Dissertation Research: The Impact of War and Nationalism on Knowledge Exchange and Cultureal Practices of Scientists During the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars

论文研究：法国大革命和拿破仑战争期间战争和民族主义对科学家知识交流和文化实践的影响

• 批准号: 0620172
• 负责人: Kenneth Alder
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Northwestern University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-06-01 至 2008-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0620172&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Dissertation; Research; Impact; War; Nationalism

This Science and Society Dissertation Improvement Grant in the history of science will support a student in traveling to archives in England and France to collect data which will help in his completion of the Ph.D in the history of science. The dissertation investigates the impact of war, nationalism, and national interests on knowledge exchange and the cultural practices of scientists during the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. Utilizing transnational scientific correspondence as its source base, it illuminates how late Enlightenment scientists at once invoked and challenged the ideal of scientific cosmopolitanism to accommodate the increasingly systematic use of science in the service of national interests. It sheds light on the historiography's paradoxical portrayal of the late eighteenth century as an era characterized, on the onehand, by the apex of scientific internationalism and, on the other hand, by emergent scientific nationalism. This dissertation's intellectual merit lies in its identification of the origins of a central aspect of modern science: the tension between science's transnational aspirations and its de facto practice in national contexts. Two well-established characteristics of the transition to modern science around 1800 are professionalization and specialization. This dissertation adds a crucial third aspect to this discussion: the tension between science's transnational ambitions and national character. Employing a transnational framework, it illuminates the complex ways in which late Enlightenment scientists grappled with national and transnational loyalties. It asks how the increased interest of the modern state in scientific affairs altered the contours of scientific internationalism. This dissertation is innovative because it asks new questions about the character of scientific cosmopolitanism. This approach is much needed due to recent research on science and nationalism in France and Britain that challenges a Cold War era historiography that exaggerated the amicable character of eighteenth-century science. The broader impacts of this project are several. By demonstrating how the late eighteenth century scientific community addressed the challenges that warfare andnational interest posed to its ideal of open knowledge, the project will provide a useful model of how scientific communities balance their international and national commitments in moments of political exigency. In addition to contributing to scholarly and public understanding of the history of science, it has implications for scholarly understanding of the Enlightenment. The existing literature on the Republic of Letters is remarkably silent about the fortunes of this transnational community after the outbreak of the French Revolution. The contribution of this study is to offer a model for understanding how a cosmopolitan community reacted to the pressures of national interest. It will be a starting point for comparing and contrasting how other cosmopolitan communities, namely literary, religious, and philosophical, reacted to the demands of nationalism and national interest in this period. Finally, it's historical perspective on how scientists grappled with issues of scientific openness and secrecy has resonance for twentieth-century science studies and for early twenty-first century policy debates.

科学史上的科学与社会论文改进补助金将支持学生前往英国和法国的档案馆收集数据，这将有助于他完成科学史上的博士学位。本论文探讨了法国大革命和拿破仑战争期间战争、民族主义和国家利益对知识交流和科学家文化实践的影响。利用跨国科学通信作为其源基地，它阐明了如何晚启蒙科学家在一次调用和挑战的理想，科学世界主义，以适应日益系统地使用科学服务于国家利益。它揭示了史学对18世纪后期的矛盾描述，一方面，科学国际主义达到顶峰，另一方面，新兴的科学民族主义。本论文的学术价值在于它确定了现代科学的一个核心方面的起源：科学的跨国愿望与其在国家背景下的实际实践之间的紧张关系。1800年前后向现代科学过渡的两个公认的特征是职业化和专业化。本论文增加了一个关键的第三个方面，这一讨论：科学的跨国野心和民族性格之间的紧张关系。采用跨国框架，它阐明了启蒙运动后期科学家与国家和跨国忠诚斗争的复杂方式。它提出了现代国家对科学事务日益增长的兴趣如何改变了科学国际主义的轮廓。本文的创新之处在于对科学世界主义的性质提出了新的问题。这种方法是非常必要的，因为最近在法国和英国的科学和民族主义的研究，挑战冷战时期的史学，夸大了18世纪科学的友好性格。该项目的广泛影响有几个。通过展示18世纪末科学界如何应对战争和国家利益对其开放知识理想的挑战，该项目将提供一个有用的模型，说明科学界如何在政治紧急时刻平衡其国际和国家承诺。除了有助于学术和公众对科学史的理解外，它对启蒙运动的学术理解也有影响。关于文学共和国的现有文献对法国大革命爆发后这个跨国社区的命运保持沉默。这项研究的贡献是提供了一个模型，了解一个国际化的社区如何应对国家利益的压力。这将是一个起点，比较和对比其他世界性的社区，即文学，宗教和哲学，如何反应的要求，民族主义和国家利益在这一时期。最后，它对科学家如何应对科学公开性和保密性问题的历史观点，对20世纪世纪的科学研究和21世纪世纪早期的政策辩论产生了共鸣。