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Article ID: CBB000650005

What Is the History of Science the History Of? (2005)

Dear, Peter Robert (Author)

Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Volume: 96
Pages: 390--406

Publication Date: 2005
Edition Details: Focus: Natural Philosophy and Instrumentality
Language: English

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History of science, as a discipline Historiography Science, general histories Early modern 19th century 18th century

The mismatch between common representations of "science" and the miscellany of materials typically studied by the historian of science is traced to a systematic ambiguity that may itself be traced to early modern Europe. In that cultural setting, natural philosophy came to be rearticulated (most famously by Francis Bacon) as involving both contemplative and practical knowledge. The resulting tension and ambiguity are illustrated by the eighteenth-century views of Buffon. In the nineteenth century, a new enterprise called "science" represents the establishment of an unstable ideology of natural knowledge that was heavily indebted to those early modern developments. The two complementary and competing elements of the ideology of modern science are accordingly described as "natural philosophy" (a discourse of contemplative knowledge) and "instrumentality" (a discourse of practical or useful knowledge; know-how). The history of science in large part concerns the story of their shifting, often mutually denying, interrelations.

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