Science in History

Hallhane Machado

doi:10.24117/2526-2270.2020.i8.10

Abstract

 In 1987, Ernest Coumet highlighted the presence of a “scientific revolution” in Alexandre Koyré’s works. When and where did the destruction of the Cosmos and the geometrization of space materialize in the authors she studied? In what work do we find the “revolution” for which Koyré is so well known? From unknown texts, at least in 1987, Coumet pointed out concordances between Koyré’s philosophy of historical knowledge and that of Raymond Aron – of Weberian inspiration – affirming Koyré’s famous concept of Scientific Revolution as “ideal type”. Which means to say that, in the works of the author of From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, “revolution” is not a historical reality, but an interpretative horizon. However, a letter from Koyré to Aron discovered by us in the archives of this author, deposited in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, shows us the unsustainability of Coumet’s hypothesis. Nevertheless, it seems to us that the great lesson of his singular hypothesis remains, that of the importance of not neglecting the conception of the history of those who focus on the past of the sciences.

Highlights

We would have started this article, certainly, stating an axiom if we were to state that the historian’s object, whatever it may be, is not disconnected from his conception of history; it is not possible to think of one without involuntarily thinking of the other; that the way we conceive history shows how we conceive an object that we believe is inserted in it
In a conference organized by Pietro Redondi, in 1986, addressed to Alexandre Koyré, the historian of the “scientific revolution” of the 16th and 17th centuries, professor and source of inspiration for Thomas Kuhn, Coumet was ready to make an exhibition under the title Alexandre Koyré : La révolution scientifique introuvable ? “The more I read and reread Alexandre Koyré, the more I came across seemingly irreconcilable statements” (Coumet 1987, 497)
As Koyré claims in the preface to his From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, in Galilean Studies, he built the “prehistory of the great revolution” (Koyré 1986 [1957], 9), that occurs with Newton, and not with Galileo and Descartes, considering that it has its end with the elaboration of the Newtonian system

Summary

Introduction

We would have started this article, certainly, stating an axiom if we were to state that the historian’s object, whatever it may be, is not disconnected from his conception of history; it is not possible to think of one without involuntarily thinking of the other; that the way we conceive history shows how we conceive an object that we believe is inserted in it. If Coumet regrets the lack of studies that privileges the historical theory and methodology admitted and practiced by Koyré, if he seeks to advance in this direction, it is because there are unknown texts, at least in 1987, very suggestive, as witnessed by more recent works published in Brazil, in France, and in Italy.

Results

Conclusion