The history of science

internal or external?

Corina Yturbe

pp. 71-87

in: Robert S. Cohen (ed), Mexican studies in the history and philosophy of science, Berlin, Springer, 1995

Abstract

1. Contemporary historians and philosophers of science have shown an even greater reluctance to accept a dichotomy between "internal" and "external" factors that intervene in the development of scientific knowledge. In the recent Anglo-Saxon tradition, we find two fundamental positions with respect to the internal-history/external-history problem. One of these consists in defending an "internalist" position with regard to the history of science, or, at least, in supposing that internal factors have a greater relevance for science than external ones. On the other hand, there is an increasingly more serious interest in constructing a "new history of science", based on the complementarity of the internalist approach and the externalist approach, and on the utilization of methods drawn from other social disciplines.