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The paper edition of the Anthropology of History Yearbook is the definitive version

2018, No. (11), Cultural History of Knowledge

Tomasz Falkowski
Art of diplomacy in the contemporary philosophy and history of science

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Keywords: philosophy and history of science, art of diplomacy, scienticic practice, Isabelle Stengers’ thought

Abstract:
In the paper, I analyse one of the contemporary perspectives in philosophy and history of science, which is proposed by Isabelle Stengers. Known as the art of diplomacy, it tries to move beyond an alternative between the absolutist approach to sciences (as well as to their achievements) and the relativistic one, formed by cultural studies, social history, STS etc. Since the early 1990s, Stengers has been developing a way of treating modern science as a particular scientific practice which contains some inherent values, exigencies, and obligations. Such notions – practice, value, exigency, obligation as well as a truth of the relative and constraint – constitute a conceptual framework of Stengers’ perspective. In my paper, I reconstruct this framework in order to check its efficiency in the historical studies. Hence, two examples are discussed: 1) physics works on neutrino and 2) Lavoisier’s position in the history of chemistry.

About Author:
TOMASZ FALKOWSKI – history methodologist, historian of science, adjunct at the Department of Methodology of History and History of Historiography IH UAM in Poznań. E-mail: tmfalko@amu.edu.pl. ORCID 0000-0002-4799-3594
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