When historiography met epistemology : : sophisticated histories and philosophies of science in French-speaking countries in the second half of the nineteenth century / / by Stefano Bordoni.

• Author: Bordoni, Stefano, 1989-
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden ;, Boston : : Brill,, [2017]
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Series: History of Modern Science 2.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (347 pages).

In When Historiography Met Epistemology , Stefano Bordoni shows the emergence of sophisticated histories and philosophies of science in French speaking countries in the second half of the nineteenth century. That process involved mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, and was deeply linked to other processes that transformed the cultural and material landscape of Europe. In the literature, the emergence of the history and philosophy of science is chronologically associated with the turn of the twentieth century: the author points out that this meaningful starting point should be moved backwards. Since the 1860s, sophisticated histories of science and critical meta-theoretical remarks on scientific practice began to compete with naïve historical reconstructions and dogmatic views on science.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material -- Introduction: The Emergence of an Intellectual Stream -- Critical Analyses of Scientific Method -- Between Experimentalism and Mild Naturalism -- Different Attitudes Towards Reductionism -- Mathematics and Determinism -- Scientists and Philosophers on Determinism -- Naïve versus Sophisticated Meta-theoretical Frameworks -- Histories of Ancient Science and Mathematics -- From Theoretical Physics to Meta-theoretical Commitments -- Scientific Practice between Metaphysics and Experiments -- Conclusion -- Afterword: Disappearances and Questionable Reappearances -- References -- Index to Names.