This article disentangles the various assumptions and expectations tied to case studies, to testing philosophy through cases, and to historical adequacy. Several notions of historical adequacy are distinguished: 1) adequacy to the standards of professional history of science, 2) historical accuracy, i.e. capturing the historical record, 3) relevance of historical episodes to the epistemic interests of philosophers of science, and 4) withstanding tests by historical cases. I argue that philosophers’ preoccupation with historical adequacy is misplaced if we understand “historical adequacy” as adequacy to professional history of science, capturing the historical record, a path to philosophical discovery, or as a test. In the last part of the article, I identify two important roles for philosophically informed studies of science: case studies of current issues can do explication work for the sciences . Tracing the history of philosophical reflections in past science can do explication work in the service of philosophy. Both kinds of endeavors are worthwhile but have very different goals and should not be conflated.

中文翻译：

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科学与哲学的阐释工作

本文解开了与案例研究，通过案例测试哲学以及历史充分性相关的各种假设和期望。历史适用性的几个概念被区分出来：1）符合科学专业史的标准，2）历史准确性，即获取历史记录，3）历史情节与科学哲学家的认识论利益相关，以及4）能够承受通过历史案例进行测试。我认为，如果我们将“历史的充分性”理解为对科学专业史的充分性，记录历史记录，进行哲学发现的路径或作为检验，那么哲学家对历史的充分性的误解就错了。在文章的最后部分，我确定了哲学上明智的科学研究的两个重要作用：对当前问题进行案例研究可以为科学做说明工作。追溯过去科学中哲学思考的历史可以为哲学服务做一些说明性的工作。两种努力都是值得的，但目标却大不相同，不应混为一谈。