The Social Construction of Science: Institutionalisation and Definition of Positive Science in the Latter Half of the Seventeenth Century

Abstract

This essay is intended to contribute to the debate about the internal or external historiography of the rise of modern science. The internal-external distinction defines the contest between two explanatory programs. The one analyzes the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century as a cognitive transformation in the history of the endogenous development of intellectual structures, the other seeks the reasons for this transformation in the technical, economic and cultural conditions of the society (2). The point of contention between the two programs is that the internal program not only seeks to reconstruct the development of science logically but also to explain it historically. It assumes an independent history of intellectual structures; the development of the forms of knowledge is an independent variable of cultural evolution. The external program, on the other hand, views the social structures and the environment of science not simply as contingent boundary conditions or as a complementary dimension of the development of the logical structures of thought but regards them as constitutive of these.