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Editorial: Can History Be Used to Test Philosophy?

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Editorial: Can History Be Used to Test Philosophy? journal of the philosophy of history 12 (2018) 183–190 brill.com/jph Editorial: Can History be Used to Test Philosophy? Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen The University of Oulu [email protected] Philosophy of history has a long history. The great masters of philosophical thinking, including Kant, Hegel and Marx, wrote about the nature of history centuries ago. If we now ignore what Ranke and his followers penned about the research of history in the nineteenth century, philosophy of historiogra- phy also has a shorter but extensive history of its own. Focusing on the philo- sophical problems of history writing and of other disciplinary features, it has been practiced since at least the 1930s. Maurice Mandelbaum’s The Problem of Historical Knowledge1 appeared in 1938 and was soon followed by C. G. Hempel’s important paper.2 K. R. Popper published his view of historical explanation al- ready in 1934 in German.3 In the 1960s analytic philosophy of history reigned, and a couple of decades later narrativism started to dominate the scene. One might even claim that both philosophy of history and historiography were already practiced in antiquity. For example, Herodotus and Thucydides have arguably contributed to our understanding of what history and history writing are. How about philosophy of the history of science and philosophy of the histo- riography of science? It is forgivable if one hesitates here and asks again, ’phi- losophy of WHAT …?’ These epithets are used so rarely. Although it would be wrong to say that philosophical writing about the history of science and re- lated matters does not exist, it is correct to claim that they have not received due recognition. Naming a subject or field is, in a way, making it. This state of affairs reminds me of the situation that Tucker mentions in the introduction 1 Maurice Mandelbaum, The Problem of Historical Knowledge (New York: Liveright Publishing). 2 Carl G. Hempel, “The Function of General Laws in History,” The Journal of Philosophy 39 (1942): 35–48. 3 Karl Popper, Logik der Forschung: Zur Erkenntnistheorie der Modernen Naturwissenschaft (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1934). This was translated into English as The Logic of Scientific Discovery only in 1959 by Routledge. Both Hempel’s and Popper’s theories of historical expla- nation are naturally extensions of their general theories of scientific explanation. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/18722636-12341399 184 Kuukkanen to A Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography.4 Many of the writers had to be told that they practice philosophy of history! Consider Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,5 which has given incentive to innumerable philosophical discussions and approaches in history and philosophy of science and beyond. Has anyone ever considered that what Kuhn is doing is philosophy of history, even ‘speculative philosophy of history’? How so? In the book, Kuhn outlines a view of scientific develop- ment or, in other words, characterizes what the nature of the history of science is. That is, the essence of history itself. In his view, the history of science is cyclical in form: science is constituted by paradigms at each historical stage to be later overturned by scientific revolutions and replaced by new paradigms. If one claims something similar regarding the nature of history in general, one is certainly doing philosophy of history in a mode similar to that of Arnold Toynbee, who developed a theory of how civilizations rise and fall in history.6 The mainstream discussion about scientific development and its progress, whether science converges on the truth, is teleological, is cyclical, is essentially problem-solving, etc. are philosophical questions of science’s history. Let us now think about the philosophy of historiography of science. It is easy to recognise that it has a copious recent history in history and philoso- phy of science. I am referring here to the debates on how history of science should be written and what factors should explain theory changes. In the 1970s the debate centred on the role of ‘internal’ or ‘external’ factors. After those were widely deemed too categorical many historians of science started talking about ‘contextual factors’ or just ‘context.’ Further, much ink has been spilled over the question whether explanation should be symmetrical regarding truth and the rationality of beliefs. And the same goes with the questions of whether observational input and even truth directly could be understood as explana- tory notions in scientific transitions.7 There are now some signs that causality, perhaps in the form of contrastive explanations, is returning to the agenda too. If the names of philosophers who have practiced philosophy of the histori- 4 Aviezer Tucker (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 1–7. 5 Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1970) (2nd en- larged ed.). 6 Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934). There are twelve parts in this series in total. 7 Jan Golinski’s Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism in the History of Science. With a New Preface. (Chicago: Chicago UP, 2005) provides a useful overview to theoretical debates rel- evant for the historiography of science, although the book itself is written from a constructiv- ist perspective. journal of the philosophy of history 12 (2018) 183–190.
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