It is easy to stumble upon conceptual questions and debates in historiography, especially in the historiography of science and knowledge. Historians are often wondering how to define historiographical subfields and their subjects of study. What counts as historiography of science? What is knowledge? Often these questions are centered around the issues of unity and distinctiveness […]
What Is History of Knowledge?
The history of knowledge is a quickly evolving field. As usual, many questions concerning the novelties, background, and prospects of the new field have arisen. Often the set of questions is impossible to answer. On the one hand, all sound historiography must stem from previous historiography and its results. On the other hand, the history […]
The Ship Is Leaking. Present Knowledge and What-If Thinking
Scientific knowledge changes. In the past, there were different theories and ideas than now. In the future, there will probably be different theories and ideas that may or may not resemble the current ones. In the previous post (here), I noted that this makes it rather difficult to tell what theories there will be in […]
Preprint: The Philosophy of the Future of Science
In today’s post, you can find a preprint of my paper The Philosophy of the Future of Science.
History and Causality. Notorious E. H. Carr
In this post, I will discuss E. H. Carr’s views on historical causality. Although some of his views are infamous, I attempt to defend and make a good case for some of the controversial views. I argue that his discussion about causal patterns, accidental causes, causal hierarchies, values behind causal selection, and future-oriented causal selection […]
Classics in Historiography of Science: Robert K. Merton
In this post, I will continue my discussion about central figures in the history of historiography of science. I discuss Robert K. Merton’s views on science and, following the approach in the previous classics post, I analyze those views from the perspective of current conceptions of and interests towards science. It will be interesting to […]
About the Blog
This blog is related to my research project “Estimating Possible Futures of Science”. In the project, I focus on the question How to estimate possible futures of science? Here I write about topics of my research: The problems and prospects of estimating possible futures of science; Philosophy of science as a conceptual tool to understand […]