Historiography of science

The historiography of science or the historiography of the history of science is the study of the history and methodology of the sub-discipline of history, known as the history of science, including its disciplinary aspects and practices (methods, theories, schools) and the study of its own historical development ("History of History of Science", i.e., the history of the discipline called History of Science). Historiographical debates regarding the proper method for the study of the history of science are sometimes difficult to demarcate from historical controversies regarding the course of science. Early controversies of the latter kind are considered by some to be the inception of the sub-discipline. Histories of science were originally written by practicing and retired scientists, a notable early example being William Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences (1837). Biographies of natural philosophers (early scientists) were also popular in the nineteenth century, helping to create Isaac Newton as a scientific genius and national hero in Great Britain. H.G. Wells began a trend for histories of science on the grand scale, a kind of epic of civilisation and progress, with his Outline of History (1919/1920). Popular accounts of science's past were often linked to speculations about its future, with science fiction authors such as Isaac Asimov and L. Sprague de Camp dabbling in the two. In the early 1930s, a paper given by the Soviet historian Boris Hessen prompted many historians to look at the ways in which scientific practices were allied with the needs and motivations of their context. Hessen's work focused on socio-political factors in what science is done, and how. This method of doing the history of science that became known as externalism looks at the manner in which science and scientists are affected, and guided by, their context and the world in which they exist. It is an approach which eschews the notion that the history of science is the development of pure thought over time, one idea leading to another in a contextual bubble which could exist at any place, at any time, if only given the right geniuses.