A significant change in the publication behavior of scientists can be revealed by studying the policies of editors of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century journals toward anonymity. Although a great deal more anonymity is to be found in this period, there is also evidence of ambivalence and even rejection of the practice. It reflects the Baconian ideal of collective research and a belief that the role of the scientist was to uncover rather than to discover the truth, an attitude that is reflected in scientific writing today where the author seeks to cast himself in the role of a passive observer. The explicit and implicit reasons revealed for the assumption of anonymity have some relevance even today, when it is rarely to be found. The study of anonymity in scientific writing can serve to illuminate the changes in the social role of science and the functions of scientific communications.