My conviction grows stronger that the history of the origins of modern science will only get out of the self-indulgent swamp of the "discourse" departments by a radical and quick turn towards cognitive science and cliodynamics. https://twitter.com/_infinitography/status/1249717408857817088

I think it's pretty obvious to everyone that as much as they keep *talking* repeatedly about such a thing as 'science', the very thing the whole thing was supposed to be about has vanished through their fingers.

"If we define science as human interaction with and aspiration to understand the working of nature, then popular beliefs are certainly part of this history."

This is an actual quote from an actual historiographer.

And don't get me wrong, I think the externalist research carried out in the previous few decades is superbly enlightening and of incredible importance. Science is not a cause of itself and cannot be explained by its own sole means.

But this overaccelerated course of research has turned the very thing it was meant to explain into a caricature. Normally I would be all for this kind of progression. There's only a slight caveat –– contemporary scientists have no clue how to recognize themselves in this picture.

I completely understand that the 'pseudosciences' and 'protosciences' (not my nomenclature) that preceded modern science were absolutely key in many ways. But the momentous effects of the XVIIth-century epistemic take-off are perfectly contrastable through multiple sources.

This is where I think cliodynamics could help. I'm not a historian, but there are massive databases that have nothing to do with 'indigenous knowledge systems' that would offer a very different picture than the current consensus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliodynamics

Cliodynamics' approach to historical research offers 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 and quantitative models that can push to the fore the kind of patterns sunked in sociodiscoursive needle-haystacking.

This could offer a very much needed objective reference for what we are trying to explain – an evident historic take-off whose attempted denial simply alienates the field of history of science from contemporary scientific practice.

This wouldn't imply that 'science' is an unproblematic or ahistorical concept. Indeed, science is a creative product of the socially-organized human mind. But for precisely this reason I find it hard to believe that we haven't yet delved into the findings of cognitive science.

The idea entered the landscape during the 90s, but apparently it hasn't received much attention. This paper by Nersessian explains rather well what it's about. https://www-jstor-org.bris.idm.oclc.org/stable/301919?socuuid=d75b1c8a-9c2c-4a04-87a1-2ebb366f0699&socplat=twitter

Nothing could excite me more than to investigate the intricate folds to which human cognition must have had to subject itself in order to bring about the contemporary naturalist methodology.

“Any theory that makes progress is bound to be initially counterintuitive.”
Dennett

But that would be a task of scope beyond the 17th century, of course. To which I say: all the better.