Antonio Gramsci Revisited: Historians of Science, Intellectuals, and the Struggle for Hegemony

"13 In this context, it was the image of the development of science as an elitist, autonomous intellectual activity, sealed off from society, that reinforced the relevant and politically 'safe' role of the history of science as an emerging academic discipline, as a useful ally to professional scientists and educational reformers. Since Bernal's Science and history (1954) epitomized a version of Marxism, which overemphasized economic determinism, naive externalism and uncritical scientism,14 in the 1960s and 1970s, a new emphasis on cultural aspects of Marxism contributed to further analysis on the links between culture, knowledge (science) and power, on the use of science as a cultural tool for domination and social control.