Confrontation and Its Problems: Can the History of Science Provide
Evidence for the Philosophy of Science?
Dimitrakos, Thodoris
In this paper I am concerned with the relation between the history of
science and the philosophy of science from the perspective of
philosophy. In particular, I examine two philosophical objections
against the idea that the history of science can provide evidences to
the philosophy of science. The first objection is metaphysical and
suggests that given Hume's law, i.e. that norms cannot be derived from
facts and given that the history of science is a descriptive enterprise
while the philosophy of science is a normative endeavor, the former
cannot be informative for the latter. The second is epistemological and
is often called the `case studies dilemma'. According to this dilemma,
we can neither deduce general philosophical theories from particular
historical cases nor test the former through the latter. I argue that
although those objections fail to be fatal for the idea that the
historical data can provide evidence for the philosophical theories of
science, they can help us draw a proper image of the relation between
the history and the philosophy of science. I conclude that this picture
presupposes the constant epistemic iteration between the two
disciplines.
(EN)
