This Focus section explores how knowledge and skill emerged in direct dialogue with practice, from the late Middle Ages to the early modern period. It seeks to create a space in which historians of science and economic historians can recognise common research questions and establish a conversation. The contributions in this section share an interest in how practitioners’ works, their knowledge, and craft expertise contributed to both socio-technical and scientific change. To do so, they explore how the expertise of artisans, artists, engineers, instrument makers, surgeons, and other skilled workers took form “in use.” These pages introduce the first papers published under this ‘Knowledge in Use’ label. Other papers will be published in the Focus section published in the forthcoming volume of Galileana. Early drafts of these studies were discussed in a workshop held in February 2026 at the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, within the research activities of the FIS WorKnow project. Taken together, this and the forthcoming Focus section show how taking practitioners’ own words seriously is to see knowledge developing hand in hand with material practice.
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