Abstract
Dissatisfaction with hasty philosophical generalizations from a small number of conveniently chosen case-studies has contributed significantly to a widespread disillusionment with the whole enterprise of integrated history and philosophy of science. The history-philosophy relationship should be seen as one between the concrete and the abstract, not between the particular and the general. An abstract framework is necessary for telling any concrete stories at all. If historians do not find appropriate philosophical concepts with which to frame their episodes, then they ought to create fresh ones. Thus history-writing can serve an effective method of generating new philosophical insights. I illustrate these claims with two episodes from my own recent work. First, an inability to make sense of the original development of thermometry led me to craft a new philosophical framework of “epistemic iteration”, which involves accepting an unjustified starting-point for a process of self-correction and refinement. Second, a puzzle about the apparently insufficient reasons for the switch to Lavoisier’s new paradigm resulted in a move to a more commodious philosophical framework of analysis, in which theory-choice is understood as a pluralistic process of interaction between systems of scientific practice.
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Notes
- 1.
It may even be an act of self-analysis, in case the episode was initially narrated without a good awareness of the abstractions that guided its construction.
- 2.
- 3.
Priestley maintained his preference for the phlogiston theory until his death, and it is quite telling that his last stance was a book titled The Doctrine of Phlogiston Established and That of the Composition of Water Refuted, published in 1803. By that time, most others had converted to Lavoisier’s theory.
- 4.
Again, Musgrave himself points out this failed Lavoisierian prediction, and how long he had struggled with it (1976, 199–200).
- 5.
This paper originated as a presentation at the first Integrated History and Philosophy of Science conference (“&HPS1”), at the University of Pittsburgh, 13 October 2007. I would like to take this opportunity to thank John Norton and colleagues for hosting that meeting, and various other participants for their helpful comments.
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Chang, H. (2011). Beyond Case-Studies: History as Philosophy. In: Mauskopf, S., Schmaltz, T. (eds) Integrating History and Philosophy of Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 263. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1745-9_8
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