seminar of CEFISES | History and Philosophy of Science

Abstract

In an article written about ten years ago, when I was a postdoc, I offered a critical assessment of the largely dominant anti-presentist stance in the history of science (Loison 2016). While taking care to avoid any form of anachronism, present-day science can (and indeed must) be a major resource in understanding the past. Programmatically, I referred to this propulsive dialectic between the past and the present as “critical presentism,” without seeking to reify this attitude in the form of a method.
Since then, I have had several opportunities to put this form of critical presentism into practice in a very concrete way, particularly through extensive collaborations with biologists. In this presentation, I will revisit one of these collaborations, showing how it has been beneficial both to history (Loison 2025) and to science (Lambert et al. 2025). In doing so, it becomes clear that the present can legitimately be included in the context necessary for elucidating the past.

References:

Lambert Amaury, Achaz Guillaume, Le Rouzic Arnaud, Loison Laurent, 2025, “The Baldwin effect reloaded: Intermediate levels of phenotypic plasticity favor evolutionary rescue”, The American Naturalist, 206/5, pp. 418-434.
Loison Laurent, 2025, Beyond Lamarckism. Plasticity in Darwinian Evolution, 1890-1970, London & New York, Routledge, 298 pages.
Loison Laurent, 2016, “Forms of presentism in the history of science. Rethinking the project of historical epistemology”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, A, 60, pp. 29-37.