Handbook for the Historiography of Science

1. “The Herodotus of Geometry”: Montucla and the Birth of a General Historiography of Science in the French Enlightenment

   • Giorgio Matteoli

2. Bourdieu and the Social History of Scientific Reason

   • Gerardo Ienna

3. Cosmopolitical Propositions: A Historiographic Analysis of Contemporary Anthropological Perspectives on Sciences

   • Nathan Willig Lima

4. Early Historiography of Science

   • Michael Segre

5. Embodied Boundaries of Historical Studies of Science: A Vision of Steven Shapin’s Historiography

   • María de los Ángeles Martini

6. Feynman’s Frameworks on Nanotechnology in Historiographical Debate

   • Raffaele Pisano, Andrea Durlo

7. Gaston Bachelard and Historical Epistemology: A New Perspective for the History of Science in the Twentieth Century

   • Fábio Ferreira de Almeida

8. Historical Epistemology: A German Connection

   • Juan A. Queijo Olano, Antonio A. P. Videira

9. Historiography of Science and Gender

   • Andrea Reichenberger

10. Historiography of Science and Philosophy of History: Toward a Rapprochement Between Disciplines That Never Ruptured

    • Matt Waldschlagel

11. Historiography of Science and the Relationship Between History and the History of Science

    • Andrea Mara R. S. Vieira

12. History of Science as History of Our Best Errors: Joseph Agassi’s Critical Historiography of Science

    • Stefano Gattei

13. Ian Hacking’s Contributions to Historical Reflection on Science

    • María Laura Martínez

14. John Desmond Bernal and “Bernalism”

    • Daniele Cozzoli

15. Leonhard Euler’s Works on the Motion of the Moon: A Historiographical Shift

    • Dmitri Starostin

16. Lorraine Daston’s Historical Epistemology: Style, Program, and School

    • Gabriel da Costa Ávila, Tiago Santos Almeida

17. Ludwik Fleck: Thought Style and Thought Collective in the Historiography of Science

    • Mauro L. Condé, Paweł Jarnicki

18. On the Interpretations of the Cultural and Techno-Scientific Significance of Portuguese Navigations: A Historiographic Approach

    • João Príncipe

19. Pierre Duhem: Between the Historiography of Science and Philosophy of History

    • Fábio Rodrigo Leite

20. Postcolonial and Decolonial Historiography of Science

    • Silvia F. de M. Figueirôa

This book aims to perform a critical and broad assessment of the historiography of science produced from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century. It presents its main authors, concepts, ideas, conceptions, and schools. It also analyzes the historical circumstances of the rise of the discipline history of science and the relations of the historiography of science with related areas. 

These chapters do not understand the historiography of science as a mere description or record of the history of science. Instead, they understand the historiography of science from the epistemological criteria and choices that guided the writing of the history of science in its different contexts. In other words, more than describing the record of the various possibilities of historiographical approaches to science, the chapters carry out an epistemological reflection to assess the bases, possibilities, scope, and limits of different historiographical conceptions, authors, and traditions that have established the writing of the history of science. 


This book can be conceived as a reference work not only for professional historians and philosophers but also for academics from different backgrounds who are initiating themselves in the universe of history and philosophy of science, be they scientists from different fields or young researchers from different backgrounds who want to start studying the history and philosophy of science.

• Historiography of Science
• Philosophy of History
• Historical Epistemology
• Thought Collective
• Historical Sociology of Science
• Historical Studies of Science
• Epistemology
• History of Science
• Philosophy of Science
• Sociology of Science

• Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil

  Mauro L. Condé

• Universidade Federal de Goiás, Goiânia, Brazil

  Marlon Salomon

​Mauro L. Condé is a Professor of History of Science (Historiography of Science) at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (Brazil) since 1998. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy (2001). From 2009 to 2010, He was a visiting scholar at Boston University (USA). He also was a visiting scholar at the University of Vienna in 2016 and the University of São Paulo in 2017. His primary academic interests and research topics focus on the relationship between the historiography of science and epistemology. Author of several articles, book’s chapters, and books on historiography of science. He wrote especially on Kuhn and Fleck and the later Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language. He was editor of several books and currently is Editor-in-Chief of Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science.

Marlon Salomon is an Associate Professor of Modern History at the Federal University of Goiás (Brazil) since 2003. In 2006 and 2009, he was a visiting professor on the history of science team at the University of Picardy Jules Verne (France). His main research interest focuses on the relationships between the historiography of science and other academic disciplines, such as philosophy and history. In recent years, he has been dedicating himself to the study of conceptions of temporality in the history of the historiography of science. He is the author of numerous studies on Alexandre Koyré and on the development of the historiography of science in France. He was editor of several books and currently is Editor-in-Chief of Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science.