Historians and historically-minded sociologists and philosophers of science routinely critque “traditional” conceptions of science and scientific knowledge as ahistorical: “The philosophies of Carnap and Popper are timeless: outside time, outside history.” Such conceptions are not sensitive to the historical dimensions of science and as such histories of science that follow from these views amount to mere chronologies of discoveries that aren’t sensitive to the complex historical processes shaping scientific knowledge.
Of course, it has been noted that “traditional” notions of scientific knowledge are more philosophical – more normative, and historically-sensitive versions (i.e. post-Kuhn) are more descriptive. But isn’t this precisely why traditional, philosophical treatments of science are ahistorical? This is, of course, not to say that such philosophies promote methods or doctrines without any temporality. It is quite obvious that Popper’s (and even someone like Carnap) vision of scientific method is dynamic. This is the whole point of conjecture and refutation. When someone like Kuhn points out the ahistoricity of the visions of science that preceded him, he means that they aren’t accurate to the way that science is actually practice – how it actually unfolds over time.
But again, this doesn’t seem to be a problem of lack of insight on behalf of the normative philosophers of science. It’s not that they overlooked or were unable to grasp the realities of scientific practice. They were never trying to illustrate what science is, they are advocating what it should be. Of course, we can critique such ideals as unrealistic – any normative guidelines for science should reflect the actual historical and social nature of scientific practice.
But here is the question: don’t all normative principles (about science or otherwise) in some degree have to transcend the contingencies of history? Isn’t normativity necessarily timeless in some sense? Normative guidelines are only such insofar as they are meant to apply across a wide range of historical locations. Even pragmatism exhibits a sort of timelessness, despite being routinely adopted because it is supposed to allow one to escape ahistorical, non-contextual, normative versions of notions like truth and knowledge Truth and knowledge, according to (many strains of) pragmatism, are determined by the utility of such designations in some particular context. Depending on the context, what counts as true, and what counts as knowledge, will change. Pragmatism, of course, is usually invoked for naturalistic explanations of lofty metaphysical ideas. But it is not so hard to take James’ aphorism, “The true is only the expedient in the way of our thinking,” as a sort of normative principle: when trying to determine the best knowledge, consider instrumental utility. Does James’ principle not appear to take on a sort of meta-level ahistoricity? Is it always true that truth is the expedient way of thinking? Or could a context arise that even this belief is no longer expedient? Would this merely affirm the pragmatist credo?
It is hard to imagine what an historical normativity would look like. Of course many have tried to codify exactly such a thing: Be good and kind – but this means respecting differences and change, and not everyone has the same definition of “good” and “right” as you do. But one is immediately struck by the inkling that there is some meta-level notion of “good” or “right” operating behind the respect for contigent manifestations. And insofar as these meta-level normative notions hang around – goodness, kindness, honestly, happiness, respect, love – there appears to be a necessary ahistoricity.
If this is correct, then it is inescapable that philosophers interested in normativity would not be sensitive to history – it would undermine their very project.
