{"id":10963,"date":"2013-02-11T17:45:27","date_gmt":"2013-02-11T21:45:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/etherwave.wordpress.com\/?p=10963"},"modified":"2013-02-11T17:45:27","modified_gmt":"2013-02-11T21:45:27","slug":"history-philosophy-relations-pt-1-the-disappearance-of-weltphilosophie-in-the-history-of-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/2013\/02\/11\/history-philosophy-relations-pt-1-the-disappearance-of-weltphilosophie-in-the-history-of-science\/","title":{"rendered":"History-Philosophy Relations, Pt. 1: The Disappearance of “Weltphilosophie” in the History of Science"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Hanson,
Norwood Russell Hanson<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In his 1962 paper, <\/span>“The Irrelevance of History of Science to Philosophy of Science,”<\/span><\/a><\/span> Norwood Russell Hanson referred to a longstanding concern of philosophers of science that historians of science abided by one or another deficient “Weltphilosophie<\/em>“. \u00a0A Weltphilosophy<\/em>\u00a0was an explicit or implicit outlook adopted by a historian, which “controls his selection of salient subjects, his alignment of data, his conception of the overall objective of the scientific enterprise, and his evaluations of the heroes and villains within the history of science.” \u00a0According to Hanson, “Those who stress the silent operation of a\u00a0Weltphilosophie\u00a0<\/em>in the studies of historians of science then suggest that without philosophical awareness and acuity, the reader must remain at the mercy of the historian’s unspoken assumptions.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Do historians abide by unspoken philosophical assumptions today<\/span>? \u00a0Critics have often asserted that historians abide by a social constructionist epistemology, and much time and effort was expended in the 1980s and ’90s contesting its validity. \u00a0<\/span>According to Michael Bycroft<\/span><\/a><\/span>, it is still useful to analyze and criticize social constructionism precisely because “[m]uch current research in the history of science can be seen either as an affirmation of [social constructionist] claims or as a consequence of them.” \u00a0But this is one of the few points on which he and I disagree. \u00a0In the past several years, I have come to believe that “social constructionism” is a rhetorical red herring, which confounds an appreciation of less well articulated changes in historical methodology, including\u00a0<\/span>the fact that most historians of science no longer abide by any\u00a0Weltphilosophie\u00a0<\/em>at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

My take on social constructionism is that the idea of it shapes historians’ sense of identity and mission. \u00a0The belief seems to go that because of its virtuous intervention in the history of our profession, we have attained the ability, and thus the responsibility,\u00a0to\u00a0combat\u00a0<\/em>certain naive conceptions of scientific method<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span>, which inform other naive conceptions of\u00a0scienc<\/span>e’s place in society. We can combat these conceptions by recovering and presenting certain kinds of images<\/span><\/a><\/span> of science, which the tenets of social constructionism help us to identify. \u00a0In this way, social constructionism essentially functions as a corrective program, and has never developed an epistemology of its own,* and historians cannot be said to have adopted s<\/span>ocial constructionism as a\u00a0Weltphilosophie<\/em>. \u00a0Thus, while it may be useful to consider its place in the history of our profession, I believe that it is\u00a0pointless to argue against it as though it were an underlying source of whatever historiographical ills might rankle us.<\/span><\/p>\n

In general, historians may in their works exhibit fragments of some underlying\u00a0Weltphilosophie<\/em>, but I would say that by and large our “selection of salient subjects” and our “alignment of data” proceeds in a way that studiously avoids making strong epistemological commitments. \u00a0The methods and criteria governing the generation and modification of scientific arguments and knowledge are systematically marginalized in our work in favor of emphasizing:<\/span><\/p>\n

1) the institutional and cultural preconditions of various kinds of scientific work and knowledge (e.g., funding, political and social interest in scientific results, the rhetorical construction of an “ideology of science,”<\/span><\/a><\/span> etc.),<\/span><\/p>\n

2) historical invocations of meta-criteria generated by incommensurable world-views, which impinge on the\u00a0acceptance<\/em>\u00a0(rather than the generation and revision) of knowledge claims, or on the perceived legitimacy of their application (e.g., in policy). \u00a0These invocations are taken to accentuate the existence of epistemic “boundaries”<\/span><\/a><\/span> in history, and offer clues as to the non-rational mechanisms of “trust,” “values,” and, more generally, “culture” that pattern life behind those boundaries,<\/span><\/p>\n

and<\/span><\/p>\n

3) allusions to science, or the generation of science-related imagery, in the public sphere, in literature, in criticism, and so forth.<\/span><\/p>\n

All of these things are good things to study, and I cannot imagine that anyone would suppose the study of them necessarily<\/em> comes at the expense of studying the more complex strategies of scientific work. \u00a0Nevertheless, in practice, the elevation of their importance does seem to have led to a withering of understanding of scientific work and thought.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0In my view there are only two major exceptions to this contemporary rule:<\/span><\/p>\n

First, there are\u00a0those who carry on work in certain specialist enclaves, including (but not limited to) the history of relativity and quantum mechanics, population genetics<\/span><\/a><\/span>, and some branches of medieval and early-modern natural philosophy, astronomy, and alchemy<\/span><\/a><\/span>. \u00a0These studies are fairly classical history of science, which boast a strong internalist component. \u00a0In some cases these studies are actually conducted by philosophers. \u00a0But, in general, they are not overtly concerned with the deployment or development of philosophy per se<\/em>, though they may well abide by one or another\u00a0Weltphilosophie<\/em>.**<\/span><\/p>\n

Second, there are authors\u00a0whose work is done under the banner of “historical epistemology,” including\u00a0Lorraine Daston<\/span><\/a><\/span>, Hans-J\u00f6rg Rheinberger<\/span><\/a><\/span>, and Peter Galison<\/span><\/a><\/span>. \u00a0Daston’s 2009\u00a0“philosophy, anyone?” appeal<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0illustrates the concern within that camp, in accord with my argument here, that history is currently lacking a\u00a0Weltphilosophie<\/em>. \u00a0In Pt. 2,<\/a> we will discuss the\u00a0Weltphilosophie\u00a0<\/em>advocated by proponents of historical epistemology.<\/span><\/p>\n

—<\/span><\/p>\n

*There have been attempts, particularly Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory and Andrew Pickering’s “mangle”, to establish constructionism as a kind of new socio-epistemic metaphysics,\u00a0but I would not consider these attempts historiographically influential, although historians sometimes cite them.<\/span><\/p>\n

**Those interested in what Bycroft defends as “internal” history<\/span><\/a><\/span>, and those who seek a closer union between history and philosophy of science, have begun to gather under the banner of “integrated” history and philosophy of science (&HPS)<\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his 1962 paper, “The Irrelevance of History of Science to Philosophy of Science,” Norwood Russell Hanson referred to a longstanding concern of philosophers of science that historians of science abided by one or another deficient “Weltphilosophie“. \u00a0A Weltphilosophy\u00a0was an explicit or implicit outlook adopted by a historian, which “controls his selection of salient subjects,<\/p>\n

Continue Reading… History-Philosophy Relations, Pt. 1: The Disappearance of “Weltphilosophie” in the History of Science<\/span>Continue Reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[111,190,571,967,1072,1128,1178],"class_list":["post-10963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-andrew-pickering","tag-bruno-latour","tag-hans-jorg-rheinberger","tag-lorraine-daston","tag-michael-bycroft","tag-norwood-russell-hanson","tag-peter-galison"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10963\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}