| Historiographic school | Conception of history of science | Picture of both science and scientists | Historians’ task |
| (Old) positivistic Historiography | History of the positive scientific results; determination of a discover’s date | Science as a cumulative growth; a great scientist as a point of accumulation of a lot of results | Ordering the cumulative results, linearization of the events |
| KOYRE’ (1939) | History of both results and errors in the scientific development | Each scientist is placed within both the culture of his time and the scientific context | Recognition of both scientific and philosophical factors of the historical change |
| (SSR) | History of science structured by revolutions | Scientists’ community, normal science, paradigm, anomaly, incommensurability, revolution | Recognition of the paradigms severed by revolutions |