ABSTRACT
Historians generally grumble at the liberties taken with letters and papers by editors and biographers in the past, while reviewers may complain at the professorial pomposities which interfere with the reader's interaction with the text. Both scientists and philosophers tend towards internal history, seeing the science as the foreground and the other parts of the life and times of the scientist or the institution as the background. Science is not an activity that needs no explanation. At different times and places it has flourished or languished, and emphasis on utility or on intellectual interest has also varied. If science is public knowledge, then generally speaking what was not published was not science; and if there is no such thing as a logic of discovery, but only perhaps of confirmation or falsification; then the manuscripts of scientists might be only of very moderate interest.
