The knowing world: A new global history of science
The knowing world: A new global history of science
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DOI：
10.1177/0073275319831582
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发表时间：
2019-09-01
影响因子：
0.5
通讯作者：
Delbourgo, James
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Delbourgo, James
本文提出了一种新的全球性的方法，以地缘政治，历史意识和文化认同的问题为中心的科学史。文章认为，该领域现在正处于其长期关注西方世界自然科学史和某种形式的世界科学史的前景之间的十字路口，文章描述了一个新的本科生讲座课程，由作者设计，自2015年以来在罗格斯大学和哈佛大学任教，既不是从西欧开始，也不是以美国为高潮。它的目的是在此基础上阐明该领域的原始愿景。有人认为，科学史可以而且应该通过重新思考历史叙事如何涉及地理决策，即在何处集中分析注意力（以及在何处不集中），并将叙事和地理作为相关问题一起处理，来提供全球现状的深刻历史。这里提出的方法既不是背景中的科学，也不是运输中的知识，而是涉及一个已知世界的概念：一个由多种科学文化和悠久的历史记忆组成的世界，需要在世界范围内跨越空间和时间的辩证运动，以把握科学过去对现在的重要性，以及现在对我们如何看待过去的影响。在世纪不断变化的环境中，对身份、文化、种族和国家地位的争论进行明确的阐述，可以帮助我们构建一个更具公民意识和地缘政治信息的科学使用史。
This article proposes a new global approach to the history of science centered on questions of geopolitics, historical consciousness, and cultural identity. Arguing that the field is now at a crossroads between its longstanding focus on the history of the natural sciences in the Western world, and the prospect of some form of worldwide history of science, the article describes a new undergraduate lecture course, designed by the author and taught at Rutgers and Harvard since 2015, which neither begins in Western Europe nor culminates with the United States. It aims to articulate an original vision for the field on this basis. Histories of science can and should offer deep histories of the global present, it is argued, by rethinking how historical narratives involve geographical decisions about where to focus analytical attention (and where not) and tackling narrative and geography together as linked issues. The approach proposed here is neither science in context nor knowledge in transit but engages the notion of a knowing world: one made up of multiple scientific cultures and long historical memory, and requiring dialectical movement back and forth across both space and time on a worldwide scale to grasp the scientific past's importance for the present, as well as the present's impact on how we perceive the past. Explicitly addressing polemics of identity, culture, race, and nationhood can help us to construct a more civic-minded and geopolitically informed history of science of use in the changing circumstances of the twenty-first century.