Is the History of Science Essentially Whiggish?

Abstract

1. THE STIGMATIC LABEL OF 'WHIGGISM'In his influential 1931 essay The interpretation of Herbert Butterfield criticized what he called history, study of past sake of present; he stated, cannot be used to justify certain contents in present. In particular, he denounced conceiving of as a succession of goal -directed stages, such that past stages must be seen through lens of their future goal. As his account goes, any investigation into causes of historical change hampered by while any teleologica!, goal-directed narrative proves untenable. Butterfield, in face of historians, rather preferred an ideal whereby past be studied for sake of past,1 whereby historian become more than a mere observer and one who actually goes out to meet past.2Chief in reticle of Butterfield's book was political of circumstances leading to Protestant Reformation and modern constitution of English people. There, he contradistinguished which understood Reformation as an inevitable step towards progress, from Catholic, Tory interpretation of same event; Butterfield, Luther was nothing of a progressive. him, was inherently related to what he called abridged or general history itself rectified, so to speak, by a specialized, of very concrete, detailed issues.Around same time as Butterfield, Alexandre Koyre published his well-known Etudes galileennes in field of of science.3 In these important essays, Galileo takes shape less as a modern experimentalist (as a hagiographie presentcentred would have it) and more as a speculative Platonist seeking to refute Aristotelianism.Since mid-1970s, labels Whig or have been frequently used in of science jargon to denigrate and repudiate certain histories of science which accept idea of progress as an idea of significant value. This jargon, favouring a more skeptic, sociological approach, uses Whiggism, anachronism, triumphalism, presentism and like as labels to denote a chronological snobbery considering all things past as inherently inferior. Studying past with reference to present, Whiggish supposedly views present as inevitable product of past. As such, past science judged according to its contribution to theorems held as true in present: past interpreted through current values, with a consequent dismissal of problems and ideas of earlier scientists.4 Opposing both a of science used to illustrate historian's own view of science as well as any narrative of scientific progress, an inductive establishes itself as ideal of professional historian of science.As Wilson and Ashplant have declared, among professional historians of science label of 'Whiggishness' part of everyday discourse.5 No professional dare bear such a tag, it brands a deep stigma: any historian seeking respect as modern, academic, professional, technical and intellectual must label him/herself as anti-Whiggish.2. THE EMIC/ETIC DISTINCTION AND ITS RELEVANCE TO THE DISCUSSION SURROUNDING THE WHIGGISH HISTORY OF SCIENCECultural anthropologists and linguists make use of distinction, introduced by K. L. Pike, between ernie and etic standpoint.6 As defined by a well-known handbook of cultural anthropology, ernie point of view corresponds to perspective of participants: the test of adequacy of ernie descriptions and analyses whether they correspond with a view of world natives accept as real, meaningful, or appropriate. The etic standpoint observer's perspective, and test of its adequacy is simply its ability to generate scientific theories about causes of social differences and similarities. …

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