Uses and Abuses of Anachronism in the History of the Sciences

Skinner Q. , “Meaning and understanding in the history of ideas”, History and theory, viii (1969), 3–52. Others associated with Skinner at the time ventured somewhat similar injunctions against interpretations insensitive to past categories and local languages; see, for example, Dunn J. , “The identity of the history of ideas”, Philosophy, xlvii (1968), 85–104; Pocock J. G. A. , “The history of political thought: A methodological inquiry”, in Laslett P. Runciman W. G. (eds), Philosophy, politics and society, 2nd ser. (Oxford, 1962), 183–202; idem, Politics, language and time (New York, 1971), chap. 1, “Languages and their implications: The transformation of the study of political thought”.

On this debate see Boucher D. , Texts in context: Revisionist methods for studying the history of ideas (The Hague, 1985); Tully J. (ed. and intro.), Meaning and context: Quentin Skinner and his critics (Cambridge, 1988).

For my own fit of enthusiastic anachronism-hunting, see “Writing off the Scientific Revolution”, essay-review of Lindberg D. C. Westman R. S. (eds), Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, Journal of the history of astronomy, xxii (1991), 311–19. Others who have followed the Skinnerian line in this include Cunningham A. R. , “Getting the game right: Some plain words on the identity and invention of science”, Studies in history and philosophy of science, xix (1988), 365–89; Wilson A. Ashplant A. , “Whig history and present-centred history”, The historical journal, xxi (1988), 1–16.

Biagioli M. , Galileo courtier: The practice of science in the culture of absolutism (Chicago, 1993), 236, 240. In all fairness, it should be noted that Biagioli uses “science” only “under erasure” (p. 1).

See Eden K. , Hermeneutics and the rhetorical tradition: Chapters in the ancient legacy and its humanist reception (New Haven, 1997).

See Szondi P. , Introduction to literary hermeneutics [1975], transl. by Woodmansee M. (Cambridge, 1995). A striking instance is from Daniel Le Clerc's Ars critica (Amsterdam, 1697):.

So we must beware of lending our notions to the Ancients and then judging their discourse on the basis of these notions, as often happens. If we wish their thought to be understood, our opinions should be as if forgotten. … We should not compare their sayings with the nature of the things about which they speak, so as to be able to say that their knowledge of them is greater or less than ours, but should as far as possible interpret them from their very words (pp. 534–5).

See, for example, Q. Skinner, in Tully (ed.), Meaning and context (ref. 2), 259–73.

Winch P. , The idea of a social science and its relation to philosophy (London, 1958).

Q. Skinner, in Tully (ed.), Meaning and context (ref. 2), 272.

Skinner , “Meaning and understanding” (ref. 1), 40ff.

This neologism is not to be confused with the rare ‘anatopism’, “a putting of a thing out of its proper place” (OED), which could at a stretch be used for the application of categories proper to one place in another.

Winch , The idea of a social science (ref. 8), 108. My appreciation of Winch's account of interpretation owes much to Miranda Fricker's “The creation of social reality”, seminar paper at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, 22 October 1999.

Winch , The idea of a social science (ref. 8), 89ff., 121ff.

Ibid., 50 and passim.

Ibid., chap. 2.

Ibid., 51–52.

Ibid., e.g., 133ff.

Ibid., 57–58. On Winch's vacillations on this issue, see Philip Pettit's excellent overview of his account of the understanding of action: “Winch's double-edged idea of a social science”, History of the human sciences, xiii (2000), 63–77.

Winch , The idea of a social science (ref. 8), 116ff. For cogent defences of Weber's views on causal explanation in relation to interpretation see Henrich D. , Die Einheit der Wissenschaftslehre Max Webers (Tübingen, 1952); Ringer F. , Max Weber's methodology: The unification of the cultural and social sciences (Cambridge, Mass., 1997).

Winch , The idea of a social science (ref. 8), chaps. 1 and 2.

Apart from the inclusion of material alongside social conditions, this mode of classification is close to Mary Douglas's famous grid/group typology: Natural symbols (London, 1970), chap. 4.

Winch , The idea of a social science (ref. 8), 42, 102ff., 114.

Weber M. , Economy and society [1921–22], ed. and rev. transl. of 4th edn by Roth G. Wittich C. (2 vols, Berkeley, 1968).

Cf. Singer C. , A history of biology ([1931], rev. edn, New York, 1950), 10. Singer, in fact, showed himself aware of the anachronism involved, since he distinguished earlier biology from the “scientific biology” that was formed in the course of the nineteenth century (ibid., p. xxxiv). Moreover, he recognized the gulf between the material and social conditions of modern biology and the situation of Aristotle, who “had no books to consult, no training for such work, no instruments to help him, no learned societies…” (ibid., 24).

See, for example, Lycan W. G. , Logical form in natural language (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), chap. 4. This is but one of a range of technical devices for evading the objection.

A position I have argued for myself: Jardine N. , The scenes of inquiry (Oxford, 1991), chap. 3.

For a careful account of the debate on human universals sparked off by Winch's work, see Fretlöh S. , Relativismus versus Universalismus: Zur Kontroverse über Verstehen und Übersetzen in der angelsächsische Sprachphilosophie: Winch, Wittgenstein, Quine (Aachen, 1989).

Winch P. , “Understanding a primitive society”, in Wilson B. R. (ed.), Rationality (Oxford, 1970), 78–111, p. 107. It has even been argued, perhaps mock-seriously, that the disposition to attach symbolic sexual significances to cucumbers and other members of the Cucurbitaceae is a human universal, instantiated even in cultures in which the plants in question are not indigenous: Norrman R. Haarberg J. , Nature and language: A semiotic study of cucurbits in literature (London, 1980).

Hollis M. , “The limits of irrationality”, Archives européennes de sociologie, vii (1967), 205–71; Hollis's account of universal human nature is elaborated in his Models of man: Philosophical thoughts on social action (Cambridge, 1977).

Parsons Talcott , The social system (London, 1952), chap. 4.

See especially Bourdieu P. , Outline of a theory of practice [1972], transl. by Nice R. (Cambridge, 1977).

For a critique along these lines of bridgehead arguments, see, for example, Newton-Smith W. , “Relativism and the possibility of interpretation”, in Hollis M. Lukes S. (eds), Rationality and relativism (Cambridge, 1982), 106–22.

On the question of the universality of the categories of psychoanalysis the locus classicus is the Trobriand Islands. In Sex and repression in savage society (London, 1927) Malinowski argued that the Oedipus complex, being a product of Aryan, patriarchal society, cannot apply to Trobriand islanders. He did, however, recognize an analogue of the Oedipus complex in the Trobriander matrilineal society in which the mother's brother figures as the agent of repression and the sister as the forbidden object of desire. (There is an echo of Malinowski's claims in Winch , The idea of a social science (ref. 8), 90.) Melford Spiro's Oedipus in the Trobriands (Chicago, 1982) contests Malinowski's data and arguments, strongly defending the strict applicability of psychoanalytical categories to all mankind, including the Trobrianders.

Cf. B. Williams on the claim that all men are equal: “The idea of equality”, in Laslett Runciman (eds), Philosophy, politics and society, 2nd ser. (ref. 1), 110–31, p. 111.

Elias N. , The civilizing process: Sociogenetic and psychogenetic investigations [1939], transl. by Jephcott E. (2 vols, Oxford, 1978, 1982); Weber M. , The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism [1904–5], transl. by Parsons Talcott (New York, 1930); Taylor C. , Sources of the self: The making of the modern identity (Cambridge, 1989); Foucault M. , The order of things: An archaeology of the human sciences [1966], transl. anonymously (London, 1970); Koselleck R. , Futures past: On the semantics of historical time [1979], transl. by Tribe K. (Cambridge, Mass., 1985). On such theses about the formation of the modern person see Roper Lyndal , Oedipus and the devil: Witchcraft, sexuality and religion in early modern Europe (London, 1994), Introduction.

I have in mind here interest theory as articulated in Steven Shapin's classic papers: “Phrenological knowledge and the social structure of early nineteenth-century Edinburgh”, Annals of science, xxxii (1975), 219–43; “Homo phrenologicus: Anthropological perspectives on an historical problem”, in Barnes B. Shapin S. (eds), Natural order: Historical studies of scientific culture (Beverly Hills, Calif., 1979), 41–67; “The politics of observation: Cerebral anatomy and social interests in the Edinburgh phrenology disputes”, in Wallis R. (ed.), On the margins of science: The social construction of rejected knowledge (Keele, 1979), 139–78.

On actor-network theory, see Latour Bruno , The Pasteurisation of France, transl. by Sheridan A. (Cambridge, Mass., 1988); idem, Science in action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society (Milton Keynes, 1987); and for an excellent and clear introduction, Callon M. , “Some elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of the scallops and the fisherman of St Brieuc Bay”, in Law J. (ed.), Power, action and belief: A new sociology of knowledge? (London, 1986), 196–233.

See Todd D. , Imagining monsters: Miscreations of the self in eighteenth-century England (Chicago, 1995).

See Hogarth W. , “Credulity, superstition and fanaticism”, engraved in 1762.

See Jardine N. , “How to appropriate a world system”, essay review of Gingerich O. Westman R. S. , The Wittich connection: Conflict and priority in sixteenth-century cosmology, Journal of the history of astronomy, xxi (1990), 353–8.

Elias N. , The court society [1969], transl. by Jephcott E. (Oxford, 1983), chap. 8.

Mehrtens H. , “Irresponsible purity: The political and moral structure of mathematical sciences in the NS state”, in Renneberg M. Walker M. (eds), Science, technology and National Socialism (Cambridge, 1994), 324–413; cf. Beyerchen A. D. , Scientists under Hitler (New Haven, 1977), which questions the validity of the view that commitment to the purity and professional autonomy of physics placed the physicists above the politics of the NS regime.

Bourdieu P. Passeron J. C. , Reproduction in education, society and culture [1970], transl. by Nice R. , 2nd edn (London, 1990); Homo academicus [1984], transl. by Collier P. (Cambridge, 1988).

This sketch draws on Caron's J. A. “Biology in the life sciences: A historiographical contribution”, History of science, xxvi (1988), 223–68.

Foucault , The order of things (ref. 35), chaps. 7–8; see also the Cuvier centenary issue of Revue d'histoire des sciences et leurs applications, xxiii (1970), much of which is devoted to Foucault's claims.

Lenoir T. , The strategy of life: Teleology and mechanics in nineteenth-century German biology (Dordrecht, 1982), 2nd edn (Chicago, 1989); “Kant, von Baer, und das kausal-historische Denken in der Biologie”, Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, viii (1985), 99–114.

Salomon-Bayet C. , “1802 — ‘Biologie’ et médecine”, in Jahnke H. N. Otte M. (eds), Epistemological and social problems of the sciences in the early nineteenth century (Dordrecht, 1981), 35–54.

Caron , op. cit. (ref. 44), 224.

Ibid., 224.

Ibid., 247–54. Caron's view of the agenda and institutions of biology is, in fact, remarkably close to Huxley's: See, for example, his Scientific memoirs , ed. by Foster M. Lankester E. R. , i (London, 1898), 432 (from “On the method of palaeontology”, delivered in 1856); on the hands-on teaching of biology see for example Huxley's “On the educational value of the natural history sciences” [1854], in Collected essays , iii (London, 1893), 38–65, and “On the study of biology” [1876], ibid., 262–93.

For a compelling plea for the relevance of philosophical anthropology to the history and philosophy of the sciences see Hacking's I. Representing and intervening: Introductory topics in the philosophy of natural science (Cambridge, 1983), 130–46.

The dodginess of such applications is evident in “Psychoanalysing Boyle”, special issue of The British journal for the history of science, xxxii/3 (1999); see especially Geoffrey Cantor's contribution, “Boyling over: A commentary”, ibid., 315–24. However, for a spirited defence and convincing examples of application of psychoanalytic perspectives to early modern persons see Roper's Lyndal Oedipus and the Devil (ref. 35).

Cui bono? Who benefits? may be a sensible first step in interpreting early modern deeds and works, but as the prime mover of human action, social interest seems unthinkable in relation to early modern people.

For interesting reflections on the range of application of actor-network theory, see Stemerding D. , Plants, animals and formulae: Natural history in the light of Latour's Science in Action and Foucault's The Order of Things (Enschede, 1991).

Cf. Jardine , The scenes of inquiry (ref. 26), chap. 8.

On these matters see Shapin S. , A social history of truth: Civility and science in seventeenth-century England (Chicago, 1994), where the emphasis is on the social status of witnesses; and for accounts attaching more weight to legal and dialectical traditions and to the competence of witnesses, Serjeantson R. W. , “Testimony, authority and proof in seventeenth-century England”, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1998, and Shapiro B. J. , A culture of fact: England, 1550–1720 (Ithaca, NY, 2000).

Smith P. , The business of alchemy: Science and culture in the Holy Roman Empire (Princeton, 1994); Findlen P. , Possessing Nature: Museums, collecting and scientific culture in early modern Italy (Berkeley, 1994); and Daston L. Park K. , Wonders and the order of nature, 1150–1750 (New York, 1998).

I discuss this issue at some length in my On historiography of the sciences, forthoming from Oxford University Press.

Skinner , “Meaning and understanding”, 3; for the association of such contextual reading with Marxists, see p. 42.

On the incoherence of symbolic anthropology thus construed, see Skorupski J. , Symbol and theory: A philosophical study of theories of religion and social anthropology (Cambridge, 1976).

On didactic historiography of the sciences see Heilbron J. L. , “Applied history of science”, Isis, lxxviii (1987), 552–63, esp. the frank admission “… our compulsion to be faithful to the record — A professional ethos rigidified by fear of the charge of whiggism — Will have to be relaxed if we are to apply our learning” (p. 558).

See, e.g., Lakatos I. , “History of science and its rational reconstructions”, in Buck R. C. Cohen R. S. (eds), PSA 1970 (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, viii; Dordrecht, 1971), 91–135; and for a useful account of Lakatosian philosophical history of science, Kourany J. A. , “Towards an empirically adequate theory of science”, Philosophy of science, xlix (1982), 526–48.

For criticism of the strong versions of social interest theory see Woolgar S. , “Interests and explanations in the social studies of science”, Social studies of science, xi (1981), 365–94; Jardine , The scenes of inquiry (ref. 26), chap. 9.

For a vigorous defence, against Skinner, of the historian's right to commit anachronism in the service of critique, see Rée Jonathan , “The vanity of historicism”, New literary history, xxii (1991), 961–83.