ABSTRACT
For Gaston Bachelard and Georges Canguilhem science was essentially historical; indeed their philosophies of science were based on a study of science as a historical process. Lon Brunschvicg and Lucien Levy-Bruhl read philosophical, scientific or ethnological texts in order to find out the mentalities that had produced them. Nevertheless, philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, historians of religions, historians of science and other scholars debated with each other in places such as the Socit franaise de philosophie and the international conferences of philosophy. Moreover, the very fact that much of French philosophy of science has analysed the history of science suggests that historians of science, and indeed other historians, were an important part of their intellectual milieu. Abel Rey, who acquired his cultural capital in philosophy, and invested it the history of science, created it at the Sorbonne. His own Sorbonne chair of History and Philosophy of the Sciences was still a philosophy chair.
