ABSTRACT
Helene Metzger aimed to make herself a ‘contemporary’ of her own sources in order to translate them for readers. Her goal was to make those texts understandable and relevant to her readers, who had rather different views of nature and science. The discussion about anachronism largely presupposes a historical view of science, and of science as human activity, or process, rather than a collection of truths, as Cunningham among others has pointed out. Against Enlightenment and positivist traditions, Metzger re-admitted into science not only emotions, but also ways of thinking that in the eyes of her peers fell short of modern rationality. Metzger originally based her own concept of active analogy on Lucien Levy-Bruhl’s concept of participation, which was for him the hallmark of primitive mentality. Metzger wrote her history of science in conscious opposition to the then mainstream historiography, which was focused on the results of science, rather than its processes, and on great men and discoveries.
