ABSTRACT
Such a view engenders the question of the role of biography in the study of science. One position is that a scientist's biography helps understand how that scientist did what he or she did and the meaning of it for him or her. Another position is that biography is irrelevant to the truth or falsity of an idea or theory. There is something to both theories. But the latter position suffers from both a conceit and an illusion. The conceit is that what we know is probably true, because past error has been corrected. Of course, believing so in the future means that some of what we consider true today is false. The illusion is that there exists a coherent, unequivocal, univocal body of ideas, whereas at every point in time multiple points of view have existed, however much some or many have been eclipsed by a dominant school of thought. In any event, the truth and falsity of ideas and theories, so hard to come by, is important. But the meaning - verstehen - of an idea or a theory is another marter. That is one reason why every generation interprets its own his tory on its own terms - wirh multiple stories because of multiple perspectives.
