Focus

 

Below you will find the Focus sections from the most recent issues of Isis. The Focus sections are designed to attract readers in all areas of the field by dealing with themes that cut across chronological boundaries. Originally they were intended as tools for scholars who wished to explore new perspectives in the history of science. But they have proven to be valuable teaching tools as well and we therefore decided to make them more widely accessible.
 

March 2013, 104:1
Focus: The Future of the History of Science

• Introduction, Bernard Lightman
  
• The History of Science as Oxymoron: From Scientific Exceptionalism to Episcience, Ken Alder
• The Global and Beyond: Adventures in the Local Historiographies of Science, Carla Nappi
• Ancient Science in a Digital Age, Daryn Lehoux
• Computational Perspectives in the History of Science: To the Memory of Peter Damerow, Manfred D. Laubichler, Jane Maienschein, and Jürgen Renn
• The Shape of the History of Science Profession, 2038: A Prospective Retrospective, Lynn K. Nyhart

December 2012, 103:4
Focus: Listmania

• Introduction, James Delbourgo and Staffan Müller-Wille
• Specimen Lists: Artisanal Writing or Natural Historical Paperwork?, Valentina Pugliano
• The “New World of Sciences”: The Temporality of the Research Agenda and the Unending Ambitions of Science, Vera Keller
• Listing People, James Delbourgo
• Lists as Research Technologies, Staffan Müller-Wille and Isabelle Charmantier

September 2012, 103:3
Focus: Applied Science

• Introduction, Robert Bud
  
• Thinking Again about Science in Technology, Jennifer Karns Alexander
• The Origins of Pure and Applied Science in Gilded Age America, Paul Lucier
• “Applied Science”: A Phrase in Search of a Meaning, Robert Bud
• “Vague and Artificial”: The Historically Elusive Distinction between Pure and Applied Science, Graeme Gooday
• From Art to Applied Science, Eric Schatzberg

June 2012, 103:2
Focus: Follow the Money: Networks, Peers, and Patronage in the History of Science

• The Money Trail: A New Historiography for Networks, Patronage, and Scientific Careers, Casper Andersen, Jakob Bek-Thomsen, and Peter C. Kjærgaard
• Time, Money, and History, David Edgerton
• Reluctant Entrepreneurs: Patents and State Patronage in New Technosciences, circa 1870–1930, Christine MacLeod
• The Fossil Trade: Paying a Price for Human Origins, Peter C. Kjærgaard

March 2012, 103:1
Focus: Focus: Textbooks in the Sciences

• Introduction: The Secret Lives of Textbooks, Marga Vicedo
• Translating Textbooks: Russian, German, and the Language of Chemistry, Michael D. Gordin
• Between Training and Popularization: Regulating Science Textbooks in Secondary Education, Adam R. Shapiro
• Playing the Game: Psychology Textbooks Speak Out about Love, Marga Vicedo
• A Tale of Two Textbooks: Experiments in Genre, David Kaiser 

December 2011, 102:4
Focus: The History of Scientific Instruments

• Introduction: Reengaging with Instruments, Liba Taub
• Early Modern Mathematical Instruments, Jim Bennett
  
• Easily Cracked: Scientific Instruments in States of Disrepair, Simon Schaffer
• Medical Instruments in Museums: Immediate Impressions and Historical Meanings, Ken Arnold and Thomas Söderqvist

September 2011, 102:3
Focus: The History of Science and the History of Mathematics

• The Skeleton in the Closet: Should Historians of Science Care about the History of Mathematics?, Amir Alexander
• Between Timelessness and Historiality: On the Dynamics of the Epistemic Objects of Mathematics, Moritz Epple
• AfterMath: The Work of Proof in the Age of Human–Machine Collaboration, Stephanie Dick
• “This Compendious Language”: Mathematics in the World of Augustus De Morgan, Joan L. Richards
• History of Mathematics and History of Science Reunited?, Jeremy Gray
• History of Mathematics and History of Science, Tony Mann

June 2011, 102:2
Focus: Alchemy and the History of Science

• Introduction, Bruce T. Moran
• Alchemy Restored, Lawrence M. Principe
• What Have We Learned from the Recent Historiography of Alchemy?, William R. Newman
• Alchemy as Studies of Life and Matter: Reconsidering the Place of Vitalism in Early Modern Chymistry, Ku-ming (Kevin) Chang
• Words and Works in the History of Alchemy, Tara E. Nummedal

March 2011, 102:1
Focus: Between and Beyond “Histories of Science” and “Histories of Medicine”

• Introduction, John V. Pickstone, Michael Worboys
• The History of Medicine and the Scientific Revolution, Harold J. Cook
• Practice and the Science of Medicine in the Nineteenth Century, Michael Worboys
• Historiography of Biomedicine: “Bio,” “Medicine,” and In Between, Ilana Löwy
• Sketching Together the Modern Histories of Science, Technology, and Medicine, John V. Pickstone

December 2010, 101:4
Focus: Performing Science

• Placing Performance, Iwan Rhys Morus
• Taking a Bow in the Theater of Things, Michael Wintroub
• An Experimenter's Gotta Do What an Experimenter's Gotta Do—But How?, Peter Heering
• Worlds of Wonder: Sensation and the Victorian Scientific Performance, Iwan Rhys Morus
• Pedagogy and Performativity: Rendering Laboratory Lives in the Documentary Naturally Obsessed: The Making of a Scientist, Natasha Myers

September 2010, 101:3
Focus: History of Science and Literature and Science: Convergences and Divergences

• Making Knowledge: History, Literature, and the Poetics of Science, James J. Bonom
• Modifiable Futures: Science Fiction at the Bench, Colin Milburn
• Science Surveys and Histories of Literature: Reflections on an Uneasy Kinship, Laura Otis
• Lessons from Literature for the Historian of Science (and Vice Versa): Reflections on “Form”, Henry S. Turner
• Of Atoms, Oaks, and Cannibals; or, More Things That Talk, Laura Dassow Walls

June 2010, 101:2
Focus: New Perspectives on Science and the Cold War

• Hunter Heyck and David Kaiser: Introduction, Hunter Heyck, David Kaiser
• Transnational Science during the Cold War: The Case of Chinese/American Scientists, Zuoyue Wang
• Technophilic Hubris and Espionage Styles during the Cold War, Kristie Macrakis
• Mathematical Models, Rational Choice, and the Search for Cold War Culture, Paul Erickson
• Social Science in the Cold War, David C. Engerman
• “Hypothetical Machines”: The Science Fiction Dreams of Cold War Social Science, Rebecca Lemov

March 2010, 101:1
Focus: Global Histories of Science

• Introduction, Sujit Sivasundaram
• When Science Became Western: Historiographical Reflections, Marwa Elshakry
• Global Histories, Vernacular Science, and African Genealogies; or, Is the History of Science Ready for the World?, Helen Tilley
• The Enchantment of Science in India, Shruti Kapila
• Global Knowledge on the Move: Itineraries, Amerindian Narratives, and Deep Histories of Science, Neil Safier
• Sciences and the Global: On Methods, Questions, and Theory, Sujit Sivasundaram

December 2009, 100:4
Focus: The Emotional Economy of Science

• Introduction, Paul White
• Bodies, Hearts, and Minds: Why Emotions Matter to Historians of Science and Medicine, Fay Bound Alberti
• Darwin's Emotions: The Scientific Self and the Sentiment of Objectivity, Paul White
• Enduring Emotions: James L. Halliday and the Invention of the Psychosocial, Rhodri Hayward
• “Would I Had Him with Me Always”: Affects of Longing in Early Artificial Intelligence, Elizabeth A. Wilson
• Afterword: A Reflection on Feelings and the History of Science, Otniel E. Dror

September 2009, 100:3
Focus: Darwin as a Cultural Icon

• Introduction , James A. Secord
• Looking at Darwin: Portraits and the Making of an Icon, Janet Browne
• “You Are Here”: Missing Links, Chains of Being, and the Language of Cartoons, Constance Areson Clark
• Singing His Praises: Darwin and His Theory in Song and Musical Production, Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis

June 2009, 100:2
Focus: Historicizing “Popular Science”

• Introduction , Jonathan R. Topham
• Varieties of Popular Science and the Transformations of Public Knowledge: Some Historical Reflections, Andreas W. Daum
• Reflections on Popular Science in Britain: Genres, Categories, and Historians, Ralph O'Connor
• Popular Science in National and Transnational Perspective: Suggestions from the American Context, Katherine Pandora
• A Historical Perspective on Science and Its “Others”, Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent

March 2009, 100:1
Focus: 100 Volumes of Isis: The Vision of George Sarton

• Introduction, Bernard Lightman
• Ego and the International: The Modernist Circle of George Sarton, Lewis Pyenson and Christophe Verbruggen
• George Sarton, His Isis, and the Aftermath, Gerald Holton
• The History of Science and the History of the Sciences: George Sarton, Isis, and the Two Cultures, Peter Dear
• Rethinking Sarton's Institute for History of Science and Civilization—Virtually, Jane Maienschein
• The American History of Science Society or the International History of Science Society? The Fate of Cosmopolitanism since George Sarton, Ronald L. Numbers

December 2008, 99:4
Focus: Laboratory History

• Reflections , Robert E. Kohler
• The Laboratory Challenge: Some Revisions of the Standard View of Early Modern Experimentation, Ursula Klein
• Placing or Replacing the Laboratory in the History of Science?, Graeme Gooday
• Laboratory Design for Post-Fordist Science, Thomas F. Gieryn

September 2008, 99:3
Focus: Counterfactuals and the Historian of Science

• Introduction: Why What If?, Gregory Radick
• Ideology, Inevitability, and the Scientific Revolution, John Henry
• What Darwin Disturbed: The Biology That Might Have Been, Peter J. Bowler
• Genuine Possibilities in the Scientific Past and How to Spot Them, Steven French
• The Normative Turn: Counterfactuals and a Philosophical Historiography of Science, Steve Fuller

June 2008, 99:2
Focus: What is the Value of History of Science?

• What Difference Does History of Science Make, Anyway?, Jane Maienschein and George Smith
• Does Science Education Need the History of Science?, Graeme Gooday, John M. Lynch, Kenneth G. Wilson, and Constance K. Barsky
• Taxonomy and Why History of Science Matters for Science: A Case Study, Andrew Hamilton and Quentin D. Wheeler
• How Can History of Science Matter to Scientists?, Jane Maienschein, Manfred Laubichler, and Andrea Loettgers
• Science in the Everyday World: Why Perspectives from the History of Science Matter, Katherine Pandora and Karen A. Rader
• History of Science and American Science Policy, Zuoyue Wang and Naomi Oreskes

March 2008, 99:1
Focus: Changing Directions in History and Philosophy of Science

• Scientific Philosophy as a Topic for History of Science, Alain Richardson
• On Scientific Observation, Lorraine Daston
• Ten Problems in History and Philosophy of Science, Peter Galison
• History and Philosophy of Science in a New Key, Michael Friedman