The subject of the present work is what I consider to be the essentials of the historiography of science. I discuss a number of problems which, I suggest, are of fundamental importance to almost any serious historical study of science, irrespective of its particular field and period. There are, of course, historiographical issues which are peculiar to certain approaches, disciplines and periods. Most of these I have left untreated or only touched lightly. Thus science before 1500 only figures sporadically in the book, and issues peculiar to the social and institutional history of science have only received scant attention. Apart from these limitations there are other important topics which I do not discuss because they are only indirectly related to the main themes of the book. These include various philosophically based views concerning the historical development of science, such as the historiographical theories of Kuhn, Lakatos and others, and also the question of the so-called driving forces of scientific development.

The structure of the book is as follows. Chapter 1 gives an outline, separated from the rest of the work, of the prehistory of history of science. The chapters 2 to 7 deal with matters of a general historiographical nature, being an introduction to theory of history as applied to history of science. As a historical discipline, history of science is amenable to the same theoretical reflections which are valid in general history. Practitioners of the discipline, whether trained as scientists or historians, should be familiar with these reflections. In chapters 8 to 10 I discuss some of the basic problems in the general historiography of science.