25 years after Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s seminal book Toward a History of Epistemic Things, both the life sciences and their historiography have deeply changed. Molecular biology has (arguably) lost its supremacy, data-intensive approaches pose (at least some) new questions, and studies on the serendipity of experiments are themselves becoming “historical”.
This special issue explores the past, present and future of historical epistemology from a multitude of vantage points. It gives 20 tentative answers to the question of how to write the (long and contemporary) history on and beyond epistemic times. Ceci n’est pas un hommage.

With contributions by Jenny Bangham, Cornelius Borck, Soraya de Chadarevian, Esther Chen, Angela Creager, Stephen Hilgartner, Lara Keuck, Ilana Löwy, Kathryn Maxson-Jones, Elisabetta Mengaldo, Pierre-Olivier Méthot, Robert Meunier, Michel Morange, Kärin Nickelsen, Christian Reiß, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Caterina Schürch, Alexander von Schwerin, Edna Suárez-Díaz, Hanna Worliczek, and Michael Zimmermann.