HISTORY

I had a brief debate on the patio of Jesse’s apartment on Saturday regarding ‘dangers’ of historically blind philosophy. Today, I read the following aside on Peter Smith’s blog
:

Why should the philosopher be any more especially interested in the history of her subject than the physicist is in the history of hers? If you take a broadly naturalist line, then I think the answer, to a first approximation, is: there is no good reason. The physicist and philosopher alike should start from the hard-won available theoretical options in their best-developed forms. Of course, philosophy is difficult, there’s a danger of foreclosing options too soon, and it is a good to remind ourselves that there may be more theoretical options than the currently most explored ones: the Great Dead Philosophers might provide a useful source we can mine for alternative ideas. So, less approximately, the naturalistic philosopher — being grateful for all the help she can get in her pursuit of truth — might occasionally delve into the history of philosophy for inspiration (and she supposes that she’s more likely to get inspiration from something like the lines of thought actually pursued by her best predecessors than from straw positions created by incompetent exegesis). Still, by my lights, the naturalistic philosopher’s interest in the history of her subject should remain relatively minor and completely instrumental. It perhaps feeds into her thinking about causation or knowledge, or whatever: but it is causation and knowledge that she cares about, and she is interested in Descartes or Hume or Kant only insofar as they offer useful pointers. And as soon as she finds herself at the edge of interpretative swamps — which is in practice rather soon — the naturalistic philosopher will typically lose interest: let the historians amuse themselves, and come back and tell her if and when they manage to dredge up any new nuggets of wisdom that will actually help her with her present philosophical problems. She’s certainly not holding her breath.

Santayana says “Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it”, but it seems to me that philosophers are doomed either way. It also occurs to me that it is silly to think that physicists operate in a historical vacuum, oblivious to the shoulders they are standing on, and unaware of the important experiments and interpretations that made their research programs possible. Perhaps the only relevant difference between the physicist and the philosopher is that the philosopher’s ‘window of current research’ can often span a few centuries; but I suppose thats exactly what the debate is about.

I’d ask the philosophers directly, but I know how most of them will answer, and though I probably agree with them I don’t know that they’d give me any knock-down response. I want to have this debate with some of the first years too, but probably in a more sober situation. In any case, posting here for posterity.