Contemporary historical epistemology. An analytical review of research directions

Lada V. Shipo­val­o­va
Saint Peters­burg Uni­ver­si­ty

Con­tem­po­rary his­tor­i­cal epis­te­mol­o­gy. An ana­lyt­i­cal review of research direc­tions

Abstract. The arti­cle ana­lyzes the mod­ern his­tor­i­cal epis­te­mol­o­gy as a top­i­cal research direc­tion of schol­ar activ­i­ties in his­tor­i­cal con­text. It emerged at the end of the 20th cen­tu­ry and is asso­ci­at­ed with the names of L. Das­ton, P. Gal­i­son, H.-J. Rhein­berg­er, Y. Renn, B. Latour, I. Hack­ing and oth­ers. The analy­sis includes three main sec­tions. In the first sec­tion, the author dis­tin­guish­es with­in the research field dif­fer­ent ver­sions of his­tor­i­cal epis­te­mol­o­gy. In the sec­ond sec­tion, the author clar­i­fies the con­texts of the emer­gence of mod­ern his­tor­i­cal epis­te­mol­o­gy as well as its struc­ture, which deter­mines the diver­si­ty of spe­cif­ic top­ics. There are five con­texts described: the his­tor­i­cal, the inter­dis­ci­pli­nary, the non-clas­si­cal epis­te­molo­gies, the onto­log­i­cal and the prac­tice turn con­texts. There are four the­mat­ic areas dis­tin­guished: the his­to­ry of epis­temic con­cepts, the his­to­ry of sci­en­tif­ic objects, the macro and micro his­to­ry of sci­ence and the his­to­ry of styles of sci­en­tif­ic think­ing. In the third sec­tion, the author describes the prob­lems of mod­ern his­tor­i­cal epis­te­mol­o­gy, among which are con­tex­tu­al issues deter­min­ing the place of con­tem­po­rary his­tor­i­cal epis­te­mol­o­gy in cur­rent dis­cus­sions, and reflex­ive issues asso­ci­at­ed with the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, inter­dis­ci­pli­nar­i­ty, and con­sid­er­a­tion of the basic prin­ci­ples of this research direc­tion. As a result, the author sug­gests treat­ing the mod­ern his­tor­i­cal epis­te­mol­o­gy as an open project.

Key­words: his­to­ry of sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy of sci­ence, non-clas­si­cal epis­te­mol­o­gy, prac­tice turn.

DOI: 10.5840/dspl20181453

Acknowl­edge­ments

The arti­cle is writ­ten with sup­port of Russ­ian Foun­da­tion for Basic Research, project 18–311-00282 “Ratio­nal­i­ty in the Human­i­ties: the­o­ret­i­cal con­tro­ver­sies and dis­ci­pli­nary prac­tice”.

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