We live in an age of metrics. All around us, things are being standardized, quantified, measured. Scholars concerned with the work of science and technology must regard this as a fascinating and crucial practical, cultural and intellectual phenomenon. Analysis of the roots and meaning of metrics and metrology has been a preoccupation of much of the best work in our field for the past quarter century at least. As practitioners of the interconnected disciplines that make up the field of science studies we understand how significant, contingent and uncertain can be the process of rendering nature and society in grades, classes and numbers.

This paper argues that ancient Babylonian signs (omens) reflect a mode of inferential reasoning as a function of their syntactic and logical structure as conditionals. Taking into account the institutional context that produced a systematic written body of omens, the paper is principally interested in the cognitive disposition of such texts. Investigating what constitutes system in these works, formal aspects of the material are examined in terms of the nature of conditionals and the logic of conditional statements. It is argued that conditional statements about ominous phenomena speak as much to a notion of conceivability and possibility as to empirical physical actuality. It is claimed that the epistemological character of the Babylonian compendia of signs cannot be understood without due attention to epistemic possibility and further, that the cuneiform omen texts comprise a different kind of scientific knowledge from that limited to a knowledge of physical phenomena and their laws.

Textual and material evidence suggests that early Byzantine architects, known as mechanikoi, were comprehensively educated in the mathematical sciences according to contemporary standards. This paper explores the significance of the astronomical and optical sciences for the working methods of the two mechanikoi of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, Anthemios of Tralles and Isidoros of Miletus. It argues that one major concern in the sixth-century architectural design of the Great Church was the visual effect of its sacred interior, particularly the luminosity within. Anthemios and Isidoros seem to have been thoroughly conversant with the ancient corpus of astronomical and optical writings and, as will be shown, implemented their theoretical knowledge in the design of Hagia Sophia. Specifically, the paper demonstrates that the orientation of the building's longitudinal axis coincides with the sunrise on the winter solstice according to ancient computations, implying that the orientation was intentionally calculated in order to secure an advantageous natural illumination of the interior. Light and visual effects served to reinforce the symbolic significance of the sacred space that furthermore provides evidence for optical considerations with respect to late antique concepts of light and vision.

Gertrude Cox, first chair of North Carolina State University's Department of Experimental Statistics, worked as a consultant for the Ford Foundation to Cairo University's Institute of Statistical Studies and Researches in 1964. An analysis of this work provides a case study in the internationalization of the statistics profession, the systems of patronage available to scientists in the second half of the twentieth century, and the history of women in science. It highlights some of the complexities in the process of internationalization in science, showing that even when scientists cross national boundaries to promote their discipline, they may have as a goal the advancement of their own nationalistic interests, or those of their patrons. In documenting Cox's commitment to serving her professional community, this case study will show that some particularly feminine qualities of Cox's approach to her work enabled her to accomplish what her male colleagues tried unsuccessfully to do.

Two simultaneous episodes in late nineteenth-century mathematical research, one by Karl Hermann Brunn (1862–1939) and another by Hermann Minkowski (1864–1909), have been described as the origin of the theory of convex bodies. This article aims to understand and explain (1) how and why the concept of such bodies emerged in these two trajectories of mathematical research; and (2) why Minkowski's – and not Brunn's – strand of thought led to the development of a theory of convexity. Concrete pieces of Brunn's and Minkowski's mathematical work in the two episodes will, from the perspective of the above questions, be presented and analyzed with the use of the methodological framework of epistemic objects, techniques, and configurations as adapted from Hans-Jörg Rheinberger's work on empirical sciences to the historiography of mathematics by Moritz Epple. Based on detailed descriptions and a comparison of the objects and techniques that Brunn and Minkowski studied and used in these pieces it will be concluded that Brunn and Minkowski worked in different epistemic configurations, and it will be argued that this had a significant influence on the mathematics they developed for those bodies, which can provide answers to the two research questions listed above.

In the late 1960s, in the midst of campus unrest, a group of young economists calling themselves “radicals” challenged the boundaries of economics. In the radicals' cultural cartography, economic science and politics were represented as overlapping. These claims were scandalous because they were voiced from Harvard University, drawing on its authority. With radicals' claims the subject of increasing media attention, the economics mainstream sought to re-assert the longstanding cultural map of economic science, where objectivity and advocacy were distinguishable. The resolution of the contest of credibility came with a string of cases of dismissals and denial of tenure for radicals. The American Economic Association's investigations of these cases, imposing the conventional cultural map, concluded that personnel decisions had not been politically motivated. Radicals were forced to migrate from the elite institutions from which they had emerged to less prestigious ones. “Place” became a marker of their marginalization within the profession.