Historicism and Debate on the Status of Science: From Philosophy to the New History of Psychology

The paper analyzes historicist discussions in philosophy and psychology in the 1990s-2020s. The development of the critical history of psychology as the field of understanding the science past and as a discussion platform for the exchange of positions on its modernity is reconstructed. The dispute between K. Danziger and D. Robinson as a typical case in this field is consistently analyzed. Danziger’s argumentation, his interpretation of psychological categories, interpretation of the positivist historiographic foundations of science are revealed. The author problematizes the model of historicism, within which Danziger forms his criticism, and its components: the rejection of the linearity of history and the continuity of the object, criticism of positivist historiography, orientation towards a socially oriented institutional history. Robinson’s debatable position is studied: problematization of the categories «influence», «continuity», «modernity», the appeal to the problem of interpretation of ancient sources, emphasizing the significance of the repetition of problems in history. It is shown what the problems of psychology as a science dispute absorbs, what lines on the development of the philosophy of science are placed. The latest assessments of the Danziger-Robinson discussion, as well as related debates on the history and philosophy of psychology, are reviewed. The author demonstrates that psychology often raises problems in the philosophy of history, the sociology of knowledge, and science. Following the history, philosophy, philology, it begins to problematize its subject, language, turns to practice, in which its facts the names and history are revealed. The author concludes that in this discussion field, psychology cultivates self-consciousness, raises the problem of its identification as a science or philosophy, practice or theory.