Trends in the Historiography of Science

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

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2. Methodological Issues in the Historiography of Science

   1. Charting the Scientific Community

      • Richard S. Westfall

      Pages 1-14

   2. Theory and Practice in Early Modern Physics

      • Stillman Drake

      Pages 15-30

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

      • Ian Hacking

      Pages 31-48

   4. Kinds and (In)Commensurability

      • Jed Z. Buchwald

      Pages 49-63

   5. Types of Discourse and the Reading of the History of the Physical Sciences

      • Kostas Gavroglu

      Pages 65-86

   6. On Demarcations between Science in Context and the Context of Science

      • Erwin N. Hiebert

      Pages 87-105

   7. On the Harmful Effects of Excessive Anti-Whiggism

      • Aristides Baltas

      Pages 107-119

   8. Issues in the Historiography of Post-Byzantine Science

      • Dimitrios Dialetis, Efthymios Nicolaidis

      Pages 121-127

   9. Social Environment, Foundations of Science, and the Possible Histories of Science

      • Vyacheslav S. Stepin

      Pages 129-137

   10. Scientific Discoveries as Historical Artifacts

       • John Stachel

       Pages 139-148

   11. Selection, System and Historiography

       • Peter Machamer

       Pages 149-160

   12. Can the History of Instrumentation Tell us Anything About Scientific Practice?

       • Yorgos Goudaroulis

       Pages 161-168

   13. The One in the Philosophy of Proclus: Logic Versus Metaphysics

       • Dionysios A. Anapolitanos, Apostolos K. Demis

       Pages 169-175

   14. Rational Versus Sociological Reductionism: Imre Lakatos and the Edinburgh School

       • Theodore Arabatzis

       Pages 177-192

   15. Sociocultural Factors and Historiography of Science

       • Elena A. Mamchur

       Pages 193-201

3. Historiography of Mathematics

   1. Is Mathematics Ahistorical? An Attempt to an Answer Motivated by Greek Mathematics

      • Sabetai Unguru

      Pages 203-219

   2. The Story of the Discovery of Incommensurability, Revisited

      • David H. Fowler

      Pages 221-235

   3. On the History of Indeterminate Problems of the First Degree in Greek Mathematics

      • Jean Christianidis

      Pages 237-247

   4. On the Justification of the Method of Historical Interpretation

      • Izabella G. Bashmakova, Ioannis M. Vandoulakis

      Pages 249-264

The articles in this volume have been first presented during an international Conference organised by the Greek Society for the History of Science and Technology in June 1990 at Corfu. The Society was founded in 1989 and planned to hold a series of meetings to impress upon an audience comprised mainly by Greek students and scholars, the point that history of science is an autonomous discipline with its own plurality of approaches developed over the years as a result of long discussions and disputes within the community of historians of science. The Conference took place at a time when more and more people came to realise that the future of the Greek Universities and Research Centres depends not only on the progress of the institutional reforms, but also very crucially on the establishment of new and modern subject areas. Though there have been significant steps towards such a direction in the physical sciences, mathematics and engineering, the situation in the so-called humanities has been, at best, confusing. Political expediencies of the post war years and ideological commitments to a glorious, yet very distant past, paralysed the development of the humanities and constrained them within a framework which could not allow much more than a philological approach.

• History of Mathematics
• interpret
• issue
• logic
• metaphysics
• philosophy
• philosophy of science
• science
• scientific practice
• scientific thought

• National Technical University, Athens, Greece

  Kostas Gavroglu

• Greek Naval Academy, Athens, Greece

  Jean Christianidis

• National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens, Greece

  Efthymios Nicolaidis

Policies and ethics