Abstract

In the 1960s, the history and philosophy of science made common cause in the search for universal patterns of theory change: philosophers provided models, historians offered examples. But the two enterprises pulled apart during the 1970s. Now there is a new arena of joint concern. Historians and philosophers are searching for the conditions under which standards of theoretical and experimental demonstration are established. I argue against the picture of these standards as independent of (or reducible to) the context of their introduction. Instead, I suggest that we think of scientific developments as simultaneous solutions to multiple constraints; the constraints issue from domains as diverse as the technical, the aesthetic and the political.