[valvar]

> attributing, to historical figures, modern concepts which they surely never even conceived of, and which would undoubtedly baffle them until they had been brought up-to-date with current knowledge.

I don't think that's quite what Whig history is. The Wikipedia article doesn't seem to imply that, either. If there was a "Tory history", I think this case would be more like that, as it presents a past figure as being more enlightened (while Whig history typically does the opposite in order to extol progress).

[mannykannot]

Yeah, I'm not certain about the analogy, and I'm basing it more on how I have seen the phrase used in other places, but my cursory search did not dig them up. IIRC, the complaint is that, in order to present history as the steady progress towards what they regarded as an enlightened present, Whig historians attributed influential and powerful historical figures with liberal motives and goals. Tory historians might have attributed them with illiberal motives and goals that were sometimes thwarted (leading to what they regarded as a suboptimal present), which might well be more plausible in general.

Looking a little further into the article, I see it mentions a whig history of science that ignores failed theories and dead ends, and I would agree that this is not the same as attributing successful theories to people who probably did not hold them, though the latter does also tend to present science in 'march of progress' terms.

[lucideer]

You're right but upon reading the article it does seem to actually be a form of Whig history - the article attributes the actual first work on this to Galileo (not Einstein), so while the headline is misleading, the article content seems to simply be surprised someone in the 14th century could be aware that gravity causes objects to accelerate at all.

The idea that the Galileo in being the first to formalise an equation for precise calculation of acceleration was by extension the first in history to conceptualise that acceleration occurs at all is a severe infantalisation of all scientists who preceded him.

[syntaxfree]

A conservative history would emphasize more the contingency of the scientific process and the fact that it wasn’t inevitable that we’d get where we got.

Extending this: the Whig story on contemporary science (sp. as it affects policy) is that this is the best science because scientists have been improving it forever, while the conservative story is that maybe the scientists are wrong now, they’ve so often been wrong in the past.

[poiuyt098]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precursorism

states it more clearly

"... a characteristic of that kind of historical writing in which the author seeks antecedents of present-day institutions or ideas in earlier historical periods. This kind of anachronism is considered to be a form of Whig history ..."

[dragonwriter]

Except in the rare case where a new idea emerges and is introduced fully formed in its final stage, there are precursors of present-day institutions and ideas in earlier historical periods so seeking them would just be normal history.

[mannykannot]

That's true in general, but that is not what seems to be the case here, and the full article on precursorism linked by poiuyt098 suggests that correct usage would be confined to such cases.