“On Disaster"

Disasters—and related topics such as risk, forecasting, and anthropogenic climate change—are of increasing interest to historians of science and allied fields. The very concept, however, is a slippery one, raising a host of related questions. What types of events or processes truly constitute “disasters”? How have disasters been defined historically, and how have these categories shifted over time? How have science and technology shaped social and cultural understandings of catastrophe? With an eye toward these questions, this Focus section examines the central, fundamental role that science has played in delineating disaster in the modern era. The contributors to this section interrogate the multifaceted relationship between disasters and the history of science. Taking a deliberately expansive view of both “disaster” and “science” as categories of analysis, their essays invite readers to consider catastrophe in novel ways and from a variety of perspectives.