scholarly journals Place of History in the History of Science

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andréa Mara Ribeiro da Silva Vieira
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Conceptual Apparatus ◽  
Epistemological Perspective ◽  
Institutional Issues ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Historiography Of Science ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
Science Departments

This article aims to reflect on the place of history in the history of science from the perspective of Brazilian historiography of science, mainly according to the thought of the Brazilian physicist and historian of science, Carlos Alvarez Maia. Since the 1990s, Maia (2013) began to question why the history of science became (and still largely remains) a “history of absent historians” in the face of the predominance of history of science in the Natural Science Departments and the absence in History Departments. The dynamic and changing historiography of science itself reaffirms the lack of historical analyses using history’s methodological and conceptual apparatus. Thus, epistemological aspects appear interrelated to political-institutional issues. Consequently, one has a political-epistemological perspective for discussing the place – or non-place – of history in the history of science. The thought of Maia (2013) acts as an essential starting point for reflection. It constitutes a possible opening in constructing a consolidation of discussions about the impacts (of the absence and the presence of the conceptual apparatus of history) in developing new historiography of science conceptually historical.

scholarly journals Between Reception and Reflection

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcela Renée Becerra Batán
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
Historical Epistemology ◽  
Second Stage ◽  
Historiography Of Science ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Current

In this work, I propose some notes for a current epistemological evaluation around Whiggism and presentism in the historiographical proposal of Guillermo Boido (1941-2013). In the first place, I will locate the topic proposed in the shared framework from the “Colloquium of Historiography of Science in Latin America (Argentina – Brazil – Uruguay): Reception, Reflection and Production.” Second, I will refer to some aspects of Boido’s academic career and I will place him in what I identify as a “second stage” of the history of science in Argentina. Third, I will dwell on some of Boido’s writings, particularly on those in which he addresses the questions of Whiggism and presentism. Fourth, I will recover some elements on the treatment of these issues in recent works carried out from the perspective of historical epistemology. Finally, in conclusion, I will propose a current epistemological evaluation of Whiggism and presentism between reception and reflection; an evaluation oriented to sustain a “critical” (Loison 2016) and “pluralist” (Chang 2021) presentism, in the face of the epistemological, ethical and political challenges of our current days.

scholarly journals SCIENCE IN HISTORY

2018 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-242
Author(s):  
JAMES POSKETT
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Historiography Of Science ◽  
The Future ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglophone World

AbstractWhat is the history of science? How has it changed over the course of the twentieth century? And what does the future hold for the discipline? This ‘Retrospect’ provides an introduction to the historiography of science as it developed in the Anglophone world. It begins with the foundation of the Cambridge History of Science Committee in the 1940s and ends with the growth of cultural history in the 2000s. At the broadest level, it emphasizes the need to consider the close relationship between history and the history of science. All too often the historiography of science is treated separately from history at large. But as this essay shows, these seemingly distinct fields often developed in relation to one another. This essay also reveals the ways in which Cold War politics shaped the history of science as a discipline. It then concludes by considering the future, suggesting that the history of science and the history of political thought would benefit from greater engagement with one another.

scholarly journals From devotion to commitment: Towards a critical ontology of engagement

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-281
Author(s):  
Andrea Perunovic
Keyword(s):  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Semantic Field ◽  
Comparative Linguistics ◽  
Conceptual Apparatus ◽  
Critical Ontology ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Binary Oppositions ◽  
Light Darkness ◽  
History Of

This article approaches the notion of engagement from the perspective of critical ontology. With language as the starting point of its hermeneutic task, it commences with an etymological analyses of diverse Indo-European words gravitating around the semantic field of the notion of engagement. From these introductory insights obtained by an exercise in comparative linguistics, devotion and commitment are mapped as two opposite, yet inseparable, modes of being of engagement. Both of these modes seem to condition engagement in an ontologically disparate manner. While examining their fundamental structures, some of the canonical concepts of history of philosophy such as being, existence, subjectivity, or world - and also some of its constitutive binary oppositions such as body/mind, individual/collective, transcendence/immanence, light/darkness and sacred/secular - will be reconsidered through the prism of different ontological dispositions that devotion and commitment impose respectively on engagement. The overall aim of this investigation is to bring forth the main existential characteristics of being-engaged, by interpreting the roles of who, where, and what of engagement, and in order to provide a fundamental conceptual apparatus for a critical ontology of engagement.

Gender and the historiography of science

1993 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 469-483 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ludmilla Jordanova
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Historiography Of Science ◽  
Logical Reason ◽  
Big Picture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theoretical Issues ◽  
Intellectual Maturity

The production of big pictures is arguably the most significant sign of the intellectual maturity of a field. It suggests both that the field's broad contours, refined over several generations of scholarship, enjoy the approval of practitioners, and that audiences exist with an interest in or need for overviews. The situation is somewhat more complicated in the history of science, since the existence of big historical pictures precedes that of a well-defined scholarly field by about two centuries. Broadly conceived histories of science and medicine were being written in the eighteenth century, when such an all-encompassing vision was central to the claims about the progress of knowledge upon which Enlightenment ideologues set such store. The Plato to Nato style histories, characteristic of the earlier twentieth century, were written largely by isolated pioneers, and while these were used in teaching as the field was becoming professionalized, recent scholars have preferred to concentrate on a monographic style of research. Despite the existence of the series started by Wiley, and now published by Cambridge University Press, it is only in the last ten years or so that more conscious attempts have been made to generate a big-picture literature informed by new scholarship. It is noteworthy that most of this is addressed to students and general readers, although there is no logical reason why it should not tackle major theoretical issues of concern to scholars. My point about maturity still holds, then, since as a designated discipline the history of science is rather new; it is still feeling out its relationship with cognate disciplines. Big-picture histories have an important role to play in these explorations since they make findings and ideas widely available and thereby offer material through which ambitious interpretations can be debated, modified and transformed.

scholarly journals HISTORY OF THE “HUMAN SCIENCES” AND WALLACE’S SCIENTIFIC VOYAGE IN THE AMAZON: NOTES ON HISTORIOGRAPHICAL ABSENCES

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (67) ◽  
pp. 549-563
Author(s):  
VICTOR RAFAEL LIMEIRA DA SILVA
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Historiography Of Science ◽  
History Of

Abstract This essay analyses a particular historiographical bibliography with the aim of addressing the divergence between history and history of science. I argue that the absence of the history of the human sciences in the historiography of science expands the distance between the history of science and other disciplines of historical studies. To ponder this hypothesis, I will analyse the historiography of Alfred Russel Wallace’s scientific voyage in the Amazon (1848-1852), arguing that the omission of the ethnographic dimension of this expedition exposes important aspects to understand the nature of such dissension and its effects on the construction of the history of the human sciences.

scholarly journals Guest Editors’ Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 3
Author(s):  
Andrea Reichenberger ◽  
Moema Vergara
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Historiography Of Science ◽  
History Of

Special Issue – Women in Sciences: Historiography of Science and History of Science – on the Work of Women in Sciences and Philosophy

scholarly journals Grundtvigs natursyn

1989 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-104
Author(s):  
Kim Arne Pedersen
Keyword(s):  
Natural Science ◽  
Main Tool ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
Spiritual World ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
Symbolic Image ◽  
Near Future

Grundtvig’s conception of Nature.By Kim Arne Pedersen.In this paper Grundtvig’s view on non-human nature and natural science is examined with the contemporary Danish discussion about theology and natural sciences (Viggo Mortensen) as a starting-point. It is argued against the use of Grundtvig’s ideas as a model for a dialogue between these fields of scholarship.Earlier researchers’ (C. I. Scharling) denial of Grundtvig having a view on nature is rejected, and Kaj Thaning’s conception of the autonomy of natural sciences in Nordens Mythologi 1832 is modified.Grundtvig’s conception of nature is defined as rooted in the Western European theological tradition’s Neo-platonic oriented cosmological interpretation of Genesis. Grundtvig takes up the understanding of natural objects as images of the invisible, spiritual world, but he shows his awareness of the rational, scientific interpretation of this tradition.The article points out 4 phases in Grundtvig’s elaboration of his view on nature after 1810, connected with the years after Kort Begreb af Verdens Krønike 1812, the magazine Danne-Virke 1816-1819, the years after Nordens Mythologi 1832 and the period from 1855 to 1860-1865. In the first phase Grundtvig rejects the independence of natural sciences as a tool of Antichrist in the final battle of the near future. In Danne-Virke nature is understood as a tool used in man’s symbolic knowledge of God. The main tool is man’s knowledge of himself because of his exceptional position inside creation as a creature with self-consciousness and language, and therefore the natural sciences are subordinated research on the history of man. Grundtvig’s thesis of femininity as representing nature and man’s body as a microcosm both in a rational, scientific and in a symbolic way is connected with this leading idea. In the years after Nordens Mythologi Grundtvig gives nature and natural sciences a much more independent position, but at the same time he stresses nature’s connection with man because of the state of man’s body as a microcosm. Grundtvig also attacks the Copernican picture of the universe.In the years after 1855 Grundtvig’s attitude towards natural science is sharpened. Apocalyptic motives return, and now Antichrist is connected with the rejection of God’s omnipotence and man’s exceptional position inside creation. As an alternative to the natural sciences Grundtvig emphasizes the interpretation of nature as a symbolic image of God.

scholarly journals Similarities, Differences, and Missed Connections between Thomas S. Kuhn, Gaston Bachelard and the Continental Historiography of Science

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 94-111
Author(s):  
Alberto Fragio
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
European History ◽  
Gaston Bachelard ◽  
Historical Turn ◽  
Michael Friedman ◽  
Historiography Of Science ◽  
History Of ◽  
Important Object

AbstractAccording to the American philosopher, Michael Friedman, while triggering the so-called “historical turn,” Kuhn reinstated the history of science as perhaps the most important object for the philosophy of science. In this paper, I show that this reinstatement is rather a rehabilitation of the philosophical and epistemological uses of the history of science, something already present in the continental historiography of science in the first half of the twentieth century, and especially in Gaston Bachelard’s work. In this sense, I undertake a review of the European history and philosophy of science during that period, paying special attention to Gaston Bachelard as one of the leading representatives of the French historical epistemology of the 1930s. I conclude with the late and quite problematic reception of Bachelard’s thought in the early work of Thomas S. Kuhn. My thesis is this strand may help to outline what is continental history and philosophy of science.

Aurora, Nemesis and Clio

1993 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 391-405 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. R. R. Christie
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Potential Problem ◽  
Historiography Of Science ◽  
Big Picture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Science Community ◽  
Professional History

This essay offers some preliminary and general considerations of big picture historiography of science, attempting an introductory specification of the topic by means of narratological analysis. It takes no strong, substantive position either pro or contra big pictures themselves, preferring an approach which is more diagnostic and heuristic in nature. After considering what may be meant by a term such as ‘big picture’ and its cognates, it interrogates the kind of desire which could lie behind the wish expressed by the conference title ‘Getting the Big Picture’: namely, that a big picture may be worth getting. It proceeds by way of a limited enquiry into what seems to be felt as a relative absence of big picture works in contemporary historiography, criticizing one very general historicocultural thesis which accounts for such an absence, advancing instead evolving features of the professional history of science community over the last thirty years as reasons for this relative absence. Concludingly, it turns the issues raised thus far on their head, in some measure at least. In trying for a more precise specification of the contemporary historiographical formation, we will discover eventually a situation not so much of relative absence of big pictures, rather one where there exists both frame and title for the picture, together with some distinguished painters' names; but where the canvas is only minimally marked, a partial and shadowy sketch, stylistically disjoined. Although this sounds paradoxical, a concrete paradox is not intended. The existence of frame and title enclosing mainly empty canvas indicates only the limitations of the pictorial metaphor for describing complex and developing sets of historiographical practice. What is instanced concludingly is less a theoretical paradox than an intelligible sequence and form of development which issues in a potential problem of practice.

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