Whig history of science

[ish mailian]

Steven Weinberg suggests, in “Eye on the Present—The Whig History of
Science” [*NYR*, December 17, 2015], that historians of science may be
permitted to view the past in terms of modern knowledge (called “whig
history”), whereas others may not. This is because in science, we *know* who
in the past was “right,” and who was “wrong,” whereas in religion,
politics, and other sociological areas, ultimate truths based upon
scientific methodology and mathematical applications can never be decided.

But is this really true of science? Before the understanding of atomic
energy and radioactivity, could a historian of science in the early 1900s
declare that Lord Kelvin was wrong in his mathematical calculation of the
age of the earth based upon thermodynamic laws as 100 million years, as
many recent historians of science have done? Weinberg implies that we now
know these ultimate truths, and are thus in a position to objectively
evaluate who was right and who was wrong in the past. But has this not been
generally true throughout science’s past, and may not today’s scientific
truths give way to further progress? Permit me an example from my own field.


http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/02/25/the-whig-history-of-science-an-exchange/
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