“[L’algèbre] répond non seulement à ce qu’on lui demande, mais encore à ce qu’on ne lui demandoit pas, et qu’on ne songeoit pas à lui demander.” (Jean Le Rond d’Alembert : Equation: In: Encyclopedie, vol. 5, 1751, p. 850).
After two full terms as editor of Science in Context, Moritz Epple has left us to focus on new tasks ahead. Epple’s contribution to the journal as editor has been invaluable. His collected manner of criticism has encouraged countless authors to strengthen the lines of their reasoning, and his broad command of the field has ensured the inclusion of many pertinent issues in their articles that would not otherwise have been mentioned.
His own research agenda was a very good fit with the journal’s program, which, since the 1980s, has leaned strongly towards a social history of science. Key topics in Epple’s research have stretched from the heights of twentieth-century topology to the lows of the sciences of the Third Reich, with particular emphasis on the dire fates and significant scientific contributions of Jewish mathematicians. Widely read in continental philosophy and epistemology, Moritz Epple embraced the depth of many disciplines in a global perspective, and highlighted the constitutional role of “weak knowledge,” describing how this fragility is a necessary stage of all science, before discoveries have been sufficiently proven and gained enough supporters. His balanced views of the community of historians of science were mirrored by the politics of translation from lesser-known centers of the field.
His tenure with the journal from 2013 onwards was characterized by a swift change towards digital publication. He remained unwavering in his rejection of ill managed forms of quantification.
We thank Moritz Epple for his countless contributions to the journal and to the thoughts of others, and take heart from the fact that the same astute and considerate attention that he devoted for so long here, to last minute revisions, missing headlines, or incorrect color shades in a low-resolution image, will now be applied to his future pursuits.
