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The problem with "thickness" in the Geertzian sense applied to intellectual history is
that it makes the relationship of different intellectual eras to one another analogous to
the relationship between two "incommensurable" cultures (cultures for Geertz *are* so
related - or unrelated, if you will).  This is a slippery slope, don't you think? - at the
bottom of which is a thorough-going  relativism about science.  I think historians of
science have to translate between different languages - both ways, not just, Whiggishly,
the past into the present - and *evaluate* the thought whose history is being recounted.
It's my impression that this need for evaluation is the crux of the issue between thick
and not-thick.
 
 
Kevin Quinn 
 
 
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