Ebook: Trends in the Historiography of Science

The articles in this volume have been first presented during an international Conference organised by the Greek Society for the History of Science and Technology in June 1990 at Corfu. The Society was founded in 1989 and planned to hold a series of meetings to impress upon an audience comprised mainly by Greek students and scholars, the point that history of science is an autonomous discipline with its own plurality of approaches developed over the years as a result of long discussions and disputes within the community of historians of science. The Conference took place at a time when more and more people came to realise that the future of the Greek Universities and Research Centres depends not only on the progress of the institutional reforms, but also very crucially on the establishment of new and modern subject areas. Though there have been significant steps towards such a direction in the physical sciences, mathematics and engineering, the situation in the so-called humanities has been, at best, confusing. Political expediencies of the post war years and ideological commitments to a glorious, yet very distant past, paralysed the development of the humanities and constrained them within a framework which could not allow much more than a philological approach.

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The discussions of theoretical issues involved in the history of science have not received sufficient attention. This volume is a contribution to this ongoing discussion and deals with many such issues in the historiography of science, concentrating mainly on what is known as the internalist approach. The topics include ancient Greek mathematics during the Enlightenment, the physical sciences in the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as discussions of the relationship between history and philosophy of science. Both beginners in the fields of history and/or philosophy of science as well as scholars who have been already working in these fields will read the articles with pleasure and profit.

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The discussions of theoretical issues involved in the history of science have not received sufficient attention. This volume is a contribution to this ongoing discussion and deals with many such issues in the historiography of science, concentrating mainly on what is known as the internalist approach. The topics include ancient Greek mathematics during the Enlightenment, the physical sciences in the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as discussions of the relationship between history and philosophy of science. Both beginners in the fields of history and/or philosophy of science as well as scholars who have been already working in these fields will read the articles with pleasure and profit.
Content:
Front Matter....Pages i-xi
Charting the Scientific Community....Pages 1-14
Theory and Practice in Early Modern Physics....Pages 15-30
Styles of Scientific Thinking or Reasoning: A New Analytical Tool for Historians and Philosophers of the Sciences....Pages 31-48
Kinds and (In)Commensurability....Pages 49-63
Types of Discourse and the Reading of the History of the Physical Sciences....Pages 65-86
On Demarcations between Science in Context and the Context of Science....Pages 87-105
On the Harmful Effects of Excessive Anti-Whiggism....Pages 107-119
Issues in the Historiography of Post-Byzantine Science....Pages 121-127
Social Environment, Foundations of Science, and the Possible Histories of Science....Pages 129-137
Scientific Discoveries as Historical Artifacts....Pages 139-148
Selection, System and Historiography....Pages 149-160
Can the History of Instrumentation Tell us Anything About Scientific Practice?....Pages 161-168
The One in the Philosophy of Proclus: Logic Versus Metaphysics....Pages 169-175
Rational Versus Sociological Reductionism: Imre Lakatos and the Edinburgh School....Pages 177-192
Sociocultural Factors and Historiography of Science....Pages 193-201
Is Mathematics Ahistorical? An Attempt to an Answer Motivated by Greek Mathematics....Pages 203-219
The Story of the Discovery of Incommensurability, Revisited....Pages 221-235
On the History of Indeterminate Problems of the First Degree in Greek Mathematics....Pages 237-247
On the Justification of the Method of Historical Interpretation....Pages 249-264
The Infinite in Leibniz’s Mathematics — The Historiographical Method of Comprehension in Context....Pages 265-278
John Landen: First Attempt for the Algebrization of Infinitesimal Calculus....Pages 279-293
Historiographical Trends in the Social History of Mathematics and Science....Pages 295-315
The Conception of the Scientific Research Programs and the Real History of Mathematics....Pages 317-325
Scientists and the State: The Legacy of World War II....Pages 327-354
Unification, Geometry and Ambivalence: Hilbert, Weyl and the G?ttingen Community....Pages 355-367
The Two-Dimensional View of the History of Chemistry....Pages 369-377
The Problem of Method in the Study of the Influence a Philosophy has on Scientific Practice. The Case of Thermoelectricity....Pages 379-384
Problems and Methodology of Exploring the Scientific Thought During the Greek Enlightenment (1750–1821)....Pages 385-396
History of Science and History of Mathematization: The Example the Science of Motion at the Turn of the 17th and 18th Centuries....Pages 397-404
The Artistic Culture of the Renaissance and the Genesis of Modern European Science....Pages 405-420
Archaeoastronomy in Greece: Data, Problems and Perspectives....Pages 421-432
Back Matter....Pages 433-443
....Pages 445-460