Re: [Marxism] Boris Hessen and Philipp Frank

[Andrew Pollack <acpollack2@xxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks for this, Jim. If you're right about Hessen's motivations, this
is important. And in any case the intent you impute to him, on the
need for separating out the materialist grounding of a theory from
it's originator's ideology, is sound, so it's still important.
By the way (Dave, this is for you especially), Hessen's essay has
never been up at MIA even though the other talks given at the London
Congress are. Maybe now's our chance, if the pdf Jim linked to isn't
copyrighted. Even if it is, we could get a copy from a library.
A quick google on Hessen turned up Graham's book on google books, and
in fact brought me directly to the page where Graham claims Bukharin's
essay is more sociological than what he calls the "economic
determinism" of Hessen. I haven't read either in way too long to be
able to judge (Bukharin's essay IS online at MIA as part of the
Congress proceedings).
PS: The founder of the sociology of science in the US, Robert Merton,
wrote a work on the same topic as Hessen later in the same decade, a
work which made Merton famous in his field. I'll have to go back and
see how much credit Merton gave Hessen and where he diverges.
Andy P.

On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 6:54 PM, Jim Farmelant<farmelantj@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> Probably at least a few people here have
> heard of Boris Hessen, the Soviet physicist
> and historian and philosopher of science, whose
> groundbreaking paper, "The Social and Economic Roots of Newton’s
> Principia"
> (http://webfiles.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/rereadingClassics/Hessen.pdf/V1_Hess
> en.pdf)
>

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