Abstract
It is a theory of any field which tells us what is its internallogic and hence, what is its internal history. What is not internal is, then, external. E.g., military incentive is external to both science and art but not to logistics. Whereas purely external study of science, such as the studies of citations of one author by others, is plainly silly, the purely internal study of science is possible but incomplete.
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The question, was Marx a “vulgar” Marxist is very intriguing. See the very forceful, if brief, discussion in Rene Wellek and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature (Harcourt, Brace, and Co., New York, 1942, 1947, 1949), Chapter 9, pp. 102–6, where the term is traced to the Marxist critics A. A. Smirnov and V. Grib, and where Marx himself and Marxism in general are presented aS ambiguous on the issue. Let me notice that “externalism” and “internalism” are presented in that enlightening volume as “extrinsic study” and “intrinsic study”, which parts III and IV, the central parts, respectively explore.
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© 1981 D. Reidel Publishing Company
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Agassi, J. (1981). Externalism. In: Science and Society. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 65. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-6456-6_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-6456-6_5
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