Table Of ContentLorenz Krüger
Why Does History Matter to Philosophy and the Sciences?
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Quellen und Studien
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Herausgegeben von
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Band 66
Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York
Why Does History Matter to
Philosophy and the Sciences?
Selected Essays
by
Lorenz Krüger
Edited by
Thomas Sturm, Wolfgang Carl,
and Lorraine Daston
Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York
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Contents
Why Does History Matter to Philosophy and the Sciences?
Editors' Introduction 1
I Three Philosophical Classics
1 Did Kant Aim to Prove the Completeness of His
Table of Judgments? (1968) 21
2 Was John Locke an Empiricist? (1970) 45
3 Probability in Leibniz (1981) 63
II Scientific Theories .Their Relations and Their Development
1 Intertheoretic Relations as a Tool for the Rational Reconstruction
of Scientific Development (1980) 79
2 Reduction as a Problem: Some Remarks on the History
of Statistical Mechanics from a Philosophical Point of View (1980) .... 93
3 Unity of Science and Cultural Pluralism (1981) 119
III Indeterminism in Explanation and Causation
1 Are Statistical Explanations Possible? (1976) 137
2 Causality and Freedom (1992) 155
IV Realism and Its Histories
1 Matter For Us and in Itself-What Are Primary Properties? (1989) ... 169
2 Does Progress in Science Lead to Truth? (1991) 187
3 Has the Correspondence Theory of Truth Been Refuted?
From Gottlob Frege to Donald Davidson (1995) 201
V Philosophy, the Sciences, and Their History
1 Does a Science Need Knowledge of Its History? (1978) 221
2 Why Do We Study the History of Philosophy? (1984) 231
3 How Philosophy and Science Came to Differ (1988) 255
List of Publications by Lorenz Krüger 269
Why Does History Matter to Philosophy and the Sciences?
Editors' Introduction
Thomas Sturm, Wolfgang Carl and Lorraine Daston
The title of this volume is a variation of three papers by Lorenz Krüger (1932-
1994) chosen for the present selection, namely "Does a Science Need Know-
ledge of Its History?" and "Why Do We Study the History of Philosophy?" and
"How Philosophy and Science Came to Differ", all brought together in the last
section of the present volume. These essays may be considered the cornerstone
of this volume, while the essays in the four other sections provide illuminating
examples of his distinctive way of dealing with philosophical problems.
What Krüger argues and frequently exemplifies in the papers collected for
this edition is a complex and challenging view of the relation between philoso-
phy, the sciences, and their history. As is well known, there are widely held
assumptions according to which history of philosophy and current philosophy
should be connected, or that philosophy and history of science should not be
estranged from one another, and, last but not least, that philosophy and the sci-
ences may overcome their separation. There are good reasons for each of these
views. But hardly anyone has thought about whether or not they should be con-
nected.
The first assumption concerns the relation between philosophy and its his-
tory. Today philosophical discussions are often linked to the history of philoso-
phy. Even among those philosophers who understand their own discipline sys-
tematically, many recognize the importance of the history of their discipline.
One oft-heard argument in favor of history is that students can learn how to
philosophize from the classical arguments to be found in the writings of Aris-
totle, Locke or Kant. Moreover, it is frequently maintained that current philoso-
phical debates concerning, say, knowledge, morality or science can be improved
by taking into account the arguments of outstanding philosophers of the past.
Even if we need not rest content with the positions of these "older contemporar-
ies", we are well advised to consider them, lest we repeat their mistakes.
The second view is that the philosophy of science must be connected to the
history of science, a view reinforced by the influence of Thomas Kuhn's semi-
nal study The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962/1970). The philosophy
2 Why Does History Matter to Philosophy and the Sciences?
of science, which conceives of the sciences as historical entities, has developed
into a special subdiscipline of philosophy; this historical understanding shapes
how philosophical questions about science are frequently treated nowadays. An
investigation of the nature and presuppositions of scientific knowledge, or the
dynamics of scientific research, cannot ignore past scientific practices. Although
philosophers of science need not accept the findings of the history of science
without qualification, they certainly must come to terms with how science has
developed through the centuries.
Thirdly, equally widespread and plausible is the claim that philosophy
should be practiced in close contact to the sciences. This demand takes different
forms as well. Some, following Willard Van Orman Quine, claim that it is mis-
guided to think philosophy is an enterprise that differs substantially from the
empirical sciences. In more moderate versions, it is claimed that philosophy
requires discussion with physicists, mathematicians, cognitive scientists,
economists, and practitioners of other disciplines in order to develop intellectu-
ally respectable answers even to its own questions. It has been sometimes ar-
gued, and with some justification, that philosophical claims must be vetted for
consistency with well-established scientific findings. Yet the reverse seems less
compelling: it would be ridiculous to think philosophers of science could evalu-
ate, direct or improve scientific research from the notorious armchair. Philoso-
phers need not accept the current practice of science without demur, but phi-
losophical counsel should be developed in close and informed exchange with
current practitioners in the sciences. Clearly, each of these demands makes
sense only against the background of a de facto dissociation of philosophy and
the sciences over the course of history - a fact that itself needs explanation and
evaluation, if one wishes to be clear how to evaluate these demands.
The three views about the relations between philosophy, history, and the sci-
ences can be found in slightly different versions, but all enjoy widespread as-
sent. Moreover, each of them has produced many instances of fruitful philoso-
phical inquiry. Nonetheless, it has proved difficult to integrate them. To some
extent, this is due to the fact that the guiding claims have been developed in
different philosophical contexts. While they have attained the status of accepted
wisdom, different specialties within philosophy have in practice always concen-
trated upon only one or the other of these claims. Moreover, philosophical stud-
ies that would do justice to all three desiderata at once would require thorough
and daunting expertise in a number of different domains. Finally, linking them
in order to pursue a specific type of philosophizing would require more basic
reflections about these beliefs as well. After all, how could one develop studies
relevant to current questions of philosophy, informed by an understanding of the
history of philosophy and also by the history of the sciences and their relations
to the relevant parts of the history of philosophy? It would be easy to lose one's
way among such different agendas and audiences.
