The scientific origins of ideas - genealogy as conceptual reverse engineering

Overview of the book "The Scientific Roots of Ideas - Genealogy as Conceptual Reverse Engineering": Why have highly abstract ideas such as truth, knowledge, or justice become so important to us? What is the purpose of thinking with these terms? Matthew Kilby — the winner of the 2020 Leonard Prize for Emerging Philosophers — in this notable book "The Practical Roots of Ideas" presents a philosophical approach to answer such questions: the pragmatic genealogy approach. Pragmatic genealogy is partly fictional narratives, and partly historical stories; it explores what might drive us to develop certain ideas in order to understand how we benefit from these ideas. This book reveals a tradition of pragmatic genealogy that has not received enough appreciation; it intersects with the analytic and continental divide in philosophy: starting from the state of nature scenes at David Hume, passing through early genealogy at Friedrich Nietzsche, and ending with modern works in analytic philosophy by Edward Craig, Bernard Williams, and Miranda Fricker. However, these genealogies combine imagination and history in ways that even sympathetic philosophers find perplexing when using narratives of the state of nature or real history. To understand why both imagination and history are necessary, the book provides a systematic framework for pragmatic genealogies as dynamic models that perform reverse engineering of ideas — not only concerning human needs that are almost universal but also social and historical needs. This enables the approach to offer explanations without reductionism, helping us understand what has directed our ideas toward their practical origins. Moreover, beyond being neutrally normative, pragmatic genealogy can influence the scope of causes, which can guide our efforts to develop our conceptual toolkit by helping us determine whether our ideas are worth adopting and when.