Kuhn's Externalistic Attitude toward History of Science

Internalism has been the dominant attitude in the historiography until mid-20th century. According to this approach, the task of historiographer is to report an intellectual history for scientific theories and depicting that history of science is the history of accumulation of personal discoveries and inventions. The works of Kuhn, however, make a revolutionary turn in the historiography. Under the influence of historians like Butterfield and Koyré, Kuhn investigates science as a social institution and on this ground presents history of science as a history of separation of totality of paradigms. Kuhn believes that literature in history contains a positivistic philosophy and emphasizes the revising of this literature by a new historic attitude. Kuhn’s critics recognize some relativist and antirational elements in his attitude. This article will examine some of the main problems in the basic elements of Kuhn’s points of view.