This volume is the result of a two-tier conference consisting of a two-day symposium followed by a one-day workshop, which was first conceived by a group of philosophers and historians of physics in the Greater Boston area, the core members of which were Babak Ashirafi of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ronald Anderson of Boston College, Tian Yu Cao of Boston University, David Kaiser of Harvard University and Silvan S. Schweber of Brandeis University, and then sponsored by the Center for Philosophy and History of Science, Boston University, and held at Boston University on March 1-3 1996, with financial support provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Boston Philosophy of Science Association.

The intention was to offer an opportunity for a group of leading scholars to present their penetrating and in-depth analysis of various formulations and understandings of the foundations of quantum field theory, and to investigate philosophical and historical issues associated with these formulations, and also to provide a forum for the desirable, mutually beneficial but difficult exchange of views and ideas between physicists and mathematicians on the one side and philosophers and historians on the other. Although the experiment in dialogue was not completely successful, the publication of this volume will make the valuable contributions to this conference as well as interesting material about the tension between two groups of scholars accessible to a much wider audience for further theoretical, philosophical, historical, and sociological analysis.