Abstract
When it comes to highlighting Koyré’s contribution to the methodology of the history of sciences, analysts have frequently insisted on presenting him as an author who innovatively strove to study antiquated scientific theories in the setting of their own time. That new attitude toward the past should not, however, obscure the role that the actuality [actualité] or modernity of science performed in the elaboration of a new conception of history. My hypothesis is that the elaboration of this new conception of history did not stem from any methodical distinction between past and present, but, quite the contrary, from a new way of articulating the actual and the no-longer actual. The theoretical and methodological novelty of his conception of history was intrinsically connected to the actuality of science. Thus, Koyré’s perspective was inserted in the debates then promoted by historians and philosophers about the intricate links between present and past. In 1946 he stated that “the reality of time” could only be revealed through transformations and, at the same time, that there was only past from the stance of a present. Therefore, an epistemological transformation in the present called for a new history of sciences. As early as 1935, Koyré had declared that the history he was writing was inextricably connected to the epistemological transformations then in course. A revolution in the history of the scientific thought, such as the one being seen in the interwar period, not only marked a deviation in the course of science but also made it possible to think about its path from a new perspective. From Einstein’s finite (though unlimited) world, it was possible to think from a different perspective the infinite universe of the moderns and the ancient-medieval closed cosmos.
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.
The French word “actualité” refers to the quality or state of that which is current, the circumstances of the present (actual) moment. Many authors have translated it as “actuality” although the usual meaning attributed to the word in English is not identical with its meaning in French. For reasons that the reader will readily perceive in the course of the text, we too have decided to adopt this option. Similarly, we have opted to translate the French “actuel” (the antonym of “inactuel”) with the word “actual.”
- 2.
Thus, it is the speed or slowness of the changes that makes it possible to talk about the “acceleration” or “deceleration” of time.
- 3.
That was an idea shared at the time among those that had broken with nineteenth-century scientism. In that regard, it is interesting to note that Koyré, in spite of coming from the field of philosophy, situated himself in the movement of historiographic renovation then in course. “It is obligatory for those that dedicate themselves to historical studies […] to achieve a total dissociation from things of the present.” The truth of history itself would be distorted if the past were approached “in the light of today’s preoccupations” (Coulanges 2003 [1875], p. 302). Here is what Lucien Febvre wrote quite severely about the history book in 1942. “Let us not act as if the historians conclusions were not necessarily contaminated by the contingency. Of all the stupid formulas, that of ‘the book that can never be rewritten’ runs the risk of being the stupidest. Or rather: that book will not be written over again, not because it has attained the last word in perfection, but because it is a child of its own time.” He concludes by saying: “History, is the child of its time. I do not say so to detract from it, philosophy is also the child of its time and so is physics. The physics of Langevin is not that of Galileo, which, in turn is not that of Aristotle” (Febvre 1970 [1942], pp. 11–12).
- 4.
And it is because there are, in the present, different (not necessarily actual) perspectives that different pasts are constituted and because the “entities analyzed [...] are viewed from the standpoint of different ‘presents’” that the frequently divergent perspectives of the past are constituted (Koyré 2011 [1946], p. 52).
- 5.
We could think about whether renovation of the schools of historical thinking found their conditions of possibility in that. Lucien Febvre arrived at that conclusion by other ways. In texts of that time, the 1930s and the early 1940s, he insisted on that point: the times of a new science not only make it possible for a new idea of the history of sciences to exist, but they demand it. There lies the crux of the problem: in the 1930s, the historiographic renovation that needed to be carried out (and not just in the history of the historians) was a demand of the current actuality.
- 6.
And regarding archeological condition, I would like, in the wake of Michel Foucault , to articulate two issues: first, an analysis of what kind of transformation would make the constitution of new objects of knowledge and of a domain or field in which they can be formulated possible and, second, seeing that Koyré states that the thickness of time only reveals itself when there are transformations, an analysis and identification of the different time strata and layers that make up the past of a science.
- 7.
Therein lies the reason for Koyré’s critical stance and even opposition to Aldo Mieli and the spiritual inheritors of Pierre Duhem-type history who wrote and promoted a history of science that was absolutely indifferent to the events that shocked and transformed the modernity of science in the period between the wars.
- 8.
That was why, in the 1930s, Bachelard and Koyré were to write histories of sciences marked by trajectories that were the complete reverse of those described by the empiricist tradition. In its trajectory, science did not head toward the empirical or concrete, but, instead, toward the mathematical and abstract. Ever since his interpretation of Galileo in 1935, Koyré had defended that thesis. Just a few years later, in 1938, Bachelard was to invert the Comte’s law of three stages in his preliminary address “Discours préliminaire” to La Formation De L’Esprit Scientifique. In Koyré’s case, however, it was a conclusion drawn from a historical study because there was no finality in that trajectory that would allow for him to refer, as Bachelard did, to a “law.”
- 9.
Hence, the conception of the history book then formed as being always a book to come, contrary to the nineteenth-century conception. That recognition marked a whole generation of historians in the between-wars period. In 1945, in his analysis of the new conceptions of history, science historian Robert Lenoble transformed it in the question he posed: “There is a question that bothers me, all the more so because I have never seen it clearly posed. How can one explain the constant writing of new history books?” (Lenoble 1945, p. 195). In a future paper on the history book, that moment could be defined as the “temporalization of the book.”
- 10.
Perhaps that is why there was such repeated insistence on delineating a space of resonance between his work and that of Gaston Bachelard, whose efforts were dedicated, not by chance, to writing the philosophy that the new scientific spirit called for.
- 11.
The introduction was published a year before, with the title “Copernic” (Koyré 1933).
- 12.
While a new way of articulating epistemology and history had been fostered ever since the work of Léon Brunschvicg, Émile Meyerson, and Abel Rey , it was only with Koyré and Bachelard that reason came to be inscribed in the opening of history, marking, as Gattinara put it, a “point of no return” in the epistemology and philosophy of the sciences in France (Gattinara 1998, pp. 55–57). What is interesting in the work of Castelli Gattinara is to show how those “two generations” actually faced sets of problems common to both of them so that it is possible actually to think of them on the same plane. That mode of understanding marks an explicit withdrawal from the historiography of the 1960s and 1970s which analyzed those “two generations” in terms of the opposition between the continuism and discontinuism and between the immobilism and the dynamism of reason. In that respect, it is in alignment with Gerard Jorland’s interpretation when he showed that Koyré’s theory of the history of thought was a synthesis of those of Brunschvicg (creating activity) and Meyerson (cheminement) (Jorland 1981, pp. 90–102).
- 13.
That conception moves away from the Pierre Duhem’s history of reason whereby reason evolved teleologically from its primitive forms toward its more complex forms. The idea of movement in the former conception is not the same as that of Duhem for whom reason had an origin that could be located in certain germs that held, in potential, what it would come to be. That form of evolution is not only guaranteed but it is also the work of a certain Sagesse.
- 14.
With those texts, reason is inscribed in what it would come to be; his analysis clearly shows how, in Koyré, the history of science is articulated with the history of reason.
- 15.
Without doubt, “the ephemeral nature of the modernity of science” implied that this theory of history was founded on quicksand and he recognized the implication (Bachelard 1972 [1951], 142).
- 16.
At that same conference, he stated: “In my view, for the historian, the scenario of actual current life constitutes more of a danger than a help” (Coulanges 2003 [1875], p. 307).
- 17.
In the same way that Galileo’s physics had avenged Plato on Aristotle , so, in Koyré’s view, Einstein’s which reduces physics to the real and geometrical had avenged Descartes on Newton (Koyré 1962 [1938], p. 228).
- 18.
Pietro Redondi also situates the establishment of that distinction in Koyré (Redondi 1986, p. X).
- 19.
Just a few years later, he was to state exactly the same thing but his time regarding the works of Eddington and of Heisenberg . “It would be almost impertinent to praise Sir A. Eddington’s work. One can only regret that its philosophical part [...] does not match the standard of the scientific part” (Koyré 1935–1936, p. 457). In his book on the transformations in the fundaments of science, “Heisenberg adds some historical remarks on the roles played by Copernicus, Cristopher Columbus , Galileo, Newton. Our respect for Heisenberg forbids us to comment on them” (Koyré 1935–1936, p. 458).
- 20.
François Delaporte showed very clearly how, by means of those images, Michel Foucault , in a dialogue with Gaston Bachelard, sought to distinguish his archeology of epistemology from that of the author of La formation de L’Esprit Scientifique (see Delaporte 2011). It was Delaporte who called attention to the importance of teratological images in epistemological reflections.
- 21.
Delaporte showed the importance that the notion, être dans le vrai [being within the truth], coined by Koyré, acquired in the philosophy of Sciences in France (Delaporte 2011, p. 69).
References
Bachelard G (2003 [1938]) A formação do espírito científico. Contribuição para uma psicanálise do conhecimento. Transl. Estela dos Santos Abreu. Contraponto, Rio de Janeiro.
Bachelard G (1951) L’activité rationaliste de la physique contemporaine. PUF, Paris.
Bachelard G (1972 [1951]) L’actualité de l’histoire des sciences. L’engagement rationaliste. PUF, Paris, pp. 137–152.
Bloch M. 2006 [1942]. Apologie pour l’histoire ou métier d’historien. In Becker A, Bloch E (eds). L’histoire, la guerre, la résistance. Gallimard [Quarto], Paris, pp. 843–985.
Canguilhem G (1983 [1966]) L’objet de l’histoire des sciences. In Canguilhem G (ed). Études d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences. Vrin, Paris, pp. 9–23.
Clavelin M (1987) Le débat Koyré–Duhem, hier et aujourd’hui. History and Technology 4:13–35.
Coulanges F (2003 [1875]) A história, ciência pura. In Hartog F (ed). O século XIX e a história. O caso Fustel de Coulanges. Translated by Roberto Cortes de Lacerda. EdUFRJ, Rio de Janeiro, pp. 304–309.
Delaporte F (2011) Foucault, Canguilhem e os monstros. In Salomon M (ed). História, verdade e tempo. Translated by Marlon Salomon e Raquel Campos. Argos, Chapecó, pp. 51–74.
Duhem P (1913) Études sur Léonard de Vinci. Les précurseurs parisiens de Galilée. Tome III, Hermann, Paris.
Febvre L (1970 [1942]) O problema da descrença no século XVI. A religião de Rabelais. Trans. de Rui Nunes. Início, Lisboa.
Febvre L (2009 [1949]) Vers une autre histoire. In Febvre L (ed). Vivre l’histoire. Édition établie par Brigitte Mazon. Edition Robert Laffont [Collection Bouquins], Paris, pp. 357–374.
Gattinara EC (1998) Les inquiétudes de la raison. Vrin, Paris.
Gattinara EC (1997) L’idée de la synthèse : Henri Berr et les crises du savoir dans la première moitié du XX. Revue de Synthèse 117:21–37.
Jorland G (1981) La science dans la philosophie. Les recherches épistémologiques d’Alexandre Koyré, Gallimard, Paris.
Koyré A (1933) Copernic. Revue philosophique 116/7–8:101–118.
Koyré A (1991 [1955]) Da influência das concepções filosóficas sobre a evolução das teorias científicas. Estudos de História do Pensamento Filosófico. Translated by Maria de Lourdes Menezes. Forense Universitária, Rio de Janeiro, pp. 201–214.
Koyré A (1992 [1939]) Estudos Galilaicos. Transl. Nuno Ferreira da Fonseca. Dom Quixote, Lisboa.
Koyré A (1934) Introduction. In Copernic N. Des Révolutions des Orbes Célestes. Traduction, avec introduction et notes par A. Koyré [Textes et Traductions]. Alcan, Paris, pp. I-VIII.
Koyré A (1962 [1938]) Introduction à la lecture de Platon suivi d’Entretiens sur Descartes. Gallimard, Paris.
Koyré A (2011 [1946]) Filosofia da história. In Salomon M (ed). Alexandre Koyré, historiador do pensamento. Translated by Fábio Ferreira de Almeida. Ricochete, Goiânia, pp. 49–61.
Koyré A (1982a [1955]) Galileu e a Revolução Científica do século XVII. Estudos de História do Pensamento Científico. Forense Universitária, Rio de Janeiro, pp. 181–196.
Koyré A (1982b [1930]) O pensamento moderno. Estudos de história do pensamento científico. Translated by Márcio Ramalho. Forense Universitária–Brasília, EdUNB, Rio de Janeiro, pp. 15–21.
Koyré A (1982c [1951]) Orientação e Projetos de Pesquisa. Estudos de História do Pensamento Científico. Forense Universitária, Rio de Janeiro, pp. 10–14.
Koyré A (1991 [1949]) O vácuo e o espaço infinito no século XIV. Estudos de História do Pensamento Filosófico. Translated by Maria de Lourdes Menezes. Forense Universitária, Rio de Janeiro, pp. 23–69.
Koyré A (1971 [1933]) Paracelso. Mystiques, spirituels, alchimistes du XVIe siècle allemand. 2ª ed. Gallimard, Paris, pp. 75–129.
Koyré A (1982 [1961]) Perspectivas da história das ciências. Estudos de história do pensamento científico. Translated by Márcio Ramalho. Forense Universitária–Brasília, EdUNB, Rio de Janeiro, pp. 370–379.
Koyré A (1929) Review of André Metz. Une nouvelle philosophie des sciences: le causalisme de Émile Meyerson. Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger 108/7–8:154–156.
Koyré A (1935–1936) Review of Arthur Eddington: New pathway in science. Recherches Philosophiques 5:455–457.
Koyré A (1934–1935) Review of Signification de l’histoire de la pensée scientifique. Recherches Philosophiques 4:522.
Koyré A (1935–1936) Review of Werner Heisenberg. Wandlungen in den Grundlagen der Naturwissenschaft. Recherches Philosophiques 5:457–458.
Kuhn T (2011 [1968]) As relações entre a História e a Filosofia da Ciência. A tensão essencial. Translated by Marcelo Amaral Penna–Forte. EdUNESP, São Paulo, pp. 27–44.
Lenoble R (1945) Les nouvelles conceptions de l’histoire. Revue Philosophique 135/7–9:193–208.
Rasmussen A (1996) Critique du progrès, « crise de la science » : débats et représentations du tournant du siècle. Mil neuf cent 14:89–113.
Redondi P (1986) Préface. In Redondi P (ed). Koyré A. De la mystique à la science. Cours, conférences et documents 1922–1962. Édition EHESS, Paris, pp. IX–XVII.
Redondi P (1983) Science moderne et histoire des mentalités. La rencontre de Lucien Febvre, Robert Lenoble et Alexandre Koyré. Revue de Synthèse 111–112:309–332.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Salomon, M. (2018). Alexandre Koyré: History and Actuality. In: Pisano, R., Agassi, J., Drozdova, D. (eds) Hypotheses and Perspectives in the History and Philosophy of Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61712-1_18
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61712-1_18
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-61710-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-61712-1
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)