ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how Francophone Philosophy of Science (PS), or what is called French epistemology, embodies this interconnectedness. It highlights some general characteristics of French epistemology and subsequently elaborating these two principles. First of all, there is a primacy of science over philosophy: for French epistemologists scientific practices, and not philosophy, should provide the relevant categories by which these practices can be understood. Secondly, at the same time, French thinkers feel the obligation to make a normative judgement about the history of science. The chapter argues that these principles are still at work in contemporary Francophone philosophers such as Michel Serres, Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers, a fact neglected within the literature. The idea of the primacy of science over philosophy often comes into conflict with another constant in French epistemology, namely the question of normativity. More developments in Francophone PS have often been neglected in overviews of French epistemology, but in fact offer an even more promising normative project.
