I. Some Characteristic Features of the Passage From the 18th to the 19th Century 1. The following notes grew out of reflections which first led us to send out invitations to, and call for papers for, an interdisciplinary workshop, which took place in Bielefeld from 27th to 30th November, 1979. The status and character of this preface is therefore somewhat ambiguous: on the one hand it does not comment extensively on the articles to follow, on the other hand it could not have been conceived and written in the way it was without knowledge of all the contributions to this volum- which contains revised editions of papers for the workshop - nor without the cooperation of the participants in the above mentioned symposium. Furthermore, although the following may sound slightly programmatic and summary, we hope that it will be sufficiently explicit to provide some key words and concepts useful for further scholarly work. Perhaps the most important result of our efforts is the very structure of these notes: it is aimed at providing methodological orientations for the investigation of what turned out to be a very peculiar period in the history of science. xi H. N. Jahnke and M. Otte (eds.), Epistemological and Social Problems of the Sciences in the Early Nineteenth Century, xi-xlii. Copyright © 1981 by D. Reidel Publishing Company. xii H. N. JAHNKE ET AL.