Why study the history of history of science? This essay review by @velivirmajoki.bsky.social interestingly suggests that it can show us how this discipline, notwithstanding historians' implicit or explicit rejections of Kuhnian historiography, can be characterized as a Kuhnian discipline
theonion.info
A new Boards of Canada track was released yesterday. Today is a little bit brighter.
If you'd like to *listen* to Thomas Kuhn interview Robert Oppenheimer, we've got you covered:
repository.aip.org/node/151144
Audio quality is a little iffy, so you'll need the transcript:
repository.aip.org/node/150787
More on this soon!
"A primary merit of the work is the heuristic clarity it brings to a field often clouded by conceptual slippage."
For more from Daniele Pizzocaro's review of a new philosophical study of absolute magnitudes, see link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Last Thursday, the far-right student organization KVHV organized a public lecture by Nathan Cofnas. The lecture was an absolute train wreck. It will take a while to analyze everything, but here are some first impressions. /1
Kuhn also admitted that he mostly did internal work, and that Forman's work nicely complemented it
There's very interesting correspondence in the Kuhn archive between Kuhn and Forman about this point (end of the 60s, early 70s). They both agree that the history of the quantum could be approached in both ways, and that the best work combines both
I think that that's a very insightful way to approach the AHQP interviews as well, as documents that are shaped by the 1960s context in which they came about. Anke te Heesen also provide such an analysis of them in her book (focusing e.g. on the Cold War, Post WW2 context)
"What I hadn’t anticipated was the number of times people would say, ‘I don’t know, I can’t remember; how, why would you expect me to remember that?’”
Anyone who has ever conducted an #OralHistory can sympathize w/Thomas Kuhn's frustration while documenting the history of quantum #physics. #histSTM
Makes perfect sense to me. It's extremely hard in retrospect to remember how some particular idea was developed. I suspect that most detailed reconstructions along those lines have a lot of confabulation in them.
Yes, Kuhn at some points made a very similar analysis, stating that scientists normally have no use for retracing the exact origins of their views (which are often vague, incomplete), and that they are rather interested in the narratives where their views and findings click/make sense
This is a facanating must read for anyone interested in oral history or the history of science.
Having read a lot of these interviews for my book on Bohr, I found this fascinating. I think Heilbron is right to speak of "ridiculously detailed questions". Kuhn will whip out a 40-year-old paper and start going through it, and folks like Heisenberg won't really remember it at all.
That's a very good analogy, if you don't mind I'll gladly use that in the future
And there's also a recording of this talk I gave on the topic: m.youtube.com/watch?v=3ET4...
Your paper was what originally brought me to study Kuhn's interviews in the first place, many thanks for that :)
I wouldn't say that he was terrible. The main issue was that he didn't have many examples to follow for such a project with such a specific focus. That for me makes them fascinating and fun to read as well, since you really see him and his collaborators trying out the interview method in real time
Very honoured to have an AIP Weekly piece on Kuhn's frustrations with interviewing quantum physicists! For those interested in more on this, I have a few forthcoming papers on this (which I would be happy to share via DM) as well as a book manuscript in progress about Kuhn and quantum physics
I hadn't seen that obituary yet, thanks very much for the pointer!
There was even some kind of public reconciliation between Collins and Allan Franklin, for thirty years one of Collins' foremost critics on this topic:
philpapers.org/rec/FRATKO-2
Call for Abstracts
2nd International Conference
The History of the Philosophy of Technology
October 26-28, 2026
Maastricht University
Theme: national and regional traditions
Abstracts by 25 May 2026
fasos-research.nl/history-of-p...
#philtech #hopot #hopos #histtech
I've just noticed that the recording of my talk at Louvain-la-Neuve is online now. For all those interested in Thomas Kuhn's work on the history of quantum physics:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ET4...
As far as I can tell there was no selection committee involved, Cofnas was hired as a postdoc by professor Bouke de Vries on an already funded project
In the past, De Vries also hired other people to work on similar topics, and there have been open letters by students and faculty about his discussions of race, genetics, gender etc. in his courses (see e.g. this article if you can read Dutch and have a subscription: apache.be/2025/07/04/g...)
Cofnas was hired by Bouke de Vries, ethics and political philosophy professor in Ghent. De Vries already had a funded project on 'Liberalism's fertility problem' and I suppose that Cofnas was hired on that specific project. In Belgium, the professor alone decides who to hire on a project
I've just noticed that the recording of my talk at Louvain-la-Neuve is online now. For all those interested in Thomas Kuhn's work on the history of quantum physics:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ET4...
Image of Heidegger holding Guthrie's famous guitar, the sticker thereon has been changed to read "This fascist kills machines".
Went back to Twitter to check something and @deontologistics.bsky.social reminded me of this meme, I genuinely think the best meme to ever be produced by Philosophy Twitter.
