Abstract
This paper discusses the history of science in the light of ontology. The research problem is defined as the following question: can the discipline known as the philosophical history of science (or history and philosophy of science, hps), which was inspired in large part by Kantian criticism and historicism, be turned against a transcendental (subjective) standpoint and revert us to the what Alfred North Whitehead called the “pre-Kantian modus of thoughts” – that is to ontology?The first part of the paper considers the history of science in the form of transcendental historicism (entailing a universal teleology of reason). It shows that transcendental historicism speaks against ontology because it neglects a real history of nature in favor of ideal (subjective) conditions for the possibility of ‘nature’.The key question of the second part of the paper is formulated as follows: what are the ontological premises under which the question relating to the historical conditions for the possibility of ‘nature’ replaces the question relating to nature-as-it-really-is? (The contrast between the presence of quotation marks in the first part of the previous sentence and their absence in the second part emphasizes the clash between these two approaches). Answering this question reveals that the philosophical history of science is able to give ontology its due because it is able to reveal a historically changeable ontology of the transcendental (subjective) standpoint itself. This means that the philosophical history of science is able to testify to the existence of a history that is more than a subject who thinks it.