The promises of science. Historical perspectives

© 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Historically, promises, or expectations, gained especial relevance in the legitimisation process of new scientific disciplines and large-scale research projects. We often find influential discourses voiced by scientists and natural philosophers using language in the future tense and one may legitimately wonder the extent to which the rhetoric of promise became intrinsic to the modern notion of science. The aim of this special issue is to consider some ways in which ‘promise’, understood as statement(s) aiming at creating expectations about some benefit(s) gained in the future with the help of science, may be a potential historiographical category in the history of science.