Abstract
Our work aims to analyze the way in which Steven Shapin rewrites the past of scientific practices while assuming both the artifactual character of scientific knowledge and of all historical narrative. Shapin’s historiographical perspective is an attempt to displace the boundaries of scientific practice established by traditional historiography. These displacements entail a commitment to the central theses of meaning finitism, postulated by the Strong Program of the sociology of scientific knowledge. We will focus on the examination of these theses and their implications for the Shapinian history of science. We will examine, on the one hand, what Shapin calls “lowering the tone in history” and, on the other, the centrality of the preconditions of knowledge – the place of knowledge, the body, and the credibility of true searchers – as topics of embodied science. Finally, we will analyze the exemplary case of the experimental philosophy of the English seventeenth century in order to show the way in which Shapin links the logic of finitism with the preconditions of knowledge in his approach to a fundamental theme in his work: the boundaries of scientific practice.
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Martini, M.d.l.Á. (2023). Embodied Boundaries of Historical Studies of Science: A Vision of Steven Shapin’s Historiography. In: Condé, M.L., Salomon, M. (eds) Handbook for the Historiography of Science. Historiographies of Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99498-3_9-2
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Embodied Boundaries of Historical Studies of Science: A Vision of Steven Shapin’s Historiography- Published:
- 26 July 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99498-3_9-2
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Embodied Boundaries of Historical Studies of Science: A Vision of Steven Shapin’s Historiography- Published:
- 13 July 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99498-3_9-1