ABSTRACT
In the late nineteenth century historians based their emerging profession's standards on those of science, while in the first half of the twentieth the social stature of scientists became the measure of their own aspirations. Thomas Kuhn's work changed the entire perspective of historians working on the history of science by proposing that science was a social activity, its premises, methods, subject matter, and lines of inquiry all socially determined by members of a self-selected group. In Edward Shils's essay, "Center and Periphery," he described it as a power zone, which ''impinges in various ways on those who live within the ecological domain in which the society exists". Academic science proffered to women uninterested in direct access to political life an alternative avenue to the exercise of power. Mary Lyon presented the study of science so that it appeared under the aegis of evangelical objectives, but was generally compatible with the objectives of the college men.
