Abstract
The purpose of this article is to respond to Thomas Uebel’s criticisms of my comments regarding the current revisionism of Carnap’s work and its relations to Kuhn. I begin by pointing out some misunderstandings in the interpretation of my article. I then discuss some aspects related to Carnap’s view of the history of science. First, I emphasize that it was not due to a supposed affinity between Kuhn’s conceptions and those of logical positivists that Kuhn was invited to write the monograph on the history of science for the Encyclopedia. Three other authors had been invited first, including George Sarton whose conception was entirely different from Kuhn’s. In addition, I try to show that Carnap attributes little importance to the history of science. He seldom refers to it and, when he does, he clearly defends (like Sarton) a Whig or an ‘old’ historiography of science, to which Kuhn opposes his “new historiography of science”. It is argued that this raises serious difficulties for those, like Uebel, who hold the view that Carnap includes the historical or the social within the rational.
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Notes
The interview served as a basis for a book by Horgan, although the passage was not published (Cf. Kuhn 1991).
The expression “Whig” was applied to the historiography by Butterfield in 1931. As summarized by the author, Whig history, or “whiggism” is “the tendency in many historians to write on the side of Protestants and Whigs, to praise revolutions provided they have been successful, to emphasise certain principles of progress in the past and to produce a story which is the ratification if not the glorification of the present” (Butterfield 1973/1931, 9). Kuhn uses this expression frequently (as well as "textbook history") to refer critically to traditional historiography of science.
For a comparative analysis, see my forthcoming paper (with Amelia Oliveira) “Kuhn, Sarton, and the History of Science”.
Uebel says that Carnap “does not exclude the social from the rational” (2011, 134).
See also Wray (2012, 4). Indeed, I am not referring to a “strict separation” between the disciplines, but, as I argue throughout this article, that Carnap attributes only a traditional and very secondary role to the history of science in the study of science.
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Acknowledgments
I am very grateful to Paul Hoyningen-Huene, Alfredo Marcos, Amelia J. Oliveira and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I would like to thank also Anne Kepple for translations and revisions.
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Pinto de Oliveira, J.C. Carnap, Kuhn, and the History of Science: A Reply to Thomas Uebel. J Gen Philos Sci 46, 215–223 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-014-9277-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-014-9277-1