This post continues from the previous post. —- The three cases from philosophy of science draw conceptual and epistemological insights from considerations that are intimately related to history and historiography. They are related to history when they are based on events and patterns in the past, and they are related to historiography when they are […]
Limits of Conceivability in the Study of the Future. Part 1. The Problem
This post is the first post in a series that discusses the limits of conceivability. I draw lessons concerning our ability to conceive and reason about possible future from three argumentative cases in philosophy of science. In this post, I introduce the problem. In the next post, contextualize the philosophical cases on the theoretical and […]
A Merry Little Christmas? On Possible and Desirable Christmases
At this time of the year, the nature and possibility of a desirable Christmas must be asked again. In this post, I examine the question of how we can understand possible Christmases and their desirability in our own lives. The first thing we need to study is the previous Christmases. Can we find some patterns […]
Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is. Part 3. Historiography as Progressive Science
In the previous posts, I have discussed Lakatosian and counterfactual considerations about the use of frameworks in historiography. I have argued that frameworks generate possible futures and therefore historiography is committed to sets of possible futures, whether historians like it or not. In this post, I argue that choices of explanatory frameworks reflect values and […]
Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is. Part 2. Counterfactuals, Frameworks, Futures
Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is (PYMOWYM) principle: All research on historical phenomena both assumes and makes conclusions about the workings of the relevant phenomena. The commitments limit and shape the possible structures of the phenomena in the future. In the previous post, I discussed Lakatos’s idea of framework-driven historiography. According to Lakatos, historical […]
Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is. Part 1: Lakatosian Considerations
Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is (PYMOWYM) principle: All research on historical phenomena both assumes and makes conclusions about the workings of the relevant phenomena. The commitments limit and shape the possible structures of the phenomena in the future. — How can a historian (or a historiographical community) identify a chunk of actual history […]
Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is. Causality, Scenarios, History, and Future
This post is a brief abstract for a talk I will give. Further discussion about the topics can be found in (at least) the following posts: Rational Reconstructions from History to Future Future of Science. How to Build and Assess Scenarios? Theoretical Structures in the Estimating the Futures of Science [ABOUT VALUE-LADENNESS] History and Causality. […]
Causal Presentism. An Ontological Approach in Historiography
I have defended causal presentism in the historiography of science before. (See here for a blog text; see here for 200 page defense.) Quite often I have been asked whether causal presentism is applicable to other fields of historiography, such as historiography of war or historiography of politics. This is presented as a critique towards […]
Future of Science. How to Build and Assess Scenarios?
In this post, I discuss further how we can build scenarios of the future of science by using theoretical taxonomies. I also discuss how it is possible to assess the merits of the taxonomies and scenarios. … In order to understand how and to what extent we can estimate the future of science, we need […]
Future of Values. Some reflections
In this post, I discuss the topic of the future of values (axiological futurism) and provide my own interpretation of when and why it is important and what tensions it might have. … In an excellent paper ”Axiological futurism: The systematic study of the future of values” (2021), John Danaher discusses the issue of value-change […]
Preprint: Understanding Futures of Science. Connecting Causal Layered Analysis and the Philosophy of Science
Here you can find a manuscript that discusses philosophy of science from a novel perspective.
Poststructural Toolbox in the Philosophy of Science
In this post, I point towards interesting connections between the “poststructural toolbox” (Inayatullah 2004; 1998) and philosophical analysis of science. The poststructural toolbox consists of deconstruction, genealogy, distance, alternative pasts and futures, reordering knowledge. Next, I show how each element can be found from the philosophy of science and how the insights in the field […]