Article ID: CBB215794755

Negotiating history: Contingency, canonicity, and case studies (2020)

unapi

Objections to the use of historical case studies for philosophical ends fall into two categories. Methodological objections claim that historical accounts and their uses by philosophers are subject to various biases. We argue that these challenges are not special; they also apply to other epistemic practices. Metaphysical objections, on the other hand, claim that historical case studies are intrinsically unsuited to serve as evidence for philosophical claims, even when carefully constructed and used, and so constitute a distinct class of challenge. We show that attention to what makes for a canonical case can address these problems. A case study is canonical with respect to a particular philosophical aim when the features relevant to that aim provide a reasonably complete causal account of the results of the historical process under investigation. We show how to establish canonicity by evaluating relevant contingencies using two prominent examples from the history of science: Eddington’s confirmation of Einstein’s theory of general relativity using his data from the 1919 eclipse and Watson and Crick’s determination of the structure of DNA.

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Authors & Contributors
Edelson, Edward
Eli I. Lichtenstein
Scholl, Raphael
Williams, Gareth
Sturm, Thomas
Strauss, Bernard S.
Concepts
DNA; RNA
Molecular biology
Genetics
Historical method
Philosophical historiography
Discovery in science
Time Periods
20th century
20th century, late
21st century
20th century, early
19th century
16th century
Places
England
France
Great Britain
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