Pragmatism, Perspectivism and the Historicity of Science

Abstract

The affinity between perspectivism and pragmatism is easily recognized if we take a humanist view on science, seeing it as a pursuit of knowledge that human agents engage in. As I interpret it, pragmatism is deep empiricism: a full realization of the idea that learning can only come from experience, understood not merely in terms of the propositional reports issuing from the “five senses”, but the full lived experience of purposeful agents in its ineliminable historical settings. The methods of science develop through the experience of scientific inquiry itself through its history. The inherent historicity of scientific knowledge also implies that the history and philosophy of science can only function well by mutual integration.