A Thread through the Labyrinth
A Dynamic Model of the Scientific Object
through the case-study of the
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Tom Kayzel
2015
i
ii
University:
University of Amsterdam
Assignment:
Thesis
Title:
A Thread through the Labyrinth
Subtitle:
A Dynamic Model of the Scientific Object through the
case-study of the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.
Name Program:
Research Master in Philosophy
Name Candidate:
Thomas Nicolaas Kayzel
Student number:
6059341
Email:
tom.kayzel@xs4all.nl
Name Supervisor:
mw. dr. F. Russo
Name Second Reader:
dhr. prof. dr. H.O. Dijstelbloem
Version:
2.1 (final)
iii
iv
Contents
Introduction ... - 2 -
Chapter I. Historical Epistemology: A Historic Indication for a Complementary Ontology ... - 6 -
1.1 Gaston Bachelard: Applied Rationality and Phenomeno-Technology ... - 7 -
1.2 Georges Canguilhem: The object of the history of science and its epistemology ... - 10 -
1.3 Michel Foucault: Discourse rules and thresholds ... - 13 -
1.4 Hans-Jörg Rheinberger: From Practices to Things ... - 16 -
1.5 History and Philosohpy of Science & Philosophy of Science in Practice ... - 19 -
1.6 The use of case-studies ... - 23 -
Reflections and Conclusion ... - 26 -
Chapter II. Formative Practices: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in the BONDS research group ... - 30 -
2.1 Presentation of the case-study ... - 31 -
2.2 Methodology ... - 33 -
2.3 Technology ... - 35 -
2.4 Tacit and embodied knowledge ... - 38 -
2.5 Scientific ideas, Ideals and dogma’s ... - 43 -
2.6 Institutions ... - 47 -
Reflections and conclusion ... - 50 -
Chapter III. Dynamics of the scientific object: Intersections of scientific formations ... - 54 -
3.1 It’s process not substance ... - 55 -
3.2 The epistemic thing as place ... - 59 -
3.3 When practices meet: How an object becomes a model ... - 62 -
3.4 The migration of objects ... - 65 -
3.5 The scientific object and the vindication of scientific knowledge ... - 68 -
Reflections and conclusion ... - 71 -
Conclusion ... - 74 -
Appendix I: Interview excerpts ... - 80 -
Appendix II: The definition of PTSD in the DSM-IV ... - 88 -
vi
“How does one re-create a thought centered on a tiny fragment of the universe, on a ‘system’ one turns over and over to view from every angle? How above all, does one recapture the sense of a maze with no way out, the incessant quest for a solution, without referring to what later proved to be the solution in all its dazzling obviousness?”
-François Jacob in The Statue Within, p. 274
“The successive faces madness takes on in the modern world receive what is most characteristic in their traits from proportion and links that result from these four major elements. None of them disappears entirely, but on occasion one is more privileged than another, so much so that the others may fade into the background, leading to tensions and conflicts that operate below the level of language. It also happens that links are established between these different forms of consciousness, constituting large areas of experience that have their own structure and autonomy.
These movements sketch the outline of a historical becoming.” - Michel Foucault in History of Madness, p. 169
- 2 -
Introduction
There is a common image of science. One that is always present in the background when philosophers or outsiders of science reflect on science. It is present in science journalism, science fiction novels and in philosophical essays. Most of the time this image is not an issue and only implicitly plays a role in how science is understood by the general public. There are probably many variations on this common image, but its shared core is best represented in the title of a book by Richard Rorty: The mirror of nature. In my words: There exists an absolute reality which underlies all that exist, we call it Nature; its essence is rule-like, universal and timeless. The scientist’s job is to represent this reality in objective impersonal formulation. What we call a fact is a formulation whose correspondence is tested with nature. Where and when this image came from and to what extent philosophers are to blame for it, remains another question, but the matter is that this image is an obstacle in doing philosophy of science.
That is the case at least in the traditional conception of philosophy of science that was popular before the start of the twentieth century. When science was thought of as busy forming their formulations and testing them without thinking about the justification of its enterprise. It is the task of the philosopher to find the absolute grounds on which science can ground its theories. Isaac Newton thought out his laws and proofed their validity, but it was Immanuel Kant that justified their validity in his first critique. But with the flight of science and its radical break at the start of the twentieth century – special theory of relativity, non-euclidean geometry, quantum mechanics – the philosophies that had defended the old physics came under suspicion: they had provided the wrong grounds for the wrong scientific assumptions. This suspicion gave rise to the development of new philosophies of science. In Austria a group known as the Wiener Kreis tried to break away from the (neo)-Kantian framework, while in France Gaston Bachelard tried to radicalize the (neo)-Kantian framework from within: by moving away from the subject and placing scientific practice at the centre. It is especially the latter who not only broke with philosophy of science, but also with the common picture of science.
Bachelard was suspicious about the concepts of nature or reality. Scientists don’t investigate nature as the common picture imagined it. Scientists investigate phenomena that they create by means of technology. What the object of research is, is not a natural given, but something that scientist form in the application of technology. Bachelard looked for a philosophy of science that did justice to this new picture of
A
T
HREAD THROUGH THEL
ABYRINTH- 3 -
science. He did so by giving philosophy of science a new epistemology. Not an epistemology of its own, but the epistemology of the sciences. Traditionally epistemology is understood as a definition of knowledge or general theory of knowledge. Bachelard has however something completely different in mind. Epistemology consists according to him of the rules and norms scientists develop and apply in their research. For Bachelard the development of a science is the development of an epistemology. The philosopher has to study this development in order to say something that is truly about science, and not about the idea the philosopher has of science.
The present essay studies epistemology as defined by Bachelard. It is also an essay in ontology, and even better it is an essay on ontology studied as epistemology. To clarify this confusing phrase let me define what I say when I speak of ontology. Hacking provides a useful definition in his book Historical Ontology (2004). When he explains why he uses ontology in the title of his book he says: “[T]he old connotations of "ontology" serve me well, for I want to talk about objects in general. Not just things, but whatever we individuate and allow ourselves to talk about. […] we are concerned with the coming into being of the very possibility of some objects.”1 Hacking defines ontology thus as a general philosophy of objects, with the specific addition that this philosophy is concerned with how we individuate and allow ourselves to talk about objects. Thus the goal of the philosophy is to understand how and why we perceive of objects: what possible conditions are at stake when we deem something an object. This definition of ontology fits well with the one Bachelard gave to epistemology. For Bachelard the philosopher has to study how scientists form their rules and norm in scientific practice; in Hacking’s definition the philosopher has to study how rules, norm, criteria, are developed for the object. It is thus possible to combine them; going from a general philosophy of things to a scientific philosophy of things. This essay tries to accomplish exactly that: how scientists form norms for their object of study.
How to accomplish that goal? I propose that the best way is to develop a model of the scientific object. Following Hacking, ontology is understood as a general philosophy of objects. ‘General’ can be here understood as not bound to a specific field (such as science or the arts), but ‘general’ can also mean applicable to all objects. As such it is still possible to have a general philosophy of science. Although my research is bound to the field of science, it does try to develop a general philosophy of science. This means, the ideas on the scientific object put forward in this essay have the pretention to be applicable to all sciences. Such claim poses a problem however. Different sciences use different norms to individuate their objects. Posing an idea on the scientific object encounters the problem that it cannot do justice to the diversity of the different sciences. Therefore a general theory on the scientific object has to operate on a more abstract level: not speaking about specific norms, but trying to give abstract description of the workings of the norms in relation to the object they form. Again, this last sentence is a good description of what I want to achieve in this essay. In order to emphasise the abstractness of my claims I will speak of a model.
But there is a second reason to speak of a model, and that has to do with the goal of developing a model. Bachelard promoted to study scientific practices, but how does one do that? Or better asked, from which philosophical angle? When it comes to scientific phenomena, Bachelard spent some time debunking what in the analytic
I
NTRODUCTION- 4 -
tradition is called the myth of the given.2 But how then can we assume that a scientific practice is simply given? In some branches of philosophy of science it has become common to adopt case-studies, a delimited instant of scientific practice that is studied in detail. This is also the way this essay studies science, by analysing one specific research group on the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). How does one start the analysis of a case-study and what conclusion can be derived from it? I believe that every case-study starts with some philosophical assumption. In this essay these assumptions come from Bachelard and his followers, a tradition that is called Historical Epistemology. That a case-study starts from assumptions does not mean that they are beyond doubt. In the case-study a revision of every assumption is possible, and sometimes even necessary. The development of a model for the scientific object comes from the revision of philosophical ideas through the case-study. A case-study can add, revise, debunk and inspire philosophical ideas. The opposite is also true. For in philosophy of science – at least in the way Bachelard envisioned it – philosophical ideas are only worth something insofar they help describing of understanding concrete science. The movement is therefore circular: from philosophical ideas case-studies are opened-up, and from case-studies new ideas are born, which in turn can be used to open-up new case-studies. A model seem an adequate notion, since it is meant as an analytic tool for the science scholar, and can always be revised when necessary.
The case-study I choose is the BONDS research group at the Academisch Medisch Centrum (AMC) in Amsterdam. BONDS stands for Boosting Oxytocin after trauma: Neurobiology and the Development of Stress-related psychopathology, which is also an adequate description of their research project. This choice was in part inspired by Hackings writings on Historical Epistemology. When discussing his notion of dynamic nominalism -the idea how the general and concrete shape each other, Hacking names a set of objects that he considers examples of things under dynamic nominalism. One of these things is PTSD. And indeed in its short history PTSD has shown to be a dynamic object, appearing in different contexts, shifting from definition, becoming a well-known phenomenon. In my attempt to study the science as much in action as possible,3 I decided to choose an ongoing research project, to see what their practice consists of and how they form their scientific object. PTSD is not viewed as an established entity whose working is clear to the scientist. Instead I want to show how scientist operate in an uncertainty towards their object of research. To speak with a metaphor from Hans-Jörg Rheinberger: “An experimental system can readily be compared to a labyrinth, whose walls, in the course of being erected, in one and the same movement, blind and guide the experimenter.”4 I want to follow the scientist as he walks his labyrinth of PTSD research.
I divided this essay in three chapters, each with their distinct topic, even so much so that they could be read as separate essays. In the first chapter I discuss in more detail the issue present in this introduction, that is the theoretical framework. Although I mention Bachelard in this introduction a pivotal figure, I build my approach from other philosophers as well. The thinkers I discuss operate in the tradition of Historical Epistemology and Besides Bachelard the names of Georges
2 The term was coined by the American philosopher Wilfrid Sellars. See: Sellars, “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind.”
3 When I use the notion in action, I allude to Bruno Latour’s book Science in Action (1993). in A 4 Rheinberger, Toward a history of epistemic things, 74.
A
T
HREAD THROUGH THEL
ABYRINTH- 5 -
Canguilhem and Michel Foucault are usually associated with it. I will also look at other approaches to philosophy of science, and return to the issue of what it means to study a case-study. In the second chapter the actual case-study is central. I discuss four types of scientific practice that I think are important to the formation in the scientific object.
In the last chapter I will start with the development of the model of the scientific object. It is here that I pick up the clues left over in the case-study and start to modify the assumption I started with. One idea central to the development of the model is the notion dynamic. I decided to name my model a dynamic model, since I want to drive my idea of the object beyond the role it is ascribed in Historical Epistemology. I not only want to discuss how forces shape the scientific object, but also the effects of this shaping, and how in turn the object shapes practice. What interest me here is the interaction between practice and object. Describing the dynamics of a scientific object invites all kind of ontological problems, thus the last chapter will return to old school metaphysical problems in the hope to return to the concreteness of scientific practice.
- 6 -
Chapter I
Historical Epistemology:
A Historic Indication for a Complementary
Ontology
“What would be needed, then, would be an ontology of the complementary, less sharply dialectical than the metaphysics of the contradictory.”
- Gaston Bachelard1
To understand what a scientific object is, you have to study the scientific practices that shape the object. This is the central approach used in this essay, to study the scientific object. It is an approach to science that was developed in the course of the twentieth century in France and what is commonly called Historical Epistemology, and sometimes French Epistemology. The present chapter is an introduction in this tradition of philosophy of science. I want to start this essay with this introduction in order to clarify the framework I use to analyse the case-study. Historical Epistemology presents a very different view on science and science studies, when compared to mainstream (Anglo-Saxon) philosophy of science. It has some far reaching claims on the nature of scientific research, which may sound for the unprepared reader quite radical and maybe unreasonable. Hence a discussion of its view is appropriate. A good understanding of Historical Epistemology is necessary in order to follow the argument developed in this essay. I will give this introduction not in an issue oriented or thematic way, but by giving a historical overview of the most important figures: Gaston Bachelard (1884 -1962), Georges Canguilhem (1904 – 1995) and Michel Foucault (1926 – 1984). This may seem at times as quite a detour, but I think it is interesting to see the background of issues on which Historical Epistemology was developed. For addressing the framework of this essay, is not simply addressing some definition. It opens up a broader discussion on what philosophy of science should do,
A
T
HREAD THROUGH THEL
ABYRINTH- 7 -
what its position in relation to science is, and its position in relation to metaphysics. In order to also address these issues the historical approach is a convenient one.
The ideas of Historical Epistemology show quite some similarities to another approach in the philosophy of science developed from a wholly different American tradition: History and Philosophy of Science. Continental philosophy, such as French Epistemology, usually operates in a totally different world from philosophical traditions overseas. This is a shame, especially when the goal and means are sometimes closer than commonly thought, as is the case with Historical Epistemology and History and Philosophy of Science. In order to bridge the gap a bit, I included a section on History and Philosophy of Science in this chapter. Also since comparisons between the two traditions is a helpful tool of analysis. This chapter concludes with a discussion on case-studies. Considering that most claims in this essay are based on a case-study, a discussion on their function is to the point.
1.1 Gaston Bachelard: Applied Rationality and Phenomeno-Technology
The writings on the philosophy of science Gaston Bachelard started to publish in the late twenties of the twentieth century were radically different from most other trends in the history and philosophy of science at that time.2 Even today Bachelard’s views are quite eccentric, especially compared to the mainstream of philosophy of science in the English-speaking world. Although Bachelard’s research program was not continued after his death, his views on science remained highly influential, especially in France. Bachelard introduced some of the guiding principles that nowadays are commonly used by many approaches in science studies such as studying science as practice and seeing science as intrinsically historical. Bachelard’s reasoning on these principles remain relevant, and is thus worth discussing.
Bachelard’s philosophy was an attempt to get beyond the two approaches that he considered as prevalent in the philosophy of science: rationalism and empiricism. According to Bachelard, rationalism assigns the philosopher the task of inventing the fundamental principles on which science is build. For in his view science derives its validity from the foundations provided by rationalism. Empiricism, on the other hand, attempts to eliminate speculative philosophical thought by stressing the importance of direct observations. Knowledge statements can only be valid as long as they can be confirmed by observations. By arguing against these two approaches, Bachelard developed two important concepts namely firstly the idea of applied rationality against rationalism and secondly the idea of phenomeno-technology, against empiricism.
Let us start with the first notion, applied rationality: Bachelard states that typical rational philosophy always gets refuted by science. Take for example the Arche-rationalist Descartes, whose concept of materiality has been refuted by scientific theories that could not hold to the idea of simple bodies as building blocks of reality.3 For Bachelard this refutation showed two things: firstly, science is demonstrating to philosophy that the foundations or principles of science (on which the validity of
2 Bachelard’s views were developed against the background of Auguste Comte’s positivism and Émile Meyerson’s realistic epistemology. Rheinberger notes that only probably Ludwik Fleck was working on a similar project at the same time as Bachelard. See: Rheinberger, On historicizing epistemology, 19 – 21.
C
HAPTERI:
H
ISTORICALE
PISTEMOLOGY- 8 -
scientific statements is based) are historical and in the history of science the foundations and principles are constantly changing. Secondly, principles and foundations are not getting refuted by philosophy but by scientific practice which consists of the rationality that scientists apply to solve concrete problems that emerge in the endeavour called scientific research.4 As such, the basis for scientific knowledge is internal to the scientific practice itself. With these two conclusions Bachelard has provided a new role for the philosopher of science. Instead of finding the principles of science in isolation – the image of Descartes gaining his insights trough meditation is striking of course– the philosopher should be studying concrete instances of scientific practice, to see how foundations are developed within this practice. The development of these foundations is rational, which saves them from being arbitrary, but the application of this rationality is bound by an accidental historical context, and as such they are to a certain extend contingent.5 Studying these practices, which are, according to Bachelard, forms of applied rationality, does not mean studying the outcomes of science in the form of theories or specific statements, but studying the process of vindication the science tries to achieve.
Concerning the second notion, empiricism, Bachelard argues that scientists rarely study reality as it is given directly to us. When studying wax, for example, the scientist does not start with deriving its object from a bee hive – Bachelard is again mocking Descartes’ Meditations when invoking the image of wax here- but rather produce wax chemically, starting his or her research with an object that is much purer then ever encountered in nature.6 Bachelard writes: “[I]t is necessary for phenomena to be selected, filtered, purified, poured into the mould of instrumentation, produced according to the design of instruments.”7 This process of creating phenomena often gets little attention in empiricism, or is disregarded altogether for not being a direct perception. Bachelard argues, however, that scientific practice is not possible without mediation. Scientific practice is mediated by technology, since instruments, tools, machines, serve the scientist to change the phenomenon into objects that are suited to be studied by science.8 Technology, argues Bachelard, provides science with a certain stability; in turn, science needs this stability in order to structure the practices around a (scientific) goal.9 Since science has almost nothing to do with simple observations, Bachelard uses the term phenomeno-technology, to describe what scientists use to form their scientific object. Thus Bachelard adopts a strange form of idealism.10 The objects of everyday experience (the hats, cats and mats of this world) are not real, or at least they are not real for the scientist.11 What is real, then, is technology and that what
4 Gutting, Michel Foucault’s archaeology of scientific reason, 13. 5 Bachelard, The New Scientific Spirit, 17.
6 Ibid., 167. 7 Ibid., 17.
8 Bachelard was influenced by the French neo-kantion Léon Brunschvicg, thus his rejection of empiricism for the adoption of historical categories likely finds it origins there. See: Gutting,
Continental Philosophy of Science, 3 – 4.
9 Bachelard, Essai Sur La Connaissance Approchee, 167.
10 I speak here of Idealism as the idea that the ‘outside reality’ is constructed by human beings. Bachelard deviates from the usual idea of Idealism by claiming that this construction of the world involves material entities, such as machines. Therefore I call it a strange from of Idealism.
11 Garry Gutting notes that Bachelard did not claim that science was the only practice that is capable of grasping the hidden reality behind the everyday experience. Bachelard also wrote
A
T
HREAD THROUGH THEL
ABYRINTH- 9 -
emerges from scientific practices. This reality is essentially constructed, since every scientific fact is a construction made by human practices. The vindication that scientific practice tries to establish in the end, consists in a form of inter-subjectivity. Bachelard writes:
“By announcing the scientific truth we call for a meeting of minds; together we convey both an idea and an experience, we link experience to an act of verification: The scientific world is therefore that which we verify” 12
Vindication, of which the process of scientific practice consists, is the development of the human mind that is increasingly more apt to grasp scientific knowledge. All the phenomeno-technology and applications of rationality, have influenced first the thinking of a group of scientist, later the scientific community and in the end all human minds. These minds are getting more and more capable of communicating scientific information and, as such, are able to vindicate the findings of science. When talking about the collective mind of scientist or humans in general, Bachelard speaks of the scientific mind or spirit.13
Then what is the task of the philosopher of science when he investigates the applied rationalities or the phenomeno-technology? For Bachelard the philosopher of science’s main object of study is the epistemic obstacle.14 The development of science throughout history consists of overcoming a series of epistemic obstacles, problems that arise when the fundamental principles of science are no longer able to solve the problems encountered in scientific practice. When the principles are changed so that problems can be solved, Bachelard speaks of an epistemic break.15 Because in the epistemic break the foundations of science are changed, not all knowledge remains valid. Epistemic breaks form demarcations of periods in the development of science. Bachelard is not relativistic about the epistemic breaks in the history of science. Although different periods have different foundations on which they are build, these changes are progressive in the end. The epistemic break is helping the scientific mind to get increasingly better at grasping science, even if it sometimes has to give up knowledge claims. Through an epistemic break the vindication of science can only become stronger. For the philosopher of science these breaks provide a great example for studying how science creates its own internal foundations, but philosophy also helps the scientific mind in understanding itself.16 And by self-understanding the scientific mind is able to overcome scientific obstacles. Philosophy of science is crucial for science, not in providing foundations, but in aiding science to create them.
Since the works of Thomas Kuhn,17 who emphasised the incommensurability between periods of science, or the Strong Program of David Bloor, who showed how scientific vindication is in part dependent on non-rational social factors,18 the
extensively on poetry, another means to change phenomena into meaningful experience. The experience of poetics is not more real than science, but the two means are complementary and irreducible to each other. See: Gutting, Michel Foucault’s archaeology of scientific reason, 18 – 19.
12 Bachelard, The New Scientific Spirit, 11. Italics from the original 13 Bachelard, Formation of the Scientific Mind, 22.
14 Ibid., 27 – 29. 15 Ibid., 30. 16 Ibid., 20 – 21.
17 Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 18 Bloor, Knowledge and Social Imagery.
C
HAPTERI:
H
ISTORICALE
PISTEMOLOGY- 10 -
optimism of Bachelard’s idea of the scientific mind is something that philosophers can’t tap into so easily anymore. The task of the philosopher of science as assistant of science is an idea which finds little resonance in those who are inspired by Bachelard. On certain points, however, Bachelard still points out in what direction science studies should go. Bachelard’s idea of making philosophy of science dependent on the study of applied rationality implies that philosophy can no longer provide an all-encompassing idea of science. The practices of science itself are diverse; as such there is no longer an idea of a unified science. Bachelard even opposed that idea.19 Referring to Bachelard, Rheinberger concluded: “We have to live with this ‘lack of metaphysical purity.”20 But this unsolvable lack in our metaphysics is by no means the end of metaphysics. In Bachelard view there is still need for ontology, but of a specific kind. It has to be an ontology that allows for the plurality of sciences, and is apt for the description of scientific practices.21
1.2 Georges Canguilhem: The object of the history of science and its epistemology
Georges Canguilhem’s institutional influence is probably greater than his philosophical one. In the sixties, Canguilhem was regarded as the pivot figure of the academic philosophy in Paris, helping many of his pupils to pursue a career in philosophy. Many important French thinkers were students of Canguilhem: Louis Althusser, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault and among many others. Even if his students are probably more famous than Canguilhem himself, his philosophy is undeniably important for the development of the French history and philosophy. In 1953 Canguilhem was successor of Bachelard’s chair in the history of science at the Sorbonne, and although his own approach to the history of philosophy was different from that of Bachelard, he built on the ideas that were put forward by Bachelard. Thus Canguilhem continuation of Bachelard’s project makes it possible to speak of a tradition of Historical Epistemology.
Invoking the label Historical Epistemology causes, however, some confusion. Neither Bachelard, nor Canguilhem ever used the label to describe their work. Historical Epistemology was first used by Dominique Lecourt in his essay L’Épistémologie historique de Gaston Bachelard (1969)22 and initially only described the project of Bachelard. Later Lecourt used it to describe a larger group of authors that included Canguilhem and Foucault.23 Canguilhem himself had some troubles with the term, and wondered whether Epistemological History might better fit the description of his own research.24 Some authors have indeed argued that the works of Bachelard and Canguilhem differ so much that we should use two separate labels.25 Because it is not my intentions to discuss here at length which label is more fitting, I will use the term Historical Epistemology for both Bachelard and Canguilhem. The reasons to call
19 Bachelard, The New Scientific Spirit, 14. 20 Rheinberger, On historicizing epistemology, 21. 21 Bachelard, The New Scientific Spirit, 16.
22 A English translation was published in 1975 and included in the book Marxism and
epistemology.
23 Lecourt, Pour Une Critique De L’épistémologie: Bachelard, Canguilhem, Foucault. 24 Braunstein, “Historical Epistemology, Old and New.”
A
T
HREAD THROUGH THEL
ABYRINTH- 11 -
Canguilhem’s project Epistemological History, are however quite revealing to see the differences between the authors and how Canguilhem responds to Bachelard.
As pointed out in the last section, Bachelard’s ultimate aim was a form of epistemology. Not in the usual sense of providing definitions of knowledge or conditions for valid knowledge. But in helping science to become more reflexive, in order to be able to develop its own norms. Historical research was for Bachelard the way of letting science become reflexive. This implies that history is a mean (a very important one, but a mean nevertheless) for epistemology. In the works of Canguilhem means and ends are reversed. Canguilhem main aim is writing an adequate history of science, which is according to him only possible with the help of epistemology.26
Canguilhem’s approach to history of science, can best be understood when it is compared with other popular approaches in Canguilhem’s time. The first approach is that of Eduard Dijksterhuis who in his The Mechanization of the World Picture (1961)27 presented history of science as memory of science or laboratory of epistemology.28 This means that studying the science of the past helps in developing a general theory of what science is or how it should work. The problem with this approach is that it takes all past instances of science as part of one great scientific methodology. Canguilhem has analysed this problem by pointing to the object of research Dijksterhuis uses. Dijksterhuis treat the history of science in the same way as a scientist treats his object: as a universal timeless entity, from which general theories can be derived.29 For Canguilhem this approach misses the ability to remark breaks in scientific progress: the way in which scientific methodology can sometimes radically change.
A second popular approach in Canguilhem’s time, found in the readings of Émile Meyerson and Alexander Koyré, is the role of epistemology in the history of science seen as the judge of past knowledge. In this approach epistemology decides what good science is, and what should be considered as part of the history of science. But such approach leaves a very limited history, since the epistemology used for deciding on good science is contemporary, only science that is still of relevance to today’s science can counted as good. This has to be unsatisfactory for the historian.30
However for Canguilhem a history of science without epistemology is also an unattractive option, for this would yield a series of facts surrounding science, but ultimately miss the point of what makes science into science: namely, finding the truth. Truth here can be understood as universal principles or comparable conceptions, but the finding of truth itself is a historical and local process. Canguilhem calls for the use epistemology in history, not present-day history, but the epistemology of the past, the historical and local epistemologies that the scientist used to find the truth. Just like Bachelard, Canguilhem epistemology is a form of applied rationality always localised by definition. Canguilhem explicates his point by making a comparison between the object of the history of science and the object of science itself. Science investigates objects that are derived from nature, but history of science derives its
26 Canguilhem writes: “without reference to an epistemology, a theory of knowledge would be a meditation on the void, and without relation to a history of sciences an epistemology would be a less important labor which was completely superfluous to the science of which it pretends to speak.” Canguilhem, “The Object of the History of Science,” 200.
27 Originally published in Dutch: De Mechanisering Van Het Wereldbeeld (1950). 28 Canguilhem, “The Object of the History of Science,” 200.
29 Ibid. 30 Ibid., 201.
C
HAPTERI:
H
ISTORICALE
PISTEMOLOGY- 12 -
object in a different way than science. Instead of placing the scientific object within the restriction of a (imaged) laboratory of history as Dijksterhuis would have done, history of science should turn its attention to the surroundings of the scientific object.31 These surroundings are the scientific practices that make the object into a scientific object.
Further understanding of how Canguilhem conducts his research in history of science, requires the explanation of two key-concepts from his oeuvre: norms and concepts. Concepts are the main object of analyses according to Canguilhem. They are the organizing elements of scientific practice, they enable the existence of research programs, formulation of objects and theories. Concepts can also evolve into other research programs, thus forming possible conditions for the practice of science. For example, Canguilhem argued that Claude Bernard’s introduction of the concept of internal environment led to the possibility of a whole new field of experiments in life sciences. The idea that a function could be observed in a living animal (in vitro experimentation), led to the technique of vivisection, which in turn led to new forms of scientific reasoning.32 If we borrow the terminology from Canguilhem’s student Foucault, then we are able to say that concepts are the condition of a discourse. Discourse according to Canguilhem is always concerned with speaking the truth, but its boundary rules do not designate what this truth is, only what it can be. In other words within a discourse all the scientists are bound to make use of the same concept, but allowed to speak in different truthful ways about the same concept. This multiplicity of speaking, which forms the plane of operation for epistemology, allows for the interaction between technology and scientific objects – this interaction is the scientific practice – for the occurrence of error, and henceforth of correction and adjustment. What follows from this practice is what Canguilhem calls scientific norms. They are the guiding principles that allow scientists to discard, adjust or verify knowledge. Canguilhem writes:
“The object of historical discourse is, in effect, the historicity of scientific discourse, inasmuch as this historicity represents the carrying out of an internally law-governed project, but one which is traversed by accidents, retarded or deflected by obstacles, interrupted by crises, i.e. moments of judgment and of truth.”33
Note that Bachelard operates here in similar fashion. He also states that the occurrence of obstacles as constitutive of the formation of an epistemology. Bachelard, however, applies this logic to the whole of the development of science, whereas for Canguilhem this formation of epistemology is only local, bound to specific historic concepts.
One last thing to note on Canguilhem is that his oeuvre is more extensive than simply his work on ‘epistemological history’. His most famous work Le normal et le pathologique (1966)34 is also presented in a historical narrative, but has more normative ideas concerning the concepts it discusses, whereas in the work of Canguilhem, as discussed above, he distances himself more from his object of study,
31 Ibid., 205.
32 Example taken from: Rheinberger, An Epistemology of the Concrete, 45. 33 Canguilhem, “The Object of the History of Science,” 203.
A
T
HREAD THROUGH THEL
ABYRINTH- 13 -
suspending it from universal judgement. In his work on the concept of live, Canguilhem presents a concept in metaphysical fashion, that is a grounding way of defining live on which all other concepts are based.35 This is the reason why Canguilhem is sometimes called a vital rationalist.36 It seems that Canguilhem approach here is in contradiction with his writing on the history of science and therefore it makes sense again to speak of Canguilhem as a Historical Epistemologist. In an article called On the Genealogy of Concepts and Experimental Practices (2013) Pierre-Olivier Méthot described the relation between his epistemological history and historical epistemology, where the former cannot be simply identified with history of science, and the latter not with philosophy of science. Méthot sees these two approaches to science as intrinsically linked and give rise to a critical program for philosophy of science.37 An example of this is Canguilhem’s essay Knowledge and the Living (1994),38 in which he employs a historical analysis on the emergence of a new concept of life with the development of genetics. Canguilhem shows in this essay how the concepts developed through the twentieth century, and compares its characteristics to his own metaphysical conception of life. In the end he concludes that the new concept of life in genetics has a tension with what life itself does, namely the constant adoption to new environments. Here Canguilhem combines normative and descriptive research in order to develop a critique on a scientific concept. Canguilhem acknowledges that epistemological history, can never completely detach itself from contemporary epistemology. That is why Canguilhem is modest in his aims for the history of science: Rheinberger described Canguilhem stance as follows:
“History of science accordingly presupposes a never-ending constructive effort: it cannot be made once and for all, but must be constantly made and remade.”39
It is my opinion that in the relation between Canguilhem’s descriptive and normative work, the same ideas concerning ontology that became apparent in the work of Bachelard, can be identified. Without making a general philosophy of science, there is still room for a general ontology that can do justice to the plurality of science. As such normative, general and universal elements can be (and mostly will be) part of a philosophy of science that focusses on the historical and local.
1.3 Michel Foucault: Discourse rules and thresholds
Canguilhem’s research of studying the practices that turn an object into a scientific object has continued in the work of Foucault.40 The latter, however, deepens and
35 Rheinberger, An Epistemology of the Concrete, 45.
36 This name was coined by Paul Rabinov who also published a collection of essays by Canguilhem with the same name: Canguilhem, A Vital Rationalist (2000).
37 Méthot, “On the Genealogy of Concepts and Experimental Practices,” 118. 38 Canguilhem, “Knowledge and the Living.”
39 Rheinberger, An Epistemology of the Concrete, 44.
40 The way I present the section here suggest that the influence of Canguilhem om Foucault was an one-way relation. Canguilhem however only started to explicate his ideas on the history of science after he supervised Foucault thesis. It would be thus make more sense to speak of
C
HAPTERI:
H
ISTORICALE
PISTEMOLOGY- 14 -
extends this program considerably. The deepening of the project is established by the distinction between savoir and connaissance that Foucault introduces. On this distinction Foucault himself writes:
“By connaissance I mean the relation of the subject to the object and the formal rules that govern it. Savoir refers to the conditions that are necessary in a particular period for this or that type of object to be given to connaissance and for this or that enunciation41 to be formulated.”42
Foucault is somewhat cryptic here, when he speaks of ‘the relation of the subject to the object’, he basically refers to the common picture of science in which the subject (the scientist) extracts knowledge from its object, according to the rules that the scientific methods dictate (what Foucault calls here ‘the rules that govern it’). To put it more simply, connaissance is every sort of knowledge conveying the information scientists usually hold as relevant: outcome of the experiment, experimental set-up, number of subjects, method choses, etc. Savoir forms the possible conditions for this knowledge, this knowledge is thus typified as ‘underlying’; hence I will use ‘underlying knowledge synonymously with savoir.43 This type of knowledge is usually implicit for the scientist and as such not the subject matter of treatises that operates in a specific discipline. Here Foucault deepens the project of Canguilhem. One could say that Canguilhem also sought to find the conditions for the object to become scientific; he, however, has focussed mainly on the explicit considerations that are present in the scientific practice. For example, when Canguilhem is focused on how scientists use technology to order certain biological information,44 Foucault would pose the question: where does this idea of order come from in the first place? Therefore Foucault investigates orders, conditions and rules that already play a role in bringing the scientific object into discourse.
In his book The Archaeology of Knowledge (2002)45 Foucault developed a research method to examine the ‘underlying knowledge’ (savoir). This method consists in the determination of the rules that govern the relation between statements. Statements, the basic units of discourse, have a peculiar status in the work of Foucault. They are something of the traces left by scientific practice, they can be utterings of facts, theories, opinions, but also marks, maps, interfaces, layouts, even speech acts as commands, warnings, agreements.46 Singled out, these statements do not hold any meaning. It is only within the discourse they operate that they have a meaning. The archaeologist (the name Foucault gives to the researcher of underlying knowledge) abstracts, however, first from the themes, objects, traditions, concepts, that at the surface seem to determine the relations of the statements to each other.47 Here again
mutual influence of the two figures. See: Gutting, Michel Foucault’s archaeology of scientific reason, 10
– 11.
41 ‘Enunciation’ refers here to a type of discursive formation with the same name. It concerns the rules on how a things can be formulated within a discourse.
42 Foucault, The archaeology of knowledge, 16n. 43 Ibid., 16.
44 Canguilhem, “Machine and Organism.”
45 Original was published as L'archéologie du savoir (1969), the first english edition in 1972. 46 Foucault, The archaeology of knowledge, 90 – 98. For more discussion on Foucault and Speech-acts see: Dreyfus and Rabinow, Michel Foucault, 46.
A
T
HREAD THROUGH THEL
ABYRINTH- 15 -
Foucault deviates from Canguilhem: the concept can no longer be the bearer of vindication, nor the entity that determines a certain unity within a discourse. Without a meta-referent that provides the coherence within discourse, the archaeologist can determine where the coherence comes from by analysing the relations the statements have to each other. Removing the meta-referent, takes connaissance away from the picture, and analysing the relation between statements provides information about savoir.
Instead of the concept as means of vindication and main object for the history of science, Foucault introduces discursive formations: the rules that govern the construction of a discourse. These formations can be grouped into four categories that echo traditional elements of the history of science: objects, enunciations, concepts and strategies. The formation rules of the object, for example, describe the condition that the object has to satisfy in order to count as scientific object. One subset of rules concerning the object is the surface of emergence, which prescribes that, in order for an object to become scientific, it must or should already stand out in the environment from which it will emerge.48 For instance, sexuality as scientific object can only come into existence if some sexual behaviour is already pushed to the margins of society, in such an extent that it is viewed as pathological in contrast with normal, as is the case with homo sexuality (here the influence of Canguilhem on Foucault is very clear). But rules do not only concern conditions. The rules concerning enunciations for example determine the possibilities of scientific speaking: what may, or may not, count as scientific. Here, for example, institutions in the form of journals, and the specific formats they use, play a vital role.49 Foucault extends the project of Canguilhem by breaking with the concept as sole type of rule that can be analysed by the archaeologist, and introducing three more types of rules.
These rules not only describe a current state within a discourse, as the notion ‘formations’ already suggests, they also describe how disciplines develop and structure new rules. To describe this development Foucault introduces four lines along which the disciplines can develop. Foucault calls these lines ‘thresholds’. The discourse has to pass through a threshold in order to gain characteristics usually associated with developed sciences.50 Foucault distinguishes four of them: the threshold of positivity, of epistemology, of scientificity and of formalization. The first threshold, of positivity, is the level in the discourse in which statements can form groups with a certain coherence. Foucault means that certain issues, themes, concepts can be grouped together in such a way that they are potentially able to form a new field of science, although what exactly binds them together has not yet necessarily been formulated. The second threshold is that of epistemology. If a discourse has reached the threshold of epistemology it will be able to decide which statements fall within the discourse and which don’t. It will also start to form ideas or criteria on which statements can be included or excluded in the discourse itself. The third threshold, that of scientificity, enables the discourse to formulate rules concerning the validity of the statements. Whereas the threshold of epistemology only could count statements as in or out, scientificity is able to weight statements on its validity by making explicit use of rules. In the crossing of the last two threshold (that of scientificity and formalization) the discourse can be distinctive enough (e.g. developing its own methods and norms) to
48 Ibid., 46. 49 Ibid., 57. 50 Ibid., 205 – 208.
C
HAPTERI:
H
ISTORICALE
PISTEMOLOGY- 16 -
become a discipline, and as such capable of making rules so explicit that they count as connaissance rather than savoir. It is at this level that according to Foucault Bachelard and Canguilhems analysis take place.51 Hence Foucault claims that his predecessors only focus on mature science, whereas his approach also gives way to research on how disciplines are born. The last threshold also opens up the possibility of vindication, which is not bound to an entity as the scientific mind, or a concept, but bound to explicate rules developed at the end of a process of discursive formations.
The deepening and extension Foucault brought to Canguilhem’s project also meant a loss. The connection between normative philosophy of science (what Bachelard and Canguilhem would call present-day epistemology) and history of science, is no longer natural in the works of Foucault. The works of Canguilhem and Bachelard focussed on the threshold of scientificity and formalization, while Foucault focussed on those of positivity and epistemology. A clear connection between those two forms of study - as Méthot argued for in the work of Canguilhem - is absent in the philosophy of Foucault. Indeed Foucault had a completely different goal in The Archaeology of Knowledge. In wake of his previous book The Order of Things (2001)52 Foucault sought a post-structuralist account to undo the human-centred episteme.53 The Archaeology of Knowledge is written in polemics with approaches to the history of ideas that take the human subject for granted.54 Thus Foucault’s remarks are methodological, oriented towards the history of science, and do not contribute to the development of science itself.
After The Archaeology of Knowledge Foucault developed another approach to analyse practices, this time however he did not exclusively focussed on knowledge practices, but tried to understand the relation between knowledge and other forces in society. This approach he called genealogy. Although in this later work Foucault proves to be more influential than in his earlier work, the ideas that has been set out in his earlier works remain highly influential among philosophers of science.55 In this section I have attempted to break away from the usual picture of Foucault (which focuses on discipline, power, bio-politics and so on) in order to show how Foucault’s work is builds on a tradition of French philosophy of science.56 And to enable to understand as well why I choose Foucault as starting point in the analysis of the case-study in chapter two.
1.4 Hans-Jörg Rheinberger: From Practices to Things
One of the main figures that has inspired the present study is the German Philosopher Hans-Jörg Rheinberger. In addition to being a philosopher of science, Rheinberger was occupied in the past as Bio-Chemist, Historian of Science and translator of many French philosophical works. Especially the works of Jacques Derrida, which he
51 Ibid., 209.
52 Original Les Mots et les Choses (1968) Paris: Éditions Gallimard Foucault, The order of things. 53 Gutting, Michel Foucault’s archaeology of scientific reason, 264.
54 Foucault, The archaeology of knowledge, 208 – 212.
55 Apart from the already noted works from Gutting and Rheinberger, other examples include: Davidson, The Emergence of Sexuality; Hacking, The Emergence of Probability.
56 Gutting and Rheinberger have also tried to interpret Foucault as a follower of Bachelard and Canguilhem. I follow their interpretation at many places. See: Gutting, Michel Foucault’s archaeology of scientific reason.; Rheinberger, On historicizing epistemology.
A
T
HREAD THROUGH THEL
ABYRINTH- 17 -
translated, have played an important part in his own work on philosophy of science. Up to 2012 he was director of the Max Planck Institute of History of Science (together with Lorainne Daston and Jürgen Renn), where he was partly responsible for introducing the term Historical Epistemology beyond the context of its French tradition.57 In his essay On Historicizing Epistemology (2010), Rheinberger traces and describes the relation between epistemology (or philosophy of science in general) by showing how the theme of history was intrinsically part of science had been debated by different thinkers since the start of the previous century. In his own work Rheinberger built on the above discussed authors (Bachelard, Canguilhem and Foucault) as well on the works of Edmund Husserl and Derrida. The label Historical Epistemology seems very apt for what Rheinbeger tries to achieve in his work. Therefore it is not so strange to include him in this discussion on French philosophy. In this section I will show how Rheinberger reacted on the philosophy of the above thinkers. In my discussion of Rheinberger’s work, I will focus mainly on his book Toward a History of Epistemic Things (1997), in which he develops his approach through the case-study of the discovery of messenger-RNA.
Contrary to what Canguilhem and Foucault argued, Rheinberger suggested that not only the surrounding practices that make an object a scientific object are interesting to study but also studying the scientific object itself. Or to put it more strongly, the dynamic of scientific discovery cannot be understood if the historian of science does not pay attention to the scientific object itself. The functioning of the scientific object in the history of science is twofold. Firstly, as the main object of study for the historian, and second, as explanatory device used in the description of experiments. I will expand on the second point in the next paragraph, but first let’s look at how Rheinberger had set up his research, and consider the role of the object. Rheinberger has traced the emergence and developments of scientific entities, mainly by looking at how objects in laboratories come to the foreground, and crossover to other laboratories: how they are subsequently changed, translated, debunked, and finally how scientific objects can be applied in technology.58 Rheinberger usually takes examples for these objects from the life-sciences, since he has a background in those disciplines himself. These objects can be concepts, such as heredity, or model organism like the fruit fly; tools, for example radioactive markers, or scientific mysteries, such as the existence of black matter.59 By focussing on objects, Rheinberger provides himself with the boundaries of his research project. It also gives him some coherence when studying science over time. One may wonder however, whether Rheinberger didn’t fall for the usual trap of history of science, as pointed out by Foucault and Canguilhem, in which the validity and workings of science are contributed to the workings of the scientific object, instead of the scientific practices. To see how Rheinberger has escaped from this trap we have to take a closer look at how he situated the scientific object in the laboratory.
In discussing Bachelard to Foucault, I referenced to ‘the scientific practices that surround the scientific object’ to address the object of research these authors have taken. In Rheinberger’s work these ‘surrounding practices’ are called the experimental system. Such a system is a collection of machines, tools, theories, concepts
57 Braunstein, “Historical Epistemology, Old and New.” 58 Rheinberger, Toward a history of epistemic things, 76. 59 Rheinberger, An Epistemology of the Concrete, 3.
C
HAPTERI:
H
ISTORICALE
PISTEMOLOGY- 18 -
and institutions, which enable the research of the scientific object.60 By speaking of systems, instead of speaking of a single experiment, Rheinberger stresses the way science never functions in isolation, but how it needs technology, a group of background assumption and a scientific community to produce results.61 It is however not the fact that all scientists accept the same technology nor the same background assumptions that produce the results of science. It is the interplay between experimental setup and scientific object (called an epistemic thing by Rheinberger). The Epistemic thing is that what is investigated, it is an essentially unknown factor within the experimental system: an object about whose function the scientist is not yet sure. The epistemic thing causes within the experimental system, what Rheinberger calls, an unexpected event, as such the epistemic thing is ‘a generator of suprises’.62 The incorporation or adjustments of these events into the system, is the dynamic of the experiment, and that what produces new results (or discoveries) in science. But new results do not make science, nor does one experiment produce an accepted fact. Results are valuable if they can be integrated in other systems, thus of importance is that research programs can work together, and are able to make the epistemic thing more and more visible. When the working of the epistemic thing is known to such an extent that it can be fully integrated into the experimental system, and be used in turn to investigate other epistemic things, then the epistemic thing has become a technical object. When the thing has become a technical object, its functions are so well known that it can seamlessly integrate in the experimental system. And therefore it is no longer an object of investigation. Most elements of the experimental setup were once epistemic things, but are now functioning in the background: a horizon on which the epistemic thing can appear.
But how does this approach escape from the danger of giving the scientific object too much explanatory power, as Canguilhem and Foucault warned for? To answer this question we have to take account what Rheinberger means when he speaks about writing. As said before, one of the main influences on Rheinberger is the work of Derrida. This is most notable when Rheinberger studies the ‘laboratory scribbles’, the notes and marks that scientist make while conducting an experiment. In line with Derida’s work De la grammatologie (1967)63, Rheinberger calls the dynamic of trying to catch the results of experiments in writing - translating, transforming, stabilizing the phenomena: La Trace, or following the trace. Following a trace, means that the essence of an epistemic thing can never be known, and that every time the scientist makes an effort to induce such an essence, he can only stumble upon a trace. A trace of the epistemic thing that is not present, but of which the validity of the trace is dependent.64 Writing, making scribbles, is thus a departure of the essence of the epistemic thing, it is a departure from the inherent unknowability. But writing is not merely losing the thing, it is also producing knowledge, integrating objects into systems. Thus writing is not simple representation,65 it has a productivity of its own.
60 I am aware that my enumeration of elements from which experimental systems exist, is not completely identified, what these elements are exactly is an issue I discuss in chapter II, while the interaction of elements and how they form a system, is the issue of chapter III.
61 Rheinberger, Toward a history of epistemic things, 30. 62 Ibid., 28 – 32.
63 Derrida, Of Grammatology, 157 – 164.
64 Rheinberger, Toward a history of epistemic things, 110. 65 Ibid., 112.
A
T
HREAD THROUGH THEL
ABYRINTH- 19 -
Those who are less familiar with Derrida’s work will probably wonder why Rheinberger thought it was necessary to include the complex terminology of this French philosopher into his account of the dynamics of science. The reason is twofold. First, the dynamics of writing as described by Derrida, is an apt description of the workings of science: It gains its validity and productivity from an element, a reference, to something that is inherently outside of science itself. As Canguilhem and Bachelard have shown, the productivity of science lies not in a universal essence of nature, as a more common picture of science would describe it, but in the practice of doing science. Rheinberger acknowledges, more than Bachelard and his consorts are able to, that science always takes place by referring to this essence of nature. Derrida’s ideas on writing provide an elegant way to accept that science concerns the essence of nature, while one need not fall back into a naturalistic account of science. A second reason is that seeing science as writing helps the philosopher and historian of science to concentrate on the relevant aspect of science. The epistemic thing forms the pivot part of every experimental system, and the philosopher or historian of science would be wrong to focus only on the nature of the scientific object. Focussing on the nature of the object would be the mistake that Canguilhem warned for when looking for the object of the history of science. Derrida showed that the productivity of science lies in the writing, and that writing is the interesting part of science studies to investigate.
With the help of Derrida, Rheinberger makes points that are in line with the French tradition of Historical Epistemology, where science is studied as historicised practice. In my opinion Rheinberger has added two important insights to this tradition. Firstly the description of the laboratory dynamics of science in terms of epistemic things becoming technical objects, in which he points out how scientist are constantly trying to transform the unknowable into the knowable. These dynamics are used in the second chapter of this study as means of analyses of the case-study. Secondly, the role that the scientific object itself plays (as set apart from the scientific practice) in the dynamics of science. This is a point I will extensively return to in chapter three.
1.5 History and Philosohpy of Science & Philosophy of Science in Practice
While Bachelard, Canguilhem and Foucault were writing their theories in Paris in their typical French style, against the background of the French intellectual milieu (phenomenology vs structuralism),66 philosophy of science developed along very different lines outside France. Europe brought forth different approaches to the philosophy of science during the first decades of the twenty century, of which Bachelard’s approach was only one. Quite opposed to Bachelard’s historical approach was the Logical Positivism of the Wiener Kreis, which downplayed the role of history in the philosophical analysis of vindication. Many members of the Wiener Kreis fled Austria with the rise of national socialism and the outbreak of World War Two. They found a new audience for their views on science in America. From there Logical Positivism could develop itself as the dominating view in the philosophy of science in North America.67 This approach only changed when Thomas Kuhn published his The
66 For more on this context see: Foucault, “Life: Experience and Science.”
67 For more on the historical context of the Wiener Kreis and their views on the history of science, see Rheinberger, On historicizing epistemology, 14 – 17. I should also note here that the
C
HAPTERI:
H
ISTORICALE
PISTEMOLOGY- 20 -
Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), which was mainly read as an argument against the program of the Logical Positivist.68 Thus, it appears that history only entered the stage fairly late in the mainstream philosophy of the America, but this does not mean that no interesting approaches that integrate philosophy and history of science have come from this part of the world in the past forty years or so. This section outlines two of these approaches: History and Philosophy of Science (HPS) and Philosophy of Science in Practice (PSP), in order to bridge the gap a little between continental philosophy and Anglo-Saxon Philosophy – a gap sadly all too clear in most, if not all, present work on the philosophy of science – and to contrast their approach to that of the French Historical Epistemology, so that possible pro and cons will surface.
In order to start the history of HPS, the story of how history entered the stage has to be nuanced a bit. In order to do so I will briefly retell the history of HPS, following Jutta Schickore’s article More Thoughts on HPS: Another 20 Years Later (2011). History not only came into the picture though the works of Kuhn, but was also brought about through the discussion on the future of the axiomatic conception of scientific theories that was held at the end of the sixties and start of the seventies in America. The discussion concerned the structure of a scientific theory: is it build from basic sentences? Abstract models? Exemplars? Combination of the pervious elements? And so on. It was through this discussion that HPS was first seriously debated.69 The basic idea that sparked the debate was that in order for philosophers of science to tell why certain present day concepts are preferable, a philosopher should see into the history of science to show how the concepts of the past were not fit. Two early approaches towards HPS were the ‘hermeneutic’ and the ‘historicist’ approach. The hermeneutic approach considered history to important for philosophy of science because it could tell them what the relevant aspects of scientific research are. A good philosophy of science could only come about when philosophy is informed about the state of scientific research, and history is the means to investigate this state. Thus history is the hermeneutical means, that enable philosophers to see into the concepts of the past and see why they were/ are important or why they fail. The second approach claimed that elements of science itself could be explained by historic research. Thus history could tell the philosopher of science how certain conception come about and how they are discarded again. This acceptance or dismissing of scientific concepts by scientist is useful for in the philosopher of science since it reveals the relevant reasons in science.70 Where the hermeneutic approach focussed on understanding science, that is to say what scientist thought of relevant elements of science, the historicist approach tried to explain science through history, meaning uncovering the reasons for scientific development.71
Later, at the end of the eighties, Larry Laudan proposed another approach to HPS entered the field and remained influential for the following decades. Larry Laudan proposed to approach HPS with the same model the Logical Positivism used
appreciation of the Wiener Kreis in the United Kingdom is a little different story, but since I will focus in the coming discussion only on American authors, I will leave that story out of this essay.
68 Ibid., 54 – 58.
69 Schickore, “More Thoughts on HPS: Another 20 Years Later,” 456 – 47. 70 Ibid., 459.
71 The distinction of approaches that Schickmore here makes is of course inspired by the classic erklären / verstehen distinction was introduced by Dilthey. Ibid., 462.
