On March 30, 2020, UNESCO hosted a global ministerial dialogue on scientific cooperation in the face of COVID‐19. By that time, WHO had called COVID‐19 a pandemic, cases in Europe and the USA were skyrocketing, and stock markets were crashing. The first virtual meeting of its kind was clearly a success, despite the unfamiliar tools (such as the “mute” function), with 77 science ministers and several

This spotlight issue encourages reflection on the current COVID‐19 pandemic, not simply through comparisons with previous epidemics, but also by illustrating that epidemics deserve study within their broader cultural, political, scientific, and geographic contexts. Epidemics are not solely a function of pathogens; they are also a function of how society is structured, how political power is wielded

The notion of “emerging infectious diseases” (EID) as a category of global health concerns was created in the 1990s to acknowledge that, although public health interventions, vaccines, and antibiotics since the late 19th century had given wealthier parts of the world control over most infectious diseases, the experience of Ebola and HIV/AIDS showed that new human diseases could still arise. “Emerging

The epidemic of COVID‐19 appears to be reshaping the world, separating before and after, present and past. Its perceived novelty raises the question of what role the past might play in the present epidemic and in responses to it. Taking the view that the past has not passed, but is present in is material and immaterial remains, and continuously emerging from these, we argue that it should not be studied

This paper looks at the role of state and society in the history of epidemic governance in China for an appreciation of the way China manages the current COVID‐19 epidemic.

This brief survey article examines the strategies to cope with plague in early modern Italy, often hailed at the time and by historians as the country that provided the model for public health policies in other parts of Europe and even formed the basis for policies in subsequent centuries. The study is organised according to three mains themes that are familiar today, containment, mitigation, quarantine

Publication of population‐level data can help balance a government's need for authority with individual residents' practical need for autonomy, even during the chaos and urgency of an epidemic. Starting in the early 16th century, efforts to track the spread of epidemic plague across England and Wales included royal orders to compile weekly, parish‐by‐parish mortality reports. The City of London devised

We are currently experiencing one of the most disruptive pandemics in modern history. The outbreak of COVID‐19 that was first recorded in Wuhan, China and quickly spread across the globe has resulted in nearly 5 million confirmed cases to date and more than 300,000 deaths. Where we stand now, it is still uncertain how many it will infect or kill worldwide, how long it will continue, and when—if ever—life

Epidemic diseases are defined by excess. They are dramatic and they attract attention. Endemic diseases, on the other hand, are regarded as “normal” and tend to be neglected. Yet it is clear that this contrast can entail inaccurate impressions of risk, as well as disparities in the imperative to action. This paper looks at two examples, one from the early modern period and the other from the 19th century

This article compares the management of COVID‐19 in different Asian states—China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam—after their reactions to the SARS crisis in 2003. It uses animal metaphors and the concept of sentinel territory to describe the way these states have prepared for the next pandemic crisis in a mix of competition and collaboration that produces solidarity.

This article traces the historical co‐evolution of microbiology, bacteriology, and virology, framed within industrial and agricultural contexts, as well as their role in colonial and national history between the end of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century. The epistemology of germ theory, coupled with the economic interests of European colonies, has shaped the understanding of

The COVID‐19 pandemic has raised questions about what efforts were made across the world to prepare governments and healthcare systems for such an event. This spotlight article looks at developments made in “pre‐pandemic preparedness planning” following a number of outbreaks of influenza type A virus in 1997. At that time, a specific avian influenza subtype, referred to as A(H5N1), wreaked havoc among

This spotlight article reflects on President Xi Jinping's handling of the COVID‐19 epidemic and evaluates its specificities by making a brief incursion into the history of Chinese official responses to epidemics. This analysis shows that Xi Jinping's response to the COVID‐19 epidemic differs from official responses to the 2003 SARS epidemic and the cerebrospinal meningitis epidemic of 1966–1967, and

This piece seeks to elucidate how and why Latin America is neither anecdotal nor peripheral to pandemic preoccupations—nor to larger health and disease narratives—past and present. First, it examines the world's proportionately most destructive pandemic as coterminous with the rise of imperialism. Next, it traces how the impetus for international health cooperation based on regional crises predated

Amid the current COVID‐19 crisis, everyone has been called upon to offer assistance. What can historians contribute? One obvious approach is to draw on our knowledge of the history of epidemics and proclaim the lessons of history. But does history offer clear lessons? To make their expertise relevant, some historians assert that there are enduring patterns in how societies respond to all epidemics

In the present paper, I present and discuss some new information about the life of Paul Wittich from Wrocław, Poland (formerly Breslau, Germany), an elusive mathematician and astronomer of the late 16th century. Wittich seems to have played a significant role in the emergence of two important, though short‐lived, developments of late 16th‐century science: the so‐called prosthaphaeresis calculating

This is a study of Bernardino Ramazzini's De fontium mutinensium (1691) as an artefact that reveals how disparate historiographical approaches were shaped by the culture of the new science, when novel investigative practices and a new instrument‐mediated vision transformed the historical imagination in a similar way, creating a common 17th‐century experience of history. In England, De fontium was valued

In this paper, I explain Francis Bacon's use of plants as philosophical instruments in the context of his Historia vitae et mortis . My main claim is that Bacon experimented with plants in order to obtain knowledge about the hidden processes of nature, knowledge that could be transferred to the human case and used for the prolongation of life. Bacon's experiments were based on Giambattista della Porta's

In this paper, I suggest that research results from the history and philosophy of modern science provide a valuable methodological contribution for investigating early modern experimental philosophy and employ them to reassess the contribution of Giovan Battista Della Porta to its development. In modern science, the production of experimental knowledge is dependent on a complex array of communication

The editors of scientific journals are key gatekeepers for building careers and communicating knowledge, but we know far less about them than about scientific authors and readers. Using a variety of methodological approaches, this issue of Centaurus investigates the motivations for editorship, and the practices,strategies and resources needed to carry it out successfully. It asks us to reflect on how

This paper explores the editorial influence of Joseph Banks on the Philosophical Transactions —still, at the time of his accession to the Presidency of the Royal Society in 1778, the most prestigious scientific periodical published in English. In particular, it examines how Banks forged, and wielded, personal influence over what went into the Transactions . Nominally, at least, the periodical was under

Mainly known for its links to the periodical market and radical politics, this article recontextualizes the editorship of William Nicholson (1753–1815) in terms of its roots in the metropolitan natural philosophical circles of the second half of the 18th century as well as its impact on experimenters and men of science after 1797. The article argues that Nicholson's editorship of the Journal of Natural

In 1798, astronomer Franz Xaver von Zach in Gotha and publisher Friedrich Justin Bertuch in Weimar launched the first astronomical‐geographical journal, Allgemeine geographische Ephemeriden (AGE ). The journal was intended to provide professionals and interested lay readership with high‐quality maps, information about new discoveries, and statistical data. The periodical was shaped by Zach's expertise

This paper scrutinizes the attempts of 19th‐century Belgian and Dutch physician‐editors to convey foreign knowledge in new ways. By analysing their editorial practices and strategies—including the duplication (reprinting in full), reduction, modification, and translation of texts—it shows that the introduction of periodical publishing in medicine involved experimentation not only with the style of

Ever since the Royal Society replaced the editor of the Philosophical Transactions with an editorial committee in 1752, it created an increasingly complex system which distributed editorial work and responsibility among many individuals. A 1902 suggestion that the Society ought to appoint an editor offers an opportunity to explore what the role of “editor” was believed to be: why might such a role

Diagrams in medieval manuscripts of Greek mathematical and astronomical works can seem peculiar for a modern reader, given their persistent and widespread tendency to represent more geometric regularity than the argument requires and their usual visual inaccuracy in depicting the mathematical objects discussed in the text. Although most scholars believe that these tendencies go back to the original

In this article I present the unique partial transmission of Euclid's Elements in the medieval Hebrew calendrical treatise Yesod 'Olam (The Foundation of the World ), which was composed by Isaac Israeli in 14th‐century Toledo. After a short introduction of Yesod 'Olam , I discuss the role of mathematics, as understood by Israeli, in the study of astronomy and the Jewish calendar. I then provide a mapping

The aim of this paper is to shed light on the transmission of Euclid's Elements in the Middle Ages, and in particular of an Arabic version of this work, which medieval sources attribute to al‐Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf ibn Maṭar. I examine some medieval reports that explicitly ascribe certain textual variants and diagrams to this “Ḥajjāj‐version.” These reports concern Books II–V and VII–X. I compare them to

This article focuses on the Russian chemist Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev's assessment of certain representations of various aspects of the periodic system that employed more mathematical methodology. The equations of interest were created by E. J. Mills, B. N. Chicherin, and J. H. Vincent. The English chemist Mills tried to find a firmer numerical basis for the periodicity of the elements. The Russian

The grandeur of the celebration to mark the centenary of Marcellin Berthelot's birth in 1927 surpassed even that of the Pasteur centenary 4 years earlier. The explanation lies in the contemporary state of international relations in science, following the exclusion since 1919 of Germany and the other Central Powers from the International Research Council and its associated disciplinary unions. In the

This paper explores the editorial policies and practices of three scientific journal published in Edinburgh in the first half of the 19th century. The first of these was the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal (1819–1826), and its continuation as the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal (1826–1854). It was edited until 1824 by Robert Jameson, Edinburgh's professor of natural history, and David Brewster

The current SARS‐CoV‐2 crisis raises questions about the challenges faced by nation states and international organisations in offering a coordinated international response to the pandemic, and reveals the great vulnerability of European countries, which are implementing lockdown measures and imposing restrictions on international travel, for the most part on a unilateral basis. Such measures run counter

In journalism subjectivity is not the binary opposite of objectivity. The protagonists on both sides of the Cold War propaganda war were engaged in neither objective nor subjective journalism. While Western journalists working in the trenches of the Cold War at Radio Free Europe or Voice of America used the “mimicry of objectivism” and the “aura of objectivity” as their weapons to counter political

Radio Free Europe used balloons to drop leaflets in an attempt to supplement radio with printed words in the 1950s—a historical moment when closing borders, censoring the press, jamming foreign radios, tapping telephone lines, and tracking letters from abroad created an almost hermetically sealed space without many means for exchanging information across the Iron Curtain. This article traces how distorted

During the communist era, Radio Free Europe (RFE) was Romania's favorite radio station. This paper analyzes the role of RFE in everyday life in the strictly controlled Romanian communist state by looking at the broadcasts of RFE's Romanian Department, their audience, and their impact. Drawing largely on the RFE archives at the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives (OSA) and the former secret

In Polish historiography on radio in the Stalinist period, the official propaganda broadcast by Polish Radio is very often juxtaposed with the free and unbiased broadcasting of Radio Free Europe (RFE), which can create the impression that RFE was the only source of information in Poland and tends to diminish the importance of Polish Radio. In fact, both broadcasting institutions were crucial players

During the summer of 1900, the Chemical Section of the Society for the Promotion of Russian Industry and Commerce in Warsaw published a very special booklet in which prominent philologists debated proposals concerning adjustments to chemical nomenclature. Several issues were discussed, including systems of classification of chemical compounds, new specialist terms, and which element names to select

Following the 15th anniversary of the European Society for the History of Science (ESHS), one can definitely say that this relatively young society has come of age. Through regular meetings, a journal, a prize, fellowships and various other activities, the ESHS has been striving to create a space fostering diversity, plurality and internationalization among historians of science, located in Europe

Several fields of research associated with the history of the early modern Iberian world have experienced a significant boost in recent decades: Iberian science as it relates to the Atlantic world, the history of European colonial empires, and the study of knowledge production in Latin American cultures. This expansion has coincided with a renewed interest of historians of the early modern period in

Broadly speaking, Victorian scientific periodicals fell into one of two categories: specialist periodicals aimed at publishing original research for an audience of scientific researchers, or popularizing periodicals meant to share news about science with a broader readership. When astronomer Norman Lockyer founded Nature in 1869, he envisioned his new weekly as a member of the latter group. That vision

It is fairly well‐known that both Dmitri Mendeleev (1834–1907) and Lothar Meyer (1830–1895) were in the process of writing textbooks when they realized that the connection between the atomic weights of elements and their properties could lead to a classification system that encompassed all of the elements. However, little has been written about the role of chemical pedagogy in the development of the

The aim of this essay is to examine the iconic nature of Mendeleev's periodic table in light of the philosophy of the American pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce. Mendeleev and Peirce lived at approximately the same time during the 19th and early 20th centuries. They both trained as chemists and, in 1869, the year of Mendeleev's first arrangement of the chemical elements, Peirce published his own arrangement

The periodic system is an icon of science, with an exceptional level of usage around the world. It is especially celebrated as a source of information and pedagogical tool. Although many publications on the history and philosophy of the system have appeared over the years, few of them deal with its underlying values aside from predictability. In this issue, scholars from different disciplines use the

Mendeleev was one of a dozen or more chemists who aimed to create a classification of elements in the mid‐19th century. Mendeleev distinguished himself among the discoverers of the periodic system in their priority disputes because he was the only one who bothered to provide a clear definition of the entities to be ordered. This paper will first outline the role of Mendeleev's conceptual distinction

Like other scientific concepts, the idea of a chemical element has changed considerably over time, since it was first established in the Enlightenment era. In Dmitri Mendeleev's construction of the periodic system, he distinguished between simple substances and elements as defined by their atomic weights. The foundation of the periodic system on the latter concept led to several challenges. For example

After 150 years of scientific developments, the periodic system of chemical elements is still an icon of modern science. Its resilience is striking. The icon used today by scientists and teachers is in fact the outcome of many rearrangements and reinterpretations by the scientific community during that period. This success is often explained as a result of the underlying atomic structure, discovered

While symbolic colour use has always played a conspicuous role in science research and education, the use of colour in historic diagrams remains a lacuna in the history of science. Investigating the colour use in diagrams often means uncovering a whole cosmology that is not otherwise explicit in the diagram itself. The periodic table is a salient and iconic example of non‐mimetic colour use in science

The paper discusses the publications of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (RSAS) as part of a wider network of publication exchange, linking learned societies, libraries, and archives. The periodicals of the RSAS went through several reorganisations between 1813 and 1903, all to some extent related to their role in publication exchange. Although subject to many of the same deliberations of commercial

The history of science can be better understood against the background of a history of knowledge comprising not only theoretical but also intuitive and practical knowledge. This widening of scope necessitates a more concise definition of the concept of knowledge, relating its cognitive to its material and social dimensions. The history of knowledge comprises the history of institutions in which knowledge

In the late 1950s the North-Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) made a major effort to fund collaborative research between its member states. One of the first initiatives following the establishment of the alliance's Science Committee was the creation of a sub-group devoted to marine science: the Sub-committee on Oceanographic Research.This paper explores the history of this organization, charts its

When Mary Cholmeley married Henry Fairfax in 1627, she carried to her new home in Yorkshire a leather-bound notebook filled with medical recipes. Over the next few decades, Mary and Henry, their children and various members of the Fairfax and Cholmeley families continually entered new medical and culinary information into this 'treasury for health.' Consequently, as it stands now, the manuscript can

This article examines one of the most widely believed episodes in the life of Charles Darwin, that the death of his daughter Annie in 1851 caused the end of Darwin's belief in Christianity, and according to some versions, ended his attendance of church on Sundays. This hypothesis, it is argued, is commonly treated as a straightforward true account of Darwin's life, yet there is little or no supporting

In historiography there is a tendency to see the Great War as marking the end of scientific optimism and the period that followed the war as a time of discord. Connecting to current (inter)national historiographical debate on the question of whether the First World War meant a disruption from the pre-war period or not, this article strives to prove that faith in scientific progress still prevailed

This paper offers a caution that emphasis upon the importance of mathematics in recent historiography is in danger of obscuring the historical fact that, for the most part, mathematics was not seen as important in the pre-modern period. The paper proceeds by following a single case study, and in so doing offers the first account of the mathematical writings of Jean Fernel (1497-1558), better known

Scientific networks are often credited with bringing about institutional change and professional advancement, but less attention has been paid to their instability and occasional failures. In the 1970s optimism among academic women was high as changing US policies on sex discrimination in the workplace, including higher education, seemed to promise equity. Encouraged by colleagues, Shyamala Rajender

Between 1799 and 1806, trials of vaccination to determine its safety and efficacy were undertaken in hospitals in London, Paris, Vienna, and Boston. These trials were among the first instances of formal hospital evaluations of a medical procedure and signal a growing acceptance of a relatively new approach to medical practice. These early evaluations of smallpox vaccination also relied on descriptive

In the 1870s, Ewald Hering and Samuel Butler provided what was, for that time, a scientifically coherent foundation for the Lamarckist view that positive adaptations to the environment acquired during an individual's lifetime can be transmitted to the offspring. Observing that heredity was a form of memory (involving stored information), they distinguished what are now known as genotype and phenotype