Ether Wave Propaganda

Philosophy and the History of Science February 24, 2009

In my earlier “pocket history” of the relationship between philosophy, sociology, and history, I noted a few key points:

1. Philosophers tended to use the history of science as a way to develop the philosophy of science.
2. Sociologists noticed that there was much in the history of science that did not fit philosophy-based history.
3. Sociological theories were insufficient to explain the exact path of the history of science, leading some sociologists to develop sociological epistemologies.

What should already be clear is that the history of science cannot work without interrelated philosophical and sociological elements.  You don’t really know you know anything unless you can get someone else to agree with you, but you’ll have a harder time commanding agreement unless you can demonstrate that you really do know something.

What is not, I think, entirely clear is how philosophy and sociology combine to create powerful history.  Historians have responded to the sociological insights by focusing intently on day-to-day practices.  Experimental instrumentation, representation of objects, public lectures all became important parts of the historical examination of (more…)

Good Work and Good History February 21, 2009

All of the methodological introspection that takes place on this site is done with an eye toward arriving at a sympathetic, charitable, and critical understanding of the way today’s history of science profession works, and to figure out what it does well and also what it does less well.

To this point, much of this introspection has involved intuiting a professional mentality—an understanding of what individual scholars feel they are contributing to the profession as a whole.  I have noted that the way scholars frame and justify their work seems to operate according to an “epistemic imperative”, the idea that what we are saying contributes to a sociological and philosophical understanding of the nature of both elite and public knowledge (thus, the “epistemological problematic“).  Exactly how work is supposed to add up into this understanding is rarely (if ever) made clear (a point also made by Peter Galison in his 10 Questions—I’m not just making this stuff up!).

Lately on this site, we have been exploring other aspects of this mentality, assuming an individualistic rather than a communitarian sensibility.  Here “the “epistemic imperative” becomes less of a serious suggestion for application of the (more…)

Charitable, Skeptical, and Critical Readings February 14, 2009

I would like to consider the methodological problem of how historians read sources in terms of a tripartite taxonomy of reading attitudes: charitable, skeptical, and critical.  I take a critical reading to be a combined form of charitable and skeptical readings.  For some background, see the brief conversation that developed over at Time to Eat the Dogs.

The prerogative of the historian is to offer a critique of past events, which should be distinguished from criticism.  A critique offers an articulation and analysis of events; it may be accompanied by a criticism, but its primary concern is with arriving at an interpretation which renders the past coherent.  History is a science and not literature insofar as some critiques can render history more coherent than others.  Interpretations of coherence are subject to agreement based on an assessment of:

1. the physical reality of events of the past;
2. the psychological motivations of actors; and, most provisionally…
3. an account of the prerequisites and causes of events.

I take (1) to be reasonably unproblematic, and (3) to be extremely problematic—if ultimately most rewarding—requiring an extensive, complicated, and highly debatable taxonomy of historical “trends” as well as some physical, economic, and sociological theory of how “trends” unfold.

Concerning the possibility of agreement concerning either (1) or (3), historians must deal with the historical record, (more…)

Localized Historiography February 9, 2009

I think Christopher and I are slightly out-of-sync concerning the terminology of historiographic “atavism” (which is his very useful term).  An atavism is a degradation.  If we take the qualities of a historiography to be simply the contents of the historiographical archive, then atavism is impossible, since the archive cannot be destroyed (one would hope).  However, an archive is only as good as an understanding of its contents, meaning that if new historical work consistently fails to engage with its insights, the historiography is degraded simply through lack of use.

Christopher identifies the qualities of writing that he characterizes as “atavistic” scholarship.  My argument would be that certain styles of writing are more apt to risk atavism than others in much the way he describes, but that atavism itself can be traced to no single work.  It is part of the insidiousness of historiographic atavism that no individual can be held responsible for it.

The lack of accountability is related to the technique of “perspective layering” (more…)