The term "paradigm", divulged by Thomas Kuhn thirty-nine years ago, is ossibly the most frequent term to come from philosophy of science in use in social sciences and among historians, in the last decades. Among specialists it was identified as an interesting concept in order to examine the changes in historiography that occurred in the Twentieth Century, although it has also become a commonplace expression to refer to ideas that characterize any group of historians. In this paper we are going to coment

on the sense in which "kuhnian theory" is applicable to examination of historiography. In it we emphasize two main arguments

1. Taken literally Kuhn´s Theory of "scientific revolutions" does not serve to explain the appearance of the main groups of historians in the Twentieth Century. This phenomenon responds to factors that were not taken into account by Thomas Kuhn, given that focused on to communities of physicists, chemists and mathematicians.

2. However, this fact does not invalidate the application of important aspects of the above-mentioned theory to studies of the history of historiography. The discipline of History, its peculiarities aside, is an

intellectual work with features similiar to other scientific professions; in particular its tendency to be an international discipline endowed with certain "paradigmatic" criteria for protagonists and social contexts, which constitute its subject-matter, and the means of argumentation. To some degree these are the features which make possible international debate and the tendencies towards interdisciplinarity. Therefore the criterion of "paradigms" allows the discipline of History to be seen as something more than a simple relationship of isolated groups and "schools", or national historiographies. For example, the so-called "new histories" of the last decades can be interpreted in a different manner to what is considered usual they are not so much an emergence of scattered "paradigms" brought about by the "collapse" of economic and social history, but a tendency towards a new international "paradigm" inspired by new criteria ("micro-historic" and "culture-oriented"), or in the correction of the same "paradigm" of economic and social history.

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In original language,

1º) En qué medida, el concepto de "paradigma" está en condiciones de sustituir al más tradicional de "escuela" para reflexionar sobre el alcance internacional de los cambios de la historiografía en el siglo XX.

2º) En qué medida, además, la historiografía de las tres últimas décadas -las llamadas "nuevas historias"- plantea nuevos retos al manejo de la noción de "paradigma", dado el desafío de éstas a la creencia de que el "paradigma rankiano" habría sido sustituido con pleno éxito por varios paradigmas coincidentes en la defensa de la Historia económica y social (el marxista, el de Annales, etc.)

A la primera cuestión se responde en sentido favorable efectivamente, tanto la noción de "paradigma" en el sentido amplio de "matriz disciplinar" como en la acepción más restringida de "ejemplos modélicos", permite entender plenamente el éxito internacional de la historia económica y social, sobre todo en los años cicuenta y sesenta. De hecho, aquí se halla una de las claves de que se haya convertido en un tópico el vocablo "paradigma" se compagina fácilmente con la imagen de la profesión de historiador, una profesión que ha mantenido su relativa autonomía en las últimas décadas en medio de otras profesiones intelectuales.