Abstract
This chapter discusses Kuhn’s conception of the history of science by focussing on two respects in which Kuhn is an historicist historian and philosopher of science. I identify two distinct, but related, aspects of historicism in the work of Hegel and show how these are also found in Kuhn’s work. First, Kuhn held tradition to be important for understanding scientific change and that the tradition from which a scientific idea originates must be understood in evaluating that idea. This makes Kuhn a historicist in a sense we may call conservative (drawing on Mannheim). Secondly, Kuhn held that there is a pattern to the development of science. In the light of the fact that he held scientific change to be law-like, we can call this second aspect of Kuhn’s historicism determinist (in parallel with Marx). I discuss the relationship of Kuhn’s historicist historiography to the philosophical purposes he had for his history of science, namely to refute a conception of scientific progress as driven towards increasing truth by something like ‘the scientific method’. I argue that while this determinism refutes certain positivist conceptions of scientific change, it also requires internalism—the view that the causes of scientific change come from within science, not from outside. Consequently, Kuhn’s historiography of science contrasts with that implicit in much of post-Kuhnian science studies.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
This chapter expands on ideas first presented in Bird (2012b) and discussed at a meeting of the Institute of Historical Research, to whom I am grateful for helpful comments.
- 2.
There are of course important differences. Hegel’s Absolute is part of the world of ideas, whereas Kantian noumena are not. Kant denies that the noumena are knowable, whereas Hegel does claim to know something about the Absolute. The latter leads to a familiar point on which there is indeed a tension: how can the relativist rationally make any claims about general and absolute truths? Hegel is alive to this point, even if he does not resolve it entirely. On the one hand, the philosophical historian seeks an insight into the abstract reason that lies behind historical processes. On the other hand, no historian can avoid some element of subjectivity, for that is essential to historical interpretation. A reflective, philosophical historian is aware of this and so may avoid merely imposing their preconceptions on the historical data, which is the danger facing an historian seeking general laws but who is unaware of the historical conditioned nature of their own thought. By being aware both of the contextual nature of thought and of the existence, albeit obscured, of an underlying reason, the philosophical historian can partially transcend his or her own era. But only partially, which is why Hegel (1821) tells us “The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk”, intimating that it is only with the end of history that we can be in a position to understand fully how the Absolute shaped the unfolding of history.
- 3.
To give an anachronistic analogy: it is because life-forms have evolved that, to understand the nature of a species, we need to understand the ecological environment in which that species originated. (This analogy stands despite the important difference between biological evolution and Hegel’s historical evolution in that the latter has a teleological aspect that the former lacks.)
- 4.
See Bloor (1997) for more on understanding Kuhn in the light of Mannheim.
- 5.
Reynolds (1999) also mentions Kuhn in connection with different species of historicism.
- 6.
While there was disagreement about what those laws were, or whether they should in fact be laws of falsification, logical empiricists agreed that such laws would be perfectly general and context-independent.
- 7.
The idea of tradition is central to Kuhn’s description of normal science and the function of paradigms (see for example Kuhn 1959, p. 227; Kuhn 1962, p. 10). Hegel also refers to the importance of tradition in science, “likewise, in science, and specially in Philosophy, do we owe what we are to the tradition which, as Herder has put it, like a holy chain, runs through all that was transient, and has therefore passed away” (Hegel 1825, pp. 2–3).
- 8.
Beiser says that, as portrayed by Hegel, the values of each nation and the manners in which they achieve the self-awareness of freedom are incommensurable between nations (Beiser 1993, pp. 279–280).
- 9.
The internalism versus externalism debate is perhaps somewhat outdated now. Yet it was very much alive in Kuhn’s lifetime and his work gave an impetus to it—often in a manner of which he disapproved.
- 10.
I note that Kuhn’s internalism does mark an element of difference from Hegel’s conservative historicism. For the latter is justified in part by a holism about thought. According to Hegel, the various components of a society, from its politics and religion to its culture and philosophy form an inseparable whole. And so when one element changes so do all including its philosophy (Hegel 1861; c.f. Beiser 1993, p. 274). One would naturally take Hegel to include science in this. Kuhn, however, claims that a modern science is largely insulated from external changes, its origins and pace of progress excepted.
- 11.
For more detail on Kuhn’s internalism in relation to SSK, see Bird (2012a).
- 12.
Kuhn returned to this theme in several of his later writings, for example in his essay “Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice” (Kuhn 1977b), in which he articulates the five scientific values (accuracy, consistency, breadth of scope, simplicity, fruitfulness). His concern throughout is to reject accusations of subjectivity in theory preference, while allowing space for reasonable disagreement across paradigms.
- 13.
Note that whiggism is a feature of Marxist historians.
- 14.
See Bird (2005) for details. This view is contentious in that Kuhn did not proclaim himself as seeking to revise our notion of rationality. That is because the very notion of rationality is close to the idea of following rules of reason. Kuhn showed that science dispensed with rules but instead employed reasoning by analogy with exemplars. The latter, he was at pains to emphasize, is not in any way irrational.
References
Barnes, B. 1981. On the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of cultural change (response to Woolgar). Social Studies of Science 11:481–498.
Barnes, B. 1982. T. S. Kuhn and social science. London: Macmillan.
Barnes, B. 1990. Sociological theories of scientific knowledge. In Companion to the history of modern science, ed. R. C. Olby, G. N. Cantor, J. R. R. Christie, and M. J. S. Hodge, 60–73. London: Routledge.
Beiser, F. C. 1993. Hegel’s historicism. In The Cambridge companion to Hegel, ed. F. C. Beiser, 270–300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bird, A. 2000. Thomas Kuhn. Chesham: Acumen.
Bird, A. 2005. Naturalizing Kuhn. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 105:109–127.
Bird, A. 2012a. Kuhn, naturalism, and the social study of science. In Kuhn’s The structure of scientific revolutions revisited, ed. V. Kindi and T. Arabatzis, 205–230. New York: Routledge.
Bird, A. 2012b. La filosofía de la historia de la ciencia de Thomas Kuhn. Discusiones Filosofícass 13:167–185.
Bloor, D. 1997. The conservative constructivist. History of the Human Sciences 10:123–125.
Farley, J. 1978. The social, political, and religious background to the work of Louis Pasteur. Annual Reviews in Microbiology 32:143–154.
Farley, J., and G. Geison 1974. Science, politics and spontaneous generation in nineteenth-century France: The Pasteur–Pouchet debate. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 48:161–198.
Hegel, G. W. F. 1821 (German edition: Grunilinien der Philosophie des Rechts). The philosophy of right, English edition, T. M. Knox, ed., trans. (1967). London: Oxford University Press.
Hegel, G. W. F. 1825 (German edition: Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie). Lectures on the history of philosophy, English edition, E. S. Haldane and F. H. Simson, eds., trans., (1955). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Hegel, G. W. F. 1837 (German edition: Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte). Lectures on the philosophy of history, English edition, H. B. Nisbet, ed., trans., (1975). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kuhn, T. S. 1959. The essential tension: tradition and innovation in scientific research. In The third (1959) university of Utah research conference on the identification of scientific talent, ed. C. Taylor, 162–174. Salt Lake: University of Utah Press. (Page references to the reprint in T. S. Kuhn (1977a)).
Kuhn, T. S. 1962. The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kuhn, T. S. 1968. The history of science. In International encyclopedia of the social sciences, vol. 14, ed. D. L. Sills, 74–83. New York: Crowell Collier and Macmillan. (Page references to the reprint in Kuhn (1977)).
Kuhn, T. S. 1970. The structure of scientific revolutions. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kuhn, T. S. 1971. The relations between history and the history of science. Daedalus 100:271–304. (Page references to the reprint in T. S. Kuhn (1977a)).
Kuhn, T. S. 1977a. The essential tension. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kuhn, T. S. 1977b. Objectivity, value judgment, and theory choice. In The essential tension, ed. T. S. Kuhn, 320–339 Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kuhn, T. S. 1992. The trouble with the historical philosophy of science. Robert and maurine rothschild distinguished lecture 19 November 1991. An occasional publication of the department of the history of science. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Mannheim, K. 1953. Essays on sociology and social psychology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Margolis, H. 1987. Patterns, thinking, and cognition. A theory of judgment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Merton, R. K. 1938. Science, technology and society in seventeenth century England. Osiris 4:360–632.
Popper, K. 1957. The poverty of historicism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Reynolds, A. 1999. What is historicism? International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 13:275–287.
Shapin, S., and S. Schaffer. 1985. Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the experimental life. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Young, R. 1969. Malthus and the evolutionists: the common context of biological and social theory. Past and Present 43:109–145.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bird, A. (2015). Kuhn and the Historiography of Science. In: Devlin, W., Bokulich, A. (eds) Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions - 50 Years On. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 311. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13383-6_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13383-6_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-13382-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-13383-6
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)