Towards Useful Tools for the Study of the History of Cosmology

Abstract

One of the important goals of the philosophy of cosmology is to study the meaningful historical works of Aristotle, Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, and others. From viewpoint of the history of cosmology, these texts are important not only as examples of understandings of the universe but also because they can be considered as leading historical illustrations of original approaches to the question of scientific rationality and types of scientific controversies. Like many other classic scientifical texts, they are multidimensional works. It can be distinguished many focus points which the books may be explored (history, science, philosophy, literature, and others). In this paper, I consider the possibility of reading the texts concerning the important cosmological issues from the point of argumentative view. In this regard, the key tasks of my research are (1) to explore the central characteristics of the argumentation dimension and (2) to consider some methodological tools that will be useful for scholars studying outstanding historical books from the field of philosophy of cosmology.

Keywords

• philosophy of cosmology
• history of cosmology
• theory of argumentation
• historical and empirical approach
• tools for the study of scientific controversies