La Rivoluzione scientifica in Edgar Zilsel e Herbert Butterfield

The article proposes a comparison between Edgar Zilsel and Herbert Butterfield, two of the most important historians of science of the twentieth century. After outlining the characteristics of the main historiographical currents, the paper examines the convergences and differences between the work of the Austrian scholar and that of the English historian. Although both severely criticized premodern culture and legitimized the idea of progress, Zilsel and Butterfield offered diametrically opposed interpretations of the Scientific Revolution. Against Butterfield’s historiographical hypothesis, which understands the origin of science as a response to high intellectual needs without providing a valid explanation for the genesis of the ‘scientific need,’ the essay counterposes Zilsel’s perspective, which interpreted the Scientific Revolution as an unintentional effect due to the coincidence of three factors: the crisis of Aristotelianism, the decline of feudalism, and the affirmation of the capitalist economy.