🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <BtnLK2.9t@unx.sas.com> sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill)
 writes:

   >I did not mean to (and don't think I did) characterize the history of
   >science as sterile -- certainly this would be incompatible with some
   >of my other remarks.  What I object to is the "historicist" (or
   >socoiological) approach to the philosophy of science exhibited
   >largely by the likes of Kuhn, Lakatos, Fred Suppe, et al.

  What is "historicist" or "sociological" about Lakatos's doctrines
regarding "the methodology of scientific research programs"?

  >The claim about parasitism was perhaps a bit gratuitous, but if
  >(philosophy of science) = (history of science), it would appear
  >that the philosophers of science are parasitic not only on science
  >but the historians as well -- and can't even *claim* to have anything
  >to add.

  I don't follow your reasoning. Let us assume that philosophy of science =
history of science. Then philosophers of science = historians of science.
You are saying, then, that historians of science are parasitic on science -
which makes about as much sense as saying that ichthyologists are parasitic
on fish - and that historians of science are parasitic on historians of
science.

  Actually the people you refer to don't at all claim that philosophy of
science = history of science, but that we need to know the history of science
in order to do philosophy of science.