When Historiography Met Epistemology: Sophisticated Histories and Philosophies of Science in French-Speaking Countries in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century

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review by Jean-François Stoffel

• Warren Schmaus, “Stefano Bordoni. When Historiography Met Epistemology: Sophisticated Histories and Philosophies of Science in French-Speaking Countries in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century.,” HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science , June 28, 2021, 715580, https://doi.org/10.1086/715580.

In When Historiography Met Epistemology , Stefano Bordoni shows the emergence of sophisticated histories and philosophies of science in French speaking countries in the second half of the nineteenth century. That process involved mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, and was deeply linked to other processes that transformed the cultural and material landscape of Europe. In the literature, the emergence of the history and philosophy of science is chronologically associated with the turn of the twentieth century: the author points out that this meaningful starting point should be moved backwards. Since the 1860s, sophisticated histories of science and critical meta-theoretical remarks on scientific practice began to compete with naïve historical reconstructions and dogmatic views on science.

Duhem is well-represented in the book, which spans "from Cournot to Duhem"—e.g., p. 292:

More in general, Duhem has persistently puzzled historians and philosophers until recent years. If we read the considerable amount of secondary literature published over a number of decades, a wide range of contradictory appraisals emerges. In 1941 Armand Lowinger qualified Duhem’s epistemology as “methodological positivism.” In 1979, Harry W. Paul remarked that Duhem had be looked upon as a Thomist, but his views were “savagely contested by the hard-line Thomists,” who would have appreciated a more “aggressive philosophy needed for modern Catholicism.” In 1985, Roberto Maiocchi found that Duhem was isolated because of his “intermediate position between neo-Thomism and modernism,” and in 1987, Jaki labelled Duhem as a naive neo-Thomist: in his words, “Duhem’s Thomism was that of a passionately independent amateur.”18 In 1989 Bas van Fraassen qualified Duhem as “an empiricist hero”; in 2002 Jean-Francois Stoffel described Duhem as a phenomenalist; in 2011, Paul Needham credited Duhem with “moderate realism. [Lowinger 1941 (1967), p. 19; Paul 1979, pp. 3 and 159; Maiocchi 1985, p. 13; Jaki 1987, p. XI; van Fraassen 1989, p. 353, fn. 2; Stoffel 2002, pp. 17, 24, 27, 47, and 367; Needham 2011, p. 7].19

18. I find that Duhem was neither a naïve nor a sophisticated neo-Thomist. As Robert Deltete recently remarked, Duhem “tried to distance himself” from Thomists, and discouraged “fellows Catholics from using the results of science to promote Christian apologetics.” He undertook a two-fold task: “to cut off both any science-based attacks on religion and all possibility of a science-based natural theology” [Deltete 2011, pp. 19-21]
19. Even more astonishing are the appraisals given on Duhem’s political leanings, many decades ago. In 1932 the mathematician Pierre Humbert claimed that Duhem was a democrat [I think ∵ he subscribed to Action Française 's newsletter] , and in 1967 the scientist Donald G. Miller, who was sympathetic to Duhem’s scientific enterprise, qualified him as a “man of the right, royalist, anti-Semitic, and extremist in religion” [Humbert 1932, pp. 126, fn. 1, and pp. 133-4; Miller 1967, pp. 463 and 468].

The next § after that is entitled "The Invention of the Duhem-Quine Thesis." It indeed was an invention, as the Duhem Thesis ≠ Duhem-Quine Thesis.

From what I've skimmed of it so far, Bordoni does discuss logic. His CV, also says "Qualification of Associate Professor of Logic, Philosophy and History of Science. "
Stefano Bordoni holds 1 master's degree in physics and 3 PhDs (philosophy, epistemology of complexity, and history of science).

cites p. 263 (PDF p. 275) n25 cites pp. 163-5 (PDF pp. 165-7) of Crossing the Boundaries:

In 1893 Oliver Heaviside showed that Maxwell’s electromagnetic equations, which he had synthesised in the vector language, could not fit in with any mechanical model of aether.

I'm impressed by When Historiography Met Epistemology. This emergent field of historiography of epistemology is exciting.

I never knew of Cournot. Was Duhem familiar with him? (Duhem does use biological analogies in his La théorie physique, e.g., "natural classification" and, when describing his "holism," that refuting physical theories is akin to a physician determining what is damaging the health of a patient.*)

It seems Cournot even dealt with the problem of classification of the sciences, which Ampère dealt with in his Essai sur la philosophie des sciences and which the great American philosopher-scientist C. S. Peirce seems to have been the last to treat in great philosophical depth. (Peirce also dealt with the question of determinism/indeterminism; cf. Chance, Love, & Logic or Peirce: A Guide for the Perplexed §§9.1-3, pp. 142-151.)

Also, you'd be interested in the late semiotician John N. Deely's two-part "The Philosophical Dimensions of the Origin of Species" part 1, part 2 (cf. also his "Impact of Evolution on Scientific Method").

Your pp. 155-6 on Delboeuf's criticism of Boussinesq reminded me of the "âne de Buridan", and St. Thomas Aquinas's short-work Liber de sortibus (on obtaining information by casting lots (tirare a sorte); esp. ch. 4) also pertains to the determinism/indeterminism debate (as well as to modern Monte Carlo methodology, etc.); cf. also De Konick's "The Problem of Indeterminism" (also on PDF pp. 366ff. of this) and "Reflections on the Problem of Indeterminism" (ibid. pp. 412ff.). (Chaos: A Mathematical Adventure is an excellent, open-access film on determinism/indeterminism, too; ch. 5 is on "Il toro di Duhem".)

Re: dynamism vs. atomism (p. 175n12), Hugon's Cosmology pp. 145-77, wherein Duhem is quoted passim , is an excellent overview.
esp. in its treatise 2 "on the world with respect to its material and formal causes"; cf. these quotes

Paul Tannery seems to have been quite the historian of mathematics.

Another topic I have wondered about is the historical development of astrology as its relates to medicine, esp. with respect to today's evidence-based medicine (EBM)'s view of "disease as statistical associations at a population level" (Chin-Yee 2014* p. 921). Explaining how astrology can make what today we call statistical associations, St. Thomas writes (Summa Theologica II-II q. 95 a. 5 ad 2):

astrologers not unfrequently forecast the truth by observing the stars…because a great number of men follow their bodily passions, so that their actions are for the most part (in pluribus) disposed in accordance with the inclination of the heavenly bodies: while there are few, namely, the wise (sapientes) alone, who moderate these inclinations by their reason. The result is that astrologers in many cases foretell the truth, especially in public occurrences which depend on the multitude (ex multitudine).

Thus it would seem EBM only works for those who "follow their bodily passions" (i.e., don't use their freewill to counter nature's inclinations). Did Cournot or any other philosophers of medicine you mentioned in the beginning of When Historiography Met Epistemology treat this question or criticize the application of statistics to medicine?

Regarding your book's main thesis, did Duhem ever directly cite Cournot, Boussinesq, and many of the other "pre-Duhemian" philosophers you introduced in the first part of your book? I'm not completely convinced Duhem's views stemmed from the philosophical milieu of his era; however, Duhem was familiar with Milhaud, whom he quoted on p. XIIIn1 of vol. 3 of Études sur Léonard de Vinci, and you do say on p. 257fn19 that he cited Claude Bernard.

I liked your overview of Vicaire's criticism in ch. 8 and Duhem's response to it in ch. 9. I'd never heard of Lechalas or Domet des Vorges, either.

p. 245: "the distinction between physics and metaphysics did not depend on the subject matter under investigation, but 'on the nature of our mind.'" This seems to portray Duhem as an idealist. Is that to say that Duhem doesn't think a science is specified by it's subject matter (physics studying changeable being, metaphysics studying being qua being, etc.)?

Hugon and Garrigou-Lagrange, although not strictly "Neo-Thomists," are the only Thomist contemporaries of Duhem I know of who appreciated Duhem's sophisticated thought.
See the Duhem–Garrigou-Lagrange epistolary exchange, esp. Duhem's last letter to him, the "Note sur la valeur des principes de l'inertie et de la conservation de l'énergie," printed in Dieu, son existence et sa nature p. 759 à 763.

p. 255: Fascinating that Boutroux denied natural classifications, thinking they're all artificial!
p. 256: re: "extra-logical influences" in developing physical theory: It seems Duhem is very close to Peirce's abduction/retroduction/induction.
p. 259: Physicians in Duhem's time generally adopted a holistic view of their patients? When did reductionism in medical practice become the norm? (I mention this quote in my footnote below.)
p. 263n25: I didn't know Heaviside showed "Maxwell’s electromagnetic equations…could not fit in with any mechanical model of aether". By the way, was Heaviside the first to name the "circuital law" of Maxwell's equations "Ampère's law" (≠ Ampère's force law)? Do you have a reference to where he first coined "Ampère's law"?
p. 279fn1: I'd agree that "theoretical pluralism" ⇏ skepticism, necessarily, esp. ∵ of Duhem's belief in the existence of a "natural classification".
p. 292:
I found this summary of all the various (even contradictory!) interpretations of Duhem's epistemology (and even political views!) quite amusing!
You didn't mention R.N.D. Martin here, though; he—along with Stoffel, who you say classifies Duhem as a "phenomenalist"—considers him a Pascalian, but what exactly does that even mean? What is Pascal's epistemology / philosophy of science, exactly? Eastwood seems to equate it with skepticism, but what are others' opinions? It seems Pascal's epistemology is only found scattered in the Pensées and more systematically in De l'esprit géométrique et L’art de persuader , the latter seeming to be nothing else than Pascal's resolution of the regress problem, which Aristotle / St. Thomas already discussed in the Posterior Analytics / Expositio Posteriorum lib. 1 l. 7 n.8, which I don't think Duhem read, or did he? (cf. Weisheipl's dissertation, mentioned below.)
I would agree most with the characterizations of Harry W. Paul and Jaki (that latter claiming Duhem is an "amateur" Thomist), but neither distinguish the various "flavors" of (neo-)Thomism (and Jaki was an apologist, himself also an "amateur" Thomist (or simply a "non-Thomist")…).
I would consider Duhem's epistemology closest to "Aristotelian-Thomism / River Forest Thomism (of River Forest, Illinois)," because—unlike other "neo-Thomisms," which are Cartesian/Wolffian in holding that metaphysics comes first—River Forest Thomism's principal tenet is that the natural sciences come epistemologically first, before metaphysics (in via inventionis or "in the way/order of discovery/learning"). However, Benedict Ashley, O.P., and the Galileo expert and historian of science William Wallace, O.P. (cf. his Modeling of Nature pp. 207-9), seem not to have studied Duhem's epistemology deeply, as they both seem to consider him too much of a skeptic (like Vicaire argued).
Despite Ashley having been the chief modern proponent of River Forest Thomism, he, in Way Toward Wisdom (pt. 2, ch. 7, B. "Mathematical Physics & Cosmic Unity and Diversity"), essentially says Duhem, like Rey thought (When… p. 284), is a nominalist (which you disagree with on When… p. 285):

Today the standard model of particle physics dominates natural science, but it is more mathematical physics than physical physics. Yet ultimately it must be tested by strictly physical principles. This modern dominance of the mixed science of mathematical physics led the distinguished Catholic physicist and pioneer historian of science Pierre Duhem to argue that natural science, as distinguished from natural “philosophy,” can never do more than, like Ptolemaic astronomy, “save the appearances.”34 Duhem attributed the rise of modern science not to the Aristotelian tradition but to the Nominalist tradition of the Ockhamists. It was probably under Duhem’s influence that the great twentieth-century Thomist Jacques Maritain devised his theory of an autonomous Thomistic philosophia naturalis (that [Existential Thomism neo-Thomist] Étienne Gilson thought simply obsolete) distinct from metaphysics.35 Maritain argued that while for Aquinas natural philosophy is dianoetic (ontological), that is, concerned with the essences of material things, modern science after Galileo became perinoetic (phenomenal), concerned not with the essences of natural things but only with their accidental phenomena. Modern science only explores these phenomena, Maritain claimed, either in terms of mathematical (empiriometric) models or in terms of analogical (empirioschematic) models. Hence, for Maritain, philosophia naturalis remains formally distinct from modern science and extends only to the questions treated in Aristotle’s Physics and De Anima , while all other more specific questions about nature must be relegated to a perinoetic modern science limited to a mere “saving of appearances.”

34. Duhem’s pioneering history of science in ten volumes is Le Système du Monde (1913–1959). He has also greatly influenced the one U.S. Catholic writer who has done the most to promote good relations between Catholicism and science, Stanley L. Jaki, O.S.B.; see Jaki’s Scientist and Catholic (1991), and his Gifford Lectures for 1974–1976, The Road of Science and the Ways to God (1978). Unfortunately, Jaki accepts Duhem’s “save the appearances” view of science and underrates the Aristotelian tradition in science.
35. See Jacques Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge (1959a), pp. 136–218, and Philosophy of Nature (1951) [and his student Yves Simon's "Maritain's Philosophy of the Sciences"].

Athanasius Weisheipl, O.P. (his dissertation: Aristotelian Methodology: A Commentary on the Posterior Analytics of Aristotle), was one of the original proponents of the River Forest school. In the introduction to The Dignity of Science: Studies in the Philosophy of Science (1961), he considered Duhem a "conventionalist":

Even after Planck's paper of 1900 and Einstein's theory of 1905, theoreticians of science, such as Henri Poincaré and Pierre Duhem, were unwilling to reject Newtonian principles as erroneous. Instead they conceived all scientific theories as conventional constructs and approximations of the truth. A scientific theory may be induced from experimental data; its predictions may be verified in every detail. But, for Poincaré and Duhem, the theory was only one way out of many for interpreting the data; it was an hypothetical approximation.The same data could be interpreted with equal verification by other hypotheses. The irreconcilability of relativity theory and quantum mechanics, as well as the wave and particle theories of light, gave much weight to this interpretation of scientific theory.

p. 299: Yes, I agree; the "war of [pretty much meaningless] labels" of "realism, instrumentalism conventionalism, … " has got to end.
p. 300 (top ¶): This is basically Ariew 1984's distinction of "Duhem thesis" vs. "Duhem-Quine thesis".

buona Pasqua

*I wrote the author of that article:

Thank you for your thought-provoking article "Underdetermination in evidence-based medicine". I come from a physics background and have been intrigued by Duhem's examples from medicine; I saw your paper mentions Bernard's influence on him. Have you seen the following quote from Duhem's 1894 article "Quelques réflexions au sujet de la physique expérimentale" (PDF pp. 160-1 of Prémices philosophiques)?:

l’horloger auquel on donne une montre qui ne marche pas en sépare tous les rouages et les examine un à un, jusqu’à ce qu’il ait trouvé celui qui est faussé ou brisé; le médecin auquel on présente un malade ne peut le disséquer pour établir son diagnostic; il doit deviner le siège du mal par la seule inspection des effets produits sur le corps entier; c’est à celui-ci, non à celui-là, que ressemble le physicien chargé de redresser une théorie boiteuse.