ON THE USEFULNESS AND HARMFULNESS OF HISTORY FOR CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5840/eps202663336Keywords:
history of science, historical epistemology, presentism, antiquarianism, underdeterminationAbstract
The article examines the significance of historical and scientific research for contemporary science. The authors start from two contexts of the problematic relevance of the history of science – the institutional-educational and the socio-epistemological. The first part examines three modes of the relationship between history and (scientific) life, drawing on the ideas of F. Nietzsche. Their epistemological application makes it possible to problematize any unequivocal answer to the question of the usefulness and harmfulness of history for contemporary science. In the second part, the authors turn to the existing distinction between the antiquarian and presentist approaches, note the insufficiency of the presentist approach, reveal the difference between epistemological antiquarianism and philosophical antiquarianism, and also determine how presentist and antiquarian historiography can be useful both in the socio-communicative sense (for shaping and supporting the community) and in the epistemological sense (for the development of science). In conclusion, an answer is given to the question of the condition for the intersection of these two approaches, and it is also proposed that the underdetermination of the past of science be regarded as their common source. A general conclusion is drawn about the significance of the work of the historian of science for contemporary scientific research.
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