ウィッグ史観は許容不可能か

Abstract

This paper surveys the discussions on a Whig historiography in history of science, and proposed a more contextualized treatment of the issue. Since the mid-60s. a Whig historiography. i.e. reconstructing the history as a progress toward the present, has been accused as a wrong way of writing history. However, subsequent discussions of the issue, especially by David Hull and Stephen Brush, tend to allow a certain amount of presentism, i.e. writing history from the point of view of the present. What is needed is a clarification of various different types of prcsentism, and I propose four of them (perspective, negative, positive and evaluative). Some authors also suggest that Whig historiography is OK for historical writings by scientists themselves. Even though such context sensitivity is reasonable, the transcontextuality of written works makes it hard to pigeonhole various contexts if the case of history-of-science writings.