Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science
Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science is an open-access semiannual [June and December] online journal published by the Graduate Program in History (Science and Culture in History) of Federal University of Minas Gerais (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais). Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science promotes scholarly research in the historiography of science and chronicles its history and criticism. Although historiography of science is a sub-discipline of History, we construe this subject broadly to include analysis of the historiography of science produced by history of science, philosophy of science, science education and related disciplines. By focusing its analysis on the different historical, social and epistemological implications of science, historiography of science is a transversal knowledge with respect to the production of science, hence the name of this journal. In order to accomplish its purpose, Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science discusses historical, theoretical, conceptual and methodological aspects of the different themes, works and authors present in this tradition, as well as the new approaches in the recent historiography of science.
This commemorative contribution reflects on the intellectual trajectory and historiographical significance of Transversal since its foundation in 2016. Written from the perspective of a longstanding collaborator, Editorial Board member, Associate Editor, author, and Guest Editor, it situates the journal within a broader international effort to consolidate a serious and interdisciplinary space for the history and philosophy of science. Particular attention is given to the journal’s formative moments, its thematic dossiers, and its contribution to contemporary historiographical debate, especially through the interplay of conceptual reconstruction, epistemological reflection, textual analysis, and historical contextualisation in the history of the mathematical and physical sciences.
Copyright (c) 2026 Raffaele Pisano https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Reflections on a Decade About Ludwik Fleck between 2016 and 2026
Commemorative Issue – Transversal at Ten Reflections on a Decade About Ludwik Fleck between 2016 and 2026
Copyright (c) 2026 Paweł Jarnicki https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Debates and Developments after the Work of Ian Hacking
This article reflects on the first decade of Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science (2016-2026) in relation to the most recent years and the enduring intellectual legacy of the philosopher of science Ian Hacking. Starting from the dossier dedicated to Hacking’s work in Transversal (2023), it examines the main historiographical changes associated with the themes Hacking explored within this evolving historiographical landscape, evaluating his interventions in terms of analytical approaches, research objects, and conceptual structures. It also analyzes significant interpretative trends in the reception of Hacking’s work during this period. Finally, it identifies — in addition to the consolidated interpretations of his legacy — gaps, tensions, and persistent unresolved problems in the historiography built around his work, thus pointing out possible lines of critical development.
Copyright (c) 2026 María Laura Martínez https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Obituary Claudemir Roque Tossato (1961–2026): A Tireless Brazilian Scholar and Interpreter of Keplerian Astronomy
Copyright (c) 2026 Fábio Rodrigo Leite, Paulo Tadeu da Silva https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The relationship between history of science and philosophy of science, which constitutes the field of history and philosophy of science (HPS), has undergone significant transformations. This paper presents a dual analysis of this evolution. Firstly, it provides a brief historiographical review of the shifting dynamics between the two sides of the aisle. Secondly, it employs a bibliometric analysis of scholarly databases – Dimensions and OpenAlex – to map the field’s contemporary landscape. The findings reveal two dominant trends: the proliferation of the case study method and a marked increase in academic specialization into sub-fields (e.g., HP of Physics, HP of Biology). Finally, this paper proposes a methodological framework, the “epistemic gradient”, which reframes the relationship between historical particularism and philosophical generalism, offering a practical model for conducting integrated HPS research.
Copyright (c) 2026 Lucas Marcelo Cavalari Nardi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
From Rationality to Scientific Rationality
This article argues that the concept of rationality, widely used across disciplines, suffers from conceptual indeterminacy, obscuring its precise definition and boundaries. This necessitates a clear and coherent definition to delimit its scope and to grasp the specific relationship it maintains with science. Rationality holds particular epistemological value within the scientific domain, where it is closely tied to the scientific method. We explore how the general notion of rationality has evolved into the more specific concept of scientific rationality and examine how it diverges from other forms of rational thought. Our central hypothesis is that “rationality” lacks a straightforward definition, even in scientific contexts, and is instead understood through stipulative definitions due to its inherent complexity and broad lexical field. This inquiry aims to clarify the methodological and conceptual delimitation of scientific rationality.
Copyright (c) 2026 Georges Alahou https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Book Review Dersley, Stephen. 2025. Thought Collectives and Cultural Change: Applying Ludwik Fleck’s Theory of Thought Collectives to the Study of Cultural Transformations. Springer Nature. 438p.
Copyright (c) 2026 Marcia Tiemi Saito https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Genesis and Development of French Historical Epistemology
Book Review Gerardo Ienna, Genesis and Development of French Historical Epistemology: A Trajectory Towards Political Epistemology. Cham: Springer, 2025. 242 pp.
Copyright (c) 2026 Davi De Conti https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
From the Editors Commemorative Issue – Transversal at Ten Transversal over Its First Decade
Copyright (c) 2026 Mauro L. Condé, Marlon J. Salomon https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Reply to the Book Review of La Mathématisation du Temps: De La Science Hellénistique à La Science Moderne
Copyright (c) 2025 Jean-Pierre Castel, Jean-Claude Simard https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Book Review: Castel, Jean-Pierre & Simard, Jean-Claude. (2024). La Mathématisation du Temps : De la Science Hellénistique à la Science Moderne. Vrin / Presses de l’Université Laval. Collection Zêtêsis. 551 pages.
Copyright (c) 2025 João F. N. B. Cortese, Murtaza Chopra, Philippe Debroise https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The purpose of this article is to present the principles of Paul Feyerabend’s epistemology, described in Against Method, through the scientific practice of Harvard computers – women who worked at the Harvard Observatory between the 19th and 20th centuries. Four key Feyerabendian concepts are highlighted for this discussion, namely: counter-induction, the proliferation of theories and methodological pluralism, supposed “irrationality” that can lead to scientific progress, and the use of “forbidden resources” (such as hypotheses ad hoc). Through the historical episodes involving the “computers”, it is possible to show that astronomical knowledge has advanced through a diverse, creative and non-linear form of praxis. We conclude that the history of Harvard Computers embodies Feyerabend’s thesis that scientific progress is a pluralistic enterprise, relying on the diversity of methods and the freedom to challenge established rules and consensus.
Copyright (c) 2025 Camila Maria Sitko, Bárbara de Almeida Silvério, Michel Corci Batista, Indianara Lima Silva https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Michael Scot and the Augustalis Gold Coins
Herein is shown Michael Scot’s potential involvement in the minting of the Augustalis gold coins introduced by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Hohenstaufen II in the early thirteenth century. Michael Scot was definitely helpful in two aspects: measure and calculations. Additionally, it is shown how his knowledge of alchemy could have been helpful in metallurgical issues such as gold extraction and purification, suggesting that the century experienced a prototypical “entrepreneurial alchemy” that preceded Newton’s use of alchemy for the British Mint, centuries later.
Copyright (c) 2025 Tony C. Scott https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
This article examines the epistemological role of scientific error by analyzing the responses of Karl Popper and Paul Feyerabend to the problem of error. It begins by clarifying the terminological foundations for the use of the term error in scientific contexts. Popper’s response is then discussed within the framework of falsifiability, emphasizing how his conception of conjectures and refutations departs from traditional views, while still presenting certain limitations. Feyerabend’s progressive response, in turn, attributes an essential and non-transitory role to error in the advancement of knowledge, particularly within the divergent proliferation of cosmologies. By critically examining this response, the article contributes to a broader understanding of the significance of errors in scientific progress.
Copyright (c) 2025 Lília Ferreira Souza Queiroz, Deivide Garcia da Silva Oliveira https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
This paper critically examines the growing influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) through the lens of Feyerabend’s philosophy, specifically his defense of pluralism and the conquest of abundance. This influence poses a challenge to us by flattening the diversity and richness of human world and cognition. Our paper explores how AI systems actively sculpt reality by curtailing human preferences and narrowing the scope of what is considered real or possible. This algorithmic compression of reality is shown to be a direct assault on the abundance Feyerabend sought to protect. The algorithmic flattening will be explored in an empirical study, from which the concept of cognitive debt emerges. This cognitive impairment, coupled with the impoverishment of our shared reality, underscores the urgency of Feyerabend’s call to fight attempts to reduce abundance and devalue human existence. The paper concludes that Feyerabend’s pluralistic view offers a philosophical resource for critically facing the AI-driven world.
Ontological and epistemological homogeneity
Copyright (c) 2025 Deivide Garcia da Silva Oliveira https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Copyright (c) 2025 Eric Oberheim, Deivide Garcia da Silva Oliveira, Leandro Giri https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
This paper is an attempt to reckon with Feyerabend’s engagements with socio-cultural anthropology, an area which has so far remained unexplored. After tracking some of his recurring anthropological reference points, I argue that anthropology was important to Feyerabend’s philosophy in two related ways: first, as a model for a flexible and situational form of theorizing; second, as a critical method for the relativization of different modes of understanding. Ultimately, I argue that anthropology was central to Feyerabend’s conception of cosmological criticism, his radically comparativist means of critiquing established modes of being and thinking.
Copyright (c) 2025 Philip Swift https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Feyerabend is known for emphasizing the need to proliferate incompatible theories as a means of scientific progress. However, he also strongly criticized the idea of “​free theory creation” in the course of the debate over the interpretation of Ernst Mach’s philosophical work and its influence on Albert Einstein’s discovery of relativity. This criticism implies that Feyerabend conceived restrictions on theory creation. The purpose of this text is to identify what these restrictions were and whether they imply an internal tension in Feyerabend’s philosophy.
Copyright (c) 2025 Miguel Agustín Aguilar Sandoval https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The Anthropocene, a newly proposed geological event, continues to provoke debate across the sciences, humanities, and arts. While its stratigraphic status remains uncertain, the Anthropocene has already transformed scholarly and cultural imaginaries by entangling earth history with social history. To navigate this controversy, this paper mobilizes Paul Feyerabend’s notion of epistemological anarchism, summarized in the phrase “anything goes”, as a way to rethink the methodological and epistemic pluralism demanded by the Anthropocene. From “anything goes” to “anthropocene goes”, the argument here emphasizes that no single disciplinary lens or universal method can adequately capture the complexity of planetary transformations. Instead, pluralistic approaches must recognize multiple temporalities, causalities, and lived experiences of the climate regime, while also confronting the exclusion of underrepresented communities from epistemic participation.
Copyright (c) 2025 Rangga Kala Mahaswa https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Making the Brain, Concealing the Subject:
In recent decades, knowledge about the brain has transformed radically, enabling neuroscience to venture into domains traditionally reserved for the humanities and social sciences. This expansion has prompted critiques regarding the potential implications and consequences of neuroscience’s engagement with domains such as education, law, politics, and the self. Building on these concerns, this study seeks to foster a dialogue between two onto-epistemological perspectives: (1) the epistemological history of the making of scientific objects and objectivity ideals and (2) decolonial and postcolonial reflections on knowledge and its history. The former illuminates the ontology of the brain as an object conceived as ahistorical, serving as a condition of possibility for neuroscience. This configuration facilitates flourishing objectivity. The latter reveals how these elements function as power technologies, thus presenting modern science and its objects as universal, valid, and inevitable. The brain serves as a case study for a dialogue that reveals how the construction of scientific objects coincides with subject concealment. Specifically, modern subjectivity is hidden behind these objects, whereas subjects external to modernity are excluded from scientific endeavors. The genesis of objectivity unfolds alongside European imperial expansion, anchoring the modern brain’s epistemic authority within the historical processes that have enabled its universalization.
Copyright (c) 2025 Tomás de la Rosa https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Promises, Unpredictability, and Artificial Positivities:
The materials emerging from chemical laboratories are not fixed essences: they are hybrid entities—entwined with matter, technique, nature, and culture—whose properties are actualized as they circulate through diverse ecologies. From this understanding, we propose a relational philosophical framework to elucidate three conceptual operators that facilitate the comprehension of their modes of existence. First, the “economy of promises”: regimes of expectations that drive investments, shape markets, and imaginaries, and often eclipse environmental and social costs. Secondly, “unpredictability”: unanticipated effects that emerge when molecules move between contexts. Thirdly, “artificial positivity”: the capillarization of psychotropics as they move from therapeutic niches to performance-enhancing instruments, establishing chemically modulated forms of life. From these three operators, we derive essential normative criteria to prevent and counteract certain opaque and deleterious modes of existence of specific material entities produced by the chemical industry. Through this relational perspective, we seek to shift the focus from “what is” to “what might come to be” and “at what cost”; the philosophy of chemistry thereby reinserts into public debate dimensions often absent from purely descriptive or functionalist analyses of chemical entities.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ronei Clécio Mocellin, Luciana Zaterka https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
This paper presents a re-evaluation of Paul Feyerabend’s philosophy of science and connects him with an unlikely ally in the physicist Richard Feynman. The essay argues they share critical, latent insights into the dynamic nature of science via the ideas of Michael Polanyi. Where Feyerabend has acquired the label of “anti-science radical”, this paper will contend that this is a fundamental misreading, mistaking his thoughts about science for prescriptive methodological claims for doing science. Such mis-readings play into a wider construction of the public image of both Feyerabend and Feynman that have been utilised in “science-culture wars”. However, both thinkers recognised the fundamental distinction between doing (a tacit, lived practice) and thinking about science (explicit knowledge, philosophy) to the extent that “science” cannot be accurately defined without misrepresenting it. Ultimately, both Feynman and Feyerabend were concerned at the growth of scientism masquerading under the name of science.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ben Trubody https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
On at least two occasions, Thomas Kuhn referred to Ludwik Fleck. He did it in the Preface to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and years later in the introduction to the English translation of Fleck’s work. On the first occasion, he states that Fleck “anticipated many of my own ideas”, but he did not specify which. On the second occasion – although much more specific – he is still not very abundant. If we read Fleck’s work, we will notice that this influence is greater than we expect from these two quotations. In this article, I intend to rescue the historical memory of Fleck’s conception of scientific knowledge. Fleck influenced not only Kuhn, but also a vast current that thinks that science does not consist of isolated theories, but of structures that evolve over long historical periods, termed paradigms, research programs, traditions, Gestalten, or structures. After synthesizing the main points of Fleck epistemology, I will reconstruct his thought collective, considering – in a circular argument – he had a philosophical environment in which he developed his research, a community that guided it.
Copyright (c) 2025 César Lorenzano https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The document identifies two central themes in Paul K. Feyerabend’s work and discusses their alignment with the humanitarian activities of the Feyerabend Foundation. The first theme emphasises the abundance of life and pluralism – the proliferation of worldviews, cultures and methods that make life meaningful for different people, as opposed to unique, dogmatic views of “truth” and “reality”. This is in line with the Foundation’s support for cultural and biological diversity and community self-determination. The second element (“Every culture is potentially all cultures”) highlights the shared human nature and capacity for compassion that unite us beyond our cultural differences. This is consistent with the Foundation promoting community solidarity and addressing the root causes of social injustice. Interrupting this virtuous convergence, an unexpected postscript reveals how both Paul Feyerabend’s ideas and the genuine humanitarianism of the Feyerabend Foundation remain politically sensitive today and may, more than ever, be the subject of shameless attacks.
Copyright (c) 2025 Grazia Borrini-Feyerabend https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Editors Special Issue Paul Feyerabend and the History and Philosophy of Science
Copyright (c) 2025 Deivide Garcia da Silva Oliveira, Leandro Giri https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Copyright (c) 2025 Fábio Rodrigo Leite https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Interview: Kapil Raj and Thomás A. S. Haddad
Interview - Kapil Raj and Thomás A. S. Haddad : Following the Actors Beyond Science and Empire
Copyright (c) 2025 Kapil Raj, Thomás A. S. Haddad, Sabina Ferreira Alexandre Luz, Millena Souza Farias https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Pablo Rubén Mariconda (1949-2025): The Legacy of a Giant
Copyright (c) 2025 Paulo Tadeu da Silva, Claudemir Roque Tossato, Eduardo Salles de O. Barra https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Suitability of a Historical Research Design in a History Research
Historical research design provides a systematic framework ideal for examining historical events, people, and phenomena. It emphasizes chronological organization, enabling researchers to trace historical processes over time. Source analysis is central, promoting critical evaluation of primary and secondary sources to ensure accuracy and reliability. The design situates events within broader social, cultural, political, and economic contexts, fostering nuanced understanding. It facilitates causal analysis and comparative studies to identify patterns and contrasts across different historical situations. Longitudinal studies allow for the examination of developments over extended periods, while narrative construction ensures coherence and meaning. Interdisciplinary approaches further enrich historical inquiry by integrating insights from multiple fields. Beyond academia, historical research design aids in preserving collective memory by guiding the documentation and interpretation of the past. Its emphasis on critical analysis ensures methodological rigor, supporting accurate and meaningful contributions to historical scholarship.
Copyright (c) 2025 Josephat Nairutia Kemei, Kizito Muchanga Lusambili, Kenneth Kaunda Odulwa , Pascalia Okoba https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Constructivism and Historiography of Science in Argentina
The article focuses on the networks involved in the Spanish translation, in 2005, of the book Leviathan and the Air-Pump, by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer. It shows that the translation by the publishing house of the National University of Quilmes was linked to prior and subsequent tensions that arose within the framework of the local institutionalization of the STS (Science, Technology and Society) field and overlapped with concerns specific to the historiography of science in Argentina. Focusing on multidisciplinary publications and local institutional developments, it is shown how the constructivist approach adopted in the book received criticism from other currents such as the neo-institutional, Marxism, or historical epistemology. The final reflections show some of the derivations of these debates in relation to the decisions of science policies.
Copyright (c) 2025 Marina Rieznik https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/