Contingency, Nature and Hermeneutics in History of Science

Abstract

When, as historians, we want to explain developments in the history of natural science, how are we to do justice to the role of the natural world -the thing scientists investigate -in our explanations? The idea that the structure of the natural world renders the development of science inevitable seems to be inadequate, but so does the idea that we should explain the history of science without any reference to nature, as if what scientists study made no difference at all to what they believe. Is 'nature' even a feasible category, however? To what extent is it a problem that in referring to the result of scientific development in our explanation of scientific development, we are assuming the authority of science? Does this undermine the possibility of critical and independent historiography? This article deals with several possible solutions to these problems, and outlines an alternative to rationalism as well as to the Strong Programme in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge and Latour's Actor-Network Theory.

Ambivalencia institucional e identidad liminal: la encrucijada del investigador emprendedor

“…Las leyes predominantes en la racionalidad humana no son relevantes por los significados expresados en sí mismos, sino por la función social que le es atribuida, la cual consiste en construir un marco para interpretar el mundo (Bouterse, 2014). En ese sentido, se expresa la relevancia del conocimiento como un mecanismo cultural, edificado con el propósito de darle sentido al universo de fenómenos que circundan la realidad (Cicourel, 2015); al mismo tiempo, se expresa la relación existente entre la cognición y la cultura, caracterizada por una mutua interacción en la que se hace posible el surgimiento del conocimiento científico como resultado de construcciones culturales particulares.…”