Bringing the World into the History of Science

About the Speaker

Kapil Raj is a research professor in the history of science at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris and a visiting professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Shiv Nadar University in Greater Noida. His research is focused on the construction of scientific and technical knowledge through processes of circulation and intercultural encounter from the 17th to the 20th centuries. His publications include Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of Knowledge, South Asia and Europe, 1650-1900 (2007), and, with Simon Schaffer et al. The Brokered World: Go-Betweens and Global Intelligence (2009).

Abstract

Although the history of modern science purports to be about a domain of universal validity, and thus with a universal history, its history has largely been driven by nationalist agendas, claiming its origins in western Europe. Amongst those who have given the spatial and global aspects of knowledge formation a thought, two main approaches have until recently prevailed: civilizationalism, and diffusionism. It is only in the past few decades that historians of science have begun to seriously address the paradox of the simultaneous universality and occidentality of science, especially in the light of the rise of global history. Through a brief presentation of the history of the discipline, this talk will present the various perspectives within which the spatial question has been addressed, situating them within the changing political and geopolitical contexts of the 20th century. Finally, it will privilege one such approach — circulation — and illustrate, through a case study, how this form of historical analyse functions in a transnational context, and the kinds of questions it opens for the social sciences.

Report

This lecture discussed the rise and circulation of the discipline of the history of science, through a historiographical approach, laying out the different stages in the rise and fall of history of science.

Before delving into the wider historiography of the history of science, Professor Raj introduced to us the paradox of the history of science, where the scientific methods are widely used, but the paradox is that history is closely guarded by nationalistic borders and boundaries. In this age, where science becomes a sign of modernity, the history of science is heavily contested and becomes a very nationalist, regionist history.

The lecture was then divided into three sections, with regard to the history of science. The first was the early history at the beginning of the twentieth century, the next section covered the pre World War 2 and the third section focused on contemporary historiography and the possibilities that history of science has for its readers. Professor Raj also emphasised that the history of science in different countries is very different from each other.

The first wave that Professor Raj discussed started in the second decade of the 20th century, with the establishment of the ISIS journal, which was to promote scientific engagement and history of science. It had an extremely positivist approach to history, going from milestone to milestone. The ISIS journal had a variety of scholars from different academic backgrounds and disciplines. It gained major traction in the interwar periods, with the rising interests in scientific discoveries. Professor Raj also points out that in its early years, ISIS legitimised several forms of knowledge systems that weren’t previously deemed as particularly scientific.

The second part of the lecture focused on the concept of the Scientific Revolution, and the pre-war and post-war revolutions that happened. In 1931, the field of history of sciences is stormed by a revolution, through a well prepared Soviet delegation, spearheaded by Nickolai Bourigel, Boris Hessen. One of the key elements in this revolution was the work by Hessen, “The Socioeconomic routes of Newton’s Principia”, which focused on the socio-economic causes that made Newton make the discoveries that he finally did. These ideas were developed through World War 2. Post World War 2, and with the beginning of the cold war, there was mathematicizing of the scientific revolution. The idea that a Scientific Revolution existed and it has to be formulated mathematically came from Alexander Koyre.

The last part of the lecture focused on the new methods of circulation, and contemporary historiography in the history of science. The new modes of circulation discovered point out to the long term connections and scientific exchanges that happened between different regions of the world. One of the examples that Professor Raj used is that of the Malabar medical document, which has layers of Indian languages and Portuguese in it. These kinds of historical findings broaden the scope of the history of science and take it beyond and outside the so-called ‘scientific age’^[1].

Therefore through these three elements, Professor Raj introduced us to the wide historiography of the history of science and formulated its importance as a discipline.

By Pratiti, Undergraduate Batch of 2020

[1] An age marked by European Modern Science.