a school to disseminate it. We take her book "Objectivity" (with Peter Galison) as an example of this way of writing history. Through this book, we outline some contributions of Daston’s thought to contemporary historiography and to the understanding of modern science.

Journal of the Philosophy of History, Vol. 14, No. 1, 2020

A reply to Philipp Kitcher's attack against contemporary epistemology to appear in World congress of philosphy 2013

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 2012

"The Past, the Present, and the Future of Integrated History and Philosophy of Science" ed. by Emily Herring, Kevin M. Jones, Konstantin S. Kiprijanov, and Laura M. Sellers (London: Routledge, 2019)

The current proliferation and heated-discussion of the meaning and use of the expression “historical epistemology” in prevalently Anglophone domains (Feest & Sturm 2011; Hacking 1999) is anything but an ephemeral phenomenon introducing a transitory “brand into the market of ideas” (Gingras 2010). On the contrary, the discussion revolves around enduring difficulties in conceptualizing the correct or most fruitful interaction between history and philosophy of science. As I will argue, this recent questioning of historical epistemology can be retraced to the longstanding and prevalently Anglophone debate over the “marriage” between history and philosophy of science (Giere 1973). This debate arose in the 1960s (inter alia Hanson 1962; Kuhn 1962), picked up momentum at the beginning of the 1990s, and, thanks to renewed interest, continued on into the twenty-first century (Domski & Dickinson 2010; Laudan & Laudan 2016). My suggestion is that this renewed interest can be fruitfully framed within a French philosophical context. In particular, I will contrast the naturalizing trend prevalent in certain areas of the Anglophone debate (Laudan 1977; Giere 1988; Kitcher 2011) with the “normative turn” instantiated by French epistemology and by Gaston Bachelard and Georges Canguilhem in particular (Bachelard 1934; Canguilhem 2005). With this comparative study I hope to contribute to the ongoing discussion about the different ways of integrating history and philosophy of science.

Erkenntnis, 2011

In the spirit of James and Dewey, I ask what one might want from a theory of knowledge. Much Anglophone epistemology is centered on questions that were once highly pertinent, but are no longer central to broader human and scientific concerns. The first sense in which epistemology without history is blind lies in the tendency of philosophers to ignore the history of philosophical problems. A second sense consists in the perennial attraction of approaches to knowledge that divorce knowing subjects from their societies and from the tradition of socially assembling a body of transmitted knowledge. When epistemology fails to use the history of inquiry as a laboratory in which methodological claims can be tested, there is a third way in which it becomes blind. Finally, lack of attention to the growth of knowledge in various domains leaves us with puzzles about the character of the knowledge we have. I illustrate this last theme by showing how reflections on the history of mathematics can expand our options for understanding mathematical knowledge. 1 Scrutinizing the Traditional Agenda of Epistemology In a famous (possibly the most famous) passage in Pragmatism, William James declares his commitment to the ''pragmatic principle of Peirce'': Many thanks to Uljana Feest and Thomas Sturm for conceiving the conference at which this essay was originally presented, and for inviting me to take part in it. I learned much from the reactions of the audience to an earlier (and more strident) version of this essay. I am particularly indebted to Wolfgang Carl, Hannah Ginsborg, and especially Barry Stroud (who deserves commendation for his extraordinary patience). Two anonymous referees for Erkenntnis offered further constructive suggestions.

Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice

It has recently been argued that the philosophical study of professional history constitutes a subfield of epistemology. Consequently, the philosophy of history is cast as only one particular species of the general study of the relationship between evidence and theory in scientific practice. This view is based upon an absolute separation between substantive and critical philosophy of history. By such a separation, substantive philosophy of history is dismissed as speculative metaphysics, while critical philosophy of history is vindicated as a respectable branch of epistemology. The attempt to delineate a strictly epistemological realm of history was a central part of the programme for analytically styled philosophy of history in the 1950–1970s era. This programme has been resurrected by contemporary empiricist trends. In this essay, I will argue against the basic ideas of this programme through a reassessment of Hayden White’s so-called narrativist philosophy of history. As I will show, criticizing the distinction between metaphysics and epistemology in history is an essential and important feature of White’s contribution to the philosophy of history. This feature has, I claim, been overshadowed by formalist interpretations of White’s ‘narrativism’. In conclusion, I argue that White’s concept of prefiguration will fundamentally question the viability of current attempts to develop a purely epistemological philosophy of history.

I focus on two central issues that emerge from Anastasios Brenner’s “Epistemology historicised”. The first is the relation between history and philosophy. Their integration is a worthwhile and indeed necessary goal, but it is even more complex than it seems: even in “classic” historical epistemology it was far more problematic and imperfect than it appears. The second question concerns history of philosophy. I agree with Brenner that philosophers of science need history of philosophy of science to locate their own work. I also agree that history of philosophy of science plays, or should play, an important pedagogical and political role. However, I argue that for history of philosophy to play the role envisaged by Brenner, it should be genuinely historical, unlike most mainstream versions, and less dissimilar from history of science. I shall conclude by raising some problems with the historical approach to philosophy that I advocate, and by briefly proposing some ways in which we may be able to address them.

BMJ 2003;327:E190-E191 (4 October), doi:10.1136/bmjusa.03020004 (published 26 March 2003) Link is: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/bmjusa.03020004v1 My name is given as Kinlon TP - their error - Kin(d)lon TP.

History that teaches without claims to predict.

Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 1995

The basic ideology of science is mastery of nature, a basic component of modern society. But that mastery must be mastered, by philosophy and politics, which is to say, by insight, activity and change.

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte , 2022

Introduction to a special issue of Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte on 'knowledge from below' in history of science

History and Theory, 2005

Hayden White wants history to serve life by having it inspire an ethical consciousness, by which he means that in facing the existential questions of life, death, trauma, and suffering posed by human history, people are moved to formulate answers to them rather than to feel that they have no power to choose how they live. The ethical historian should craft narratives that inspire people to live meaningfully rather than try to provide explanations or reconstructions of past events that make them feel as if they cannot control their destiny. This Nietzschean-inspired vision of history is inadequate because it cannot gainsay that a genocidal vision of history is immoral. White may be right that cultural relativism results in cultural pluralism and toleration, but what if most people are not cultural relativists, and believe fervently in their right to specific lands at the expense of other peoples? White does not think historiography or perhaps any moral system can provide an answer. Is he right? This rejoinder argues that the communicative rationality implicit in the human sciences does provide norms about the moral use of history because it institutionalizes an intersubjectivity in which the use of the past is governed by norms of impartiality and fair-mindedness, and protocols of evidence based on honest research. Max Weber, equally influenced by Nietzsche, developed an alternative vision of teaching and research that is still relevant today. Little did I imagine, on October 13, 1995, when I sat on the floor in a crowded seminar room in Dwinelle Hall at the University of California at Berkeley, that one day I would be crossing swords on these pages with the guest speaker, Hayden White. He was, and remains, after all, the most influential critic of the discipline of history over the past forty years, a thinker whose dissections of its conceits, as elegant as they are erudite, have forced historians to reflect critically on what they do. If they have often responded defensively, literary scholars and philosophers have welcomed his apparent skepticism, a pattern of reaction that recurred with his talk, "The First Historical Event: A Rhetorical Exercise," hosted by the Department of Rhetoric. While we few interlopers from the Department of History squirmed uncomfortably, the sophisticated graduate students in comparative literature and rhetoric chortled as they learned that historians believed they "find" the past ready-made in the archives. Had we not heard the news that reality, past and present, was a "construction"? It is fascinating to learn what colleagues down the corridor really think of what you do. The disci-1. I thank Neil Levi and Geoffrey Brahm Levey for critical comments on an earlier draft.