Introduction: Rethinking History of Science in the Anthropocene

Abstract

The process of thinking through the implications of the Anthropocene for the humanities, including history, is well under way. The time has come for historians of science to take stock of the situation in Anthropocene scholarship and collaboratively reflect on how we want to situate our field toward that scholarship. It will involve taking up such fundamental questions as why and how, as well as for and with whom, we do the history of science. This introduction to the Focus section “History of Science in the An-thropocene” presents the Anthropocene as both a challenge and an opportunity, opening up new avenues of research and widening spatial, temporal, and topical boundaries while giving rise to urgent problems, dilemmas, and choices that will need to be faced. The aim of this Focus section is to put these challenges and opportunities on the history of science’s agenda and, thereby, to start a discipline-wide dialogue.