In Defense of Presentism

TLDR: This article argued that history of science should be written as it should have taken place, given a particular philosophy of science, rather than as it actually did take place, and pointed out that history is an inductive science.

Abstract: L. Pearce Williams was so irate over Joseph Agassi's book on Michael Faraday and the section on Faraday in a book by William Berkson that he was moved to entitle his review "Should Philosophers Be Allowed to Write History?"' Williams answers the question posed in the title of his review with a resounding "NO!" He complains that philosophers are prone to scandalous carelessness in transcribing quotations and to inaccurate descriptions, not to mention some highly questionable interpretations. They are more interested in plausible connections between ideas than in actual connections, in what they would have thought in the circumstances rather than in what the people concerned actually thought. But worst of anl, philosophers tend to use history of science to illustrate their own views on the nature of science, rather than treating it inductively. Popperians such as Agassi and Berkson view histories of science as good places to introduce conjectures to be refuted by later workers. Imre Lakatos has even gone so far as to state that history of science should be written as it should have taken place, given a particular philosophy of science, rather than as it actually did take place: "One way to indicate discrepancies between history and its rational reconstruction is to relate the internal history in the text, and indicate in the footnotes how actual history 'misbehaved' in the light of its rational reconstruction. " 2 Once Lakatos' position is translated out of the controversial idiom which he invariably prefers, it does not sound so radical and ahistorical. Even so, Williams would surely object. "History," according to Williams, "is an inductive science.' ' I happen to agree with most of Williams' historiographical preferences. I too value accurate quotations, citations, and de-