Toward a Hermeneutic Theory of the History of the Natural Sciences

Abstract

The history of science has a relatively short but interesting history of its own.¹ At first scientists engaged in the history of science for pedagogical and educational reasons without being explicitly trained as historians (Lagrange). Later philosophers began to concern themselves with the history of science, mainly because they wanted to come to a better understanding of the “true” meaning and function of a given science. In most cases these authors were both scientists and philosophers. Yet they all had in common that they were never explicitly trained as historians. Only lately, after World War II, did one begin to see people trained in history concerning themselves with the history of science as such (Sarton) or with the history of a particular science (Jammer). These authors were also trained in one or more sciences. Yet in many cases the knowledge of science on the part of these scholars seldom went beyond the kind of science “passively” acquired at the college level; very few of these historians were ever actually engaged in scientific research.

This section is a revised version of my essay “Toward a Hermeneutic Theory of the Natural Sciences,” which appeared in Lee Hardy k Lester Embree, eds. Phenomenology and Natural Science (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992), pp. 237-264. Copyright © 1992 by Kluwer Academic Publishers. No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. Reprinted and edited by permission of Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Thomas Kuhn, “The History of Science,” in The Essential Tension (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 105-126.