Focus: Bounded Rationality and the History of Science. Introduction

Historians of science see knowledge and its claimants as constrained by myriad factors. These limitations range from the assumptions and commitments of scientific practitioners to the material and ideational contexts of their practice. The precise nature of such limits and the relations among them remains an open question in the history of science. The essays in this Focus section address this question by examining one influential portrayal of constraints--Herbert Simon's theory of "bounded rationality"--as well as the responses to which it has given rise over the last half century.