Historiographies of Science

The goal of this series is to provide definitive assessments of the historiography and the future of major fields and approaches within the history of science. Each volume will address the major trends in historical thought within a particular field, the major debates among historians of that field, and promising new directions that may shape future scholarship. Each volume is framed in terms of what a scholar should know about the history of work in that area, if they wanted to make a meaningful and original contribution to that field. 

Each volume will be written be experts in that field for graduate students and other scholars new to the history of that field.  While other areas of history have extensive historiographic literatures (the Blackwell’s Companion series has almost sixty volumes dedicated to American history alone), history of science has very few resources from which to draw.  The paucity of historiographical reflections by leading scholars i

n the history of science makes it more difficult for new scholars to join the field, as they try to assess the traditions of research on their own.  These volumes will offer an informed introduction to major issues that will foster new, original research in the history of science.  

Editors will be asked to select topic areas/ fields that they think have had a substantial and diverse body of scholarship.  Each volume will be informed by different methods, theories, and perspectives that can be compared and contrasted in each volume.