On the Importance of History to the Philosophy of Sciences

FAIN: FS-10728-78

Ian M. Hacking
Stanford University (Stanford, CA 94305-2004)

To assess the impact of the new historiography of science on the philosophy of science. Some recent works of scientific historiography have cast into doubt many traditional assumptions about rationality; others have had implications for contemporary views of what knowledge is. Philosophical problems posed by such works coincide with current interests in the philosophy of language and the theory of reference.