Beyond the performativity of language: The linguistic turn and social constructivism in Leviathan and Air-Pump

María de los Ángeles Martini

doi:10.15848/hh.v18.2409

Authors

María de los Ángeles Martini Universidad de Buenos Aires

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15848/hh.v18.2409

Keywords:

History of science, Linguistic turn, Constructivism

Abstract

Forty years after the publication of Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer's book, Leviathan and the Air-Pump, this paper aims to examine the philosophical commitments that the authors assumed when they recognized themselves as part of the social constructivist perspective of Strong Programme. This vision, deeply rooted in Wittgensteinian philosophy, addressed the analysis of scientific knowledge in defense of the primacy of practice. However, constructivism has been naively interpreted as limiting itself to the performativity of language. The review of these commitments allows me to explore the affinities between language and materiality in the framework of their work. Finally, I examine the approach that the authors made to the philosopher's body as constitutive of the experimental form of life in seventeenth-century England. I seek to clarify where the conceptual effort and complexity of investigating scientific practices through Wittgenstein's notions of form of life and language-game lay.

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Author Biography

María de los Ángeles Martini, Universidad de Buenos Aires

Doctora en Epistemologia e Historia de la ciencia. Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, Argentina Magister en Epistemologia. CAECE. Argentina. Profesora en Filosofia. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Argentina Profesora de epistemologia de las Ciencias sociales. Facultad de Ciencias Sociales. UBA Paraticipa de proyectos de investigacion UBA. NUEVAS FILOSOFIAS DE LA HISTORIA: INDAGACIONES PROGMATICAS EN TORNO A LA CONFLICTIVIDAD Y PLURALIDAD DE LOS LENGUAJES HISTORICOS. Dirigido por la Dra. Veronica Tozzi.

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