Is it right or wrong to claim past thinkers for modern traditions?

[Tammuz]

Not sure if this is philosophical or not, but will give it a go here for a starter.

In a Dos and don’ts in history of science one of the following recommendations is given:

Do not ever call anyone a scientist who would not have recognised the term. The word was not coined until the 1830s (by William Whewell himself) but a) he meant something rather different by it and b) the word was not actually used until the 1870s. If we use the term to describe anyone before this date we risk loading their views, status, career, ambitions and work with associations that just do not exist before this date.

A critique of secular humanism has a similar message:

There was also a retrospective look at various philosophers and others throughout history whose ideas were described as humanist in some form. This is like firing shots at a wall and then drawing a target round them. The people mentioned were not humanists, most of them existed before the term was coined. Democritus and Epicurus, for example, were cited as forefathers of humanism but they are just as much the precursors of scientific rationalism. Nothing is gained by tagging them as proto-humanists except to try and give humanism some sort of historical weight and worth.

And one site collecting critiques of libertarianism criticize libertarian attempts to portray historical figures as fellow libertarians, or proto-libertarians:

Ideologies often require revision of inconvenient history, and identification of famous historical figures as fellow believers. Libertarians have their own ludicrous literature and claims.

What do you think about this? Was Isaac Newton a scientist? Was Epicurus a secular humanist? Was Thomas Jefferson a libertarian?

I can see that there is a danger in anachronistically attribute modern concepts to persons who would not have recognized the the terms. But at the same time it is also the case that very, very few ideas arise in an intellectual vacuum. If taken to heart, then it is nigh impossible to describe he history of any intellectual tradition. For more or less modern traditions (I use the term "tradition" in a broad sense here) such as science, secular humanism, and libertarianism, of course there were pre-modern thinkers, or early modern thinkers, who espoused similar ideals and would probably have subscribed to those traditions if they were brought back to life today.

 

[Togo]

Interesting topic!

I suppose it very much depends on the context of the discussion. We have had posters here claiming that a monkey using a long stick to get ants from an ant-hill is part of the scientific tradition, which is probably going too far for most purposes. On the other hand, if you're explicitly tracing the roots of modern science, or secular humanism, identifying ideas that are similar that arose well before either tradition of thought arose is the entire point of the discussion.

While it's true that intellectual ideas don't arise in a vacuum, it can be important to see what context the did arise in. Isaac Newton was a mathematician and an alchemist, following a long tradition of alchemical work that originated in the Middle Ages. He was fond of practical demonstrations, both to convince the sceptical and as a way of presenting his ideas. This did contribute to the growth of a traditional of empirical testing, but his fondness for empirical demonstrations may have stemmed as much from the alchemical tradition he was a part of (stressing the importance of establishing repeatable lab work) and his position in the scientific community (where he was responsible for holding conferences and public demonstrations) rather than any allegiance towards an ideal of a methodology of empirical testing that marks science proper. As such, it's probably fair to call him an 'early' scientist' in some contexts, but not others.

Similarly, Darwin's ideas arose in an environment where the concept of Evolution due to outside pressures was well established and popular in the social sciences, as the change of societies over time. And his ideas were first published in a journal of beekeeping, because that's where the most advanced theories of genetic change were to be found, including several that appear in his work.

What we can be sure of is that there will always be attempts to harness history to justify current practice.

 

[Speakpigeon]

What do you think about this?

One aspect I see is that it is often quite difficult to understand precisely enough what past thinkers' ideas had been (as opposed to their writings). This allows different ideological traditions to claim the same thinker for themselves and deny him to other traditions. We are still in the process of interpreting Descartes, including the Cogito! Also, thinkers may change their mind, as Marx and Wittgenstein famously did, or as Descartes may also have done. Any claim in this respect should be seen as vacuous unless properly justified. However, even that is only as good as the readiness of the audience of this claim to critically examine it on the basis not only of the justification given but of an adequate understanding of what the past thinker in question had said. Maybe one could say that claiming a past thinker should only be proper if the claimant is prepared to do his homework and check that this makes sense. Claiming that some ancient Greek dude was a scientist should be supported by adequate justification, which would include a circumstantial presentation of what this guy had done and in precisely what sense of the word "scientist" the claim is to be understood, which may require a not unsubstantial amount of expertise on both subjects. Given this, I think it would be OK in principle although it might not be in practice very often.
EB

 

[Tom Sawyer]

I don't see what the problem is. Scientist and humanist are terms that mean something. If a person would meet the definitions of those terms then the terms apply to them, regardless of whether or not that term existed or had the same meaning back in their day.

 

[ryan]

There is the scientist of scientism, and there is a scientist who follows the scientific method for gathering knowledge about nature.

There is no doubt Newton was the latter. We would have to know more about his philosophical views on epistemology to know if he was the former.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

The problem is, not much springs to life de novo. Lucretius's De Rerum Natura for example was very influential when it was rediscovered and printed during the renaissance. To ignore facts like that is also a big error. To turn our backs on such things for some philosophical ideology means not ever having a chance of truly understanding progress. And turns us to barren and stupid arguing about things that are for most of us, not worth arguing.

 

[Togo]

There is the scientist of scientism, and there is a scientist who follows the scientific method for gathering knowledge about nature.

There is no doubt Newton was the latter.

Sure there is. He was following an alchemical tradition of gaining knowledge about nature through labwork. What he did today would fall under the scientific method (for some of his work). But he wasn't following the formal scientific method, because there wasn't a scientific method for him to follow.

That is, incidentally, why his mathematical theories are so famous, and his scientific models are not. Because his mathematical conclusions, being rational models that can followed by others and are subject to empirical justification, fit it rather nicely with modern science, while the theoretical conclusions he reached are based on his archaic ideas of how the world worked. That's why you know his ideas on gravity as a force that acts on all objects, and the calculations he developed around this force, but not what he thought caused it.

 

[jab]

It's rather like saying sexual harassment didn't exist until feminist coined the term in the 1980s. Please note the terms science, natural science, and man of science all predate "scientist".

 

[Speakpigeon]

It's rather like saying sexual harassment didn't exist until feminist coined the term in the 1980s.

No it's not.
EB

 

[Trodon]

Great thinkers have insights that are worth evaluating. Nevertheless, it is inaccurate to assume that a great thinker, if transported to the present, would share one's beliefs, especially one's political beliefs.

Thomas Jefferson often expressed his preference for limited government. Consequently, Americans on the right claim Jefferson as one of their own. Nevertheless, the dichotomy between left and right began during the French Revolution, when "left" and "right" were first used politically. Jefferson admired the French Revolution until it turned badly with the Reign of Terror. He continued to be opposed to monarchies, aristocracies, and established churches, so in the context of late eighteenth - early nineteenth century politics he was on the left.

He also wrote this: "I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable, but the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property . . . Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions or property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right."

In his Reflections on the Revolution in France Edmund Burke criticized the French Revolution.

By using the writings of Burke to defend the New Deal, Peter Viereck taught me to appreciate Burke. Nevertheless, I do not claim that if they were alive during the Roosevelt administration Thomas Jefferson and Edmund Burke would have approved of Franklin Roosevelt's policies. I really do not know.