Duhem the Historian

Abstract

Duhem the physicist, dedicated to the cause of common sense, became a philosopher only in that special sense in which this was required by the ideal of physics he was pursuing. A telltale sign of the special nature of his philosophical quest was his independence of other philosophical schools. He certainly showed no concern for the school of commonsense philosophers. In his turning into not only a historian, but into a special one, he had hardly to be concerned about others. For better or for worse there has never been a school of commonsense historians and certainly not among historians of science, who a hundred years ago were too few to form any school. Anyone aiming at that time at becoming a really good historian of science obeyed common sense by cultivating utmost respect for facts. A brief recall of the notorious fact, much too in evidence in our times, that the utmost respect of a physicist for the facts of the laboratory is hardly ever matched with a similar respect on his part for the facts of the history of physics, should be enough to make that common sense appear in a rather special light. Moreover, a hundred years ago the pivotal facts of scientific history were, as will be seen, known to a much lesser degree than might have been suspected by a scholar bent on as complete a command of facts as possible. There was, of course, nothing special in looking at that time on facts as forming an organic succession. The Comtean view of history, which young Duhem imbued from Cons, his history teacher at Stanislas, and which constituted a climate of opinion, rested on such an outlook. It could seem a dictate of plain common sense.