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Historiographical preoccupation is typical for fast developing fields, and the history of science is developing and changing rapidly. Fifteen years ago, when the professionalization of the history of science started, the then Young Turks were fiercely critical of the nineteenth-century posi-tivistic influence and extolled the serene beauty of pure history of ideas which does not view the growth of knowledge as an item-by-item accumulation of positive contributions. In 1963 Agassi could still write that historians of science "paint people as well as ideas black or white",¹ and that their "criterion for whiteness is the up-to-date science textbook".² This criticism does not apply any more. By the early 1960's history of ideas in broad cultural setting, relying on metaphysical conceptions and "Weltanschauung" as influencing factors, had won the day, and Alexander Koyré's work became the hall-mark of perfection. A few years ago, under the impression of rich and numerous historical studies, and with the weakening of the anti-Marxist sentiment among the intellectuals, the conclusion that among the decisive factors on the development of knowledge one had to consider socio-political and economic ones, became inescapable. The historiographical issue now became "internal" as against "external" history.³ Under the banner of "external" history the social history of science became dominant. What this meant was revising Marxist studies⁴ written in the 1930's and writing institutional history of science, i.e. historical studies on the emergence, growth and structure of academies, universities and learned societies.⁵ Generally the presupposition behind these works is that institutions have influence on the way scientists act and thus have an indirect impact on the scientific product. Some philosophers of science, like I. Lakatos⁶ accept happily the internal- external dichotomy because it seems to them that it saves the applicability of logic as the unique tool for appraisal of scientific theories. At the same time the Young Turks of nowadays presuppose that there is a direct social influence on knowledge in general and on scientific knowledge in particular. These are groping towards a "Mannheim Revisited" (or perhaps Scheler) yet to be written.⁷

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-010-2128-9_15

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