Not too serious. Most references can be found from Wikipedia… “On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hairWarm smell of colitas, rising up through the air” A reference to Pre-Socratic philosopher Anaximenes of Miletus (c. 586 – c. 526 BC) who said “Just as our soul… being air holds us together, so pneuma and air encompass […]
Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? William Dray on Historical Explanation
In Laws and Explanation in History, William Dray takes a journey through the issue of historiographical explanation. In this post, I will explicate the many different conceptions of historiographical explanation that Dray is able to find. While there are many important arguments in the book, the book is still centered around explicating the problems of […]
Stop Doing Philosophy! Unity, Distinctiveness, and Relevance in Historiography
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 […]
Dust in the Wind. The Mechanistic Approach to Explanation in Historiography
In this post, I discuss the mechanistic approach to historical (causal) explanation. I argue that while the approach has many virtues, it does not capture some important aspects of historiographical explanatory practices. — In the paper “Ephemeral Mechanisms and Historical Explanation” (2010), Stuart Glennan argues that historical events are often products of processes that can […]
All Along the Watchtower. On the Relationship between Philosophy and Futures Studies
In this post, I analyze the relationship between philosophy and futures studies. I do not intend to capture the whole picture. Rather, I reflect on the commitments that my own study of the estimating of possible futures of science makes to the nature of philosophy. In my view, the main distinction is to be made […]
Die with Your Boots on. Theories, Corroboration, and Rational Prediction
”It may be possible to excise all inductive ingredients from science, but if the operation were successful, the patient (science), deprived of all predictive import, would die” (Salmon 1981, 125). In previous posts, I have suggested that we should approach the estimating of possible futures (of science) in a theory-driven way: We need to use […]
Theoretical Structures in the Estimating the Futures of Science
I suggest that theoretical knowledge is in the essence of understanding the possible structures of future within which more specific events take place. It is a nice coincidence that Kuhn named his famous book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” as this sense of structure is what I have mind in here. Let’s use Kuhn as […]
Should We Correct Historiography on the Basis of What Happened Later?
In the journal Futures and Foresight Science 2(3-4) there have been interesting discussions about the relationship between historiography and futures research. The following passage from Martin Kunc’s “A modeler’s perspective: A commentary on Schoemaker 2020” was especially interesting: “Schoemaker states, ‘The word forecasting captures this very notion, suggesting that the momentum of the past casts itself forward, […]