Sciences of history

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani asks how sciences of history can be real, that is, rigorous, without imitating the hard sciences. He treats the expressions "sciences of the subject", "sciences of history" and "sciences of culture" as equivalent. He places these sciences within the history of the relationship between the sciences and philosophy: Aristotle's philosophical imperialism, then the successive "declarations of independence" of mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology. He adds the critique of scientism and Marx's critique of robinsonades. He also uses the relations of production, notably slavery, to explain why the Greeks had no physics1. To show what a different kind of rigour would look like, he takes the example of Wagner's Ring. Taken from its middle, the mythic narrative reveals an "algebra" of gold and love2. The rule-governed transformation of the leitmotifs serves as a model for making the sciences of history rigorous3. The ending of the tetralogy illustrates, following Engels, the passage from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom3.

1. 19 #16 Comment des sciences de l'histoire peuvent-elles être réelles?4 Mar 2021
2. 29 #15 Comment des sciences de l'histoire peuvent-elles être réelles?18 Feb 2021
3. 39 #19 Le Crépuscule des dieux ou de la répétition à la libération • Partie 214 Apr 2021

Introduction produced automatically from the 3 sessions on this theme, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the sessions.