Marxist roots of science studies

Abstract

This book gives an enlightening introduction to the Marxist tradition in the history of science that was founded in the period between the two World Wars. Boris Hessen’s famous and influential 1931 paper on the ‘‘The Social and Economic Roots of Newton’s Principia’’ is set in its historical, political and ideological context. And Hessen’s essay is complemented with representative writings by the much less known but more scholarly developed by Henryk Grossmann. Their common Marxist view of science is sketched and discussed in an excellent introductory essay by the editors, Gideon Freudenthal and Peter McLauglin. The editors focus on what they call the Hessen–Grossmann thesis, which is taken to be the core of a truly Marxist interpretation of the historical development of modern science. They explain how this thesis has been misinterpreted from the 1930s to the present, and they hope that by redressing the situation the Hessen–Grossmann thesis can again become a productive source of inspiration in historical scholarship on science.