Reconsidering Historical Epistemology French and Anglophone Styles in History and Philosophy of Science

This book explores the key conceptual stakes underpinning historical epistemology. The strong Anglophone interest in historical epistemology, since at least the 1990s, is typically attributed to its simultaneously philosophical and historical synthetic approach to the study of science. Yet this account, considered by critics to be an unreflective assumption, has prevented historical epistemology from developing a clear understanding and definition, especially regarding how precisely historical and philosophical reflections on the sciences should be combined. Thus, this book uniquely analyses how the problems and tensions inherent to the “contemporary” phase of historical epistemology can be clarified by reference to the “classical” French phase. The archaeological method of Michel Foucault, which draws on and transforms fundamental insights by Gaston Bachelard and Georges Canguilhem, is used to exert an enduring influence on the field—especially through the work of Ian Hacking and his philosophical cum historical analyses of “styles of scientific reasoning”. Though this book is of great value to academic specialists and graduate students, the fact it addresses questions broad in scope ensures it is also relevant to a range of scholars in many disciplines and will provoke discussion among those interested in foundational issues in history and philosophy of science.

1. Introduction.- 2. Reassessing the “Historical Turn” in Philosophy of Science.- 3. Contemporary Historical Epistemologies.- 4. What (Good) is French Historical Epistemology?.- 5. Bachelard’s “Normative Turn” in Epistemology.- 6. Canguilhem’s Historiography Of The Life Sciences.- 7. Foucault’s Archaeological History.- 8. Hacking’s Styles of Scientific Reasoning.- 9. Styles of Science, Styles of Philosophy.

Matteo Vagelli is a Marie Sklodowska Curie postdoctoral fellow at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and at Harvard University. He holds a BA and an MA in philosophy from the University of Pisa and has obtained a PhD in philosophy from the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and the School of Advanced Studies Fondazione San Carlo. He has done research at the University of Cambridge, the University of Chicago, the Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main, the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin and the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (FMSH) in Paris. In 2015, he co-founded an international research network on historical epistemology that comprises over 50 members of both established and young international researchers in philosophy and history of science. In 2017/2018 he held the Chair ‘French contemporary thought’ at the European University Viadrina (Frankfurt an der Oder).