scholarly journals History as engagement: The Historical Epistemology of Raymond Aron

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Massimiliano Simons
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Historical Epistemology ◽  
Raymond Aron

Abstract Raymond Aron was a student of Léon Brunschvicg, a representative of French historical epistemology. This article explores Aron’s relation to this tradition through three claims. First of all, it contests that Raymond Aron’s philosophy of history constituted a complete break with this tradition. Secondly, resituating Aron in this tradition is valuable, because it highlights how Aron’s own philosophy of history is to be understood as a normative project, seen as an alternative to that of Brunschvicg. Finally, Aron’s philosophy can still hold valuable lessons for present-day historical epistemology and history and philosophy of science in general.

The Fix We Are In

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-87
Author(s):  
Richard Hudelson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Science Ethics ◽  
Current Thinking ◽  
Grand Strategies

I have been thinking about the history and future of the labor movement for fifty years. As an academic in philosophy I have focused my research on the intersections of the global labor movement with philosophy of history, philosophy of science, ethics, economics, and political theory. ‘The Fix We Are In’ is a summary of my current thinking. At present the grand strategies for emancipation, ascendant in the mid-twentieth century, have faltered. Headless capitalism runs amuck. The conditions of the working class deteriorate. There is no vision of a better world—no clear pathway toward a better future. The ‘popular revolt’ bubbling up around the globe is a product of this moment. My paper concludes with a difficulty regarding my own favored way forward. Responses from readers would be welcome at: [email protected].

scholarly journals Collingwood, Scientism and Historicism

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-288
Author(s):  
Giuseppina D’Oro ◽  
James Connelly
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

Abstract The philosophy of history is undergoing something of a revival. Much has happened since its heyday in the 1960s when methodological discussions concerning the structure of explanation in history and the natural sciences were central to the philosophical agenda. This introduction revisits Collingwood’s contribution to the philosophy of history, his views on the relation between science and history, and the possibility of historical knowledge suggesting his work is of enduring relevance to contemporary debates. It locates his contribution in the context of the hermeneutic tradition and locates his defence of the methodological autonomy of history in the context of recent debates concerning the relation between science and the history of the philosophy of science.

Buddhist Epistemology and Western Philosophy of Science

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 170-193
Author(s):  
Elías Manuel Capriles
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Final Phase ◽  
Buddhist Epistemology ◽  
Reductio Ad Absurdum ◽  
Gradual Development ◽  
Technological Interest

Buddhism has always produced epistemological systems, and those of the Mahāyāna, in particular, always showed knowledge and perception to be inherently delusive. “Higher” forms of Buddhism have a degenerative philosophy of history according to which a sort of Golden Age was disrupted by the rise and gradual development of knowledge and the delusion inherent in it, which have reached their apex in our time – the final phase of the “Era of Darkness.” From this standpoint, this paper intends to show science, in which Marcuse saw an inherent instrumental/technological interest, to have been developed by delusion and to have simultaneously furthered the development of delusion, to the point at which they begot the deadly ecological crisis proper to this concluding phase of the Era of Darkness – which reveals as such the delusion at its root, achieving the latter’s empirical reductio ad absurdum and offering us the possibility of eradicating it and thus healing our minds and, hopefully, our world.

scholarly journals On the History of the Divide between Analytic and Continental Philosophies: The Case of Epistemology in France

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (8) ◽  
pp. 22-33
Author(s):  
Tatiana D. Sokolova
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Historical Epistemology ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Difference ◽  
French Tradition ◽  
Definition Of

The article analyzes the conflict between the “analytic” and “continental” approaches in philosophy on the example of the development of historical epistemology, which can be considered as “French style” in the philosophy of science. The French tradition is especially interesting due to the specificity of the reception of analytic philosophy that took place in it, where analytic philosophy did not receive an institutional form. The phrase “analytic philosophy” was problematized in the French academy in the 1950s and indicates the existence of a number of differences between the two types of philosophizing, as well as the absence of any stable connection between the French and Anglo-Saxon philosophical communities. One of the main reasons of this divide is that the philosophers interested in logical positivism and seeking to acquaint the French philosophical public with its ideas have suddenly passed away. The author’s argumentation is based on the material of historical epistemology in France, which was traditionally associated with the philosophy of science much more than epistemology in other countries. The article considers two approaches to defining the difference between analytic and continental philosophy: theoretical approach (distinctions between these traditions that are based on the subject of research, methodological techniques, key ideas, style) and institutional (based on geographical division – a particular philosopher belongs to a country or an academy – or based on the choice of his predecessors by the philosopher himself). The author demonstrates the inconsistency of the theoretical approach to the definition of analytic and continental philosophical traditions.

scholarly journals The phenomenon of New Knowledge in the conceptual framework of the philosophy of science

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-483
Author(s):  
Boris I. Pruzhinin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Research Priorities ◽  
Historical Epistemology ◽  
Historical Continuity ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
Methodological Guidelines ◽  
Dynamics Of Science

The article, as a result of the analysis of the philosophical and methodological content of the new knowledge and dynamics of science concepts, substantiates the thesis about the necessity to radically shift the research priorities of the modern philosophy of science. The author critically evaluates the current methodological potential of the philosophy of science, which has developed on the basis of postpositivist concepts of scientific knowledge, and he attempts to outline the philosophical-methodological problems associated with modern scientific trends. According to the author, attention on the philosophy of science should be focused today, first of all, on interdisciplinary research programs that are implemented in the most popular and advanced areas of scientific knowledge. Within these programs, it is not the theoretical constructions (and their relationships), but the disciplinary structures of knowledge that act as the main cognitive unit of the organization of knowledge. Thus, to the fore of the philosophical-methodological approaches come the tasks related to the search and the analysis of methodological guidelines that provide cognitively effective communication (mutual understanding) of scientists within collaborations, i. e. interdisciplinary scientific teams. The author believes that the epistemological perspectives of comprehension and methodological development of such guidelines open up when referring to the cultural-historical dimensions of scientific knowledge. It is the cultural-historical epistemology that takes into account the existential, motivational attitudes of the scientist, which at the same time assume methodologically significant parameters of scientific research (the style of scientific thinking, the dignity of knowledge, and the historical continuity of science as a cultural phenomenon). As a result, the cultural-historical epistemology opens up the possibility of an effective methodological orientation of the most important areas in modern science.

What’s Forgotten About The Structure of Scientific Revolutions?

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-339
Author(s):  
Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
First Century ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Scientific Revolutions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Structure Of Scientific Revolutions ◽  
History Of

Abstract Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a classic, and it is certainly not forgotten. However, an essential aspect about it has been neglected. That is, Kuhn’s Structure is a book in philosophy of history in the sense that Structure attempts gives an account of historical events, focuses on the whole of the history of science and stipulates a structure of the history of science to explain historical events. Kuhn’s book and its contribution to the debates about the progress of science and the contingency and inevitability of the history of science shows why and how philosophy of history is relevant for the history and philosophy of science. Its successful integration of historical and philosophical aspects in one account makes it worthwhile reading also for philosophers of history in the twentieth-first century. In particular, it raises the question whether the historical record can justify philosophical views and comprehensive syntheses of the past.

From evolutionary theory to philosophy of history

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabel Gabel
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Dual Nature ◽  
Mendelian Genetics ◽  
Inheritance Of Acquired Characteristics ◽  
Human Autonomy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Raymond Aron

Well into the 1940s, many French biologists rejected both Mendelian genetics and Darwinism in favour of neo-transformism, the claim that evolution proceeds by the inheritance of acquired characteristics. In 1931 the zoologist Maurice Caullery published Le Problème d’évolution, arguing that, while Lamarckian mechanisms could not be demonstrated in the present, they had nevertheless operated in the past. It was in this context that Raymond Aron expressed anxiety about the relationship between biology, history, and human autonomy in his 1938 Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire: essai sur les limites de l’objectivité historique, in which he rejected both neo-Kantian and biological accounts of human history. Aron aspired to a philosophy of history that could explain the dual nature of human existence as fundamentally rooted in the biological, and at the same time, as a radical transcendence of natural law. I argue that Aron’s encounter with evolutionary theory at this moment of epistemic crisis in evolutionary theory was crucial to the formation of his philosophy of history, and moreover that this case study demonstrates the importance of moving beyond the methodological divisions between intellectual history and history of science.

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