1. Things really do change. When I started reading general philosophy of science, I absorbed the idea that the history of science can be used to illustrate and even as evidence in the philosophy of science. I went to a library and started to read a book by Alexandre Koyré. I was very confused when Koyré discussed how Johannes Kepler attempted to “model” the solar system by nesting Platonic solids and thereby reveal God’s geometrical plan for the universe. I thought that Koyré was really bad at writing history. I attempted to find a description of Kepler’s work that would tell what he was really doing at this stage of his career, a description without obscure stories. Gradually, I realized that Koyré was right and the “science” of Kepler looked very different from the science we know – or at least from the general conception of science. How can we learn something from a history that looks so different? In my view, that things change is not the lesson (I guess I disagree with historians here). The real question is why we are able to understand history despite the changes: Are there some unified patterns in history or are we forcing it under our conceptual system (or both)? This Kantian question haunts the philosophy of historiography.
Over a decade later I am still not sure how the relationship between the history and philosophy of science should be understood.
2. There is much more to science than the contents. Before I started regular discussions with historians, I was mainly interested in how scientific theories (or models or concepts; contents in general) were found and accepted. I was (at least somewhat) familiar with the “logical stories” including text-book accounts of falsificationism, hypothetico-deductivism, operationalism, Bayesian etc. and I wanted to deepen my understanding of science by reading how science works in real-life situations. I thought that historians of science would tell me something like “Well, Darwin was able to explain existing evidence, but the contemporaries were requesting novel predictions or applications. We need to modify the H-D-model to underline the crucial role of novel predictions in scientific practice”. Little did I know. Most historians of science are not interested in these types of questions. This is of course natural. Why would historians of science be interested in same questions as an undergraduate philosophy student.
However, first I did not realize that the difference between historiography and philosophy of science lies in the areas of interested. I thought that historians were asking the same questions about formulation and acceptance of theories and answering them differently. At this point, I thought that Kuhn is a prototypical historian of science. As we know, Kuhn claimed that the development of science cannot be captured by the “logical stories”, no matter how much we fix their details. Science includes not only facts and theories but also metaphysical commitments, values, standards and exemplars. Moreover, the development of science can depend on seemingly irrelevant factors.
“Individual scientists embrace a new paradigm for all sorts of reasons and usually for several at once. Some of these reasons—for example, the sun worship that helped make Kepler a Copernican—lie outside the apparent sphere of science entirely. Others must depend upon idiosyncrasies of autobiography and personality. Even the nationality or the prior reputation of the innovator and his teachers can sometimes play a significant role.” (Kuhn 1970, 152-153.)
Even though Kuhn was discussing all sorts of thing outside theories, facts and methods, he was still attempting to explain the contents of science:
“[We] shall deal repeatedly with the major turning points in scientific development associated with the names of Copernicus, Newton, Lavoisier, and Einstein. More clearly than most other episodes in the history of at least the physical sciences, these display what all scientific revolutions are about. Each of them necessitated the community’s rejection of one time-honored scientific theory in favor of another incompatible with it. Each produced a consequent shift in the problems available for scientific scrutiny and in the standards by which the profession determined what should count as an admissible problem or as a legitimate problem-solution”. (1970, 6 [emphasis added]).
At this point, I thought that all historians are like Kuhn: They attempt to explain the contents of science and they do so by citing all sorts of (notorious) contextual factors. I was wrong for the very simple reason that historians are not interested merely in the contents of science but attempt to understand the historical connections between science and other aspects of life and society. They ask, for example, how scientists have understood themselves and what is the relationship between science and policy. When I realized this multitude in the explananda of historiography of science, I understood why some explanations looked so weird initially. Surely, if you ask how scientists in some era produced a distinction between science and other knowledge-practices, the answer looks different from the one you get when you ask what the difference in fact is (in the same way as the difference in the chemical structure of oil and water is a different question than why we do not store them the same way [although the answers are somewhat intertwined]).
The more I have thought about the issue, the more important I have begun to see issues outside the contents of science. For example, I think it is very important to understand the conceptions of science we have. These conceptions shape what we except from science in the times of global pandemic, for example. However, I still think that historiography of science derives its justification as a field of inquiry from the central role that knowledge plays in human life. It is therefore difficult to see the raison d’être for a historiography of science that marginalizes the epistemological aspects of science. However, understanding epistemological practices in isolation from other aspects of science is not possible and the impact of the epistemic aspects of science on our lives is mediated through a network that involves social institutions, technology, cultural representations, etc. Thus, even as we recognize the importance of epistemological aspects of science, the historiography of the other aspects of science is necessary in order to understand how science works and how it penetrates our lives.
3. There are no short-cuts to the past. Sometimes philosophers of science talk as if the history of science (the past) was some sort of aquarium which we can observe. However, our knowledge about the history of science is already a product of an epistemological practice, the historiography of science. As much as we need a philosophy of science in order to understand science, we need a philosophy of historiography of science in order to understand historiography of science.
Historians often point out that the materials available are limited and require interpretation. How this, in fact, affects historiographical practice and its epistemology requires attention. (Notice that historians surely have views on this matter but we should take those views with a pinch of salt. Philosophy (and also historiography) of science goes beyond what scientists say they are doing and so should philosophy of historiography). I would also like to add that historical events and processes occur in a complex causal network. An explanation cannot bring forth everything involved in such a network. Therefore, explaining an occurrence requires that some parts of the causal networks are highlighted and others neglected. Moreover, explanatory factors can be conceptualized in different ways, i.e. the same cause may be described in different ways. we need to pay very close attention to the ways in which the highlighting and conceptualization are performed. Otherwise it is difficult to look for possible patterns in the development of science. How background assumptions, values, traditions, trends and philosophical reflections have shaped different accounts of history of science are questions that require analysis.
I want to emphasize that I am not claiming that philosophy is the “queen” of the sciences (and historiography etc). When I say that we need philosophy of something I am not suggesting that we lay the grounds of that something a priori. Rather, I mean a project of clarifying and making explicit commitments that shape the epistemological practices of a given field. Even though it might be hoped that such clarification can lead to improvement, I think that the main achievement is a clear view of what we know and why. In the case of historiography, my hope is that careful philosophical reflection helps us to avoid epistemic desperation (“historiography as mere storytelling”) and overconfidence (picking lessons from the history without proper reflection).
4. History is short. Many things have changed and much has happened. However, when it comes to macro-level changes in science, such as the creation of new theoretical frameworks, there have not been all that many episodes in the history. It is entirely possible that we have exhausted the relevant possibilities or (more likely) that the theoretical plurality will increase due to the sheer amount of science done these days. Add the problematization and scattering of expertise in the current society, and there might no longer be unified changes in science (i.e. “paradigm shifts” that concern the entire field).