Theodore Arabatzis

Introduction: Ways of Integrating History and Philosophy of Science

This special issue presents selected contributions to the conference “Integrated History and Philosophy of Science” (&HPS3) held at Indiana University in September 2010. The introduction revisits a previous special issue on History and Philosophy of Science, published in Perspectives on Science (2002), and reflects on the recent development of HPS as a field. Ten years ago, scholars expressed concern about the growing distance between mainstream history of science and mainstream philosophy of science. Today, we have good reason to be optimistic. The papers assembled in this special issue demonstrate that we now have a whole spectrum of combinations of historical, philosophical, and other perspectives to study science, ranging from augmenting historical studies by philosophical perspectives and vice versa to historicist reflection on methodological, epistemological, or scientific concepts and practices. This plurality of approaches to combining the historical and the philosophical perspectives on science is a hopeful sign that integrated HPS is here to stay.

Can a historian of science be a scientific realist

In this paper I address some of the problems that the historical development of science poses for a realist and discuss whether a realist construal of scientific activity is conducive to historiographical practice. First, I discuss, by means of historical examples, Ian Hackings defense of entity realism. Second, I try to show, drawing on Kuhns recent work on incommensurability, that the realism problem is relevant to historiography and that a realist position entails a particular historiographical strategy, which faces problems. Finally, I suggest that for historiographical purposes an agnostic attitude with respect to scientific theories and unobservable entities is the most appropriate.

Hidden Entities and Experimental Practice: Renewing the Dialogue Between History and Philosophy of Science

In this chapter I investigate the prospects of integrated history and philosophy of science, by examining how philosophical issues raised by “hidden entities”, entities that are not accessible to unmediated observation, can enrich the historical investigation of their careers. Conversely, I suggest that the history of those entities has important lessons to teach to the philosophy of science. Hidden entities have played a crucial role in the development of the natural sciences. Despite their centrality to past scientific practice, however, several of them (e.g., phlogiston, caloric, and the ether) turned out to be fictitious. For this reason, they have figured prominently in recent debates on scientific realism. The issues I explore in this paper are entangled with those debates. I argue that our understanding of hidden entities and their role in experimental practice can be enhanced by adopting an integrated historical-cum-philosophical approach. On the one hand, philosophical reflection on the reality of those entities has a lot to gain by examining historically how they were ntroduced and investigated. On the other hand, the historical reconstruction of the careers of those entities may profit from philosophical reflection on their existence.

Towards a historical ontology?: Biographies of Scientific Objects Lorraine Daston (Ed.); The University of Chicago Press, Chicago & London, 2000, pp. 312, Price £35.00 US

In Nausea, Sartre’s masterpiece, the existentialist hero suddenly ‘realized that there was no half-way house between non-existence and this flaunting abundance [of things]. If you existed, you had to exist all the way . . .’ (Sartre, 1964, 128). This absolutist metaphysics, by no means confined to existentialist literature, comes under attack in Biographies of Scientific Objects, which is based on the assumption that ‘reality is a matter of degree’ (p. 1). When scientific entities are born, their reality is usually the subject of considerable debate. Gradually they become entrenched in scientific practice and, in this sense, grow more real. Sometimes they may even pass away. Since the early 1960s and the rise of historicist philosophy of science it has been widely accepted that styles of reasoning, patterns of explanation, forms of argumentation, methods of theoretical and experimental inquiry, and criteria of theory appraisal have evolved over time. This aspect of the development of the sciences has opened up space for historicizing epistemology, the philosophical sub-discipline that examines the source and validity of knowledge claims (cf. Daston, 1994). In this stimulating collection of essays, however, Lorraine Daston and (some of) the contributors argue that the time is ripe for historicizing even ontology, the philosophical sub-discipline that examines the fundamental furniture of the world. Usually, one would describe the historicity of scientific entities by focusing exclusively on the evolving beliefs about them and the human practices associated with them. On such an interpretation, the history of the sciences does not warrant any

55.00 hardback, ISBN 0226136701. Price £12.00 US

ABSTRACT In this article, I explore the value of philosophy of science for history of science. I start by introducing a distinction between two ways of integrating history and philosophy of science: historical philosophy of science (HPS) and philosophical history of science (PHS). I then offer a critical discussion of Imre Lakatos’s project to bring philosophy of science to bear on historical interpretation. I point out certain flaws in Lakatos’s project, which I consider indicative of what went wrong with PHS in the past. Finally, I put forward my own attempt to bring out the historiographical potential of philosophy of science. Starting from Norwood Russell Hanson’s insight that historical studies of science involve metascientific concepts, I argue that philosophical reflection on those concepts can be (and, indeed, has been) historiographically fruitful. I focus on four issues (epistemic values, experimentation, scientific discovery and conceptual change) and discuss their significance and utility for historiographical practice.

19.00 paperback, ISBN 0226136728.

In this paper, we revisit the discovery of argon by Lord Rayleigh and William Ramsay. We argue that to understand historically how argon was detected, conceptualized, and accommodated into chemical knowledge we need to take into account the philosophical insight that scientific discovery is often an extended process. One of argon’s most intriguing properties was that it did not react with other elements. Reactivity, however, had been a constitutive property of elements. Thus, the discovery of argon could not have been accepted by chemists without a reconceptualization of ‘element’. Furthermore, there were difficulties with the accommodation of argon in the Periodic table, because argon appeared to undermine the conception of matter that underlay the Periodic table. The discovery of argon was complete only after those conceptual difficulties had been removed. This is why it has to be understood as an extended process, rather than as an event. Furthermore, we will suggest that some of the factors that complicated the discovery of argon were related to the legitimization of physical techniques of investigation in chemistry and the emergence of physical chemistry.

What’s in It for the Historian of Science? Reflections on the Value of Philosophy of Science for History of Science

In this paper we take as our point of departure Kostas Gavroglu and Yorgos Goudaroulis’s insight that, in the process of describing and explaining novel phenomena, scientific concepts are taken “out of” their original theoretical context, acquire additional meaning, and become relatively autonomous. We first present their account of how concepts are re-contextualized and, in the process, extended and/or revised. We then situate it within its philosophical context, and discuss how it broke with a long-standing philosophical tradition about concepts. Finally, we argue that recent developments in science studies can flesh out and vindicate the “concepts out of contexts” idea. In particular, historical and philosophical studies of experimentation and cognitive-historical studies of modeling practices indicate various ways in which concepts are formed and articulated “out of context.”