Abstract

In addition to historical epistemology’s focus on the fragmentation of scientific reason, both on the historical-diachronic level and in its regional pluralization, it foregrounds the intrinsically social and political dimensions of knowledge. Indeed, the existence of a third pole of mediation between the natural referent—that is, the research object—and the activity of the knowing subject is central to historical epistemology. However, what is controversial is how this mediation should be characterized. As the previous chapters show, historicizing scientific facts necessarily implies dealing with the cultural and social components that impact the processes of constituting and developing scientific knowledge. The first section reconstructs the reasons why authors who were affiliated with French historical epistemology (FHE) were been directly involved in the international debate on “internalism” and “externalism” (except for Koyré). I show how Meyerson, Metzger, Bachelard, and Canguilhem, while taking different positions, integrated social and anthropological perspectives into their theoretical and methodological systems. The second section shows how the legacy of Bachelard-Canguilhemism developed different directions with authors such as Althusser, Foucault, and Bourdieu. In particular, I describe how Canguilhem imparted a significant twist or bend in the development of this tradition by shifting the axis of interest from the physical-mathematical sciences toward the biological and life sciences. This process opened FHE to the human and social sciences, which had not been included previously. I also detail how, starting from common historical-epistemological references, Althusser, Foucault, and Bourdieu pursued three trajectories in their analyses of scientific knowledge, though they were marked by a common tendency to focus on the links between power and knowledge and between science and society.