ABSTRACT
Verdoorn's company published Sarton's guide to the history of science, Horus,2 and they were both members of a club of which Verdoorn was one of the founders, the Boston Biohistorical Club. Although Verdoorn would never become a true Sartonian, the two men did have more in common than their interest in the history of science. Sarton's pleas for a New Humanism failed to make a lasting impression and his unfinished magnum opus, the Introduction to the History of Science, is only rarely consulted by modern historians. The Biohistorical Institute changed its programme from biohistory to history of biology and, in the late 1980s, was merged with other disciplinary groups to constitute the Utrecht Institute for the History of Science. The main force behind it was science. Scientific research was the only truly progressive human activity. Science knew no boundaries, no cultural differences, no racial prejudices.
