Osiris aims to connect the history of science with other areas of historical and interdisciplinary scholarship. Volumes of the journal are designed to explore how, where, and why science, broadly construed, draws upon and contributes to society, culture, and politics. The journal’s editors and board members strongly encourage proposals that engage with and examine broad themes while aiming for diversity across time and space. The editors are equally interested in receiving proposals that assess the state of the history of science as a field, in both established and emerging areas of scholarship. They also welcome proposals that experiment with format and style. Recent volumes have addressed animal mobilities; disability and the history of science; and algorithmic cultures.

Pre-proposal:

Please send a 1-page expression of interest which includes a pitch of your idea and a list of potential collaborators by June 26, 2026 to osiris@hssonline.org. Osiris editors will be available to meet in July with those who have submitted expressions of interest, at the HSS meeting in Edinburgh or virtually. The Osiris editors are committed to provide feedback on these pre-proposals to make them competitive for the final round of selection.

Full-volume proposal:

The closing date for the submission of full-volume proposals is November 13, 2026.

Your proposal should include the following items:

• A description of the topic and its significance (approximately 1500 words), especially highlighting the importance of the proposed volume to the history of science, broadly construed.
• A list of 12 to 15 contributors and essay title + succinct description (~ 150 words) of each contributor’s individual essay
• A one-page c.v. of the guest editor(s).

The proposal and all supporting materials should be submitted as a single PDF to osiris@hssonline.org with “Osiris vol. 45 Proposal” in the title.

The guest editor(s) and their contributors must be prepared to meet the Osiris publication schedule. Volume 45 will go to press—after refereeing, authors’ revisions, and copy-editing—in 2029. The general timeline for this process from the start is as follows:

Proposal Deadline: November 2026

Proposal Acceptance: January 2027

First Drafts for Editorial Review due: January 2028

Editorial Review to Authors: March 2028

Revised Drafts for External Review due: July 2028

External Reviews to Authors: December 2028

Final Drafts due: September 2029

Copyediting: October 2029 – February 2030

Author Corrections: March 2030

Page Proofs: March 2030

Final Corrections: April 2030

Publication: May 2030

The guest editor(s) should choose contributors who are aware of this production timeline and are able to submit their completed essays for editorial review by January 2028.

The final announcement of the next volume of Osiris will be made by January 2027.

Author Interview: Jessica Leigh Hester 
Interviewed by: Dr. Siddhartha Chandra Mukherjee 

1. What inspired you to explore such a crucial but neglected history of the female students  at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania (WMCP)? 
My interest in the social dimensions of dissection sprung from survey courses in my first  semester of graduate school. We read about swashbuckling male anatomists, Vesalius,  especially. I encountered analyses of female anatomists here and there, including research on  Anna Morandi Manzolini’s Enlightenment-era wax work, plus the fascinating case studies in Katharine Park’s Secrets of Women: Gender, Generation, and the Origins of Human Dissection, which compellingly examines the many justifications offered for plumbing the recesses of female bodies in medieval and Renaissance Italy. I knew that there was rich scholarship about the ways that that air of swagger that drifted from Vesalius was reproduced by nineteenth century male students at American medical schools. There, dissection served a pedagogical purpose, but a social one, too: male students and instructors treated dissection rooms as places to  hone and showcase bawdiness, raunchiness, and particular strains of racialized violence for  themselves and each other. (John Harley Warner and James Edmonson’s book Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine, 1880-1930 testifies to that.) I kept wondering what the female medical students were up to at the time. What did the social world of the dissecting room look like for them, and why?  

I had had the chance to visit the Legacy Center Archives & Special Collections at the Drexel University College of Medicine—which houses many of the archives of WMCP—before I started school, and remembered that the collection included several first-person accounts by very diligent diarists/memoirists as well as a handful of photographic scrapbooks. It struck me as a great place to anchor this study. 

2. You show us how the dissection room played a pivotal role in enabling students to  develop what you call the “anatomo-affect,” which included working on their capacity to deal with the “ickiness” of smells. This is an invitation to think about the role of senses in the making of female doctors. What is the category of ‘sensation’ doing for you in  understanding the history of doctoring?

I’ve been interested in how sensation has long been entwined with the practice of medicine:  depending on the tradition they follow, practitioners have relied on touch to discern the pace and qualities of pulses, on sound to assess a patient’s lungs, and their sense of taste to evaluate urine. Medical labor can be a task to which a practitioner devotes their whole body, and that work has  to be taught to students. That made me curious about the sensory landscapes students encountered while learning to marshal their senses as tools of their future trade. A few semesters ago, professor Lan Li and I did a reading course together about histories of sensation. We dove into texts about how the senses become powerful tools for establishing group identities and inculcating shared beliefs (such as, for instance, by hearing a rallying chant or national anthem). Sensation as an analytic for thinking about past pedagogy really clicked for me after reading Richard Bellis’s article in the British Journal for the History of Science about William Hunter’s examinations of a pregnant person’s uterus. That article looks at how Hunter leveraged sensation  in his research and teaching, and it made me curious about what an investigation of sensation  might look like from the vantage point of students instead of teachers. I try to make the case that  the “anatamo-affect” was the way students were taught to carry their own bodies as they tended to someone else’s. I think that organizing this research around sensation has helped me examine this social curricula running parallel to the academic one.  

3. The essay is based on a range of sources, including students' diaries, meeting minutes, private papers, photographs, and so on. Could you tell us about the challenges of recovering the history of female doctors from such varied sources? 

I arrived at the Legacy Center wanting to read everything that might have some relationship to dissection. I knew I should look at annual announcements to see how the faculty advertised the anatomical elements of education and how much time students spent doing it, read the first person sources, look at photo albums, track correspondence the deans sent to other schools about dissection curricula, etc. I cast a wide net. The challenge, of course, is that one can never know where in a thick volume of meeting minutes someone might mention a complaint about bodies distributed by the anatomy board, or when a reflection on the dissecting room might punctuate a journal entry about snow or skating or the many other things that also occupied students’ thoughts and days. Even in our OCR age, I like to read in person, and one page at a time, because that process immerses you in the rest of the writer’s accounting of their world. It took me several weeks to get through these materials, and I’m really grateful to the Legacy Center for the fellowship that made it possible to be thorough and adjust my research questions in real time— and especially to the patient and dogged archivist Matt Herbison. 

4. How did the assumptions of sexual difference complicate the production of medical knowledge? Were there any differences in responses to dissection between male and female students that you would like to highlight?

It was intellectually rewarding and personally enraging to dive into the robust historiography  about the education of female physicians in the nineteenth-century U.S. Several of the scholars  whose work I cite mention incidents in which male students jeered at female students, or prospective employers discounted them. I found that, like male students, female students spent a lot of time dissecting. Then, similarly, they thought about dissection, wrote about dissection, talked about dissection, roamed the city in search of additional bodies or body parts, and took  portraits of themselves with the bodies they dismantled. But assumptions of sexual difference were still present, and close to home.  

It was interesting to learn that some of these women’s instructors were disparaging of them. That was far from universal; many of the instructors at WMCP were brilliant female doctors who were confident that they could produce other competent female physicians. But just recently, long after I finished this article, I read a memoir manuscript by one of the male instructors at the school and found him to be more dismissive. That instructor, William Keen, wrote an autobiographical text that he titled Reminiscences for his children; it’s in the collection of the American Philosophical Society. In it, Keen reiterates a lot of the objections that detractors wagged at female students, including accusing them of being swayed by their “emotional nature.” He classified that as “at once a help and a hindrance,” recalling that “it gave them  enthusiasm, but at the same time made inroads upon their sleep and mental poise, especially at examination time.” (Relatable! But surely also true of male students.) Keen also recalled that, when he polled other colleagues about whether he ought to teach at the school, they had sour  feelings about female physicians: “the large majority were partly neutral or more commonly actively hostile.” He viewed the job as a kind of low-stakes practice for a future position teaching male students elsewhere. The opportunity to try “clinical extemporaneous teaching” and operate in front of students, he added, “fitted me for the more important place at the Jefferson,” or Jefferson Medical College, a Philadelphia school that trained men. Keen acknowledged that the female students “were careful and exact dissectors,” but he seemingly had low expectations for them and considered them stepping stones on the path to something more prestigious.  

5. Although it is not the central concern of the essay, it has shed light on the fascinating  material cultures of preserving the dead. What can such practices tell us about how  medical doctors thought about technology? 

Doctors seized on technological innovations in several ways, many of which are wonderfully  described in Katherine Carroll’s Building Schools, Making Doctors: Architecture and the  Modern American Physician. I am especially interested in the ways that technology facilitated medical students’ and doctors’ ability to procure bodies, store bodies, scrutinize bodies, and dispose of bodies. The introduction of telephones made it possible for a coroner, physician, or shadowy intermediary to quickly alert staff about a body to intercept. Elevators made it easier to haul those bodies up to dissecting rooms. Refrigeration vastly expanded the length of time a school could keep a person’s remains before students dissected them. Electric light facilitated close looking without risky open flames. Crematory furnaces gave staff another way to discard dissected remains (many schools, such as the Medical College of Virginia, mingled them in wells or waste pits). In future work, I would love to look more expansively at the material culture of preservation for dissection. This was a huge concern for anatomists and their students. 

6. You have noted that the WMCP had international students from countries such as India and Russia. They, too, were tutored in ‘sensory citizenship’ in the dissection room, along with those who came from different parts of America. Could you give us a snapshot of how students from such diverse backgrounds interacted in the nineteenth century? 

This is a great question, and it’s something I wish I knew more about! Sarah Ross Pripas-Kapit wrote a great dissertation at UCLA in 2015 called “Educating Women Physicians of the World: International Students of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1883-1911,” and I recommend that as a resource. I would love to learn more about how all of the WMCP students reflected on the lessons they had gleaned through dissection once they fanned out and launched professional lives in scattered places—some in urban areas, surely, and some in rural ones, and at various latitudes and longitudes. That would be interesting because the nineteenth century was an era in which some practitioners emphasized regional differences in bodies and proclivities, shaped by race, environment, or some entanglement of the two. Christopher Willoughby’s article “‘His Native, Hot Country’: Racial Science and Environment in Antebellum American Medical Thought” in Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences is a helpful exploration of that. It would be fascinating to learn what the students thought they needed to know to practice in different places.

"It is a challenging time for many in our community, especially but not only for those working in the US. The institutions in which we work and the very core of our work are under attack." Soraya said. "It is my hope that the Society, together with our sister societies, can help us weather the storm both by thinking harder about how we can work together and how our work in academia and beyond can help to illuminate the current crisis and support the next generation."

On behalf of the local arrangements and program committees for the 2026 ESHS/HSS Joint Meeting in Edinburgh, we want to extend our profound thanks to all of those who submitted a proposal.

When we started planning for this conference, we aimed to host more participants than either society had ever previously welcomed in their regular meetings, and booked facilities based on the combined highest ever attendance from each. We can now share that submissions substantially exceeded these expectations. This is very exciting, but raises some challenges and questions for us as well as for everyone who hopes to present at the meeting. We hope to address some of these questions here.

From the start of planning we have consistently heard from both the ESHS and HSS communities that there is a shared priority of having as open and inclusive meeting as possible. To that end, the local team are in the process of securing additional space and preparing new logistical plans for the additional safety and welfare considerations a larger meeting would require.

To accommodate as many qualified presenters as possible, it will likely be necessary to modify some of the usual expectations about catering, session attendance, breaks, and other typical aspects of ESHS and HSS meetings. The overall conference timeline may also need to be adjusted slightly, most likely by expanding into part of the Sunday prior (12 July), and this will be confirmed by the time acceptances are notified. We recognize any adjustments come with costs and trade-offs, and we are working carefully to make an expanded conference as accessible and fruitful as possible for as many participants as we can responsibly manage.

Meanwhile, the program chairs and reviewers are making every effort to send timely acceptance decisions in February so that participants have enough time to make travel arrangements, secure visas, and plan their visits. Decisions will be based on a rigorous and fair process that is sensitive to the diversity of norms and priorities across the ESHS and HSS communities, following the criteria in the call for proposals. We know that appearing on the program is often essential for funding and other considerations.

A larger program will require making greater use of the wonderful city that surrounds the conference sites. The local team will provide extensive guidance on coffee, meals, affordable accommodation, and supplementary activities to help you make the most of your time in Edinburgh outside of formal sessions. We will endeavor to also live-stream and record plenary sessions to ease demand on the large-but-not-that-large lecture theaters we have reserved for these.

A bigger conference also means more opportunities to volunteer, and we encourage student participants to think ahead about committing some hours to helping the event run smoothly. Volunteering comes with waived registration fees and a great chance to interact from a different angle with the large and wonderful community of historians of science who will be coming to Edinburgh.

Questions can still be directed to info@hssonline.org, and we thank you for your patience as we ensure every query is addressed.

We are tremendously excited for this summer’s conference and thank you again for your interest in taking part!

Sincerely,
Edinburgh 2026 local and program committees

Isis Author Interview: Professor Alexandre Roberts
Interviewed by: Dr. Siddhartha C. Mukherjee

Siddhartha: What kinds of concerns encouraged you to write this article?

Alexandre: Like everyone else writing about the history of alchemy, I have used the term
“alchemy” quite a lot. It is a helpful shorthand to refer to a whole range of things that historians treat as interrelated: purported methods for making artificial gold and silver or imitating such precious metals, premodern chemical theory, premodern chemical practice — and the list goes on. But over time, I found that the modern terminology I was using simply did not match what I was seeing in the Greek and Arabic sources I was working with. On top of that, groundbreaking research on “alchemy” in the last few decades has repeatedly called into question conventional understandings of what this term should mean when applied to premodern or early modern cultures. This led me to reflect on the term and the conceptual framework behind it, and to wonder whether we might be better served by changing that framework.

To that end, I began to think about what kind of conceptual vocabulary would be more useful. This meant proposing that we use different words, but ultimately I am much more interested in the concepts behind those words. If we use the new words I have proposed but keep thinking in terms of “alchemy,” then nothing really has changed. None of the terms I have proposed corresponds neatly to how “alchemy” is used today, and that is precisely the point. Conversely, it might be possible in principle to redefine “alchemy” to mean something more analytically valuable, but I fear the word itself has taken on such a power that this approach would entail no real reckoning with the conceptions behind the words.

Siddhartha: What has made the modern usage of the term ‘alchemy’ such an enduring representation of a plethora of traditions, practices, and ideas- something that your article  seeks to disentangle?

Alexandre: I suspect that the staying power of “alchemy” today has to do with scholarly habit. But it emerged in the first place because it bolstered the narrative that there was something deeply new and modern about modern chemistry — and all the new sciences of the much-celebrated Scientific Revolution. Modern chemistry, in this view, was not simply a new way to investigate questions that had long been investigated in other, equally sensible ways; it was a radical rejection of the irrational folly and occultist shadows of its superficially similar but ignominious predecessor, a radical new, rational approach that finally asked the right questions.

That I was prompted to do something about this state of affairs, I think, has a lot to do with being a Byzantinist and Arabist focused on the medieval period. I was working on texts that said nothing about “alchemy” but whose efforts to conceptualize what was going on when various substances were combined and subjected to various operations were routinely folded into a  premodern “alchemy” in a narrative that reserved chemistry for the modern era. And then one day I read the brilliant article by Newman and Principe that argued that the term “alchemy” was an early modern polemical invention and that therefore we should in fact refer to gold-making and other chemical pursuits that took place in the early modern period by a new term, “chymistry” (with a “y”), to reflect this ostensible hybridity. This was intriguing to me, but what I found unsatisfying was that the article concluded that “alchemy” should still be applied to premodern periods — thus entrenching a narrative of progress from alchemy to chymistry to chemistry, from the irrational to the rational. But the supposed hybridity of early modern “chymistry” seemed to me to characterize the earlier sources as well.

The problem of “alchemy” is thus bound up with triumphalist narratives of modernity and
modern Western science. You don’t need to reject modern sciences or their many compelling results to wonder whether rigorous, systematic thinking about material transformation, worthy of the name of chemistry, might have predated the discovery of oxygen.

Siddhartha: The suggestion to suspend words like ‘alchemist’ or ‘alchemy’ and to describe
directly what they seek to represent in specific cases opens up an exciting way to engage with the sources. You have talked about the implications of this move for academic histories. How do you think it can impact modes of writing that use these words extensively and continue to shape perceptions of the past outside the academy? I am particularly thinking of historical fictions and popular histories.

Alexandre: This will ultimately be the decision of those who write historical fiction and popular history, of course, but it is my hope that my proposed conceptual vocabulary will be useful to them too. If the aim is to back-project modern esotericism onto the medieval past to craft a presentist middle ages that never existed, then “alchemy” — the indisputable name for a modern, avowedly occultist discipline — may continue to have its allure. But I suspect that the richness that recent historians of alchemy have discerned in the sources, and which my proposal seeks to bring to the fore, may be an even more appealing landscape for our collective imagination about the past and those who inhabited it. Authors of popular historical projects may wish to explore the various tangled threads in past human experience, querying who might have cared about theories of gold-making, who might have cared about confronting such theories with Aristotelian natural philosophy, who might have cared about recipes for artificially making gold, purple dye, perfume, foodstuffs. And who among them might have cared to read the works of the ancient sages and the revelations of their secret knowledge. If the answer to all these is not a single, timeless “alchemist” — if in fact the answers are many and varied, from government officials to wandering scholars, city pharmacists, village metalworkers — doesn’t that make for a better story?

Siddhartha: Historians have shown how the balance of power between the holders of
theoretical knowledge and its users across different fields has shifted over time. You speak about this division in the section on the Greek sources. Do you think a blanket use of the term ‘alchemy’ can also prevent us from seeing how power relations create and sustain the
hierarchies that characterize such divisions?

Alexandre: Certainly. The distinction between “philosophers” (who interpret the world) and the artisanal “cheimeutai” (who change it) in the turn-of-the-millennium Byzantine codex Marcianus graecus 299 is indeed a hierarchical one, as you point out, where the philosophers, the interpreters, are clearly understood to have the higher rank. I think you are right to suggest that the term “alchemy” can obscure this point: if we call them all alchemists, we make it harder to see the social variation among those to whom we apply this label.

In this respect, I suppose my own proposed vocabulary does not exactly call attention to such hierarchical distinctions either. If I call the philosophers “theoretical chemists” and the artisans “practical chemists” (with all due allowance for considerable overlap and for the importance in scientific research of the interplay between theory and practice), I am still calling them all “chemists” of one sort or another.

And yet, more subtly, the method I argue should accompany these terms would make it more difficult to forget these hierarchies and other social distinctions. That method is to pay very close attention to individual contexts (of texts, manuscripts, objects, etc.) with an open mind as to the considerable variation (scientific, cultural, social) that may lie behind the many pieces of evidence with which we have filled the box labeled “alchemy.” That label has come to serve as a reason to think no further, as if by calling something alchemy, you know everything you need to know. But if instead we say someone was a “chemist,” this immediately prompts us to wonder what this could have meant in a premodern context. What sort of chemist? What was this chemist’s social standing? The unfamiliar term “hierotechnical” is likewise intended to prompt  further questions. Were those who cultivated hierotechnical texts an elite secret society? Well-known elites like government officials? Subalterns? All of the above?

The best conceptual vocabulary entails few answers but inspires many questions.

Siddhartha: Your essay asks us to rethink medieval and early modern sources. It also argues that some organizing principles, created much later, have flattened historical processes. What do you think this reveals about how modern institutions generate knowledge?

Alexandre: In history, we rarely learn unless we complicate, and we rarely manage to
understand or communicate unless we simplify. Each historical theory we develop is a
generalization, and thus a simplification, built on a particular mountain of historical information, even when we frame our results as universal. We must balance between looking for new information on the basis of our theories and rethinking our theories on the basis of what we find (and others’ theories).

The trouble is that rethinking our theories is much harder than assimilating what we find to
existing theories. It is even harder to reconcile one theory with another. Yet historical research on premodernity moves slowly, at the pace of individual human readers and human writers working in languages not their own; to interpret history, one must know as much as possible about human experience past and present, but there is only so much that one person can read in a lifetime. When there is so much to read, it is often expedient to read without pausing to think, and so we fall back on patterns of thought that we were taught, that our teachers were taught, patterns of thought developed generations ago.

This is how we end up talking about “alchemy” long after the presentist, scientistic history of
science that underwrites it was long ago discredited among historians of science as a whole, or at least a significant contingent. If we give up on “alchemy,” we have to figure out what to do with the great edifice of publications filled with “alchemy” on every page, which means rethinking everything we thought was already settled. But in my view this is history done right: all the evidence should always be open for reevaluation. It makes our task that much harder, gargantuan and impossible, even — but also worthwhile.

Siddhartha: What can the historians of science not working on ‘alchemy’ or ‘chemistry’ take
away from the shift in the conceptual vocabulary you propose?

Alexandre: I hope that this conceptual shift will open up this dusty old attic, shine a light into it, and invite all historians of science to investigate it with us. They should expect to find things that look unexpectedly familiar to a modern eye — and to discover that what they thought could be neatly stored away in this alchemical attic is, in fact, not what they thought it was at all. This starts with gold-making itself.

In my current book project on chemistry in Byzantium and the Islamic world, one of my
arguments is that theoretical texts on gold-making were not meant to argue for the future
possibility of something that nobody had seen occur. Instead, those texts were interpretations of empirically-observed phenomena available to anyone who visited a metallurgical workshop or an imperial mint.

In the same book, I also argue that the rhetoric of secrecy in medieval Greek and Arabic
hierotechnical texts that reeks to moderns of occultist sensibilities was often in fact one of two things, neither of which corresponds to modern occultism: either actual secrecy (meant to prevent widespread access to state secrets, such as how to make gold coins) or commonplace elite conceptions of natural knowledge as secrets to be revealed (shared with other sciences such as medicine and astronomy).

So I hope that my conceptual vocabulary will help historians of science take an open mind to this material, resisting reflexive dismissal of “wrong” theories or “occultist” or “obscurantist” or “magical” thinking. With their help, I suspect we will uncover a lot about the history of science that we could not see before because we had stored away and forgotten some of its richest and most fascinating material in an attic called “alchemy.”

Osiris aims to connect the history of science with other areas of historical scholarship. Volumes of the journal are designed to explore how, where, and why science draws upon and contributes to society, culture, and politics. The journal’s editors and board members strongly encourage proposals that engage with and examine broad themes while aiming for diversity across time and space. The journal is also very interested in receiving proposals that assess the state of the history of science as a field, broadly construed, in both established and emerging areas of scholarship. Recent volumes have addressed science, technology, and food; global medical cultures and laws; and medicine in/and translation.

To submit an expression of interest:
Please send a 1-page expression of interest which includes a pitch of your idea and a list of potential collaborators by October 15th, 2025 to osiris@bbqplus.org. The Osiris editors are committed to mentor potential volume editors to take their expressions of interest to a full proposal.

To submit a full-volume proposal:

The closing date for the submission of full-volume proposals is December 1st, 2025.

Proposals should include the following items:

1. A description of the topic and its significance (approximately 1500 words), especially highlighting the significance of the proposed volume to the history of science, broadly construed. View an example of a successful proposal.
2. A list of 12 to 15 contributors and essay title + succinct description (~ 150 words) of each contributor’s individual essay
3. A one-page c.v. of the guest editor(s)

Proposals should be submitted as a single PDF in an email with “Osiris vol. 44 Proposal” in the title. Proposals and all supporting material should be sent in electronic copy by December 1st, 2025 to Elaine Leong, Myrna Perez Sheldon and Ahmed Ragab at osiris@bbqplus.org.

The guest editor(s) and their contributors must be prepared to meet the Osiris publication schedule. Volume 44 (2029) will go to press – after refereeing, authors’ revisions, and copy-editing – in 2028. The guest editor(s) must therefore choose contributors who are able to submit their completed essays by the fall of 2027.

Proposals will be reviewed by the Osiris Editorial Board and the announcement of the next volume of Osiris will be made in February 2026.

Brenna McWhorter Interview. 
Interviewed by: Dr. Siddhartha Chandra Mukherjee

1) Your viewing of the vaults at the Camera Dei Venti through the lens of neoplatonic thought is a fascinating intervention. What encouraged you to use this framework?

I had initially explored other magical interpositions in lieu of (and potentially in addition to) a Neoplatonic one, but throughout this project, Ficino remained an important guide for me. In the world of astral magic, other doctrines were also influential to early modern magical thought—Hermetica and Kabbalah, for example. At the time, I was trying to understand not just how a vault like this might work, but why it would.

For a while, a Hermetic interpretation held some appeal. Manilius, one of the primary sources for the Camera dei Venti, is generally believed to have drawn on some Hermetic traditions for his knowledge of the stars. Although hotly debated, some scholars have argued that Ficino’s De vita reveals Hermetic influence alongside its more widely recognized Neoplatonic foundations. In Book 3.26, Ficino discusses how Plotinus follows Hermes Trismegistus—the mage-like figure he believed to be the author of the Corpus Hermeticum—and attributes to Hermes the belief that airy daemons, rather than celestial ones, are present in the materials used to create talismans (Dv 3.26: 84-88).

Ultimately, I was more persuaded by a Neoplatonic reading. It offered the most coherent explanation for several otherwise inexplicable iconographic choices. I also believe Neoplatonic philosophy more broadly reflects the intellectual and cultural priorities of these elite circles, whereas Hermetic magic, while not unknown in the Renaissance, may have played a more limited role. I don’t think that applying a Neoplatonic framework limits future scholars from pursuing other interpretive paths. If future scholarship moves in that direction, there’s still plenty left to explore.

2) You have titled your article ‘Winds of Fate: Giulio Romano’s Camera dei Venti at the Palazzo Te and Astral Magic in the Gonzaga court.’ Of all the forces of nature, why do you think the wind acquired a place of such importance in the iconography?

Winds play an important role in early modern iconography. In the Renaissance, it was not uncommon to see depictions of the Allegory of Fortune or Fate used to decorate palaces, civic buildings, and private residences. In these depictions, wind often plays a central role: it usually materializes as hair blowing around the head of Fate or Fortune, or as billowing drapery—signaling that fortune is as fickle as the wind, and fate is unpredictable.

The Gonzaga featured wind in one of their imprese, or devices, in the form of the sixteen-pointed windstar, which appears in the Camera delle Imprese in the Palazzo Te. Across the loggia from the Camera dei Venti, in the Sala dei Giganti, which depicts the fall of the giants as described in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the winds appear again—this time in the corners of the room. Here, they seem to blow down the very walls of the room you are standing in, as the structures crumble around you.

For Federico II, the winds seem to have taken on a particularly important symbolic role. Given their association with fate and fortune, I believe they came to represent Federico’s ability to withstand those things that lie beyond one’s control. Of all the forces of nature, wind symbolizes fortune itself. We have Federico II’s natal chart, drawn up by Lucas Gauricus at the time of his birth. He was originally born with his ascendant—the constellation rising over the horizon—at 22°26′ Taurus, in the hooves of the bull. This part of the constellation was considered particularly inauspicious. In light of this, his horoscope was recast to give him a more favorable sign—literally rewriting the stars to secure a better fate. The practice wasn’t uncommon, but it seems unlikely that someone so committed to controlling his fortune and managing his own lucky stars would miss the opportunity to seize the winds of fate when they blew in his direction.

3) Were there any qualifications that the creator of a talisman needed to possess?

I don’t think so—nothing in my research explicitly states otherwise. Ficino says that the human spirit must be consonant with the world spirit in order to fully absorb celestial gifts. It's unclear whether this also applies to the making of talismans, but one would assume it doesn’t hurt.

As Ficino notes, the materials used to make a talisman must be prepared at the right time and in the proper manner. This includes the method of transferring the image to the material—whether by engraving, painting, or another technique. While the wearer should ideally prepare themselves to receive the talisman's full benefit, even an unsuspecting wearer—or viewer—can still be affected.

To me, this suggests that even an unknowing maker could create an effective astrological image as long as both the image and the material were appropriate. However, as with every stage in the process, the talisman's efficacy is only elevated if the maker is similarly aligned with the universal order of things, and if they understand what Ficino calls the ‘seminal reasons’ that unite the lower forms with the higher ones.

Much of Ficino’s theory corresponds with the intellectual framework of the Florentine art world, and Florentine art theory emphasized light, mathematics, optics, and color. The artists Ficino knew—and those employed by elite patrons to create astrological vaults, such as Giulio Romano or Baldassare Peruzzi—were at least familiar with the requisite art theories to produce a talisman of ample astrological potency.

4) You mention that the vaults needed sustained periods of engagement to make sense of the cosmic order they embodied. In what ways could the viewer acquire the ‘esoteric knowledge’ required to do so? 

A viewer does not necessarily need to be aware that a talisman is affecting them for it to be effective. It’s a bit like suntanning—intentional exposure helps you absorb more direct rays, but even brief, passive exposure between your car and your front door can still deliver vitamin D.In the case of a vault as complex as the Camera dei Venti, I don’t believe the viewer was expected to “get it” immediately. Unless the viewer was an astrologer, humanist, trained iconographer, or likely all three, piecing together its layered meaning would have been a challenge.

Generally, astrological vaults fall into several broad categories. The first is encyclopedic. These aim to represent a general cosmological knowledge: planetary bodies, constellations, the zodiac, and other astronomical phenomena. For someone with a general understanding of the cosmos, the meaning would be legible. Yet I would argue that these ceilings are the least effective as talismans. While many examples of these painted ceilings exist, few were likely intended to serve a truly talismanic function.

Another category is commemorative. These ceilings depict the starry sky at a specific date and time. Because they capture the celestial configuration of a particular moment, they could preserve the influence of those planetary rays long after the real sky has changed—conferring the same benefits to the viewer below. As talismans, these are potentially more effective, as they fix a moment that might have celestially beneficial rays in visual form.

A third type is horoscopic. These usually depict the natal horoscope—or parts of it—of a specific patron. A good example is the earlier astrological vault commissioned by Federico II in the Castello di San Giorgio, which reflects his personal geniture. These vaults could be especially powerful talismans, as they allow the patron to continuously benefit from the specific planetary alignments most favorable to them—and potentially harmful to their enemies.

What makes the vault of the Camera dei Venti so fascinating, and what drew me to it, is that it doesn’t neatly fit into any of these categories. It’s not an encyclopedic rendering of Renaissance cosmology; it draws from too many obscure and seemingly eclectic sources for an encyclopedic vault. It’s neither a natal horoscope nor a sky fixed to a particular date. This ambiguity is likely intentional, and it’s one reason why the vault has long resisted straightforward interpretation.

But this elusiveness might itself be a feature, especially if the vault was designed as a talismanic space. The more time a viewer spends under it, the more they absorb its subtle influences. Even if it initially disrupts our interpretive compulsion, through erudition and discourse with someone familiar with the source material, we can arrive at a true understanding. This takes time, but it also points to a deeper question: who can be trusted with the more esoteric meaning of such a program? In some cases, it may have been better to leave a viewer in the dark. If particular rays were astrologically beneficial to the patron, they were also likely to be harmful to their adversaries—known or unknown. 

This, ultimately, is what makes studying this material so difficult. Anytime we deal with esoteric knowledge, we run into the problem of access. Who had this knowledge? How was it disseminated? How widely understood was it? We know that Ficino’s De vita was popular—by 1647, thirty editions were in circulation, so this might be one way to study the ‘esoteric’ knowledge needed. But as scholars, how do we study something that was meant to be hidden? And if “secret” is too strong a word—since it may have been more of an open secret—how did people gain entry into these circles? How was this knowledge transmitted, preserved, or revealed only to a chosen few?These are challenging questions to answer.

5) Are there aspects of your research that you were unable to include in the article? 

There were a lot of fascinating dimensions I wasn’t able to get into. Other scholars have done extensive work on the Gonzaga’s broader interest in astrology, which I think rounds out the wider discourse that I’m trying to add to here. While I touch on a few significant and relevant examples, there is such a depth of astrological and astromagical patronage in Mantua. The Gonzaga are some of the most important, but they’re certainly not the only patrons in the city.

Rodolfo Signorini has done so much of the hard work—he’s gone through the Mantuan archives and uncovered nearly every mention of both extant and non-extant astrological decoration in the region. There are some well-known examples, like Bartolomeo Manfredi’s famous astrological clock tower in the main city square, but many more are just fragments: passing mentions in letters, brief inventory descriptions, or notations in documents. Astrology was so deeply embedded in early modern Italian culture that the Mantuan interest in it seems like just a footnote. But the sheer depth and persistence of this visual tradition in the region make the astromagical themes of Gonzaga patronage so much more compelling. In many ways, the magical tradition seems to be just as strong as the astrological tradition in Mantua, which is what makes it such an interesting case study for a discussion of astral magic in early modern Italy.

My most fortuitous moment researching this room also came about thanks to Dr. Signorini—on my first and only visit to Mantua, right after seeing the vault of the Camera dei Venti in person, I happened to run into him while having an aperitivo in front of Manfredi’s clock tower. It was a surreal coincidence. This was the exact moment I really started to believe that there might be something to these astromagical vaults—because it felt like more than luck to be sitting next to the one scholar who had researched this room the most extensively. After that fortuitous encounter, I do think that it matters quite a lot “which stars take hold of you.”

6) What might historians of science not specializing on your time period take away from your piece? 

I think what continues to surprise me, and many other early modernists I speak with, is just how fluid the intersections between science, magic, and religion were. Renaissance historiography has often tended to treat these as separate domains, operating more or less independently. There are exceptions, of course, with scholars doing excellent work to bridge these disciplines. But when we look at figures like Ficino—who was at once a priest, a physician, a humanist, and a translator of magical texts—there’s still a strong tendency to prioritize one of these identities over the others.

That historiographic bias also makes it particularly challenging to study “occult sciences” or “Renaissance magic” in the first place, if we accept such slippery classifications to exist. There’s often very little explicit documentation of these practices, in part because contemporaries were aware of their controversial status. Many practitioners recognized that these ideas existed on the margins of social and theological acceptability, and so they left fewer traces.

These methodological challenges are something historians of magic across time periods have long acknowledged. But I think they become especially pronounced in the late 15th and early 16th centuries—precisely when the boundaries that would later define modern science were only just beginning to emerge. The categories were still fluid, and it’s that very fluidity that makes this period both so difficult and so fascinating to study.

The History of Science Society is continuing our efforts to create new opportunities to support our early career members. Thanks to a generous pledge from longstanding member, HSS Past-President and Sarton Medalist, Dr. Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, we have established a new HSS Dissertation Research Travel Grant. 

As part of her pledge, Sally will match donations made to the Dissertation Research Travel Grant fund dollar for dollar up to $10,000. Help us reach our goal to unlock this $10,000 match by donating today!

This grant will be an open application for all HSS student members who are beginning their dissertation research or are in the process of conducting dissertation research. Applicants will be eligible to receive a one-time stipend of up to US$2,500 for travel activities related to their dissertation research.

Please help us support our graduate student members and give today!

If you prefer to mail a check, please send it to:

History of Science Society

PO Box 695

Culver City, CA 90232

USA

We are sad to report that Margaret W. Rossiter passed away on August 3, 2025.

Margaret was editor of Isis from 1994-2003 and the 2022 Sarton Medalist. She transformed the history of science through her meticulous and groundbreaking research.

HSS will update members on any services planned by her family and friends. 

Feel free to leave a comment below honoring Margaret and her impact on the field. We will pass these on to her family and friends.

You can read the Sarton Medal citation by Jessica Ratcliff here.

FRIDAY AUGUST 15th, 2025
10 am visitation at Weir Funeral Home, 144 Salem St, Malden, MA
11 am (at Weir Funeral Home) remembrance of her life, anyone wishing to speak may do so.
Following the remembrance, guests are invited to join the family for luncheon at a local eatery.
6-8 pm, visitation at funeral home.

SATURDAY AUGUST 16th, 2025
10 am Catholic mass at Incarnation Church, 429 Upham St. Melrose, MA followed by interment at Holy Cross Cemetery, 175 Broadway, Malden, MA. Luncheon to follow.

You can read Vince’s article, “Through the Looking Glass of the Coming Kingdom: Science, City, and Authority in Anita Newcomb McGee’s Anthropology, 1888–1897,” for free for the next month at the journal’s homepage: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/isis/current

Vince sat down for an interview with Bree Lohman, a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto and the journal’s manuscript assistant.

LOHMAN: In your article, “Through the Looking Glass of the Coming Kingdom,” you ask, “Who was a scientist? And who got to participate in science?” In addressing these questions, you explore the life and works of Anita Newcomb McGee. As you write, Newcomb used her dual “central” and “marginalized” positions as a Washington DC-based scientist to shape the directions and priorities of late nineteenth-century American anthropology. What inspired you to write about the life and works of Anita Newcomb McGee?

FEMIA: To a degree, the project started by archival happenstance. At the time, my work focused mostly on the history of the physical sciences, especially astronomy. In December and January of 2019 and 2020, I was in Washington, D.C. for a couple months and wanted to take a look at the Simon Newcomb Papers at the Library of Congress. In Simon’s papers, I stumbled upon Anita Newcomb, Simon’s daughter, and realized that she had her own separate finding aid. I noticed that one box in the Anita Newcomb McGee Papers contained an “Idea Book,” which is really the first thing that caught my attention. I had no idea if anything interesting would be in it, but it gave me a sense that there was something more there. 

The collection is only 12 boxes and one oversize box, but it gave a fascinating glimpse into late-nineteenth century intellectual and scientific life in DC. It showed Anita’s explorations into medical theory, heredity, anthropology, and eventually eugenics through notes, unpublished essays, collected clippings, and that Idea Book. It also revealed a vibrant social life of science in DC, and how Anita navigated scientific communication and organization given that her gender, for the most part, excluded her from the traditional physical and textual spaces of science in the city. I was particularly struck by her unusual research focus for the anthropology of the day: white communistic societies in the Midwest.

I put off turning this research into an article for a couple years. To some degree, I had difficulty finding the throughline that properly situated and contextualized her work. At Princeton, my Ph.D. dissertation had become an urban history of Washington science from the end of the Civil War to the Progressive Era. As I continued asking questions about the city, and about place, I returned to Anita Newcomb McGee with a new set of questions. How did she imagine herself as part of, or excluded from, an urban scientific community? How did her anthropological subject(s) and work relate to contemporary thinking about urban problems and reform? And what did it mean that one of the communistic groups she studied made their headquarters in a major American city?

LOHMAN: What were some interesting or unexpected finds you came across during the course of your archival research?

FEMIA: The most unexpected find was the amount of material she collected and saved on the Koreshan Unity. I had never heard of the Korehsans before this research, and it was a fascinating rabbit hole to go down (Journalist Lyn Millner has written a great account of the Koreshans called The Allure of Immortality). A self-proclaimed alchemist-messiah named Cyrus Teed established the Korehsan Unity headquarters in Chicago in the 1880s. He preached many different things, but most notably (and most noted by the press), that the Earth was a hollow sphere, that we live on the inner shell of the sphere, staring up into its center, or the center of the universe. The Koreshans lived collectively and shared their property and wealth. They also gathered many followers and attempted to experimentally prove their hollow or concave Earth beliefs. Anita visited the Koreshans a few times in Chicago, grew friendly with Teed, and even hosted Teed at her home in DC for a couple weeks so that Teed could explain “Koreshan Science” to distinguished Washington scientists, including Simon Newcomb, John Wesley Powell, and Alexander Graham Bell. 

LOHMAN: Could you share with us a “lightbulb” moment that changed the direction/focus of your article?

FEMIA: I think the Koreshans, which was the last communistic group she studied before dedicating the vast majority of her work to medicine, helped me realize how much a sense of anthropological time and a middle-class worldview sat at the heart of this story. Who fit the mold of contemporary American civilization? What was contemporary American civilization according to Anita and her milieu? In other words, in the minds of these anthropologists, who followed the currents of progress, and who lagged behind? These were essential and highly racialized questions in anthropology at the time, but Anita’s focus on white communistic societies positioned them in new ways—an unusual blending of class, race, bourgeoise norms, and mixed or layered temporalities (largely expressed in the terms of cultural evolution). At the 1897 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, she felt the need to state that, upon close inspection, the Koreshan Unity was indeed “a product of this nineteenth century.” 

LOHMAN: Are there any points you found particularly interesting or noteworthy that you couldn’t include in your article?

FEMIA: A different version of this paper could have been a dialogue between Anita and the Koreshan Unity, but I knew I needed to analyze the work she did leading up to her interest in Teed and his teachings. In the early stages, I dug deep into the Koreshan story. The press around the country had a field day reporting on Koreshan happenings. There are more photographs and sources in Anita’s papers that could have been included, but the Koreshan story ultimately became just one section of the paper. I was struck by how both W J McGee (her husband) and John Wesley Powell had close acquaintances who were Koreshans. The Koreshans also made a lasting impression on Simon Newcomb, who included two pages on them in his 1903 autobiography, noting the “scientific turn” of their religious creed. He outlined their efforts to prove the concavity of the Earth, but declared that “it does not seem that the measurers were psychologists enough to guard against the effect of preconceived notions in the process of applying their method.” The DC press frequently reported on the Koreshans and sat down with Teed for interviews when he visited the capital city. As I mention in the conclusion of the paper, Teed lived in DC for some time before his death, establishing a “Universology Hall.” The building that housed Teed’s makeshift lecture hall still stands today near the corner of 7th Street and Indiana Avenue NW. There is a larger DC-Koreshan story here that could be told. 

LOHMAN: What was one book or article that influenced how you approach this topic?

FEMIA: Curtis Hinsley’s work on Washington anthropology in the late nineteenth century and Ruth Oldenziel’s Making Technology Masculine were both essential. In discussing ethnologist Otis T. Mason’s studies and descriptions of women and technological change, Oldenziel really foregrounds Mason’s perception of temporal difference (through cultural evolution) between himself and working-class women. Mason believed that he was quite literally looking at vestiges of a bygone cultural evolutionary period. I found that some scholars took this bizarre notion of time, culture, and class more seriously than others. And the fact that this way of thinking could be superimposed on the urban landscape became a central point of inquiry for the paper. 

LOHMAN: What are your next plans for this research project?

FEMIA: I am working on turning my dissertation into a book project. The dissertation brings together federal scientists, private scientists, women working both directly and indirectly in the sciences, and the Black intellectual community in DC to show how a dream of a capital city of science became a dominant cultural force within DC after the Civil War. It really tries to examine scientists (somewhat broadly construed) as political actors at different scales—lobbyists, land developers, activists, and voices in local DC affairs. Accordingly, the boundary between politics and science often blurs. How scientists and intellectuals organized as a collective, or as multiple competing political units, was essential to science’s power and reach in Gilded Age Washington and ultimately the future of federal science. Anita Newcomb McGee is part of this story. Her whole family is part of this story, in fact. Writing a history of state science from the local scale—the city as the starting point—helps to bring out the people and places outside of government records, such as Anita, who were very much a part of this world, and who sought a voice in a capital city of science that grew each day. 

Council 2026-2028

Charlotte Abney Solomon

Michael Barany

Clare Kim

Don Opitz

Christina Ramos

Nominating Committee 2025-2027

Leticia Galluzzi

Duygu Yildirim

Council Delegate 2026

Sam Muka

Early Career Representative 2026-2028

Sarah Qidwai 

Vice President 2026-2027

Suman Seth

Letters to the editor (LTEs) of your local or regional newspapers are an effective and easy way to get your message in front of a large audience. The editorial page is one of the most-read pages in any newspaper, and members of Congress keep a close eye on local media coverage, including LTEs, in order to “take the pulse” of issues important to their constituents.

Even if your letter is not published, it will help educate and persuade editors. The more letters they receive on a given topic, the clearer its importance to the community will become, resulting in more space dedicated to that issue—both on the paper’s editorial page and in news articles.

Here are the seven elements of writing an effective LTE:

1. Respond to an article in the paper. Your letter will have a greater chance of being printed if it is in response to an editorial, op-ed, or front-page story. Many papers even require you to reference a specific article, so begin your letter by citing the original story’s title, date, and author. Some papers do occasionally print LTEs that call attention to a lack of coverage on a specific issue; if this is the case with your topic, begin by stating your concern that the paper hasn’t adequately addressed this important issue.

2. Follow the paper’s directions. Information on how and where to submit an LTE is usually found right on the editorial page, often including guidelines on what the paper looks for in LTEs. If you can’t find the information, simply call the paper and ask how to submit a letter in response to a recently published article.

3. Share your expertise. If you have relevant qualifications on the topic you’re addressing (e.g., you are a Prius owner writing about hybrid cars), be sure to include that in your letter.

4. Refer to the legislator, policymaker, or corporation you are trying to influence by name. If your letter includes a legislator’s name, in almost all cases they will be given the letter to read personally. Government agencies and corporations also monitor the media, especially in areas where they have offices or facilities. Be sure to use each legislator’s, policymaker’s, or corporation’s full name.

5. Write the letter in your own words. Editors, like all journalists, value authenticity and originality.

6. Refute, advocate, and make a call to action. Most LTEs follow a standard format. Open your letter by refuting the claim made in the original story, then use the next few sentences to back up your claims and advocate for your position. Try to focus on the positive, using data whenever possible. For example: “According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, investments in renewable energy would bring more than $200 million to our state and create 36,000 jobs by 2020.” Then wrap your letter up by explaining
what you think needs to happen now—your call to action.

7. Include your contact information. The paper will let you know if it is going to publish your letter, so be sure to include your name, address, and daytime phone number. 

Additional Tips and Resources

• Keep your letter short (150 words or fewer is best); letters longer than 200 words will likely be edited or not printed. Focus on one or two main point(s) at the most, and get to the point in the first two sentences. If possible, include interesting facts, relevant personal experience, and any local connections to the issue.
• Be timely. Respond to an article within two or three days of its publication.
• If your letter is published, and targets a specific legislator, policymaker, or corporation, clip out the printed letter and send it to the target with a brief cover note. This way you can be certain that the appropriate decisionmaker sees it.

If you have any questions as you draft your letter to the editor, or to learn more about the Union of Concerned Scientists Science Network, email ScienceNetwork@ucsusa.org. Find this document online: www.ucsusa.org/scientisttoolkit.

You can read Matt's article, "Mechanisms of Experience: Cognitivism, Cybernetics, and the Postwar Science of Pain," for free for the next month at the journal's homepage: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/isis/current.

Matt sat down for an interview with Bree Lohman, a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto and the journal's the manuscript assistant.

LOHMAN: Your article, “Mechanisms of Experience,” investigates how the postwar intellectual traditions of cybernetics and cognitivism provided the conditions for articulating a new theory of pain. Could you tell us a little about how this topic caught your attention?

SOLEIMAN: Historians, social scientists, and neuroscientists have all presented Ronald Melzack and Patrick Wall's gate control theory as a seismic shift, even a "revolution," in the history of the modern mind and brain sciences. They have done so not just because of how the theory reconceptualized the fundamental nature of pain, but because of how it challenged the persistent (western) distinction between "mind" and "body."  (This was in fact the explicit aim of Melzack and Wall.) In my past lives as a neuroscientist and science writer, I also found that the theory, or at least its basic tenets, had become almost dogma among practicing neuroscientists. Upon scouring the literature for the intellectual origins of this enduring theory, I noticed that historians had either little to say on the topic, or that they, like Melzack and Wall, projected the field of pain research that emerged from gate control theory back in time, prior to when it was invented. Hence, I became curious about the broader intellectual conditions that made the theory possible before there was a formal, self-conscious "pain science." 

LOHMAN: What were some interesting or unexpected finds you came across during the course of your research? 

SOLEIMAN: While I knew that Melzack first met Wall at MIT, where Wall was already part of a neurophysiology group led by the famous cybernetician Warren McCulloch, I did not expect to find a real connection between Melzack and cybernetics before Melzack arrived at MIT. To my surprise, I discovered both in published papers and archival documents I located at the American Philosophical Society that Melzack's postdoctoral mentor, the University of Oregon neurosurgeon William Livingston, spoke at the second of the cybernetics, or Macy, conferences. (Livingston and McCulloch seem to have become good friends after the event.) With these sources in hand, I explored the influence of cybernetics on Melzack prior to his collaboration with Wall. 

LOHMAN: Are there any points you are passionate about that you couldn’t include in the article, which you'd like to share with readers here?

SOLEIMAN: There are many, but I will limit myself to just two. With the publication of gate control theory in 1965, Melzack and Wall contributed to an emerging movement for patient autonomy. Indeed, the two scientists tried to naturalize such autonomy. Implicit in their theory was the idea that a patient's reports of pain captured the dynamics of the nervous system as a whole. Since these dynamics involved countless interactions between nerves, synapses, and pathways, a clinician could never rely on a single component, or even a subset of components, to independently verify a patient’s reported experience. The nature of pain, in Melzack and Wall's view, was inconsistent with medical paternalism. As Wall later remarked, “you'd better listen to what the patient says and believe what they say, don't have some abstract pseudo-scientific idea that they shouldn't be in pain."

I also wish I had the chance to explore Livingston and McCulloch's correspondence about the potential restructuring of the central nervous system, or its plasticity, especially in regard to Livingston's patients with chronic pain. Their discussion took place just as Donald Hebb was formulating his neuropsychological theory about the growth of new connections in the brain during learning (in 1946). 

LOHMAN: What was one book or article that influenced how you approach this topic? 

SOLEIMAN: A book that became essential to my research was Stefanos Geroulanos and Todd Meyers' The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe: Brittleness, Integration, Science, and the Great War, published in 2018 with the University of Chicago Press. In their book, Geroulanos and Meyers introduce the term "integrationism" for the mechanistic yet holistic style of thought they locate in physiology and neurology of the early decades of the twentieth century as well as in the cybernetics of Norbert Wiener. Geroulanos and Meyers' analysis helped me see how Melzack and Wall were able to use cognitivist and cybernetic ideas to integrate the mind and the body. I consider my article to be a kind of sequel to the story Geroulanos and Meyers tell in The Human Body.

LOHMAN: What questions did this work leave you with? Do you have any plans to build on this research?

SOLEIMAN: As history is written in and for the present, I was immediately left with the question of how my argument could help account for the ongoing opioid crisis in the United States. Scholars and journalists now know that pain researchers advocated for greater opioid prescribing well before the introduction of Purdue Pharma's OxyContin into the American pharmaceutical market in 1996. This presented me with a historical puzzle. Melzack and Wall developed gate control theory as a holistic theory of pain. The interdisciplinary field of pain research that arose from the spread of this theory was similarly holistic in its ideas and practices. And yet, opioids seem to be a fairly reductionistic technology of pain relief. I am currently preparing another article that attempts to solve this puzzle. This article and my article in Isis form part of a larger book project, which traces the birth and afterlife of a holistic concept of pain over the twentieth century.

This toolkit is designed to support you in effectively attending a town hall and engaging with your Member of Congress (MOC) during the next few months leading up to key votes in the House and Senate. The UCS Save Science, Save Lives campaign and our Climate and Energy program is aiming to get MOCs on the record regarding the Trump administration’s unconstitutional overreach, the illegal actions coming from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, and key climate and clean energy provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act.

What Is a Town Hall?
A town hall is a public meeting where elected officials meet with constituents to discuss key issues and answer questions. Town halls provide a rare opportunity for face-to-face engagement, allowing you to hold your representatives accountable in real time. Unlike emails or phone calls, which can be filtered through staff, town halls place direct pressure on lawmakers to respond publicly. A critical tool in advocacy efforts, town halls create a space where elected officials must listen and respond directly to the concerns of their constituents. Town halls also serve as a barometer for public sentiment, allowing policymakers to gauge how strongly voters feel about particular issues.

Why Town Halls Matter

• Public Accountability – When MOCs respond to questions in a public setting, their
  statements are on the record. This ensures transparency and allows advocates to track
  their commitments and hold them accountable later.
• Media Attention – Journalists often cover town halls, amplifying key issues. A wellposed question can generate media coverage, placing additional pressure on lawmakers
  to take action.
• Constituent Power – Seeing strong engagement from constituents can influence policy
  decisions and priorities. Lawmakers respond to the issues that their voters care about
  most, and visible advocacy at town halls can shape their legislative agenda.
• Direct Engagement – Town halls are a chance to express concerns about the Trump
  administration’s power grab, and demand action. Public confrontation forces MOCs to
  clarify their positions and, if necessary, reconsider their stance in response to voter
  pressure.

How to Find Upcoming Town Halls

1. Check Official Websites – Visit your MOCs’ official websites for event listings.
2. Subscribe to Newsletters – Sign up for email updates from your representative’s and senators’ offices.
3. Call Congressional Offices – Directly ask staff if any town halls are planned.
4. Use Town Hall Trackers – Resources like Town Hall Project list upcoming events; UCS is tracking town halls here.
5. Follow Social Media – Check X (formerly Twitter), BlueSky, Facebook, and other platforms for announcements.
6. Check Local News – Town halls are often announced through local media.
7. Check with Organizations Mobilizing in Support of Democracy –Indivisible and similar organizations often organize and track town halls.

How to Engage at a Town Hall

Before the Event

• Prepare Your Question – Keep your questions concise, fact-based, and direct. Avoid long-winded setups, and get straight to the point with a question that demands a clear answer.
• Recruit Others –If multiple people ask about the same issue, it signals broad concern and makes it harder for the MOC to dismiss.
• Practice – Rehearse your question to ensure clarity and confidence. Try role-playing with a friend or recording yourself to refine your delivery.
• Research the Format – Town halls vary: some take live questions, while others require written submissions. Understanding the format ahead of time will help you prepare.
  

At the Event

• Arrive Early – Secure a visible spot near the front where the MOC and media can see and hear you.
• Sign Up to Ask a Question – If the format allows, register early to increase your chances of being called on.
• Stay Focused and Confident – Speak loudly and clearly. If your question is dodged, politely but firmly ask for a direct response.
• Record the Response – Capture video/audio (if allowed) and take notes. This ensures accountability and provides documentation for the media and/or follow-up actions.

After the Event

• Report Back – Tell UCS how it went! Provide notes, videos, or any key takeaways. You can email staff you’ve been in contact with or fill out this short form.
• Post on Social Media – Amplify the event, especially how the MOC addressed science related topics, by posting quotes, videos, or summaries. Don’t forget to tag the MOC! Check their website for their social media handles.
  • Example: I just asked @Rep/Senator X about Y topic today’s town hall in
    [town/state] . They responded by saying ____. I applaud Rep/Senator X for
    standing up for science OR I was disappointed in Rep/Senator X for not
    committing to protecting science-informed policies. (include quote and/or
    photos if you have them)
• Follow Up – Contact the MOC’s office to request further action. A well-documented exchange can be used to hold them accountable for future decisions.
  

Sample Questions to Ask

Evergreen Questions
1. Constitutional Overreach: “The Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, is illegally overriding Congressional authority by freezing funds and dismantling government agencies. What specific actions will you take to shut down DOGE and hold the Trump administration accountable?”

2. Separation of Powers: “Legal scholars have warned that we are in a constitutional crisis due to the executive branch’s attacks on Congressional authority. Will you commit to taking legislative action to defend democracy?”

3. Science Under Threat: “DOGE has disrupted government research, defunded sciencebased programs, and censored experts. How will you ensure that public science remains independent from political interference?”

4. Legislative Action: “What concrete steps will you take to introduce or support legislation that prevents an unelected billionaire like Elon Musk from overriding Congress’s decisions?”

Time-Sensitive Questions before a Budget Reconciliation Bill Passes

5. Clean Energy Tax Credits: Investments from the IRA are leading to more projects and jobs right here in [fill in your district name], and developers are counting on economic certainty to continue their work here. Will you commit to defending clean electricity tax credits such as the tech-neutral 45Y and 48E investment and production credits during reconciliation negotiations?

6. Community Tax Credits: Will you commit to defending direct pay/transferability to allow entities like school districts, rural co-ops, local governments, hospitals and other nonprofits to take advantage of tax credits that are benefitting our community from the IRA during reconciliation negotiations?

7. Residential Clean Energy Tax Credits: Our friends and neighbors are taking advantage of clean energy tax credits to install solar panels and electric heat pumps for their homes which can lower energy bills and create jobs in our local economy. Will you commit to defending the 25D residential clean energy tax credit during reconciliation negotiations?

8. Environmental Justice: Communities who have long borne the brunt of pollution from power production have recently gained access to funding to reduce that pollution burden and make their communities more resilient. Will you commit to defending the full obligation of the Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Grants for the latter program years of that funding opportunity during reconciliation negotiations?

9. Clean Energy Support: Given the growing economic benefits of clean energy production in America and worsening climate crisis, will you commit to preserving clean energy and climate provisions from attack during the reconciliation process?

10. Clean Transportation Investments: Transportation is the number one source of emissions. The Inflation Reduction Act included several programs to boost the transition to cleaner vehicles, including incentives for domestic manufacturing and tax credits to help bring down the cost of new or used electric vehicles and charging infrastructure. Will you commit to defending clean transportation investments during reconciliation negotiations?

11. Electric Vehicle Incentives: The success of electric vehicle tax credits that support auto supply and infrastructure are intertwined with tax credits that increase automotive demand. Will you commit to protecting all electric vehicle incentives throughout the supply chain?

12. Electric Vehicle Tax Credits: Tax credits that increase vehicle access have been in place since 2008. Will you ensure they will continue to benefit consumers who want to purchase an electric vehicle in order to save money on fuel and maintenance? 

13. [For CA members]: For nearly 50 years, California has had the authority to establish vehicle pollution standards that are at least as protective as the federal standards under the Clean Air Act. Will you work to protect any attacks on California’s authority and the Clean Air Act?

14. [For non-CA members]: The Congressional Review Act (CRA) is being used as a blunt instrument for conducting congressional oversight on clean vehicle standards. Will you work to ensure that the CRA will not be used to attack clean vehicle standards that safeguard important health protections?

15. Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness: NOAA data is essential for hurricane tracking, wildfire alerts, and severe weather warnings. If access to this information is restricted or privatized, how will you ensure that communities—especially those most vulnerable—stay safe?

16. Scientific Integrity and Political Interference: Recent firings at NOAA raise concerns about political interference in climate science. What will you do to protect NOAA’s scientific integrity and prevent political appointees from undermining its work?

17. Privatization and Paywall Concerns: Taxpayers have funded NOAA for generations, yet there are efforts to put key weather data behind a paywall. Do you commit to keeping NOAA’s data publicly available and free for all Americans?

18. NOAA’s Economic Impact: NOAA’s work supports agriculture, fishing, and disaster response—sectors critical to the economy. What is your plan to defend NOAA from budget cuts or restructuring that could harm these industries?

19. Accountability and Congressional Oversight: Given the threats to NOAA’s mission, will you commit to holding hearings and demanding accountability from the administration to prevent the dismantling of this life-saving agency?

Additional Resources

• Town Hall Project
• Call Your Senators: Stop the Trump-Musk Power Grab (UCS action page)
• How to Make Science a Priority for Candidates: Birddogging and Attending Town Halls (UCS webinar recording)

Stay in Touch!

If you attend a town hall, please report back to UCS with key takeaways, MOC responses, and photos and/or videos. Together, we can hold our leaders accountable and protect public science.

The Union of Concerned Scientists invites scientists and experts to a science advocacy training webinar on writing letters to the editor to inform and influence different audiences about the impacts of federal cuts to science and science workers.

Date: Thursday, April 17
Time: 8:00–9:00 p.m. ET

For full details and to sign up, visit https://secure.ucs.org/a/2025-4-17-engaging-local-media-lte-training

Date: Tuesday, April 8

Time: 8:00–9:00 p.m. ET

For full details and to sign up, visit https://secure.ucs.org/a/2025-4-8-townhall-training

Regarding Current Attacks on Science

26 Feb 2025

Fellow historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science, technology, & medicine: The recent annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) was filled with concern about recent US federal actions against research and public engagement in science, technology, and medicine. This is a complex and rapidly changing landscape. Below are some snapshots of what is taking place, resources for keeping informed, and resources for potential actions for those who wish to respond.

--Alisa Bokulich and Conevery Bolton Valencius, as members of the Steering

Committee of AAAS Section L, History & Philosophy of Science

I. What to Know

• Dramatic changes are upending scientific and medical research.
  • “US science in chaos as impact of Trump’s executive orders sinks in” PhysicsWorld 12 Feb 2025 https://physicsworld.com/a/us-science-in-chaos-as-impact-of-trumps-executive-orders-sinks-in/
     
  • “Revised and Extended: What's Happening Inside the NIH and NSF” 5 Feb2025 Science https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/revised-and-extended-what-s-happening-inside-nih-and-nsf
    
    

• Large numbers of federal workers across many scientific and other agencies are being indiscriminately fired.
  • Firings are large-scale and indiscriminate across federal scientific agencies (NIH, NSF, NPS, CDC, etc.). https://www.science.org/content/article/wrecking-ball-rfk-jr-moves-fire-thousands-health-agency-employees
    
    
  • “Mass firings decimate US science agencies,” Science Insider 18 Feb 2025, https://www.science.org/content/article/mass-firings-decimate-u-s-science-agencies
    
    

• Key terms are being used to flag and sometimes halt grants and grant proposals at both NSF and NEH.
  • “Inside the NSF’s Effort to Scour Research Grants for Violations of Trump’s Orders” https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00365-z

   

  Terms being flagged and pulled at NSF (National Science Foundation) and targeted by Republicans such as Ted Cruz are drawn from the appendix to this anti-DEI   report: https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/4BD2D522-2092-4246-91A5-58EEF99750BC#page41

   

  • However, many of these terms remain a part of NSF’s mandated Broader Impacts, which NSF says have not changed https://www.nsf.gov/executive-orders, and temporary injunctions have ruled such efforts a violation of First and Fifth Amendment Rights: https://www.npr.org/2025/02/21/nx-s1-5305287/trump-dei-programs-executive-order-judge
    
    
  • Terms the administration has attempted to censure include ‘climate change’, ‘environmental justice’, and ‘biodiversity’—many terms that environmental historians and philosophers of science work on.
    
    
  • Moreover, the US-based IPCC technical support unit (TSU) for Working Group 3 Co-Chairs has been terminated, and the US won’t be attending IPCC meeting where the AR7 chapter outlines will be approved: https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/21/climate/trump-blocks-scientists-ipcc/index.html
    
    
  • NIH (National Institutes of Health) funding ($1.5 billion) remains frozen: https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/02/22/nx-s1-5305276/trump-nih-funding-freeze-medical-research
    
    
  • NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) is also censoring grants and awards: NEH website now says https://www.neh.gov/executive-orders 

  “As required by the Administration’s Executive Orders, NEH awards may not be used for the following purposes:

  • promotion of gender ideology;
  • promotion of discriminatory equity ideology;
  •  support for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) or diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) initiatives or activities; or
  • environmental justice initiatives or activities”

• The administration is excising websites, data sets, and information from public websites, across federal agencies. 
  •  From Slate’s “Why Trump’s Data Purge is Digital Book Banning”: ”A number of websites and data sets from the CDC and NIH are offline, along with data across the government … to comply with President Trump’s executive orders around gender and diversity. According to one analysis by the New York Times, 8,000 government web pages were taken offline.” https://slate.com/transcripts/NEt6SHR3and0RjhKa1BRQXhUMFlKTitXaE94dEdzRXRmcFVWUzZXRWdTTT0=
    
    
  • Data purges and websites deleted often relate to women and racial minorities in science, such as at NASA: https://gizmodo.com/nasa-ordered-to-remove-anything-about-women-in-leadership-from-its-websites-report-2000559596
    
    
  • Climate data and related tools have been deleted from USDA: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/24/climate/agriculture-farmer-website-data-lawsuit.html
    
    
  • There are various data rescue projects underway (at least for past data). The following resources may be helpful:
    

  https://www.datarescueproject.org/current-efforts/

  https://eotarchive.org/

  https://archive.org/details/20250128-cdc-datasets

  https://envirodatagov.org/

  https://dataverse.harvard.edu/

   

• Already-published studies are in the process of being censored.
  •  “The Trump administration instructed scientists employed by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to withdraw or retract articles from medical and science journals is sinister and ludicrous. The instruction… was for publications that included “forbidden terms” such as gender, transgender, LGBT, or transsexual, and applies to submissions that have not been accepted yet and accepted papers that have not yet been published” https://www.bmj.com/content/388/bmj.r253
    
    
  • The Trump administration has tried to cap indirect costs from federal grants, which make up a huge part of many research universities’ budgets, at 15%, which would cripple many universities. https://www.chronicle.com/article/trump-wants-to-cut-billions-in-research-spending-heres-how-much-it-might-cost-your-university
    
    
  • A coalition of Attorney Generals have argued such a move is unlawful https://illinoisattorneygeneral.gov/news/story/ahead-of-hearing-attorneys-general-issue-joint-statement-on-lawsuit-to-preserve-funding-for-medical-and-public-health-innovation-research
    
    
  • A judge has issued a temporary nationwide restraining order on the cuts, but will expire https://www.statnews.com/2025/02/21/trump-nih-research-cuts-federal-judge-extends-order-blocking-change-indirect-costs/
    
    
  • Many universities are suspending their graduate admission programs, hiring, faculty travel, etc. for next year to brace for the possible economic blow, such as University of Pittsburgh: https://www.wesa.fm/health-science-tech/2025-02-21/university-pittsburgh-phd-pause-research-funding-uncertainty
    

• Anti-DEIA Attempts: Executive orders (EO) have tried to limit or halt researchers’ ability to study or even discuss differences in race, ethnicity, gender, and attempted to shut down any DEIA (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility) programs. However, the courts have responded that these anti-DEIA EO violate First Amendment (right to freedom of speech) and Fifth Amendment (right to due process) of the Constitution.
  •  Trump’s Executive Orders Rolling Back DEI and Accessibility Efforts, Explained—ACLU https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/trumps-executive-orders-rolling-back-dei-and-accessibility-efforts-explained
    
    
  • Attorney General Offices from 16 states have issued guidance on the Executive Order that purports to target “illegal DEI and DEIA policies” across a wide range of organizations: “Importantly, diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility best practices are not illegal, and the federal government does not have the legal authority to issue an executive order that prohibits otherwise lawful activities in the private sector or mandates the wholesale removal of these policies and practices within private organizations, including those that receive federal contracts and grants. https://www.mass.gov/doc/multi-state-guidance-concerning-diversity-equity-inclusion-and-accessibility-employment-initiatives/download
    
    
  • Federal Court have granted sweeping nationwide injunction against Trump DEI executive orders finding that they violate First and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.575287/gov.uscourts.mdd.575287.44.0_2.pdf

II. What to Do

The AAAS Mission: is to “advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all. Advancing Science, Serving Society.” It further states that “AAAS fosters the open and inclusive scientific enterprise that is essential for scientific excellence” (https://www.aaas.org/mission). If you are inclined to take action, here are some things you might do:

• Find ways to keep informed on what’s happening with American science and medicine
  • “FYI” newsletter on science policy put out by the Institute of Physics: https://ww2.aip.org/fyi or American Institute of Biological Sciences Science Policy Newsletter & resources https://www.aibs.org/policy/
    
    
  • “Science Insider” newsletter put out by Science magazine:  https://www.science.org/news/scienceinsider
    
    
  • “Letters from an American” newsletter summarizing current events in a broader historical context, written by historian Heather Cox Richardson: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/about

• Meet with your Senator or Representative, in his or her office, and explain briefly how the recent cuts and policy censorship impact that district. Be as specific as possible. Hearing from constituents directly and personally is an effective way to sway decisions.
  • Primer from the AAUP on how to set up and prepare for a meeting with your legislator: here. https://www.aaup.org/our-work/government-relations/online-advocacy-center/office-visit

• If you cannot meet in person, write a person letter to your elected representative. Communication by templates or one-click emails do not register well, but a brief, personal letter containing specifics about impact can matter.
  • Primer from the AIP about effective letter-writing: here. https://www.aip.org/writing-member-congress

• Write an op-ed to your local media outlet, outlining what the recent firings, policy directives, and dramatic policy changes mean to people who rely on local hospitals, receive federal services, need weather predictions to plant crops, or have medical conditions that need research.
  • The Op-Ed Project supplies brief tips on crafting an editorial (here) https://www.theopedproject.org/resources and holds workshops.

• Join science and HPS communities on social media. There are significant problems with trolling and lack of inclusion on many social media sites, but some can offer useful resources. Many academics are moving to sites like Bluesky https://bsky.app/ or Mastadon.
  •  Check out the Bluesky HPS Starter Pack with a large number of historians and philosophers of science, as well as HPS organizations and journals, on Bluesky making it easy to connect quickly and easily: https://go.bsky.app/N9DYvxP
    
    
  • In addition to the usual news sources, organizations, and community leaders (e.g., @aclu.org, @aaup.bsky.social, @ucsusa.bsky.social, @cnn.com), to combat the censorship, individuals advocating for federal scientific and environmental organizations have created “Alt” accounts: CDC: @altcdc.bsky.social, NPS: @altnps.bsky.social; NIH: @altnih4science.bsky.social

• Talk with your friends and family about why federally supported science matters and how these drastic cuts to science will adversely affect them and the people they care about. Encourage them to reach out to their elected representatives.
  • This explainer helps communicate what indirect costs are and why they are essential to research: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxTDlFvkvio
    
    
  • Professor of Sociology Elizabeth Popp Berman has been posting helpful materials on why university endowments are not as large or easily accessible as they may at first appear to “solve” the problem of federal funding: https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/no-university-endowments-cant-replace
    
    
  • Firings of thousands of scientists and federal employees are being touted as “cutting the fat”. However, NIH is only 0.7% of federal budget and NSF is only 0.1%.
    
    
  • Trump's cut of NIH indirect indirect costs to 15% means medical facilities like Boston Children's Hospital are hit with $54 million dollar cut to operating budget, crippling their ability to save babies' and children's lives. https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/l0ZqA/9/
    
    
  • These cuts are not a savings for our country: Every $1 spent on NIH research generates ~$2.5 for our economy--an incredible return on the investment (in addition to saving lives). https://www.fiercebiotech.com/research/report-every-dollar-nih-research-funding-doubles-economic-returns

• Consider joining a working group for a friend-of-the-court (amicus curiae) brief if your scholarship is relevant to scientific funding, academic freedom, US federal engagement in science, or other topics related to current executive action. Currently, leadership at some of our organizations are developing plans for how to connect lawyers with relevant scholars.
  • As preparation, to get on a Section L contact list, please write conevery.valencius@bc.edu with the subject line “AAAS-Section L amicus.” Include your email, phone number, academic position, and a few keyword-searchable phrases about your expertise.

• Stepped-up immigration raids are happening in many parts of the United States. Many of our students and colleagues, as well as our research partners in the sciences, are being impacted by increased immigration enforcement. Find out your institution’s or local community’s legal advice on what to do if ICE or Homeland Security shows up to your office, lab, or classroom.
  •  Here, for example, is a summary of what UMass campuses advised: https://www.universalhub.com/2025/umass-instructs-employees-when-ice-comes-calling
    
    
  • Educate yourself about local resources and organizing around the rights of those detained by ICE.

• Think of ways you and your organizations can support the most adversely impacted groups (underrepresented scholars targeted by anti-DEI, LGBTQ+ scholars, those with disabilities, those working on increasingly censored topics such as climate change, biodiversity, environmental justice, bias in science/medicine, etc.). Do you have a visiting postdoc or faculty position you can offer or an international grant that you can include such scholars or topics on? Can you donate to programs that are resisting these attacks and supporting researchers in these areas?

• Check out the resources, tools, and webinars available at the Education for All Hub. https://education4allhub.com/about/

• Avoid the trap of what historians of authoritarianism call anticipatory obedience (complying in advance of pressure to do so). Read the American Association of University Professors Statement “Against Anticipatory Obedience” here: https://www.aaup.org/report/against-anticipatory-obedience
  • Many of the current Executive Orders (EOs) are not laws. Many of them are inconsistent with current laws and are being contested in court.
    
    
  • Examples: Non-government organizations deleting their DEI statements, museums covering up or taking down exhibits about women and minorities. Having members raise their voices and push back against these unnecessary and harmful anticipatory obedience acts can work.
    
    
  • Philip Ball’s piece on “Scientific institutions have a long history of anticipatory obedience” https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/scientific-institutions-have-a-long-history-of-anticipatory-obedience/4020931.article

• Recognize the strategic synchronization of ongoing federal actions. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/gleichschaltung-coordinating-the-nazi-state

• Work collectively with unions and organizations on the frontline such as the American Association of University Professors, the ACLU, NAACP, and Stand Up for Science 2025 https://standupforscience2025.org/

• Consider adding your name to one of the open letters from a trusted organization defending science, such as this Union of Concerned Scientists one defending NOAA: https://secure.ucsusa.org/a/2025-protect-noaa-science

• We are in a “teachable moment.” We can all use our skills as researchers, science communicators, historians, and philosophers to help our students and the wider public understand what is happening, place it in a broader historical and philosophical context, and get the information they need to make informed decisions. Knowledge is power: we are in a privileged position to communicate that knowledge. Be open to revising your lesson plans.

• Learn how to reach out beyond the “ivory tower” through speaking at broader venues, opinion pieces in newspapers, letters to editor, etc. Moving public opinion about the value of science and education more broadly will be important. Here are some resources for training:
  •  Beyond the Ivory Tower Workshops https://www.beyondtheivorytower.com/
    
    
  • Read Potochnik and Jacquart’s (2025) free short Cambridge Elements book on Public Engagement with Science https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/public-engagement-with-science/75DDD696358F09860520A323F699D934
    
    
  • How to make a pitch: APA’s public philosophy resources https://blog.apaonline.org/2020/12/10/public-philosophy-editors-on-pitching/ and Radiolab’s pitch video https://vimeo.com/849310192

• Recognize that not everyone is in the same position regarding job or personal security to take a public soapbox on these issues. There are many ways to resist authoritarianism and censorship, and continue to teach about science, history and the value of diversity, including under-the-radar resistance from within organizations.

• Decide how to focus your work. The US budget for Fiscal Year 2025 needs to pass by March 14 -- “Pi Day” – in order to avert government shutdown. AAAS leadership generally are emphasizing behind-the-scenes communication to legislative leaders ahead of the March 14 deadline to influence budget negotiations. https://sciencebusiness.net/news/international-news/scientists-struggle-find-right-formula-handling-trump

Whatever your strategy about responding, hearing from constituents, directly, is powerful incentive for elected representatives.

• Our work matters. Organizations are coming together (for instance, in this recent coordinated letter: https://unitedsciencealliance.org/)

We leave you with these words of wisdom from Professor Neil Lewis, Jr. (Professor of Communication, Medicine, and Public Policy at Cornell University) posted on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/neillewisjr.bsky.social/post/3lhoy3bslru2q

“So, if you’re feeling down about these attacks, I understand—I feel that way too. But just remember that they’re not attacking because your work doesn’t matter; they’re attacking *precisely* because it does. So, get some rest, connect with your people, and keep doing it.”

Osiris Editor Opening for 2026

The History of Science Society solicits applications and nominations for the Editorship of Osiris. Published annually, Osiris compliments its quarterly twin sister Isis and is one of the five publications of the History of Science Society (the other three being the Isis Current Bibliography, the HSS Newsletter and the online HSS Portal). Each volume of Osiris comprises approximately fifteen essays on a specific theme and is printed on c. 350 pages (see also http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/journals/journal/osiris.html). 

The editor’s duties include soliciting, reviewing (with the assistance of the Osiris Editorial Board), and selecting proposals for each volume; working with guest editors to define the scope and content of the volume; overseeing the outside referee process; and working with the University of Chicago Press, a copy editor, proofreader, and graphic designer to coordinate the production of each volume. The total time required may vary but is expected to be roughly 150-200 hours per year. The appointment is for five years, starting January 1, 2026. As a rule, HSS supplies funding for copyediting, proofreading, referees, and an Osiris Board breakfast at the annual meeting, for which the  Osiris Editors can budget and be reimbursed for editor travel to the HSS Annual Meeting. Additional support from candidates' home institutions is welcomed but not expected. We encourage candidates from all affiliations, including independent scholars. Proposals for co-editorships are welcome, and such applications should include a brief outline of the co-editors’ anticipated workflow.

More detailed information may be obtained from current Co-Editors of Osiris Ahmed Ragab (aragab2@jhmi.edu), Elaine Leong (e.leong@ucl.ac.uk). Interested individuals should submit three documents: a curriculum vitae; a letter indicating their reasons and qualifications for applying to the position, and a letter of commitment by the supporting institution; each to be sent to the Co-Editors of the History of Science Society, Projit Mukharji (projit.mukharji@ashoka.edu.in) and Elise Burton (e.burton@utoronto.ca). Alternatively, nominations may also be submitted with the permission of the nominated individual. The deadline for nominations is May 31, 2025.

Osiris aims to connect the history of science with other areas of historical scholarship. Volumes of the journal are designed to explore how, where, and why science draws upon and contributes to society, culture, and politics. The journal’s editors and board members strongly encourage proposals that engage with and examine broad themes while aiming for diversity across time and space. The journal is also very interested in receiving proposals that assess the state of the history of science as a field, broadly construed, in both established and emerging areas of scholarship. Recent volumes have addressed science, technology, and food; global medical cultures and laws; and medicine in/and translation.

To submit an expression of interest:

Please send a 1-page expression of interest which includes a pitch of your idea and a list of potential collaborators by October 15th, 2024 to osiris@bbqplus.org. The Osiris editors are committed to mentor potential volume editors to take their expressions of interest to a full proposal.

To submit a full-volume proposal:

The closing date for the submission of full-volume proposals is December 1, 2024. It is not a requirement to submit an expression of interest prior to the submission of full-volume proposals.

Proposals should include the following items:

• A description of the topic and its significance (approximately 1500 words), especially highlighting the potential intervention of the proposed volume to the history of science, broadly construed. View an example of a successful proposal.
• A list of 12 to 15 contributors and essay title + abstract (~ 150 words) of each contributor’s individual essay. Abstracts should articulate the article’s argument and potential intervention to the history of science, broadly construed.
• A one-page c.v. of the guest editor(s)
  

We will hold an online informational session with opportunities to discuss individual projects on September 17th, 2024 at 10am EST. To receive the zoom link, please email us at osiris@bbqplus.org.

Proposals should be submitted as a single PDF in an email with “Osiris vol. 43 Proposal” in the title. Proposals and all supporting material should be sent in electronic copy by December 1st, 2024 to Elaine Leong, Myrna Perez Sheldon and Ahmed Ragab at osiris@bbqplus.org.

The guest editor(s) and their contributors must be prepared to meet the Osiris publication schedule. Volume 43 (2028) will go to press – after refereeing, authors’ revisions, and copy-editing – in 2027. The guest editor(s) must therefore choose contributors who are able to submit their essays for peer review in mid-2026.

Proposals will be reviewed by the Osiris Editorial Board and the announcement of the next
volume of Osiris will be made in February 2025.

The Neu-Whitrow Prize is awarded every four years to an individual or team for creating the most innovative research tool for managing, documenting and analyzing sources within the history of science and technology.

The Prize is awarded by the Commission on Bibliography, Archives and Records (CBAR) of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology/Division of History of Science and Technology (IUHPST/DHST). The CBAR invites submissions for the fourth Neu-Whitrow Prize, to be awarded in 2025. The primary goal is to encourage the development of innovative research tools which includes bibliographies, archival finding aids and other scholarly resource discovery tools.

The award will be announced at a ceremony to be held at the upcoming ICHST congress in New Zealand. The winner receives a prize of US$500 and a certificate. The winner will also be invited to be a member of the Advisory Board of the CBD.

The entries will be judged on their content, usability, and precision. They can be either print-based or digital. Information about the prize, eligibility and submission process can be found below.
For full details on this prize, see this webpage: https://cbd-histsci.org/prizes/call-for-nominations-neu-whitrow-prize-2025/.

PERKINS: In your article you explore how eighteenth-century naturalists selected, read,
and used textual and visual sources of the past to construct chronologies of the aurora
borealis from antiquity to their present. How did this topic first catch your attention?

CHOI: Two fortuitous source encounters brought me to this topic. While lucubrating over the
writings of the seventeenth-century philosopher Pierre Gassendi, I came across a section titled De
Aurora Borea, and thought it curious that I had never encountered this category in earlier
meteorological texts. This led me through some excellent modern historiography on the aurora, but
it seemed to me that much of the focus had been on the development of physical theories to explain
these lights, whereas I was more interested in the historical puzzles the aurora borealis presented to
eighteenth-century authors. Gassendi had employed a deliberately classical-sounding neologism
[aurora is Latin for dawn, and βορέας is Greek for northern, after the god of the North Wind] to pin
down a fleeting phenomenon for which he thought the ancients had many different names and
categories. Later naturalists then had to grapple with the problems stemming from Gassendi’s
innovation in their search of auroras past. It’s a classic tale in the history of science, of course, but
the twofold conundrum of the aurora’s nomenclature and ephemerality brings it into sharp relief.

The other source that inspired this research was something I found during my day-job of
dissertating on the Great Winter of 1709. In one of the eighteenth-century newspapers I was reading
to chart contemporary media coverage of the extraordinary frost, I found an account about “rods of
fire appearing to emanate from the moon” seen by the “sentinels of the royal guard” at Versailles.
The Sun King’s palace watchguards were obviously not trained natural philosophers, but they
nevertheless made for excellent observers, because who else in eighteenth-century France would be
standing outside at midnight in -20°C weather, gazing at the starry sky to pass their time? But none
of the learned naturalists seem to have taken any interest: 1709 is not included in their auroral
catalogues. I would find it hard to believe the account went unnoticed – the Clef du Cabinet des Princes
was one of the most widely-read newspapers at the time, not only in France but much of Europe.
Did they ignore it because the sentries were deemed unreliable witnesses? In a similar vein, why did
Enlightenment commentators continually return to ancient Mediterranean authorities in favor of
Scandinavian ones, when they knew that the aurora was more visible the nearer to the arctic? Such questions made me think about whose testimonies counted, and how the criteria not only of the
aurora itself but also of the “trustworthy” observer were fashioned in this period.

Something that strikes me about your article is how you show the ways in which these
naturalists created criteria for understanding and identifying instances of the aurora borealis
in history. In many ways, this process seems rather similar to how historians today
interrogate and interpret sources with many of the same potential issues in verifying the
accuracy of accounts or dealing with researcher bias. Has your research into how these
naturalists aimed to understand the sources they had influenced your own understanding of
working with historical documents?

It has influenced my understanding of philology and historiography’s importance to Enlightenment
scientific culture, to be sure. Whether my working methods have drawn direct inspiration from
those of the early modern auroral commentators I studied is a different matter. I don’t think I
learned new tricks for source analysis from Mairan: if anything, I might have learned what not to do.
But some of the scholarly innovations that were new in the early modern period consolidated into
fundaments of historical research that still stand in our own time. Philological scholarship,
antiquarian practices, historia literaria, the proliferation of critical editions of ancient and medieval
texts accompanied by erudite commentaries, and of the libraries and reference technologies that
housed them—all these developments in motion since the fifteenth century furnished powerful
tools of source criticism by the eighteenth, and while they obviously underwent great
transformations, they are still part of the historians’ toolkit today.

If we were to stretch the definition of “historical documents” beyond convention, I suppose we do
currently have a wider array of tools, sources, and methods to contextualize the records of past
auroras than people did in the eighteenth century. Through measurements of 14 C in tree samples and
10 Be in ice cores, geophysicists reconstruct patterns in solar activity going back over a millennium.
Descriptions of nocturnal illuminations in historical documents then serve to corroborate their
study, or sometimes vice versa, with the proxy data for solar activity supporting identification of an
event in historical record as an aurora. While I am a cautious optimist when it comes to
interdisciplinary research – these issues arise even more saliently in my environmental history work –
it is most effective when questions from different fields converge. But there are plenty of important
questions that do not lie at disciplinary perimeters. If I am investigating eschatological discourses
and popular religion in sixteenth-century Flanders, does it matter whether an aerial spectacle
recorded in pamphlets was an aurora borealis or not by today’s scientific definition? With this article,
I was less interested in recovering lost auroras myself than in telling the story of how that enterprise
came into being.

What were some interesting finds you came across in your research? Was there an
unexpected “lightbulb” moment that directed your research?

Conversations with art historians shifted the trajectory of this research in unexpected and interesting
directions. How does one go about capturing such fleeting phenomena that constantly mutate in form and color before dissipating into the dark canvas of night? What changes in style and medium
of representing these spectacles occurred from the early Renaissance to the Baroque, and how did
they inform scientific writings? How do the visual depictions and accompanying texts on the same
page interact? Such questions helped me to imagine the early modern experience of seeing,
describing, and eventually defining the ephemeral.

I don’t know if this counts as a “lightbulb” moment, but I felt much satisfaction upon finding a
passage in Mairan’s Treatise on the Aurora Borealis that compares a sixteenth-century woodcut
illustration side-by-side with the copperplate engravings he had ordered for his own treatise. He tries
to persuade his readers that the woodcut depiction of the chasma that appeared in 1575 “looks very
similar to our own figure” of an aurora in 1731. Here was an astronomer foregrounding visual
evidence to make the case that these were one and the same phenomenon. While only a small
fraction of the many images I consulted made it into the final article, I nevertheless learned a great
deal from all of them, and I believe there are still many more to be found in archives, artworks, and
even in the margins of books (look no further than this issue’s cover illustration!).

Were there any points you were passionate about that you couldn’t include in the article that
you would like to share with the readers?

I don’t know how many of our readers will have witnessed the aurora firsthand. I myself am still
unsure whether I’ve seen one or not. During the great geomagnetic storm a fortnight ago (10-11
May), I stepped outside at around 3:00am and waited for a good hour, hoping to catch a glimpse of
the lights from the southern edge of Princeton’s campus. Being the novice observer I am, I
underestimated the light pollution emitted from the university, even in the wee hours. At one point,
I thought I could make out a small patch of purplish luminescence in the northern sky, and the
photos I took with my phone seemed to show faint beams perpendicular to the horizon. But
couldn’t these just as well be figments of what I had expected to see? Here I had the opposite
problem as my early modern naturalists: I was struggling to spot a well-defined object which credible
authorities informed me would likely be visible at that time and place.

Fortunately, the republic of scientific letters has expanded a great deal since the eighteenth century.
The NASA-sponsored citizen science project, Aurorasaurus, solicits participation from aurora
enthusiasts around the globe to report sightings of the lights’ appearance from their location. These
are uploaded real-time onto both the website and a mobile app that also informs users of auroral
visibility in their vicinity. While I sadly had to file a “No Sighting” report to this database after a
fruitless hour of waiting, a far more sensible observer who had driven out to Princeton Battlefield
around the same time shared some spectacular photos of the aurora borealis from only a mile away.
Now as then, I suppose there is strength in numbers when it comes to observation.

An aurora or just artificial light scattering?
Taken by the author at 4:24 a.m. EDT on 11 May 2024. Princeton, NJ
(Lat: 40.342904, Long: -74.654806)

For the second year, Early Science and Medicine and the Early Sciences Forum of the History of Science Society  are joining together to run a prize competition for the best essay focusing on early science, medicine, technology, and other forms of natural knowledge across the globe before 1800. We especially welcome submissions from early career scholars. The author of the winning essay will receive a $200 award and the piece will be published as an article in Early Science and Medicine  subject to peer review; the committee will provide mentorship throughout the process. The winner will be strongly encouraged to attend the 2024 History of Science Society Conference in Mérida on November 7-10, 2024 as the prize will be awarded at the Early Sciences Forum Meeting. 

We invite you to submit unpublished essays between 8,000 and 15,000 words in English that are not under consideration at another journal. Please follow the  ESM style guide  and make sure that your paper has been anonymized. ESM  publishes images in color and black-and-white; the author will handle permissions. Please submit essays  by July 1, 2024 via this form (https://forms.gle/rxxHkF49i5x5neWA8); the winner will be notified in early summer, in plenty of time to arrange for travel. For questions, please email  earlysciencesforum@gmail.com .

Dr. Ghoshal’s article is free to read for the first month, and can be found here. 

PERKINS: In your article you explore how Indian anthropologists used race science to establish themselves as disciplinary experts on an international level from a rather unique position as colonial subjects with a claim to specific expertise in understanding the social milieu of India. How did this particular topic catch your attention?

GHOSHAL: During my doctoral archival research, I was reading these anthropological works by Indians who were measuring, comparing and reimagining the subcontinent’s different communities through this new lens of anthropometry. One particular essay that prompted me to start thinking about not just these communities but the figure of the practitioner undertaking these disciplinary studies was this 1921 article by Indian lawyer and anthropologist Sarat Chandra Roy in Man In India. He was the founding editor of the journal, and it was the first dedicated anthropological journal in India, which of course was a nod to Man, the journal from the Royal Anthropological Institute (1901). In the 1921 article, Roy suggested two things – one that the subcontinent has a unique racial diversity which needed to be scientifically studied; and that it was not the administratively motivated colonial official nor the armchair intellectual in Europe who were best suited to do that. Rather, it was the Indian with their sociocultural familiarity with the social context who were most competent to study this diversity. He thus turned around the argument of bias by suggesting that because the Indian scholar was immersed by birth and upbringing in the field of study that they would not have the racist, orientalist bias that the colonial officials displayed because of their distance from the subject. This for me seemed to be the outlines for carving out a different idea of expertise. 

For your readers who perhaps aren’t familiar with the history of caste and race in India, could you perhaps briefly explain how the nuances of the two led Indian scientists to adopt a colonial scientific endeavor like race science as a way to explain the social hierarchy of India?

There was actually an interesting distinction between the colonial administrator’s and the Indian anthropologists’ study of caste. Although both used the contemporary methods of race science, there was a distinction in the intellectual motivations of these studies. The colonial administrator sought to explain the origin of the caste system and there were contending theories in this regard: the occupational versus racial theories of caste origin. The Indian anthropologists instead foregrounded a need for comprehensive knowledge about the racial history and present of the subcontinent’s communities. An imperially unbiased, non-racist knowledge about the racial composition of the region, was the prerequisite for the subsequent imagination of a modern, self-governing nation. But to measure and map this perceived racial diversity, Indian anthropologists turned to caste identities as the unit of study and analysis. They rejected the equation of castes with pure racial types which colonial officials tended to do. Instead, they sought to measure whether two caste groups – say Namasudras and Brahmins – were anthropometrically similar or different; where similarity would indicate racial intermixing and difference would indicate its absence. But even as they refrained from classifying castes as pure racial types, their disciplinary claim that each caste group’s racial composition could be measured exactly, ended up transforming castes into racially meaningful units.

What were some interesting finds you came across in your research? Was there possibly an unexpected “lightbulb” moment that directed your research?

Yes! When I was reading the United Provinces anthropometry survey that the Indian Statistical Institute had sponsored in the 1940s, I noticed the anthropologists’ and statisticians’ surprise on finding Muslims in the region anthropometrically similar to the Chattri, or the Kshetriya of north-India who claimed Rajput lineage and were relatively higher caste Hindus. They fail to conclude the reason with any certainty but speculate that either the two religious groups – Hindus and Muslims – had interbred at some point in history; or, some Chattris had converted into Islam. That for me signalled that as modern formations race and religion in the subcontinent emerged as conjoint categories, often one being used as the question and/or resolution for the other. Scholars have shown this is to the case in Europe and Latin America, under the influence of Christianity. In the Indian subcontinent, upper caste intellectuals sought to subsume religious difference, which was seen as a threat against the modern ideal of homogenous nation, within the assurance of measured, scientifically revealed racial sameness underneath. 

The additional aspect that I also found interesting, and what led me to title the paper ‘Experts of Identity’, is that the way these studies and questions were framed with relation to ideas of race, religion and caste, went on to establish biological, racial identity as the true identity of a community. So, with race science gaining legitimacy, it was no longer adequate to self-identify as Muslim or Christian, but the full extent of the identity was only revealed through one’s racial, biological ancestry – and that could only be ascertained by the practitioners of the science. 

Were there any points you were passionate about that you couldn’t include in the article that you would like to share with readers?

The statistical data that came out of these anthropometry studies definitely merit further analysis – not only for their role in the development of statistics in India. But I also found the conversion of these data into visually accessible images quite fascinating. For instance, if you look at the two images I shared in the article: a map showing racial interrelations in Guha’s 1935 publication and similarly a chart from Mahalanobis et. al.’s 1949 article. These visual representations of the findings from the studies depicted the closeness or distinction between communities by converting racial and caste intermixture, migration histories, and religious conversion into physical distance on a two-dimensional space. These studies, like most others at this time, primarily used the Mahalanobis distance formula to assign a single numerical coefficient that was calculated out of the mean values and standard deviation of anthropometric characters – such as nasal index, cephalic index, height etc. While the details of the data are also published in these studies, the resulting maps, graphs and charts are visually accessible for a broader readership without needing them to be statistically literate. These visual representations then served the additional purpose of making the statistical sciences legitimate in the eyes of the educated public but those without statistical training or knowledge. There was data for those who might want to corroborate the anthropological conclusions. But equally for the rest of the reading public, the data and its social, racial implications were accessible visually, at a glance, without the numerical obstacles. This was very much in sync with the emerging concern regarding the need for public dissemination of statistical knowledge and public approval of statistical methods for the impending postcolonial governance.