Are there any historians, besides Kuhn, that have focused on a scientific view of history?

by mweuste
mikedash

That's quite a broad questions, and I'm not 100% clear what is meant by it. If you are asking about people who wanted history to be seen as a "scientific" discipline, with all that that implies about objectivity, predictivity, and the study of "facts," then yes, there were plenty of historians who aspired to that sort of view of history, but they antedated Kuhn, and Kuhn himself did not ascribe to such a view - indeed, his study of the history of science, which (put very broadly) focused on the creation of a model which explained why scientists don't always act in objective ways, would have suggested to him that history, too, is not a discipline which could or should be studied via scientific method.

Historians who did hope and expect that history could, in time, become a scientific, objective and (in some cases, at least) predictive discipline include those nineteenth century masters Leopold von Ranke and Lord Acton, both of whom hoped that it was possible, by close study of every available source of information, to create a definitive history that would render further study of a subject or a period unnecessary, and Karl Marx, whose model presumed that history followed a pre-ordained path that was explicitly predictable.

If on the other hand you're asking about historians who studied science prior to Kuhn's time in the late 1950s/early 1960s, then the answer, once again, is 'yes.' Possibly the most influential of such figures was Herbert Butterfield, whose The Origins of Modern Science was published in 1957. Butterfield's work traces the developments in scientific thought that are together known as the scientific revolution, examining the often lengthy processes by which both the classical and medieval thought systems were replaced by the foundations of modern science. His book emphasises the scientific context of each new theory to demonstrate how scientific progress is achieved. In addition, he made the influential claim that the scientific revolution moved the power balance in Europe to Western Europe and caused the fundamental aspect of Western culture to become scientific, changing the dominant worldview of Western society at large. Although attentive to this outcome, Butterfield is primarily concerned with examining the process by which this change came about.

If you'd like to clarify your question, I can try to answer any follow ups that emerge as a result.