5 INTRODUCTION: BORIS HESSEN AND THE DIALECTICS OF NATURAL SCIENCE Sean WINKLER * Boris Hessen (1893 – 1936) 1 is best known for his talk at the 2 nd International Congress of the History of Science and Technology in London in 1931, entitled “The Socio-Economic Roots of Newton‟s Principia”. The talk is considered among the most famous in the historiography of science and yet, the study of Hessen‟s work as a whole has been plagued by a number of contradictions that have prevented it from coming to fruition. For instance, while the 1931 talk was, singlehandedly, his most influential work, it was also the least characteristic among his writings overall. 2 And while this paper was highly influential in North America and in Western Europe indirectly, with few notable exceptions, direct study of Hessen‟s thought largely remained at a standstill in these contexts. 3 Conversely, Hessen hardly received any attention in the former Soviet Union or Eastern Bloc. 4 One could say that Hessen was too much of a Marxist for his thought to garner any real interest in the former context, while he was too open to „bourgeois‟ science to make him a figure of any note in the latter. 5 But, as the adage goes, „what‟s old becomes new again‟ and the past two decades have witnessed somewhat of a minor renaissance in Hessen studies in a number of different ways. There are ever more translations of his 1931 Newton paper, with it now being available in French, German, Greek, Korean, Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Swedish. 6 Once seen as the paradigmatic example of so-called „externalist‟ historiography of science, contemporary scholars have sought to reevaluate Hessen‟s legacy and to interpret his thought under new light. 7 What‟s more is that scholars have become less content with studying the 1931 Newton text alone and have begun on a broader scale than before, to begin delving deeper into his oeuvre. 8 How is it, then, that after almost a century of time, Hessen is only now beginning to speak to us? The mounting global cultural, political and socio-economic unrest of today suggests the growing need to once again re-imagine the world. The barriers that had for some time stood between different fields of study as well as between theory and practice are crumbling at an ever quickening rate. It is becoming more apparent that sounding of the death knell of the grand narrative was perhaps premature. Hessen, a theoretical physicist, philosopher/historian of science and a Marxist, was a product of the age of the * Faculty of Humanities – School of Philosophy; National Research University – Higher School of Economics; ul. Staraya Basmannaya, 21/4 – L307; 105066, Moscow; Russian Federation. Email: winklersp@aol.com