Cañas, Dubian (2025) Metahistorical reasoning and philosophical disagreement: Revisiting the selective realism debate about the caloric episode. [Preprint]
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Abstract
By exploring a prominent controversy in the recent history of the philosophy of science, I vindicate the role of metahistorical reasoning when historical case studies are used as evidence to support conflicting philosophical claims. I draw upon the selective realism debate concerning the caloric theory of heat as a case study, arguing that basic criteria of historical adequacy are sufficiently robust to adjudicate this disagreement. On these grounds, I rebut the view that the dispute about caloric cannot be resolved in historical terms. This position is based upon historical pluralism —i.e., the argument that historical evidence cannot settle philosophical disagreements, partially because historiographical standards are too weak for adjudication. After characterizing historical pluralism and considering its rationale in diagnosing the selective realism debate about caloric, I show how this philosophical conflict is resolved in terms of standards for assessing the quality of the competing reconstructions of Joseph Black’s and Antoine Lavoisier’s epistemic pronouncements about the materiality of heat.
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| Item Type: | Preprint | ||||||
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| Keywords: | Stathis Psillos, Kyle Stanford, Hasok Chang, Katherina Kinzel, Anjan Chakravartty | ||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > History of Philosophy of Science General Issues > History of Science Case Studies |
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| Depositing User: | Dr. Dubian Cañas | ||||||
| Date Deposited: | 10 Sep 2025 13:00 | ||||||
| Last Modified: | 10 Sep 2025 13:00 | ||||||
| Item ID: | 26602 | ||||||
| Official URL: | https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/hopos/curren... | ||||||
| DOI or Unique Handle: | https://doi.org/10.1086/738518 | ||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > History of Philosophy of Science General Issues > History of Science Case Studies |
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| Date: | 2025 | ||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/26602 |
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