Historical Narrative: A Dispute Between Constructionism and Scientific Realism An intense discussion about the issue of historical narrative arose during the time when the naïve realism of classical historiography was being critiqued and led to a dispute, in the last century, between constructionism and critical or scientific realism. We can distinguish between constructionism and noetic constructivism. According to ontological constructionism all facts are human constructions; according to noetic constructivism, our notions and theories are constructs with objective meaning (sense and reference); (...) they refer to objective reality. Scientific realism recognizes the existence of noetic construction but does not regard facts as our constructions, as pure fictions. The point of contention is the question over whether historical narrative is merely a discursive construction or whether it is also a scientific reconstruction of the past. Resolving the dispute over whether historical narrative can be objectively true, or whether it is subject to empirical control or not, is dependent on finding the answer to this question. (shrink)

In the first part of the paper the authors describe Hrušovský’s model of the development of scientific knowledge, which, due to the influence of logical empiricism, he saw as cumulative, hypothetical-confirmationist and internalistic, i.e. taking into account only scientific factors. In the second part it is showed, that Hrušovský acknowledged the influence of the external factors, emphasizing at the same time the fundamental independence of scientific knowledge. He dismissed the vulgar eco nomism as well as the extreme internalism.

The article deals with the articulation of the model of empirical science in I. Hrušovský’s writings. Further, it examines Hrušovský’s conception of the development of scientific knowledge as related to his concept of “radical revision” . The authors draw mainly from Hrušovský’s books written in 1935 – 1948.

In his paper the author focuses on the analysis of 1. Kuhn's self-reflection, his discovery of hermeneutics and its importance for the new way of reading and understanding the text, 2. Kuhn's comprehension of the relation between history and philosophy of science and of many different factors which influence upon forming and development of a modern history of science, 3. Working out of Kuhn's specific conceptional apparatus , 4. Kuhn's cycle of scientific knowledge and 5. some methodological controversions concerning incomensurability (...) of scientific paradigms, understandig of the normal science and Kuhn's antirealism. (shrink)