History of Science and Political History : Intersections, Differences, Traditions

This essay deals with the complex relations between history of science and political history. In the inter-war years, most historians of science conceived of their discipline as a form of cultural history or as a history of scientific concepts and ideas. In doing so, they were reacting both to the hostile climate towards science after WWI and to Marxist scholars who stressed the connection between science and economics. In the following years history of science unfolded as cultural history. From the late 1970s historians of science developed their research in dialogue with other disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, art history and art theory, and theory of literature, making history of science a rich and complex field of studies where different approaches coexisted. Several historians of science became interested in the social dimension of science, but they tended to detach it from the economic dimension.

Historians of science have, indeed, found it difficult to engage with the main themes and methods of economic, social and political history. Focusing on four of the main historical school of the twentieth and twenty-first century (British radical social history, the École des Annales, microhistory and global history), this essay argues that a dialogue between historians of science and political historians has turned out to be difficult. It analyses how political historians have considered the role played by science, technology and medicine in their narratives and how historians of sciences have engaged poorly with political history. Finally, it argues that historians of science should pay more attention to political (and economic) history. [Publisher's text]