Emotions have become a subject of considerable research in the last thirty years. Historians, philosophers, and scholars in literary and cultural studies have contributed extensively to a growing body of literature exploring different conceptions of emotions in different periods. Historians of science have not participated as fully in this emotional turn yet. In the history of science, most of the work has focused on the role of emotions in shaping science and the scientific self. The participants in this multi-session symposium aim to explore further how science has also played a key role in shaping views about the emotions. Examining scientific research on emotions will help uncover how different societies conceptualized the emotions and the influence of scientific ideas on changing views about different emotions. Scientific knowledge of the emotions has been put to work in diverse ways: shaping the moral and social valuations of different emotions, influencing social debates about the relationship between individual personality and social order, and, generally, influencing changing conceptions of human nature.