Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.5040/9781350111875.0016
H. Paul
Introduction In a recent article, the philosopher Jutta Schickore laments what she perceives as a widening gap between philosophers of science, on the one hand, and historians of science, on the other. Although historians and philosophers of science sometimes work together in programs labelled ‘HPS’ – history and philosophy of science – their cooperation is increasingly frustrated, or so Schickore believes, by historians of science. Under influence of a ‘cultural turn’ in the humanities and social sciences, these historians are exchanging their traditional subject matter – scientific concepts and theories in their historical development – for a much broader variety of themes, varying from laboratory practices and cultures of note-taking to scientific masculinities and geographies of science. In Schickore’s words:
{"title":"History and Philosophy of History (HPH)","authors":"H. Paul","doi":"10.5040/9781350111875.0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350111875.0016","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction In a recent article, the philosopher Jutta Schickore laments what she perceives as a widening gap between philosophers of science, on the one hand, and historians of science, on the other. Although historians and philosophers of science sometimes work together in programs labelled ‘HPS’ – history and philosophy of science – their cooperation is increasingly frustrated, or so Schickore believes, by historians of science. Under influence of a ‘cultural turn’ in the humanities and social sciences, these historians are exchanging their traditional subject matter – scientific concepts and theories in their historical development – for a much broader variety of themes, varying from laboratory practices and cultures of note-taking to scientific masculinities and geographies of science. In Schickore’s words:","PeriodicalId":43541,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Philosophy of History","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72605284","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.5040/9781350111875.0007
J. Gorman
{"title":"Encompassing the Future","authors":"J. Gorman","doi":"10.5040/9781350111875.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350111875.0007","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43541,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Philosophy of History","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85534696","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1163/18722636-12341455
Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen
We are now enduring the second year of the Coronavirus pandemic. It has undoubtedly left its mark on the lives and well-being of many. Likewise, the pandemic has probably permanently changed our working habits too. It is not far-fetched to claim that even after the pandemic subsides we will be working more from our homes and long distance. Most of us have now finally had to make the long and tumultuous leap to the online world and the realm of digital humanities. While this transition has undoubtedly been a strain, it is also a possibility. For example, I recently listened to a lecture organised by a Scottish university, given by a speaker in the USA, in the comfort of my kitchen. And while circumstances made it impossible to spend a few months as a visiting scholar in Cambridge, UK, I have nevertheless been able participate in a reading group on a weekly basis. Something like this would have been unthinkable earlier. This new situation gives us a pause to consider how much and often we ought to travel to conferences and other universities for visits in the future. I think that mobility and meetings in person will be important also in the years to come for the dissemination of ideas and for acquiring understanding of other peoples, cultures and locations. Phenomenologically, it is quite different to be in a place than be connected to it through a screen. Tastes, smells, temperatures, movements, non-verbal and informal communication are all or mostly missed in onscreen meetings. Nevertheless, the new situation requires more careful thinking regarding what we should in fact do when we go to a foreign place to visit. Travelling is no longer a prerequisite for listening to talks and lectures abroad. Perhaps we have entered the era of less frequent but more profound and intensive visits and collaborations. The Corona pandemic and our newly acquired digital skills are also bound to affect how journals are edited. I have previously thought that unquestionably the best model for editing involves people physically meeting in the same room. Although this would still be desirable, I am now less sure about how necessary and advantageous it is. So much, including meetings, can be done online. This long distance form of editing has in fact been the model of Journal of Philosophy of History and is likely to continue. Fortunately, our writers and readers online have been active before and during the pandemic, and in spite of it. There has been a steady increase in
{"title":"Editorial: Living and Editing in the Online World","authors":"Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen","doi":"10.1163/18722636-12341455","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18722636-12341455","url":null,"abstract":"We are now enduring the second year of the Coronavirus pandemic. It has undoubtedly left its mark on the lives and well-being of many. Likewise, the pandemic has probably permanently changed our working habits too. It is not far-fetched to claim that even after the pandemic subsides we will be working more from our homes and long distance. Most of us have now finally had to make the long and tumultuous leap to the online world and the realm of digital humanities. While this transition has undoubtedly been a strain, it is also a possibility. For example, I recently listened to a lecture organised by a Scottish university, given by a speaker in the USA, in the comfort of my kitchen. And while circumstances made it impossible to spend a few months as a visiting scholar in Cambridge, UK, I have nevertheless been able participate in a reading group on a weekly basis. Something like this would have been unthinkable earlier. This new situation gives us a pause to consider how much and often we ought to travel to conferences and other universities for visits in the future. I think that mobility and meetings in person will be important also in the years to come for the dissemination of ideas and for acquiring understanding of other peoples, cultures and locations. Phenomenologically, it is quite different to be in a place than be connected to it through a screen. Tastes, smells, temperatures, movements, non-verbal and informal communication are all or mostly missed in onscreen meetings. Nevertheless, the new situation requires more careful thinking regarding what we should in fact do when we go to a foreign place to visit. Travelling is no longer a prerequisite for listening to talks and lectures abroad. Perhaps we have entered the era of less frequent but more profound and intensive visits and collaborations. The Corona pandemic and our newly acquired digital skills are also bound to affect how journals are edited. I have previously thought that unquestionably the best model for editing involves people physically meeting in the same room. Although this would still be desirable, I am now less sure about how necessary and advantageous it is. So much, including meetings, can be done online. This long distance form of editing has in fact been the model of Journal of Philosophy of History and is likely to continue. Fortunately, our writers and readers online have been active before and during the pandemic, and in spite of it. There has been a steady increase in","PeriodicalId":43541,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Philosophy of History","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64800406","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-15DOI: 10.1163/18722636-12341453
J. Aurell
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Pub Date : 2020-11-19DOI: 10.1163/18722636-12341447
S. Jasanoff
History at one time drew unproblematically on records produced by human societies about themselves and their doings. Advances in biology and the earth sciences introduced new narrative resources that repositioned the human story in relation to the evolution of all else on the planet, thereby decentering earlier conceptions of time, life, and human agency. This essay reflects on what it means for our understanding of the human that the history of our species has become so intimately entangled with the material processes that make up the biosphere, while concurrently the temporal horizon of our imagination has been stretched forward and back, underscoring the brevity of human existence in relation to earthly time. I suggest that, despite significant changes in the resources with which we can rethink the human condition, drawing upon the sciences, history’s fundamental purposes have not been rendered irrelevant. These center, as before, on the normative project of connecting past and future in ways that make sense of human experience and give meaning to it. In particular, the question of how humans should imagine the stewardship of the Earth in the Anthropocene remains an ethical project for history and not primarily the domain of the natural sciences.
{"title":"Ours Is the Earth: Science and Human History in the Anthropocene","authors":"S. Jasanoff","doi":"10.1163/18722636-12341447","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18722636-12341447","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000History at one time drew unproblematically on records produced by human societies about themselves and their doings. Advances in biology and the earth sciences introduced new narrative resources that repositioned the human story in relation to the evolution of all else on the planet, thereby decentering earlier conceptions of time, life, and human agency. This essay reflects on what it means for our understanding of the human that the history of our species has become so intimately entangled with the material processes that make up the biosphere, while concurrently the temporal horizon of our imagination has been stretched forward and back, underscoring the brevity of human existence in relation to earthly time. I suggest that, despite significant changes in the resources with which we can rethink the human condition, drawing upon the sciences, history’s fundamental purposes have not been rendered irrelevant. These center, as before, on the normative project of connecting past and future in ways that make sense of human experience and give meaning to it. In particular, the question of how humans should imagine the stewardship of the Earth in the Anthropocene remains an ethical project for history and not primarily the domain of the natural sciences.","PeriodicalId":43541,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Philosophy of History","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/18722636-12341447","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46385811","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-19DOI: 10.1163/18722636-12341451
M. Tamm, Z. Simon
In recent years the age-old question “what is the human?” has acquired a new acuteness and novel dimensions. In introducing the special issue on “Historical Thinking and the Human”, this article argues that there are two main trends behind the contemporary “crisis of human”: ecological transformations (related to human-induced climate change and planetary environmental challenges), and technological ones (including advancements in human enhancement, biotechnology and artificial intelligence). After discussing the respective anthropocenic and technoscientific redefinitions of the human, the paper theorizes three elements in an emerging new historicity of the human: first, the move from a fixed category to a dynamic and indeterminate concept, considering the human as a lifeform in movement; second, the extent to which the human is conceived of in its relational dependence on various non-human agents, organic and non-organic; and third, the reconceptualization of the human not as one but as many, to comprehend that we cannot speak of human individuality in the classical biological sense. In the final part, the article addresses the consequences of the redefinition of the human for historical thinking. It makes the case for the need to elaborate a new notion of history – captured by the phrase “more-than-human history”, and attuned to an emerging planetary regime of historicity in which historical thinking becomes able to affirm multiple temporalities: digital, technoscientific, sociocultural, human, biological and anthropocenic. The article concludes by recognizing the necessity to venture into a new transdisciplinary knowledge economy, appropriate for making sense of the contemporary constellation of the entangled human, technological and natural worlds.
{"title":"Historical Thinking and the Human: Introduction","authors":"M. Tamm, Z. Simon","doi":"10.1163/18722636-12341451","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18722636-12341451","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In recent years the age-old question “what is the human?” has acquired a new acuteness and novel dimensions. In introducing the special issue on “Historical Thinking and the Human”, this article argues that there are two main trends behind the contemporary “crisis of human”: ecological transformations (related to human-induced climate change and planetary environmental challenges), and technological ones (including advancements in human enhancement, biotechnology and artificial intelligence). After discussing the respective anthropocenic and technoscientific redefinitions of the human, the paper theorizes three elements in an emerging new historicity of the human: first, the move from a fixed category to a dynamic and indeterminate concept, considering the human as a lifeform in movement; second, the extent to which the human is conceived of in its relational dependence on various non-human agents, organic and non-organic; and third, the reconceptualization of the human not as one but as many, to comprehend that we cannot speak of human individuality in the classical biological sense. In the final part, the article addresses the consequences of the redefinition of the human for historical thinking. It makes the case for the need to elaborate a new notion of history – captured by the phrase “more-than-human history”, and attuned to an emerging planetary regime of historicity in which historical thinking becomes able to affirm multiple temporalities: digital, technoscientific, sociocultural, human, biological and anthropocenic. The article concludes by recognizing the necessity to venture into a new transdisciplinary knowledge economy, appropriate for making sense of the contemporary constellation of the entangled human, technological and natural worlds.","PeriodicalId":43541,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Philosophy of History","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47062116","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-19DOI: 10.1163/18722636-12341452
E. Domańska
This article shows that the question of “Historical Thinking and the Human” demands expanding the field of the philosophy of history. What I propose is to investigate the issue from two perspectives: firstly, by positioning it in the broader philosophical context, one that increasingly transcends the boundaries of the humanities to enter the realm of the life sciences; and secondly, by drawing on a wider range of analytical material than has usually been the case in classic works in the philosophy of history. I will critically reflect upon history’s anthropocentric biases, highlighting the need to develop an alternative to history. My thinking is aligned, on the one hand, with notions of the agency of images that have emerged from art criticism and visual culture studies (W.J.T. Mitchell), and, on the other hand, with the idea of theriomorphism, which I explore in terms of new animism, new totemism and philosophical ethology (Roberto Marchesini). In my analysis of works by the South African artist Nandipha Mntambo (cowhides and Europa), I argue that a future-oriented redefinition of the human should transcend the limited categories that have emerged within the framework of history understood as a Eurocentric approach to the past rooted in Greco-Judaic-Christian tradition.
{"title":"Unbinding from Humanity: Nandipha Mntambo’s Europa and the Limits of History and Identity","authors":"E. Domańska","doi":"10.1163/18722636-12341452","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18722636-12341452","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article shows that the question of “Historical Thinking and the Human” demands expanding the field of the philosophy of history. What I propose is to investigate the issue from two perspectives: firstly, by positioning it in the broader philosophical context, one that increasingly transcends the boundaries of the humanities to enter the realm of the life sciences; and secondly, by drawing on a wider range of analytical material than has usually been the case in classic works in the philosophy of history. I will critically reflect upon history’s anthropocentric biases, highlighting the need to develop an alternative to history. My thinking is aligned, on the one hand, with notions of the agency of images that have emerged from art criticism and visual culture studies (W.J.T. Mitchell), and, on the other hand, with the idea of theriomorphism, which I explore in terms of new animism, new totemism and philosophical ethology (Roberto Marchesini). In my analysis of works by the South African artist Nandipha Mntambo (cowhides and Europa), I argue that a future-oriented redefinition of the human should transcend the limited categories that have emerged within the framework of history understood as a Eurocentric approach to the past rooted in Greco-Judaic-Christian tradition.","PeriodicalId":43541,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Philosophy of History","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45645252","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-19DOI: 10.1163/18722636-12341450
B. Latour, D. Chakrabarty
The introduction of the long-term history of the Earth into the preoccupations of historians has triggered a crisis because it has become impossible to keep the “planet” as one single entity outside of history properly understood. As soon as the planetary intruded into history, it became impossible to keep it as one naturalized background. By problematizing the planetary, Dipesh Chakrabarty has forced philosophers, historians and anthropologists to extend pluralism to the very ground on which history was supposed to unfold. Hence Bruno Latour’s attempt at counting the number of “planets” whose attractions are simultaneously being felt today on any political question. Each of his eight planets are defined by the disconnect between where they are situated and where they are imagined to be moving, which means that each planet is led by a different and incommensurable philosophy of history. Such a “fictional planetology” is then discussed by Chakrabarty, who reviews the difficulties historians have had in taking the nonhuman (and hence the planet) as a historical agent and then adds to Latour’s count a new planetary body which further complicates the geopolitical situation. The result of their joint effort is to shift questions of philosophy of history to philosophy of geography.
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Pub Date : 2020-11-19DOI: 10.1163/18722636-12341448
L. Robin
History in times of crisis is practical: future action depends on historical framing. Moving beyond “human scales” to include the evolutionary and the geological, and beyond humans to include other species, demands different approaches and new “archives” like ice-cores. This paper considers history in the Long Now, and particularly how museums and big public arts institutions develop new sorts of history through practical story-telling, taking seriously the notion that “the central role of museums [is] both an expression of cultural identity and … a powerful force for human development and education.” The museum has a particular value as “slow media”, deepening news stories in times of rapid change. The new epoch of Earth, the Anthropocene, where humans have become a geological force, poses challenges for exhibitions, but also reshapes museums themselves. Crucial to managing stories, collections and objects in Anthropocene times is the capacity to change course, to remain open to new developments, using performances, events and “pop-up” exhibitions alongside traditional museum offerings. New Museology regards stories as the fundamental unit of museums. Thus, the curation of stories is central work. No longer are museums defined solely by objects: the artistic and the ephemeral are all part of story-telling.
{"title":"Museums in the Long Now: History in the Geological Age of Humans","authors":"L. Robin","doi":"10.1163/18722636-12341448","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18722636-12341448","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000History in times of crisis is practical: future action depends on historical framing. Moving beyond “human scales” to include the evolutionary and the geological, and beyond humans to include other species, demands different approaches and new “archives” like ice-cores. This paper considers history in the Long Now, and particularly how museums and big public arts institutions develop new sorts of history through practical story-telling, taking seriously the notion that “the central role of museums [is] both an expression of cultural identity and … a powerful force for human development and education.” The museum has a particular value as “slow media”, deepening news stories in times of rapid change. The new epoch of Earth, the Anthropocene, where humans have become a geological force, poses challenges for exhibitions, but also reshapes museums themselves. Crucial to managing stories, collections and objects in Anthropocene times is the capacity to change course, to remain open to new developments, using performances, events and “pop-up” exhibitions alongside traditional museum offerings. New Museology regards stories as the fundamental unit of museums. Thus, the curation of stories is central work. No longer are museums defined solely by objects: the artistic and the ephemeral are all part of story-telling.","PeriodicalId":43541,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Philosophy of History","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48929668","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-19DOI: 10.1163/18722636-12341449
H. Tirosh-Samuelson
The Anthropocene denotes the impact of human activity on Earth systems, resulting in mass extinctions of plant and animal species, pollution of oceans, lakes and rivers, and altering of the atmosphere. The Anthropocene signifies the mass control of nature by humans, the erasure of boundaries between humanity and nature, and the threat to human existence by human-made technology. How can biological humans flourish, if their physical environment, the very condition of their existence, is destroyed? What does it mean to thrive as a human in an age when human-made machines threaten to make humanity obsolete? How does human flourishing relate to human history? This essay argues that the monotheistic traditions, and Judaism in particular, offer meaningful religious imaginaries for the Anthropocene because they envision human flourishing as embodied, ecological and historically grounded. In contrast to secular imaginaries, which either declare the “end of nature” or envision the obsolescence of biological humanity, the Judaic religious imaginary honors the interconnectedness and interdependence of all creatures, while recognizing human responsibility toward the well-being of the natural world. Viewing nature as divinely created, and, thus “enchanted” by the divine presence, the Judaic religious imaginary offers a vision of human flourishing based on the ethics of care and responsibility that enables humanity to respond and perhaps even prevent further ecological collapse.
{"title":"Human Flourishing and History: A Religious Imaginary for the Anthropocene","authors":"H. Tirosh-Samuelson","doi":"10.1163/18722636-12341449","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18722636-12341449","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The Anthropocene denotes the impact of human activity on Earth systems, resulting in mass extinctions of plant and animal species, pollution of oceans, lakes and rivers, and altering of the atmosphere. The Anthropocene signifies the mass control of nature by humans, the erasure of boundaries between humanity and nature, and the threat to human existence by human-made technology. How can biological humans flourish, if their physical environment, the very condition of their existence, is destroyed? What does it mean to thrive as a human in an age when human-made machines threaten to make humanity obsolete? How does human flourishing relate to human history? This essay argues that the monotheistic traditions, and Judaism in particular, offer meaningful religious imaginaries for the Anthropocene because they envision human flourishing as embodied, ecological and historically grounded. In contrast to secular imaginaries, which either declare the “end of nature” or envision the obsolescence of biological humanity, the Judaic religious imaginary honors the interconnectedness and interdependence of all creatures, while recognizing human responsibility toward the well-being of the natural world. Viewing nature as divinely created, and, thus “enchanted” by the divine presence, the Judaic religious imaginary offers a vision of human flourishing based on the ethics of care and responsibility that enables humanity to respond and perhaps even prevent further ecological collapse.","PeriodicalId":43541,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Philosophy of History","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/18722636-12341449","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43361116","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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