ABSTRACT
Helene Metzger’s first book, La genese de la science des cristaux, is based on primary sources concerning minerals, stones, shells, fossils, mountains, the sea, the whole of nature, and also crystals. As a historian, she tended to show that her sources compelled her, but then as a historiographer she easily changed perspective and regarded the selection of sources as a choice that presupposes a particular view of science, knowledge and history. Abel Rey’s view of history of science was analogous to Henri Berr’s view of general history. Berr’s historical synthesis is similar to what Michel Foucault called ‘total history’: ‘a total description draws all phenomena around a single centre – a principle, a meaning, a world-view, an overall shape’. In her more mature work, Newton, Stahl, Boerhaave, Metzger emphasised that the history of science was well behind history of art and history of literature.
