How does scientific knowledge circulate? Does scientific communication shape the making of science? Is the making of science a national endeavour or does it have an international or transnational dimension? Are teaching and research equally relevant in this endeavour? How can history of science react to the challenges posed by the changing practices of science in historical context? Beyond Borders is a book generated at the heart of these fundamental questions. In the last decades, the history of science has attained a high degree of disciplinary maturity and sophistication. However, perception of disciplinary crisis is apparent behind calls for the search of new “big pictures” and their implementation in teaching and communicating the history of science to wider audiences. Temporal and narrative fragmentation are seen as major drawbacks hindering the development of the discipline. In addition, national, linguistic and methodological division is increasingly afflicting its practice. Like other areas in the humanities, and in contrast to the sciences, the history of science has nowadays a pronounced local character which clearly constrains its intellectual output. Challenging this state of affairs is a major aim of this book, which argues for a resolute call for intellectual and methodological pluralism and internationalism. Through a broad diversity of subjects, periods, and geographies, covering from studies of sixteenth-century astrological texts to contextual analysis of twentieth-century X-ray spectroscopy, this collection of papers and historiographical essays offers a fresh overview of the field and its major questions. Beyond Borders revisits five major topics in history of science, namely the early modern map of knowledge, pedagogy and science, science popularization, science and the nation and the geography of scientific centres and peripheries. Engaging with a broad diversity of historiographical and methodological approaches in an international perspective, Beyond Borders is a rich and plural manifesto contributing to the reflective appraisal of history of science as a discipline.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Beyond Borders brings fresh air to the mainstream historiography of our discipline. It shows the intellectual dynamism of the young generation of historians of science, and nicely combines new case studies from the periphery together with the latest debates in academic centres at international level. –Agustí Nieto-Galan, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
The writing is clear and vigorous. The contributors…have delivered a credo and a programme for going beyond postmodernist dogma. –Lewis Pyenson, Western Michigan University, Cambridge Journals BJHS, Volume 42/2 – June 2009
This important collection of essays is a historiographical milestone in our discipline. The work of young scholars working in or in association with the STEP (Science and Technology in the European Periphery) project, it breaks resolutely with the predominantly Anglophone character of the sources and subjects favoured by British and North American historians. It is a refreshingly European production that deserves the serious attention of all of us in the English-speaking world of the history of science. Between them, the eighteen essays in Beyond Borders make a powerful case for methodological plurality. They demonstrate time and again the virtues of a broad palate of reading and the dangers of exclusive allegiance to any one approach to writing the history of science. The result is a volume that invites us to cross the geographical, linguistic, and methodological boundaries that all too often constrain our work as historians. –Robert Fox, University of Oxford.
About the Author
Josep Simon, University of Leeds, UK Néstor Herran, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Tayra Lanuza-Navarro, European University Institute, Florence. Pedro Ruiz-Castell, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Ximo Guillem-Llobat, Universitat de València.
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