----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- 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 ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]