Historical Epistemology Research Articles

Matteo Vagelli, Reconsidering historical epistemology: French and anglophone styles in history and philosophy of science, 2024. Springer.

Matteo Vagelli, Reconsidering historical epistemology: French and anglophone styles in history and philosophy of science, 2024. Springer.

From Culture to Cultures: Understanding Edward Sapir’s Prophecy through Herderian Lenses

In 1934, the American anthropologist, Edward Sapir made a scientific prophecy on the concept of culture which remained largely overlooked but have proved to be surprisingly accurate and relevant in the contemporary era. He was focused on conceptual pluralisation and fragmentation. By predicting the pluralisation of culture, Sapir captured a trend that we can witness nowadays in the continuously growing number of cultures, subcultures, counterculture, and new conceptual interpretations and ramifications. His use of the Herderian concept of culture(s) requires a close inspection facilitated by interdisciplinary methodologies such as historical epistemology. Widely credited as the creator of the term “culture” in its plural sense, Johann Gottfried von Herder played a crucial role for Sapir’s academic formation. In the ruptures and continuities that culture as a concept has experienced, one can find valuable epistemological insights. Sapir did not come up with a daring prediction out of an uninformed position. Putting Sapir’s prophetic statement in the context of his academic and professional journey and in the context of the general research trends of the twentieth century reveals a strong Herderian heritage intensified by the psychologisation of anthropology that has ultimately led to an increasingly powerful and progressively sophisticated pluralisation of culture.

Empathy or sympathy: a necessary distinction?

As a deeply hybrid discipline, psychiatry demands research that tackles the concepts constituting it and its objects. This is an essential prerequisite to empirical studies, the validity of which are directly dependent on a clear understanding of the underlying concepts. Empathy and sympathy are concepts used variably and inconsistently in clinical practice and research, with ensuing uncertainties around their role and meaning. Using a historical epistemology approach, this paper compares these concepts by examining the structures, intersections, stabilities and factors that shape them. It shows that neither concept is invariant, and, despite overlap, the concepts are essentially different, underpinned by different assumptions, holding different functions and capturing different phenomena. In turn, such differences require apposite approaches to their empirical study.

“The dead do not negotiate”: Hilary Mantel, The Mirror and the Light, and Britain’s obsession with history

ABSTRACT Why do we remember the dead with such intensity in Britain, as if they were still among us? I argue that Hilary Mantel makes a critical intervention in this debate with her historical fictions Wolf Hall (2009), Bring Up the Bodies (2012) and The Mirror and the Light (2020). Her novels are theoretical and political interventions that allow us to critically evaluate historiographic, heritage and commemorative practices in contemporary Britain. I argue that they demonstrate the harmful consequences of commemorations centred around the continuous revival of the dead, because this practice justifies injuries against and negligence of the living through an appeal to imagined ancestors, who cannot engage in compromise or change their minds. This mode of knowing the past results in social standstill and the perception of social and political change as a threat. Thinking through the characteristics of this historical epistemology with Martin Davies, Walter Benjamin and Friedrich Nietzsche, I go on to argue that Hilary Mantel’s intervention exposes the violent consequences of such a mode of knowing the past and proposes a radical alternative: rather than negotiating with the dead, it reminds us to focus on the needs of the vulnerable living in the present.

Catherine Malabou’s Historical Epistemology

This article seeks to address what the work of Catherine Malabou can offer to the thinking and understanding of history. Characterizing Malabou’s intellectual project as a meditation on the relation between history and possible knowledge, it situates the philosopher’s work in the tradition of historical epistemology. It will be argued that, in its engagement with philosophical and (neuro)biological theories of plasticity and epigenesis, the historical constitution of Malabou’s philosophical system problematizes the practical and ontological difficulty behind any commitment to a historically bounded knowledge of what here will be called, following Heidegger and Foucault, ‘pure finitude’. The article concludes by suggesting that, if placed alongside the work of intellectual historian Quentin Skinner, Malabou’s historical epistemology makes a decisive and useful contribution to contemporary debates regarding historical method by underscoring the (neuro)biological rooting of persistent epistemic gaps between historical understanding and experience.

Triplex cogitandi ratio cum methodo Jana Śniadeckiego – nowe źródło do dziejów logiki i epistemologii w szkolnictwie Komisji Edukacji Narodowej

The objective of this paper is to present the intellectual context, partially philosophical, of a newly discovered source for the history of Polish logic and epistemology. The source is the manuscript of lectures on logic given in the so-called Nowodworski Schools, a secondary school associated with the Kraków Academy. The lecture was given in the school year 1777/1778 by Jan Śniadecki (1756–1830), a leading thinker of the Polish Enlightenment – mathematician, astronomer, philosopher and pedagogical activist, including a rector of the Vilnius University. A preliminary interpretation of the manuscript is also delivered, classifying it as an exemplification of philosophia recentiorum. That philosophical and scientific trend, typical of education in the second half of the 18th century, was programmatically eclectic. It assimilated threads of modern epistemology and modern science into the course of philosophy characteristic of modern Christian Aristotelianism (second scholasticism). The article also announces the first critical edition of the manuscript being prepared. It seems to be essential for understanding the first stage of Śniadecki’s work, as well as for understanding the specificity of the education system in the schools supervised by the Commission of National Education, established in 1773.

MODERNITY: THE PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTUALISATION

The article off ers an exposition of the philosophical problematization of modernity. The author consid-ers three possible models for the thematization of modernity in the perspective of the Kantian formulation of the problem: 1) ontological, associated with the project of M. Heidegger, where the question of the historical time of modernity is pushed into the background, while the question of temporality of human existence. At the same time, the question of modernity becomes universal and must be eliminated in the future; 2) anthropological, which con-sists in preserving the pragmatic perspective of considering a person, which implies a rejection of ontology, but opens up prospects for the development of the humanities. Here the question of modernity is not eliminated, but is transferred to the fi eld of historical epistemology; 3) postmodernist, associated with the elimination of the question of man, where modernity again appears as a unique event, but left in the past. The author records the insuffi ciency of both projects for the revival of metaphysics and programs for creating traumatic history, which equally reproduce the anthropological confi guration of philosophy, and concludes that it is necessary to develop a new model of modernity — an aesthetic one.

보편을 다시 무대에 올리며, 보편의 상 아래에서 말하기 - ‘탈진실’ 시대 진리 개념의 포스트-구조주의적 재구성을 위한 정치철학적 시론 -

The present study takes the politico-philosophical approach of reconstructing the concepts of truth and the universal in a poststructuralist way in order to criticize our present situation of post-truth. This approach takes the following four steps. First, beyond simply diagnosing the present post-truth situation, it also critically analyzes the various discourses that criticize the post-truth situation. The conclusion of this critical diagnosis is that the discourses which criticize the present post-truth situation treat truth in a cognitivist way in accordance with the propositional conception of truth, which is based on a superficial misunderstanding of Anglophone analytic philosophy. Second, in order to criticize these attempts to reduce truth to the dimension of the true, it reconstructs the post-structuralist triangle of truth-history-subject based on French historical epistemology, i.e. the post-structuralist conception of truth. The post-structuralist conception of truth does not reduce truth to a dimension of the true but elevates it to the dimension of truth itself. Third, it defines this post-structuralist triangle of truthhistory-subject as the triangle of the universal, based on the post structuralist philosopher Étienne Balibar’s reflections on the universal. Through an analysis of the history of philosophy, Balibar deduces three qualities of universality - equivocal universality, conflictual universality, universality as translation - from the thoughts of Spinoza-Wittgenstein, Hegel-Marx, Quine-Benjamin. Fourth, in order to address the objection that can be raised against the post-structuralist conception of truth and the universal, which is the problem of the arbitrariness of the standards for truth and the universal, it criticizes the Deleuze-Nietzschean reflection on the courage of the false, based on Balibar’s philosophy of actualityas- structure. Lastly, it reflects on how truth and the universal ought to be thought of from the standpoint of the intellectuals in this post-truth situation. In the end, the aim of this article is to provide a theoretical key to overcoming our current post-truth situation, by thinking about truth and the universal in a different way from current discourses.

Movement-colour: moments in a deep time media epistemology

Color and movement present themselves as deeply different phenomena, yet an epistemological history of their concepts reveals how entangled they have been within the Western episteme. This appears not only in scientific or philosophical texts but also, and primarily, in the way specific devices, works of art, media and experimental protocols have been conceived and developed throughout history. This article proposes a deep time media epistemology based on the analysis of a few nodal apparatuses mobilizing both movement and color: Isaac Newton’s optical experiments, Joseph Plateau’s phenakisticope, and Charles Cros’ mid-19th century projects for the recording of colour and movement. These will show how colour and movement have been thought together in Western culture.

What Racism? Race and Racism in Recent Canadian Historiography: A Critical Perspective on the Francophone Literature

Taking the societal climate surrounding issues of race and racism in the study of the past as my point of departure, I propose to examine how it translates into the practice of French-language historiography of Canadian and Quebecois societies. Do disciplinary institutions publish on issues of race and racism? This study also responds to historian Geneviève Dorais’ arguments in the Bulletin d’histoire politique in 2020 about anti-Black racism in Quebec historiography, and to the call by historians Crystal Gail Fraser and Allyson Stevenson for a critical perspective on our discipline in the post-Truth and Reconciliation Commission era. This paper consists of four sections. I first sketch out some definitions related to the concepts of race, racism, and ignorance. I then turn to the relationship these questions have with historical epistemology and the role that the discipline of history has played in the history of racism. In the third section, I present the results of my research on francophone-Canadian historical knowledge production in the past few years, which asked the following questions: Is the concept of race present in this disciplinary field? In what way is it used? Finally, I conclude by returning to the results of this study and reflect on what a better understanding of the critical concept of race in historical studies can contribute to our understanding of Quebec and Canada’s past.

Schlick, intuition, and the history of epistemology

AbstractMaria Rosa Antognazza's work has issued a historical challenge to the thesis that the analysis of knowledge (as justified true belief) attacked by epistemologists from Gettier onwards was indeed the standard view traditionally upheld from Plato onwards. This challenge led to an ongoing reappraisal of the historical significance of intuitive knowledge, in which the knower is intimately connected to what is known. Such traditional accounts of intuition, and their accompanying claims to epistemological primacy, constituted the precise target of Moritz Schlick's critique. Schlick engages with this topic throughout his oeuvre, from some of his early epistemological writings, to his anti‐metaphysical stance as a leading Logical Empiricist. Schlick crucially distinguishes knowledge from mere acquaintance, denying that the latter has epistemic status. He therefore argues that the very notion of ‘intuitive knowledge’ is a contradictio in adjecto.

Correction to: Character and Everydayness: The Bottom-Up Historical Epistemology of Tosaka Jun

Correction to: Character and Everydayness: The Bottom-Up Historical Epistemology of Tosaka Jun

Teoria nie jest dla amatorów. Hugo Merlo rozmawia z Estêvão De Rezende Martins

In this interview, Professor Estêvão de Rezende Martins, an emeritus professor at the University of Brasilia, discusses his intellectual journey and research interests in the theory, philosophy, and methodology of history and historiography. The conversation delves into the development of historical thinking and consciousness, exploring how human existence is inherently historical and how individuals relate to their experiences through cognitive operations and historical culture. Moreover, the interview explores the evolution of the theory of history in Brazil, emphasising the shift from the speculative reflections of the philosophy of history to the meth-odological rigour of the theory of history or epistemology of history. The role of academic historiography in the face of contemporary challenges, such as the recognition of non‑human or post‑human planetary agencies, is also addressed. Martins discusses the diversification of his-toriography and its autonomy in exploring previously neglected topics, along with the need for historical education to empower individuals to think independently and critically in our border-less, globalised world. Ultimately, the interview sheds light on the ongoing theoretical experi-mentation in the field of history and the potential impact on historiographical practice in the future.

Por um gesto de leitura materialista do discurso da avaliação em saúde: critérios e padrões

ABSTRACT This essay is based on the epistemological concerns of health evaluators in their search to understand the meanings of their professional practice and their theoretical formulations. Such concerns emerge from the strangeness accumulated over years of work in the field and a growing questioning, given the naturalization of the relationship between the concepts used in health evaluation and their implications for the maintenance of power relations. In this essay, we present an analytical proposal for understanding the concepts mobilized by health evaluation supported by Michel Pêcheux’s Discourse Analysis, Louis Althusser’s Materialist Philosophy, and Georges Canguilhem’s Historical Epistemology. We propose a materialist reading approach for the analysis of the standardized discourse about the development of evaluation, seeking to contribute to overcoming idealistic readings around approaches and standards that succeed one another and are stabilized as truths, with a view to advancing towards a historical understanding. Understanding the formation of the conceptual discourse around the social practice of health evaluation in Brazil-and, thus, understanding the ideological functioning of its enunciation-can aid us to deepen the analysis of the meanings that operate in the practice and formulation of this social space.

Thomson’s atomic model in PNLD 2021: A critique based on Gaston Bachelard’s historical epistemology

Resumo O atomismo é indispensável para a química moderna, carregando diversos aspectos epistemológicos e históricos de tal ciência. No ensino, o conceito de átomo permeia os currículos de maneira transversal, sendo abordado diretamente no conteúdo de modelos atômicos. Tendo isso em vista, esse artigo apresenta uma análise qualitativa do modelo atômico de Thomson apresentado pelos livros didáticos de ciências do ensino médio do PNLD 2021. Primeiro, o desenvolvimento histórico dos trabalhos de Thomson foi analisado a partir de fontes históricas primárias e secundárias, utilizando a epistemologia histórica de Gaston Bachelard. Em seguida, procedeu-se à avaliação do rigor histórico-filosófico do material dos livros didáticos. Identificou-se um modelo de Thomson distorcido, cujo desenvolvimento histórico é apresentado de maneira superficial e descontextualizada, omitindo elementos epistemológicos relevantes para a sua compreensão crítica. Com base nas análises, são apontadas perspectivas para ampliar a exploração de aspectos histórico-epistemológicos do modelo de Thomson no ensino.

Latent destruction through substitution of Haitian society: an epistemological and historical perspective

This article aims to understand and explain through a reflection focused on the historical epistemology and habitus of Bourdieu, how the Western countries, specifically, United States of America, Spain, Germany, Canada, and France are carefully and subtly planning Haiti's collapse by substitution. It highlights five methods of latent destruction in which is inscribed the setting of gradual deconstruction to replace the Haitian society by imposing a soci-political environment in perpetual instability that encourages young people to flee their country. At the end of the reflection, the article conxludes that the Western countries want to take over the land of Haiti and drive out the black savages of the Caribbean (as they used to treat them) who inhabited it.

Intinerários Transatlânticos Da Filosofia Da Informação Em Iberoamérica E Caribe: cartografias filosófico-epistemológicas em Biblioteconomia e Ciência da Informação no século XXI

The problem research is: how can we recognize the historical philosophical dilemmas and the contemporary socio-critical development of a philosophy of information in Library and Information Science (LIS), based on a historical epistemology, in Caribbean-Iberoamerican context? The basic theoretical framework is anchored in the dimensions between LIS epistemology and the theoretical plurality of knowledge organization (KO), the epistemological foundation and the institutional constitution of the KO in the international context and its repercussion in Brazil, as well as the influence of the philosophy of language platform under the epistemological constructs in LIS. The methodological procedures are based on the Ludwig Wittgenstein (1979, 1992a,b, 2002, 2005) methodological-philosophical approach. The operationalization of the research collection stages takes place from three methodological perspectives: bibliographic, theoretical and conceptual. For the purposes of constructing the corpora, for this stage of the research, the database consulted was the Base de Dados Referenciais de Artigos de Periódicos em Ciência da Informação(BRAPCI) from Brazil. The search for a given “philosophy of information” in a para-territorial context (focus in Caribbean-Iberoamerican context) in LIS from the descriptors: philosophy of information; philosophy; social theory; epistemology; theory; culture theory; critical theory; theory of knowledge; political theory, present in the field literature in conjunction with geographic demarcation descriptors (continent, country, province, state, city, territory). The study sources were compiled and managed by Zotero software. The results bring evidence of philosophical-epistemological production in thegeographical context investigated, demonstrating the paths of a structural bibliographical production, of foundation, to the growing set of philosophical-informational approaches with a political, social and cultural approach.

Post-Historicism and the End of the Historicist Project: Оn the Issue of Overcoming Historical Relativism in Analytical Philosophy

The article is devoted to consideration of theories of Post-Historicism in the analytical philosophy of history. It is emphasized that Post-Historicism initially performs a critical position to the linguistically oriented historical relativism. Theorists of Post-Historicism criticized discursive understanding of the subject of history, as well as the view of historian as author. They provide paradigmatic turn from the language of historians to the analysis of historical experience (understood as a special, ‘sublime’ experience). It is noted that in the center of the theories of Post-Historicism there are such categories as ‘narrative’, ‘past’, ‘memory’, ‘metaphor’, ‘representation’, etc. The narrativists approach involves the assumption that the historian does not work with events of the past, but only with the interpretations of it. Main historical method is the reconstruction of historical experience through productive reminiscence. There is a fundamentally new challenge: the creation of many local histories in the form of narratives, but without attempts to create ‘meta-narratives’. Retrospectivism in narrative approach is the desire of the historian to retell certain events of the past in the form of textual integrity. The integrity of the narrative as a historical text is based not according to linguistic but to the ‘aesthetic’ principle: it is rooted in describing some historical events in their unity as an experience of certain actors of those events, and considering historian as their interpreter. In the era of Post-Historicism, analytical philosophy of history seeks to design not discourse, but narrative, because the latter one initially appeals to empathize, not understand or build some linguistic kinship. The concept of metaphors is proposed, involving the symbolic interpretation of historical concepts and generalizations, according to which there is a possibility to establish ‘how’ was the past. From the author’s point of view, it is possible to base historical epistemology on the assumption of a symbolic interpretation of historical experience and narrative.

On The Notion of Historical Epistemology: A General Note

In historiography as methodology of writing history of the knowledge about economy, in recent years increasing attention has been focused on applying historical-epistemological approach (Stapleford, 2017; etc.). Among Bulgarian economists the significance of the field of epistemology in interpreting and analysis of economics discipline is outlined and discussed by Dobrinka Zlateva in Zlateva (2014; 2017; 2018). The topic of epistemology of economic knowledge is included in the curriculum for the students specializing in Political Economy at Political Economy department of the University of National and World Economy (UNWE), Sofia, Bulgaria. Generally, being subject to discussions in the world philosophy elite for decades, these questions remain rather unknown among economists and historians of economics, in the world as well with us. The present overview aims to draw the attention of the Bulgarian public interested in this direction to the developing specific field of the so called ‘historical epistemology’. A continuation of the present work will be another one revealing the meaning of historical epistemology for understanding economics and recent economics history.

Thinking Across Worlds: Pluriversal Potentiality

Reflecting on the epistemological history of the microscope alongside theories of pluriversality and Anishinaabe mnidoo ontology, “Thinking Across Worlds” addresses the microscope as an instrument of decolonial worlding through two artworks created by the authors. We ask, “How can we think across worlds—microscopic and macroscopic, western and Indigenous, scientific and creative—to transform the present and the future, from ecological devastation and colonial violence to sustainability and decolonial justice?” The art works, titled Gathering and Resonance, are experiments in political ontology, through immersion in other worlds, other versions of reality. In these microscopic hydrospheres, Anishinaabe mnidoo reality prevails. Human viewers are dwarfed by the microscopic mnidoo that surround them. The place of humans is revealed to be a mere part within a multiplicity of relations. Our own interests are eclipsed by the dramas that play out among these minute forms of consciousness.