Before and After Science is the fifth solo studio album by English musician Brian Eno, originally released by Polydor Records in December 1977 in the United Kingdom and by Island U.S. soon after.

Musicians from the United Kingdom and Germany had notably collaborated on the album, including Robert Wyatt, Fred Frith, Phil Manzanera, Paul Rudolph, Andy Fraser, Dave Mattacks, Jaki Liebezeit, Dieter Moebius, and Hans-Joachim Roedelius.

The song "King's Lead Hat" (the title of which is an anagram for Talking Heads, for whom Eno would later produce three albums) was remixed and released as a single, although it did not chart in the United Kingdom.

[7][8] Due to the very positive critical reception accorded his previous rock music-oriented album, Another Green World, Eno was afraid of repeating himself but still wanted to release a high-quality product.

[1][6][16] Jim DeRogatis, author of Turn on Your Mind: Four Decades of Great Psychedelic Rock, described the overall sound of Before and After Science as "the coldest and most clinical of Eno's pop efforts".

[17] David Ross Smith of online music database AllMusic wrote that "Despite the album's pop format, the sound is unique and strays far from the mainstream".

[10] "King's Lead Hat" is an anagram of Talking Heads, a new wave group Eno had met after a concert in England when they were touring with Ramones.

[23] The back cover of the LP states "Fourteen Pictures" under the album title, referencing Eno's ten songs and Peter Schmidt's 4 prints.

Writing for Creem, Joe Fernbacher called the Before and After Science "the perfect Eno album",[39] and Mitchell Schneider in Crawdaddy stated he could not "remember the last time a record took such a hold of [him]—and gave [him] such an extreme case of vertigo, too".

[40] In DownBeat, Russell Shaw wrote that the album was "another typically awesome, stunning and numbing Brian Eno album—the record Pink Floyd could make if they set their collective mind to it".

[42] Among later reviews of Before and After Science, the editors of AllMusic awarded the album the highest rating of five stars, with David Ross Smith stating that it ranks alongside Here Come the Warm Jets and Another Green World "as the most essential Eno material".

[43] Douglas Wolk of the webzine Pitchfork gave Before and After Science a perfect rating, calling the album "the most conceptually elegant of Eno’s '70s song-albums".