{"title":"Joseph Agassi’s Critical Historiography of Science","authors":"S. Gattei","doi":"10.1177/00483931221128516","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"In Towards an Historiography of Science (1963) and in other related works spanning over his entire career, Agassi presents his wide-ranging and original understanding of the history of science. It emerges from the criticism of two distinctive approaches, each informed by the uncritical acceptance, on the part of historians, of two philosophies of science: inductivism (scientific theories emerge from facts), and conventionalism (scientific theories are mathematical frameworks for classifying facts). Both produce unsatisfactory historical reconstructions, in which errors are either concealed or condemned. Popper’s philosophy, by contrast, allows for a picture in which science grows from the recognition and criticism of our best and wisest errors.","PeriodicalId":46776,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy of the Social Sciences","volume":"53 1","pages":"49 - 59"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6000,"publicationDate":"2022-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Philosophy of the Social Sciences","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00483931221128516","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"ETHICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In Towards an Historiography of Science (1963) and in other related works spanning over his entire career, Agassi presents his wide-ranging and original understanding of the history of science. It emerges from the criticism of two distinctive approaches, each informed by the uncritical acceptance, on the part of historians, of two philosophies of science: inductivism (scientific theories emerge from facts), and conventionalism (scientific theories are mathematical frameworks for classifying facts). Both produce unsatisfactory historical reconstructions, in which errors are either concealed or condemned. Popper’s philosophy, by contrast, allows for a picture in which science grows from the recognition and criticism of our best and wisest errors.
期刊介绍:
For more than four decades Philosophy of the Social Sciences has served as the international, interdisciplinary forum for current research, theory and debate on the philosophical foundations of the social services. Philosophy of the Social Sciences focuses on the central issues of the social sciences, including general methodology (explaining, theorizing, testing) the application of philosophy (especially individualism versus holism), the nature of rationality and the history of theories and concepts. Among the topics you''ll explore are: ethnomethodology, evolution, Marxism, phenomenology, postmodernism, rationality, relativism, scientific methods, and textual interpretations. Philosophy of the Social Sciences'' open editorial policy ensures that you''ll enjoy rigorous scholarship on topics viewed from many different-- and often conflicting-- schools of thought. No school, party or style of philosophy of the social sciences is favoured. Debate between schools is encouraged. Each issue presents submissions by distinguished scholars from a variety of fields, including: anthropology, communications, economics, history, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, and sociology. Each issue brings you in-depth discussions, symposia, literature surveys, translations, and review symposia of interest both to philosophyers concerned with the social sciences and to social scientists concerned with the philosophical foundations of their subjects.