Conclusion: The History of Science Between Epistemology and Historical Ontology
How do we organize an epistemology of the history of science which does not reduce it to a mere narrative of representations whatever, but captures its ontological scope as well? The top-down/bottom-up methodology can offer us a decent methodological recommendation.
Keeping Agazzi’s two suggestions together— that the humanities furnish themselves with working definitions and that we adopt an idea of science as “analogy”—we might even hope that the historical knowledge of science equip itself with a “formal” epistemology which is able to make the chosen assumptions visible in every era and in light of particular theories. In any case, the direction we need to take is fourfold:• The history of science can be considered a science, even if this involves raising a number of epistemological questions about it.
• Science is historical, and what in it is historical and contingent, nonetheless has scientific and philosophical value.
• History of science is the history of theories about the reality we know. Ontology and epistemology change along with these theories.
• History of science does not speak only of a succession of theories as if they were a series of imaginary representations of reality, but rather of theories that have some kind of ontological meaning.
The first two points focus on a methodology according to which epistemology and history of science have to work together in two directions: bottom-up and topdown. The last two points focus on the distinction between historical ontology of science and historical epistemology of science within the framework of the history of science.
It seems to me that we can assert that all four points convey and respect Agazzi’s lessons, who as a philosopher of science has not forgotten the importance of verifying the historical foundation of every theoretical supposition. Vice versa, as a historian he has understood the importance of identifying those theoretical junctions in history, which clarify the present and help us to consider future developments in science. In addition, he does all this in the hope that philosophy and history really can question reality and not reduce it to a mere representation.