This article is devoted to the subject of age and the elderly in the Middle Ages, and the manner of viewing elderly people in those times. The author uses Jan Długosz’s Annals, books 9–12, as his basic source. His analysis concentrates on the following questions: Whom did the Polish historian consider worthy of remembrance in his Annals? How did he describe those figures? What words did he use to describe the phenomenon of age or aging? The author analyses the Latin terms used to describe specific older persons, and also presents the perceptions of older women, older men, and elderly people as a group. An attempt is made to answer the question of whether old age was a period of well-being and prosperity in medieval times.
Units of measurement appear as media of social confl ict in Witold Kula’s seminal study on metrication. Given the current discussions around political epistemology, Kula’s treatment of metrology is telling. He turns the supposedly neutral auxiliary science of weights and measures into a matter of concern. The reception of his concepts in the West is outlined (history of historical metrology, the Annales school, and the history of science), and the potential of this social history of measurement in times of accelerated data production is evaluated.