Barseghyan and Shaw (2022)

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Barseghyan, Hakob and Shaw, Jamie. (2022) Integrating HPS: What’s in it for a Philosopher of Science? In Barseghyan et al. (Eds.) (2022), 41-65.

Title Integrating HPS: What’s in it for a Philosopher of Science?
Resource Type collection article
Author(s) Hakob Barseghyan, Jamie Shaw
Year 2022
Collection Barseghyan et al. (Eds.) (2022)
Pages 41-65

Abstract

Many have struggled to identify the proper way(s) that normative philosophical claims about science can benefit from history. The primary worry here has been that deriving philosophical ‘oughts’ from historical facts would commit the naturalistic fallacy (Schickore, 2011). The task of this paper is to introduce a novel solution to this problem. Specifically, we claim that the emerging field of scientonomy provides a promising avenue for how philosophy of science may benefit from the history of science. By taking descriptive findings and coupling them with additional normative premises, philosophers of science can draw normative methodological conclusions which can guide future scientific practices. Moreover, it is sometimes thought that philosophical claims about science are invariably local due to the diversity of scientific practices. While acknowledging this disunity, we show how a general theory of scientific change is possible and how it can be used to inform normative philosophy of science. Thus, we aim to outline a viable path for integrated history and philosophy of science that does not relinquish normativity and avoids the problem of cherry-picking which has plagued general accounts of science (Chang, 2011; Mizrahi, 2015).