A 1931 Soviet delegation introduced externalist history of science to Britain

Evidence

Beyond economics, the 1930s also proved to be a pivotal decade in the discipline of the history of science, a period “when radical historicist messages from Central Europe and the new Soviet Union combined with local antiquarian cultures into historiographical and institutional changes.” The movement for the planning of science gained prominence in the United Kingdom after a Russian delegation led by Nikolai Bukharin stunned the Second International Congress for the History of Science held in London in 1931.32 The audience, largely scientists and amateurs, had been unprepared to hear the discourse of dialectical materialism applied to the history of science. What sounded like a Martian language to some was a revelation to others. Relating scientific discovery to historical processes, Soviet scientists openly challenged the dominant internalist accounts of progress and discovery in science. These birth pangs of the externalist account of the history of science activated an intense scrutiny over the possibility and desirability of planning in science. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 75

Categorization

• QUESTION: This frames science planning debates as context for neoliberal response against science planning — worth tracing how the Mont Pelerin network directly answered this 1930s planning-of-science movement.