Abstract
In this paper, I observe that the historiographies of the social sciences differ sensibly from those of the sciences.
I start by proposing a three- part typology of this specific development and then look for the origin of these separate historiographies. I test three groups of hypothesis: (a) the social sciences are so much different from the ‘hard sciences’ that it is impossible to understand them using concepts and methods which have mostly been developed within the historiography of the ‘hard sciences’; (b) the second hypothesis assumes that the object changes less than the look at it: hence, sharing their object, it suggests that these historiographies differ because the identity and aims of the scholars who write them differ; (c) it is neither the object nor the historiographers which differ, but their relation.