Transcript II Contemporary historiography of science

The missing narrativist turn in
historiography of science
Dr Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen
Structure of the talk
Preliminary
I History of historiography of science: two views
II Contemporary historiography of science
III Change of perspective and third view:
progressivism
IV Return of historical realism
V The missing narrativist turn
Preliminary
What historiography of science is?
• Young field
• What is its nature? Is it historiography?
• Influence first from philosophy, then social
studies of science
• Can we detect any general pattern in the history
of historiography of science in past 50 years?
Three ‘narratives’ about the history of
historiography of science
1. Deepening empirization/anti-apriorism
2. From natural realism to social realism to nonrealism
3. From progressivism about natural world to
progressivism about science and its past
I Historiography of science: two views
1. Deepening empirisation: methodological
principles
• Philosophical history of science (e.g. Koyré,
Sarton, Bachelard)
▫ Central feature: history of science seen
through some key philosophical concepts:
truth, rationality, reason
• Historical philosophy of science (e.g. Kuhn,
Feyerabend, Toulmin)
▫ Kuhn: historical accountability of our
views of science: “History, if viewed as a
repository for more than anecdote or
chronology, could produce a decisive
transformation in the image of science…” (SSR)
• The Sociology of Scientific Knowledge
(e.g. Bloor, Barnes)
▫ Central feature: impartiality and the
rejection of the sociology of error: no a priori
commitment and judgment on truth, falsity,
rationality, irrationality
• Anthropological studies; ANT (e.g. Latour, Woolgar)
▫ Central feature: No pre-empirical
commitments of any kind; one needs
to pretend ignorance with respect to research
object like an anthropologists of an unknown
tribe
2. From natural realism to social realism to nonrealism: the research object of science
• Philosophical history of science
▫ Natural realism: science produces increasingly accurate
knowledge of the natural world
• Historical philosophy of science
▫ The historical record shows discontinuity in our knowledge of the
natural world
▫ Natural anti-realism: culture, conceptual schemes,
condition scientific knowledge
• The Sociology of Scientific Knowledge
▫ Symmetry principle: the same type of causal explanations for all
beliefs in science
▫ Society and social factors (ultimately) explain the content of the
sciences
▫ Social realism: no absolute natural knowledge, but there
is knowledge about society
…
• Anthropological studies; ANT
▫ Radical extension of the symmetry principle: “To be
symmetric, for us, simply means not to impose a priori
some spurious asymmetry among human intentional
action and a material world of causal relations.”
▫ If no pre-given ‘nature,’ nor ‘society’
▫ Any concepts or explanatory principles that are not
directly detectable in “routinely occurring minutiae”
have to be justified empirically
▫ No natural nor social realism, but nonrealism
and a new ‘neutral’ ontology of ‘actants’
II Contemporary historiography of
science
Two central principles of contemporary
historiography of science in light of its history:
• Science is a social practice; not a noble search
for truth: one should not portray science as
convergence on the truth about the natural
world
• One should accept only strongly empirically
rooted claims
Contemporary historiography of science…
• Rejects meta-narratives about science
• Rejects pre-empirical commitments to
(philosophical) a priori concepts
• Concentrates on local cultures and social
practices; micro studies
• Has very high standards of empirical verifiability
• Is strongly influenced by sociology and social
studies of science
Current ideal in science studies:
‘Descriptivism’
• Describe the ‘social practice’ of science as it is; ‘just
describe’ how it happened
• Follow, document, report empirical details of
historical practice
• In the ideal researcher historical and sociological
perspectives coincide:
▫ Historian as a temporally conditioned sociologist or
anthropologist
▫ Sociologists as on-the-spot observer of the ‘science in
the making’
Illustrative examples:
• Sociological: Latour in his many works
▫ “more details”; “the name of the game is to go back to
empiricism“
▫ “follow scientists around,” “the social fluid wherever it leads,”
“the veins and arteries” of science
• Historical example: Martin Rudwick: The Great Devonian
Controversy
▫ "empirical studies of science in the making –
whether in the past or present is of lesser consequence.”
▫ “is an attempt to look over the shoulders of
nineteenth-century geologists … and to figure out what
the devil they thought they were up to.”
▫ "Some philosophers may continue to portray science as 'a ship of
reason powering its own way through a silent of sea of social
contingencies.' Those who are concerned with what scientists really
did in the past - or with what they do at present - have rightly
rejected that image as incompatible with any truthful description of
scientific activity.”
III Change of perspective and third
view: progressivism
• Focus shifts from the object of research of
science to the object of research of science
studies and historiography of science
• Has contemporary historiography produced a
more accurate picture of science and the past
science?
• Would a Latourian description of Pasteur be
better than Sartonian? And would, say, Schaffer
and Shapin’s portrayal of dispute on air-pump
and vacuum be better than the positivists’?
• Symmetrical anthropology “must realise that the
two Great Divides [between nature and society
and us and other cultures] do not describe
reality . . . but define the particular way
Westerners had of establishing their
relations with others as long as they felt
modern.” (Latour, We Have Never Been Modern)
• Science studies have added “realism to science”
and believes in “the objectivity of science more
than anyone else” (Latour, Pandora’s Hope)
• It is evident that contemporary historiography
views its own history in progressive terms: that
it has corrected the mistakes of earlier tradition
and managed to produce a better image of the
nature of science, and of its past.
• But … it is (ironically) a manifestation of
modernist thinking: Modernism and
progressivism of science studies
• As a result, we can construe a third view of the
history of contemporary historiography of
science (arrows denotes a progressive step):
From progressivism about natural world to progressivism
about the nature of science and the past science:
Philosophical history of science
Historical philosophy of science
The Sociology of Scientific Knowledge
Anthropological studies; ANT
Material and regional studies of science
IV Return of historical realism
Classical Rankean historical realism
• To describe the past as it really is – wie es
eigentich gewesen
• Extinguish oneself - in order not add anything
subject-sided to it
• Rely strictly on documents and archival sources
Contemporary historical realism
• Progressivism about past science and descriptivism
implies ... historical realism:
▫ science not seen as forming increasingly accurate
image of its object, nature, but
▫ science studies and historiography of science are
forming increasingly accurate picture of their object,
science and its past
• The ideal of empiricism and descriptivism: no a
priori concepts; no abstractions, ‘just describe,’
‘pretend ignorance,’ ‘veins and arteries of science’
V The Missing narrativist turn
Narrativist philosophy of historiography
• Central figures: Hayden White (Metahistory); Frank
Ankersmit (Narrative Logic)
• Focus on complete historical works and their
literal nature
• The central claim: the most important
knowledge contribution are narratives,
central theses or messages:
▫ “There was a scientific revolution in the 16th and 17th
centuries,” “Louis Pasteur was so successful, because
he was most cunning negotiator,” “the dispute about
the existence of vacuum was a struggle of social order”
…
• Narratives/theses are cognitive structures that
organise historical ‘knowledge’ into meaningful
wholes
• Narratives/theses do not emerge naturally from
the past or from historians’ source material
• Narratives/theses are historians’ constructions
that cannot as such be true of historical reality or
refer to any corresponding entity: historical
reality is not the structured as these are
• In contemporary historiography science not enough
focus on the process of construction and the role of
historian in this construction
• More work needed to understand this process
… and to understand how specific
historiographical theses are justified
…. to spell how some interpretations seem
more justified or more rationally warranted
than others
… without assuming that they are true in the
sense of correspondence
• My suggestion: historiography is argumentative
practice that tries to produce as rationally
compelling accounts as possible.
• Three dimensions:
▫ Epistemic (epistemic values)
▫ Rhetorical (argument)
▫ Discursive (intervention in existing discourse)
Conclusions
• The history of historiography of science is both a
narrative of deepening empirisation and of the
transition from realism to non-realism
• But it also implies progressivism about science
and historical realism
• A better recognition and understanding of the
constructive aspects of historiography is called
for