Styles of Scientific Thinking or Reasoning: A New Analytical Tool for Historians and Philosophers of the Sciences

A conference on the historiography of the sciences inevitably includes papers that edgily notice the arrangements between philosophers and historians of the sciences. Let us not squander our time in global metatalk. Friendship, collaboration, appropriation and even mutual indifference will work themselves out unaided by all-purpose generalities. Instead I shall introduce you to a new analytic tool and explain two quite distinct uses of it, one by an historian who originated the idea, and one by a philosopher who picked it up. They are complementary and at first sight asymmetric. The historian may conclude that the philosopher’s use of the tool is irrelevant to understanding the past, but the philosopher needs the history, for it the tool does not provide a coherent and enlightening ordering of the record, then it has no more place in sound philosophy than any other phantasy.