Making science of things: Objects and knowledge in, between, and beyond the sciences

Things and collections of things are among the most ubiquitous forms of scientific evidence, inducing the very concept itself – from the Latin evidentia , obvious to the mind or eye – into the physical realm. Things also tend to stick around; that which was acquired for research purposes is eventually transferred to storage, where it either disintegrates, or ages and accumulates. This obduracy of being renders things subject to almost infinite afterlives. Centuries-old evidence can always spark new research questions, perspectives, and methods, therewith exciting the perpetual evolution, branching, and convergence of knowledge and ways of knowing. The process of making things work as scientific evidence is inevitably inexact and messy and requires drawing on ways of working and thinking in and beyond other scientific disciplines. This notwithstanding, conversations about the relationship between objects and scientific knowledge are still largely preoccupied with the epistemic bounds of present-day disciplines and European or Euro-American ways of knowing. The aim of this special issue is to lean into that messiness and think beyond those preoccupations, drawing on new insights from environmental, Indigenous, social, and labor history, among other fields. Contributions foreground how physical objects have been used as evidence to undergird scientific enterprises rather than the disciplines into which those efforts are or have been organized. What emerges are rich histories of how evidence-based ideas and practices have intertwined different fields of knowledge in and far beyond the history of science.