Kuhn and the historiographical revolution

Kuhn devoted great attention to scientific revolutions, but did not investigate what he called the “historiographical revolution”, a revolution in the Humanities, in the writing of the history of science, of which he was one of the main protagonists. In this article, after setting the stage in previous works, I attempt to outline how this revolution took place. I will argue that there was a revolutionary change in the historiography of science, but without a debate that corresponded to a revolution in the Kuhnian sense. This, as I will also try to show, does not mean that there has not been a debate of this kind. I argue that, due to theoretical and historical circumstances, the debate has shifted to the philosophy of science. The conflict, which began with a tension between the new historiography of science and the “old” philosophy of science (and led to the development of a new philosophy of science), had as one of its immediate and most important fronts precisely the relationship between history of science and philosophy of science