Knowledge in transit: Western Science & the Non-West

1. Maria G. Mandourari

2. The spread of knowledge, its global ubiquity and
circulation, in the history of science:
 Positivists* : this was the one issue they had
cracked.
 Scientific knowledge spread because it was true
*Positivism is a philosophy of science based on the view that information
derived from logical and mathematical treatments and reports of sensory
experience is the exclusive source of all authoritative knowledge, and that
there is valid knowledge (truth) only in scientific knowledge. Verified data
received from the senses are known as empirical evidence. This view holds
that society, like the physical world, operates according to general laws.

3. Failure of diffusion: resistance due to
false beliefs and irrational
commitments
Historians have yet to take on board
the full consequences of abandoning it
The centrality of knowledge in
circulation gradually and from diverse
perspectives

4. Scientific Revolution:
 Criticised for: positing a onetime shift
toward modernity
 Natural history & alchemy
 The problems posed by: the continued use
of the concept of the Scientific Revolution

5.  Revisionist*: continued dominance of older
frameworks. Historians offer critiques rather
than explanations or competing alternatives
 Unifying narratives and a sense of large
connections
 *In historiography, historical revisionism is the reinterpretation of
orthodox views on evidence, motivations, and decision-making
processes surrounding a historical event. Though the word
revisionism is sometimes used in a negative way, constant revision of
history is part of the normal scholarly process of writing history.

6.  Historians should think much more
consistently about the problem: the kinds
of analytical resources, the specific kinds
of narratives
 Current work: limited by
unconceptualised geographical and
disciplinary boundaries
 Variety of approaches

7.  Standard model for historicising science is to
locate specific pieces of work in a tight a
context as possible
 These trends joined up with those within the
developing field of sociology of knowledge,
the “case studies”
 Mid 1980s: science= a practical activity,
located in the routines of everyday life.
Knowledge= a form of practice.

8.  The move to study practice: the most
significant transformation
 It broke old boundaries between “internal”
and “external”
 Opened up a view of science as a process
 It broke down old distinctions

9.  Knowledge as communicative practice in a
range of well-integrated and closely
understood settings
 Appreciative audience among general
historians, historians of art and literature
and the public at large
 Historians of science: new topics have
attracted interest throughout the
humanities

10.  Deal the circulation of knowledge at the
right scale
 Constrained frameworks for
understanding the larger narratives of
science
 Comparative studies
 Find people willing to study different
kinds of interactions
 Perspective beyond that of the inherited
stories