The Copernican Question advances a radical reinterpretation of a classic episode in the history of science. Copernicus's turn to the heliocentric planetary arrangement occurred in the context of a late-fifteenth century political/religious controversy about the credibility of astrology triggered in 1496 by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's attack on the science of the stars. This controversy about the principles of astrological prognostication continued to drive debates about the heavens from the late-fifteenth to the early seventeenth century. The reviewers conceal their defense of the historiographical status quo ante by focusing on matters of translation. The rebuttal demonstrates that the real disagreements are over method and interpretation.

This essay deals with the recent history of the disputes about the relation between history and philosophy of science and the merits and prospects of HPS as an intellectual endeavor. I begin with a brief outline of the debates in the late 1960s and 1970s. At that time, several philosophers of science argued that philosophical analysis was interpretive and that understanding a concept or practice involved understanding how it came about. More recently, however, philosophical studies of science have been likened to scientific theory construction. One basic idea permeates recent debates, namely, that pursuing HPS means confronting general philosophical frameworks with historical data. I argue that this “confrontation model” of HPS is highly problematic and should be abandoned. Instead, we should appreciate (again) that philosophical reflection on science is interpretive, and that historicist analyses of scientific, methodological, and epistemological concepts augment our understanding of science.