The tragedy of the canon; or, path dependence in the history of science (2021)
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Re: The tragedy of the canon; or, path dependence in the history of science (2021)
#2Interesting. As far as I can see this is part of the age-old attempt to try and moor the the history of science, and perhaps philosophy itself, in some sort of empirical framework. In this case the notion of a "canon" seems to serve as the equivalent of the lab experiment in physics.
It could well be a useful concept, but even an amateur like me can see some obvious pitfalls. A canon among historians and philosophers of science can, and will, only be based on the paradigms of the day, paradigms that ultimately get thrown out the window in light of new developments in society (see Kuhn and others). So philosophy is, and should, primarily be critical of it's assumptions, not elevate them into canonical truths, with which to crush the critics.
We actually need to get away from the trend of reducing everything down to the "true/false" dichotomy currently so popular among media factcheckers and others, that draws inspiration from falsifiable physical science hypothesis. Statements, narratives and opinions are so much more.
With reservations stemming from not being able to read the whole paper - I'm not sure if the authors want to improve the "canon" as a useful concept, or ultimately want to disprove it.
Re: The tragedy of the canon; or, path dependence in the history of science (2021)
#3Interesting. As far as I can see this is part of the age-old attempt to try and moor the the history of science, and perhaps philosophy itself, in some sort of empirical framework. In this case the notion of a "canon" seems to serve as the equivalent of the lab experiment in physics. It could well be a useful concept, but even an amateur like me can see some obvious pitfalls. A canon among historians and philosophers…
The use of the phrase “tragedy of the canon” does highlight the author’s concerns. I sent this article to Dr. John Bickle, a philosopher of neuroscience, to review.
Re: The tragedy of the canon; or, path dependence in the history of science (2021)
#4Interesting. As far as I can see this is part of the age-old attempt to try and moor the the history of science, and perhaps philosophy itself, in some sort of empirical framework. In this case the notion of a "canon" seems to serve as the equivalent of the lab experiment in physics. It could well be a useful concept, but even an amateur like me can see some obvious pitfalls. A canon among historians and philosophers…
>paradigms that ultimately get thrown out the window in light of new developments in society
The problem with this way of looking into things is it runs into the relativity of wrong fallacy, the shortest version of which is:
>When people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.
And while it's popular to cite Kuhn just by name and move on, Kuhn himself would be the first to say his legacy was terribly misunderstood, and if I recall he analogized it to trying to hold on to the tail of an elephant that eventually escapes.
The trouble is taking Kuhn's contributions and not turning them into an unconditional global skepticism of any and all knowledge, and so conversations tend to go in circles negotiating those boundaries (and those are the good ones! The worst ones uncritically cite Kuhn as if the very invocation of his name singlehandedly dismantles any concept of objective knowledge). The best updated, comprehensive assessment of conceptual change I would say is Paul Thagard's Conceptual Revolutions, which is at pains to integrate Kuhn with a notion of explanatory coherence that takes theory change seriously as more than a mere relativity of wrong issue.
Re: The tragedy of the canon; or, path dependence in the history of science (2021)
#5Interesting. As far as I can see this is part of the age-old attempt to try and moor the the history of science, and perhaps philosophy itself, in some sort of empirical framework. In this case the notion of a "canon" seems to serve as the equivalent of the lab experiment in physics. It could well be a useful concept, but even an amateur like me can see some obvious pitfalls. A canon among historians and philosophers…
>paradigms that ultimately get thrown out the window in light of new developments in society The problem with this way of looking into things is it runs into the relativity of wrong fallacy, the shortest version of which is: >When people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as t…
Rest assured I'm in no way proposing an "unconditional global skepticism of any and all knowledge" - just a sound skepticism which questions our assumptions.
There is no doubt room for a nuanced discussion about Kuhn and paradigms here. I admittedly painted with a broad brush. But your objections doesn't seem to directly address the problem at hand: would you say that there is indeed a use for a "canon" in history and philosophy of science? and how would you in that case avoid the problem of paradigms that necessarily would tend to inform such a canon?
Re: The tragedy of the canon; or, path dependence in the history of science (2021)
#6Interesting. As far as I can see this is part of the age-old attempt to try and moor the the history of science, and perhaps philosophy itself, in some sort of empirical framework. In this case the notion of a "canon" seems to serve as the equivalent of the lab experiment in physics. It could well be a useful concept, but even an amateur like me can see some obvious pitfalls. A canon among historians and philosophers…
History and science are both grounded in empiricism. "Empirical" means that a theory is based on observations (and not on private insights, revelations from God, etc.). Observations are not limited to experiments (if so, astronomy would not be "empirical"). In history, empirical evidence are usually observations of historical documents, artefacts and the like. They are then interpreted in the context of theoretical frameworks that are themselves based on a multitude of other empirical evidence. The lack of experiments does not make the construction of such theoretical frameworks unempirical, but in a way just harder.
Re: The tragedy of the canon; or, path dependence in the history of science (2021)
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
>paradigms that ultimately get thrown out the window in light of new developments in society The problem with this way of looking into things is it runs into the relativity of wrong fallacy, the shortest version of which is: >When people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as t…
Rest assured I'm in no way proposing an "unconditional global skepticism of any and all knowledge" - just a sound skepticism which questions our assumptions. There is no doubt room for a nuanced discussion about Kuhn and paradigms here. I admittedly painted with a broad brush. But your objections doesn't seem to directly address the problem at hand: would you say that there is indeed a use for a "canon" in history an…
Well for starters, I would like to think that responding to you counts as addressing "the problem at hand", unless you mean to say you were also not addressing it, and I joined you in being unresponsive by choosing to reply to you. But I would like to give you more credit than that.
Regarding the notion of a canon, it's good to have a notion of history of conceptual change that identifies a series of major advances that we hold up as exhibiting our highest standards. I would say though that I completely agree with the premise advanced by this article that it would benefit from establishing some consistent norms. I can't see the full paper, but it seems to be building out a great theory on how this happens in philosophy of science, and I think the history of Kuhn and post-Kuhn philosophers of science have exhibited how messy and all-over-the-map it can be and how, perhaps culminating in its most extreme expression in Against Method. Which I think testifies to the need for building out the kind of norms that the paper is advocating.
Re: The tragedy of the canon; or, path dependence in the history of science (2021)
#8Interesting. As far as I can see this is part of the age-old attempt to try and moor the the history of science, and perhaps philosophy itself, in some sort of empirical framework. In this case the notion of a "canon" seems to serve as the equivalent of the lab experiment in physics. It could well be a useful concept, but even an amateur like me can see some obvious pitfalls. A canon among historians and philosophers…
History and science are both grounded in empiricism. "Empirical" means that a theory is based on observations (and not on private insights, revelations from God, etc.). Observations are not limited to experiments (if so, astronomy would not be "empirical"). In history, empirical evidence are usually observations of historical documents, artefacts and the like. They are then interpreted in the context of theoretical f…
What you say is true, modern history relies on verifiable facts like documents, artefacts, etc. But there of always a narrative involved, which to a smaller or larger degree is based off human values and as such lack the objectivity of the falsifiable physical science hypothesis. This seems to me to be a source of a gnawing sense of insecurity among (many) scholars in the humanities - but it shouldn't. They should simply recognize this situation as a fact, and declare their assumptions (even the physical sciences could benefit from this many times).
Re: The tragedy of the canon; or, path dependence in the history of science (2021)
#9This page just goes into a captcha loop for me. I would have liked to read the article and see what problems they identify, and whether they distinguish between path dependence and creating a framework of knowledge that subsequent science can build on rather than starting from first principles every time.
Re: The tragedy of the canon; or, path dependence in the history of science (2021)
#10For a moment I thought this was about cannons and I got really excited.