Empirical Expansion and Philosophical Autonomy

Abstract

The article offers a philosophical response to Harry Collins’s account of the Strong programme through the framework of historical epistemology. The first part situates the Strong programme within a longer transformation in the relation between philosophy and science. From positivism to the emergence of sociology and science studies, philosophy gradually loses its privileged role as the discipline defining the conditions of knowledge, while science itself becomes an object of empirical investigation. The second part reconstructs the historical a priori of the Strong programme. Drawing on Helene Metzger’s conception of historically variable a priori structures, the article shows how Collins’s appeal to Winch, Kuhn, and the indeterminacy of experimental practice makes possible an empirical treatment of meaning, rationality, and knowledge. Collins’s gravitational-wave studies and the experimenters’ regress serve as the central case of this transformation. The third part argues that the Strong programme reveals a structural tension in contemporary philosophy: empirical expansion increases philosophy’s engagement with scientific practice, but at the same time weakens its disciplinary autonomy.