"Historical Epistemology," Institute of Philosophy, Leuven University, December 10-12, 2009.

Historical epistemology is now a blooming field of study, bringing history and philosophy together in strikingly new ways. Historians of science understand historical epistemology as both a theoretical underpinning of their work and a heuristic tool. Some of them aim at uncovering the historically situated conditions of a field of knowledge or of scientists’ objects of inquiry. Others study fundamental scientific concepts, which organize knowledge at different historical periods, along with the contingent conditions for their permanence or transformation. The philosophically most challenging version of historical epistemology is perhaps the one that focuses on our epistemological concepts themselves. Rationality, objectivity or observation now seem to be subject to historical and/or social determinants; it is claimed that the meaning of these central epistemological categories has undergone significant changes in history. Furthermore, it has been argued that it is possible to differentiate historical styles of reasoning, each with a distinct point of origin, evolution and sometimes also an endpoint in history. What can this tell us about the epistemic concepts we use today? What can it tell us about our present epistemological norms? What is the relation between historical epistemology and social epistemology? Are there limits to historicizing epistemology? Analytic epistemologists, for example, reflect upon our intuitions about epistemological concepts such as knowledge, truth, certainty, probability, rationality and objectivity, abstracting these concepts away from the historical contexts they have had. But history might have crucially shaped not only the meaning of epistemic concepts but also our intuitions about them. There is a widespread agreement among the participants in this debate that there is a need to historicize epistemology. There are broad differences, however, about how to elaborate such an approach concretely. Furthermore, many professional philosophers are only now starting to engage with the new challenges and possibilities historical epistemology poses them. This interdisciplinary conference aims at bringing together historians of science and philosophers in order to clarify some of the methodological, historiographical and conceptual issues that come to the fore when history and epistemology are combined. Further information may be found here: http://lipss.wordpress.com/.