Pluralism in Historiography: A Case Study of Case Studies

Kinzel, Katherina

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-30229-4_7

Cited by 11 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 29 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Previous commentators have tended to view historians' and philosophers' disagreements over how to interpret case studies as evidence that a multiplicity of competing interpretations undermines their utility (e.g. Kinzel 2016). But if we conceptualize this as a process of negotiating canonicity, then we can view it instead as aiding the utility of history for philosophy of science by sharpening our understanding of particular cases and forcing us to examine and defend their canonical status.…”

Section: Case Studies and Canonicitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Negotiating history: Contingency, canonicity, and case studies

Bolinska

Martin

2020

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Objections to the use of historical case studies for philosophical ends fall into two categories. Methodological objections claim that historical accounts and their uses by philosophers are subject to various biases. We argue that these challenges are not special; they also apply to other epistemic practices. Metaphysical objections, on the other hand, claim that historical case studies are intrinsically unsuited to serve as evidence for philosophical claims, even when carefully constructed and used, and so constitute a distinct class of challenge. We show that attention to what makes for a canonical case can address these problems. A case study is canonical with respect to a particular philosophical aim when the features relevant to that aim provide a reasonably complete causal account of the results of the historical process under investigation. We show how to establish canonicity by evaluating relevant contingencies using two prominent examples from the history of science: Eddington's confirmation of Einstein's theory of general relativity using his data from the 1919 eclipse and Watson and Crick's determination of the structure of DNA.

show abstract

Section: Case Studies and Canonicitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Negotiating history: Contingency, canonicity, and case studies

Bolinska

Martin

2020

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…First, it relies on framework-independent criteria for comparison, and we're not sure what such criteria would look like (perhaps our Carnapian tendencies are stronger than we thought), and regardless think that whatever cross-framework criteria there may be, we will likely be pluralists about those as well. As Katherina Kinzel argues, insofar as there are agreed upon criteria, these underdetermine analyses of historical episodes, and stronger criteria are not framework-independent (Kinzel 2016). Second, the implied competition in Kuukkanen's account-the point of comparing the frameworks is to determine which is more successful-is in tension with our ecumenism.…”

Section: Further Onmentioning

confidence: 99%

Frameworks for Historians and Philosophers

Currie¹,

Walsh²

2019

HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The past can be a stubborn subject: it is complex, heterogeneous and opaque. To understand it, one must decide which aspects of the past to emphasise and which to minimise. Enter frameworks. Frameworks foreground certain aspects of the historical record while backgrounding others. As such, they are both necessary for, and conducive to, good history as well as good philosophy. We examine the role of frameworks in the history and philosophy of science and argue that they are necessary for both forms of enquiry. We then suggest that the right attitude towards frameworks is pluralism rather than monism: there is no single correct framework to be applied to a given scientific episode. Rather, a multitude of different frameworks are more or less appropriate given various contexts and aims. From this perspective, good frameworks generate and further, rather than frustrate, historical and philosophical enquiry.Our view sheds light on historical disagreement, and on the relationship between philosophy and history of science.

show abstract

“…The main issue with this approach, as Schickore and others have argued, is that it gives rise to the following problem, well-known in the literature since Joseph C. Pitt's (2001) (Chang, 2012;Kinzel, 2015Kinzel, , 2016Pietsch, 2016;Scholl&Räz, 2016;Knuuttila&Loetgers, 2016). Some of them argue that we should completely abandon the confrontational model, and use history merely to develop our philosophical concepts, not as evidence for philosophical theories.…”

Section: Ferromagnetism and The Acceleration Equationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stabilization of phenomenon and meaning

Potters

2019

Euro Jnl Phil Sci

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In recent years, the use of historical cases in philosophy of science has become a proper topic of reflection. In this article I will contribute to his research by means of a discussion of one very famous example of case-based philosophy of science, namely the debate on the London & London model of superconductivity between Cartwright, Suárez and Shomar on the one hand, and French, Ladyman, Bueno and Da Costa on the other. This debate has been going on for years, without any satisfactory resolution. I will argue here that this is because both sides impose on the historical case a particular philosophical conception of scientific representation that does not do justice to the historical facts. Both sides assume, more specifically, that the case concerns the discovery of a representational connection between a given experimental insightthe Meissner effect-and the diamagnetic meaning of London and London's new equations of superconductivity. I will show, however, that at the time of the Londons' publication, neither the experimental insight nor the meaning of the new equations was established: both were open The author would like to acknowledge the Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO) as funding institution.

show abstract

Pluralism in Historiography: A Case Study of Case Studies

Cited by 11 publications

References 29 publications

Negotiating history: Contingency, canonicity, and case studies

Negotiating history: Contingency, canonicity, and case studies

Frameworks for Historians and Philosophers

Stabilization of phenomenon and meaning

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About