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Integrated HPS? Formal versus historical approaches to philosophy of science

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Peer-reviewed

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Article

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Abstract

jats:titleAbstract</jats:title>jats:pThe project of integrated HPS (‘integrated history and philosophy of science’) has occupied philosophers of science in one form or another since at least the 1960s. Yet, despite this substantial interest in bringing together philosophical and historical reflections on the nature of science, history of science andjats:italicformal</jats:italic>philosophy of science remain as divided as ever. In this paper, I will argue that the continuing separation between historical and formal philosophy of science is ill-founded. I will argue for this in both abstract and concrete terms. At the abstract level, I reconstruct two possible arguments for the incompatibility of historical and formal philosophy of science and argue that they are both wanting. At the concrete level, I discuss how historical and formal philosophy of science have been brought together in practice, namely: in the form of a largely forgotten research tradition that I will refer to here as the study ofjats:italicformalized macro-units</jats:italic>. After a brief exposition, I argue that this research tradition has been unduly overlooked by historically minded philosophers of science. Bringing together these observations, I argue that the divide between historical and formal philosophy of science is not grounded in any substantive arguments, but can be primarily attributed to disciplinary happenstance.</jats:p>

Description

Funder: Trinity College, University of Cambridge; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000727

Keywords

Original Research, Metaphilosophy of Formal Methods, Formal methods, History, Integrated HPS, Structuralism

Journal Title

Synthese

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0039-7857
1573-0964

Volume Title

199

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC