Scientific Strategies and Historical Change

Abstract

There are moments when we become aware that the tide of thought is turning, and that the natural flow of men’s proper concerns is carrying us in a new direction. Only a few years back, the ‘multidisciplinary’ topic of this particular session would have been regarded as hardly serious. Most philosopher of science then saw their tasks as centered on formal logic, and they happily set aside the history, sociology and psychology of science as being ‘of merely empirical interest’. (In this they agreed with Descartes. As he put it: historical enquiries, like foreign travel, may broaden the philosopher’s mind, but they have no relevance to his professional problems.) Their indifference was required. Historians, sociologists and pyschologist of science were equally content to have philosophy leave them to their own devices.