Boris Hessen’s Philosophy of the Scientific Revolution

Boris Hessen is one of the most quoted historians of the Scientific Revolution but also one of the most controversial. His manifesto of Marxist historiography, “The Social and Economic Roots of Newton’s Mechanics” is still regarded — and often dismissed — as the most representative piece of ‘externalist’ history of science. What is still alive, today, of Hessen’s work and legacy? In our time, in which both economic analyses in the history of ideas and the concept of Scientific Revolutions are not fashionable anymore, what can still be learned from Hessen’s much-discussed approach to these topics?