Blind Isolation: History of Science Behind the Iron Curtain

Abstract

This chapter reflects upon the experiences of the author who witnessed the emergence of the field of history of science in 1970s Hungary. Based partly on research and partly on his own memories and the correspondence from his private archive, Pallo argues that in Hungary behind the Iron Curtain there was not much room for independent science policy. The branches of STS, including history of science, worked in isolation from each other and from the Western tendencies. The intellectual and sociological situation of history of science in Hungary is explained in this framework of “isolation.” Isolation dominated the activity of researchers inside their scientific community and in their virtually nonexistent relationships with their compatriots living in the West, particularly in Britain, such as Polanyi, Lakatos, and Koestler. Under these circumstances the reception of Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolution remained to the philosophers.