Classical Historical Epistemology in Retrospect: A Review Essay

According to the American philosopher, Michael Friedman, while triggering the so-called historical turn, Kuhn reinstated the history of science as perhaps the most important object for the philosophy of science. In this last chapter, I show that this reinstatement is rather a rehabilitation of the philosophical and epistemological uses of the history of science, something already present in the continental historiography of science in the first half of the twentieth century and especially in Gaston Bachelard’s work. In this respect, I undertake a review of the European history and philosophy of science during that period, paying special attention to Gaston Bachelard as one of the leading representatives of the French historical epistemology of the 1930s. The late and quite problematic reception of Bachelard’s thought in the early work of Thomas S. Kuhn provides an opportunity to review the main philosophical tenets of classical historical epistemology. This line of inquiry may help to define what the continental history and philosophy of science is, notably in relation to classical historical epistemology. Moreover, it may open new perspectives for the emerging field of historical epistemology of economics.