Abstract

The topic of conceptual change is a natural target for integrated history and philosophy of science. Scholars working in this tradition have investigated concepts from many different sciences, often supplementing familiar historical and philosophical methods with tools from ethnography, cognitive science, and the digital humanities. After reviewing the literature, we single out two themes that seem especially promising targets for future work. First, as we point out, many &HPS analyses of conceptual change lean on metaphors likening concepts to biological species or artifacts. Drawing on previous studies of metaphors in science, we encourage more attention to the substantive impact of metaphor choice. Second, &HPS scholarship has often moved beyond describing and explaining conceptual change to address normative questions. This agenda is echoed by the recent trend of conceptual engineering in analytic philosophy. Though the two bodies of research have hardly interacted so far, we point out several opportunities for fruitful mutual contribution.