Science and Technology in the European Periphery: Some Historiographical Reflections

The discussion and conclusions of this paper are mostly grounded in our experience as members of the group STEP (Science and Technology in the European Periphery). STEP is a multi-national research group focused on the study of processes and models of circulation of scientific and technological knowledge between European centres and peripheries from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. STEP was founded in May 1999, in Barcelona, and gathers more than one hundred from Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, etc. STEP organizes thematic meetings to be held biannually. Besides the foundational meeting in Barcelona, four more thematic meetings have taken place in Lisbon, Portugal (Scientific travels); Aegina, Greece (Scientific and technological textbooks); Aarhus, Denmark (Traditions and realities of national historiographies of science); and Mahon, Spain (Scientific and technological popularization in the European periphery). Many of the examples employed in this paper come from these meetings.

Despicht N. , “‘Centre’ and ‘periphery’ in Europe”, in de Bandt J. Mandi P. Seers D. (eds), European studies in development: New trends in European development studies (London and Basingstoke, 1980), 38–41, p. 38.

Selwyn P. , “Some thoughts on cores and peripheries”, in Seers D. Schaffer B. Kiljumen M. L. (eds), Underdeveloped Europe: Studies in core-periphery relations (Hassocks, 1979), 37–39; and Shils Edward , Centre and periphery: Essays in macrosociology (Chicago and London, 1975). Shils argued that “Society has a centre…. The central zone, is not as such, a spatially located phenomenon…. Its centrality has, however, nothing to do with geometry and little with geography. The centre, or the central zone, is a phenomenon of the realm of values and beliefs” (p. 3). See the recent discussion by Burke Peter , “Centres and peripheries”, in History and social theory, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 2005), 82–88. Other examples are the work on Portuguese economic history by Miriam Halpern Pereira, Villaverde Cabral, Jaime Reis and more recently sociologists such as Boaventura Sousa Santos, João Arriscado Nunes and Eduarda Gonçalves: They all presuppose and discuss different hierarchical spaces from centres to peripheries, semi-peripheries, and ultra-peripheries. See, for example: João Arriscado Nunes and Maria Eduarda Gonçalves (eds), Enteados de Galileu? A semiperiferia no sistema mundial da ciência (Porto, 2001); de Sousa Santos Boaventura (ed.), Globalização: Fatalidade ou utopia? (Porto, 2001). The idea of “semi-peripheries” has also been employed by other historians of science. See Polanco X. (ed.), Naissance et développement de la science-monde: Production et reproduction des communautés scientifiques en Europe et en Amérique Latine (Paris, 1990).

See papers included in Polanco (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 3). See also Cueto Marcos , “Andean biology in Peru: Scientific styles on the periphery”, Isis, xc (1989), 640–58; Todd Jan , “Science at the periphery: An interpretation of Australian scientific and technological dependency and development prior to 1914”, Annals of science, 1 (1993), 33–58; Lindqvist Svante (ed.), Centre on the periphery: Historical aspects of twentieth-century Swedish physics (Canton, MA, 1993); Santesmases Maria Jesús Muñoz E. , “The scientific periphery in Spain: The establishment of a biomedical discipline at the Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas, 1956–1967”, Minerva, xxxv (1997), 1997–45; and Lértora-Mendoza C. A. Nicolaidis E. Vandersmissen J. (eds), The spread of the Scientific Revolution to the European periphery, Latin America and East Asia, Proceedings of the XXth International Congress of History of Science (Belgium, 2000). An interesting recent review is Lewis Pyenson, “Centre and periphery revisited: The structures of European science, 1750–1914 [book review]”, The British journal for the history of science, xxxix (2006), 2006–3.

For a review of this extensive historiography see Dolby R. G. A. , “The transmission of science”, History of science, xv (1977), 1–43. For modern reviews see Lafuente A. Elena A. Ortega M. L. (eds), Mundialización de la ciencia y cultura nacional (Madrid, 1993). There is an important “bibliometric” literature revised by Edge D. , “Quantitative measures of communication in science: A critical review”, History of science, xvii (1979), 1979–34. See, also, the analysis by Jorge Cañizares-Esquerra, “Iberian science in the Renaissance: Ignored how much longer?”, Perspectives on science, xii (2004), 2004–124. Cañizares shows that the neglect of Iberian contributions to the Scientific Revolution goes back to the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment. He also offers an interesting review of the literature. For a comprehensive list of recent literature see Conceição Tavares and Henrique Leitão, Bibliografia de história da ciência em Portugal 2000–2004 (Lisbon, 2006), and the Bibliografía española de historia de la ciencia y de la técnica, which includes more than 15000 entries: http://161.111.141.93/hcien/.

A special issue of the journal Nuncius devoted to national historiographies of science is now under preparation by a group of STEP members. It will cover ‘peripheral’ countries such as Greece, Portugal, and Spain, among others.

Hauss H. R. , Pour une esthétique de la reception (Paris, 1978); Daston Lorraine (ed.), Things that talk: Object lessons from art and science (New York, 2004); and Tamen Miguel , Friends of interpretable objects (Cambridge, MA, 2001).

Selles M. Peset J. L. Lafuente A. , (eds), Carlos III y la ciencia de la ilustración (Madrid, 1987); Kondylis P. , Neohellenic Enlightenment: The philosophical ideas (Athens, 1988) (in Greek); Dimaras C. Th. , La Grèce au temps des Lumières (Geneva, 1969); de Carvalho Rómulo , A física experimental em Portugal no século XVIII (Lisbon, 1982); and Rodrigues Resina , “Física e filosofia da natureza na obra de Inácio Monteiro”, in História e desenvolvimento da ciência em Portugal, i (1986), 1986–242.

See, for instance, Gay P. , The Enlightenment: An interpretation (New York, 1977); Outram D. , The Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1995); Venturi F. , “The European Enlightenment”, in Italy and the Enlightenment: Studies in a cosmopolitan century, ed. with an introduction by Woolf Stuart (London, 1972), 1–32; Ferrone V. , The intellectual roots of the Italian Enlightenment: Newtonian science, religion, and politics in the early eighteenth century, transl. by Sue Brotherton (New Jersey, 1995; originally published as Scienza natura religione: Mondo newtoniano e cultura italiana nel primo Settecento (1982)); Golinski J. , Science as public culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760–1820 (Cambridge, 1992); Diogo Maria Paula Carneiro Ana Simões Ana , “The Portuguese naturalist Correia da Serra (1751–1823) and his impact on early nineteenth-century botany”, Journal of the history of biology, xxxiv (2001), 2001–93; and Carneiro Ana Simões Ana Diogo Maria Paula , “The Scientific Revolution in eighteenth-century Portugal: The role of the estrangeirados (Europeanized intellectuals)”, Social studies of science, xxx (2000), 2000–619. For a recent overview, Clark William Golinski Jan Schaffer Simon (eds), The sciences in Enlightened Europe (Chicago, 1999).

Basalla G. , “The spread of Western science”, Science, clvi (1967), 611–22.

Basalla , op. cit. (ref. 10), 611.

Basalla , op. cit. (ref. 10), 617.

Basalla , op. cit. (ref. 10), 611.

See Lafuente (eds), op. cit. (ref. 5), which includes, for instance, a paper by Roy McLeod discussing Basalla's point of view: “The worldwide diffusion of science”, 735–7. It also includes a chapter by Basalla himself revisiting his famous paper: “The spread of Western science revisited”, 599–603. Main changes can be identified simply by going through the following books: Nathan Reingold and Marc Rothenberg (eds), Scientific colonialism: A cross-cultural comparison (Washington, DC, 1987); McLeod Roy Kumar Deepak (eds), Technology at the Raj: Western technology and technical transfers to India 1700–1947 (New Delhi, 1995); and McLeod Roy (ed.), Nature and empire: Science and the colonial enterprise (Osiris, n.s., xv (2000)).

“Looking back, the diffusionist perspective, the centre—periphery model, and the strong program of imperial science have proved insufficiently accommodating to the sources and discoveries of recent research.” Cf. McLeod , Nature and empire (ref. 14), 5. Some of the new approaches cited by McLeod are: Anthony Padgen, European encounters with the New World: From the Renaissance to Romanticism (New Haven, 1993); Petitjean P. Jami C. Moulin A. M. (eds), Science and empires: Historical studies about scientific development and European expansion (Dordrecht, 1990); and Patty Michel , “Comparative history of modern science and the context of dependency”, Science, technology and society, iv (1999), 1999–203. Another example is Robert Iliffe, “Foreign bodies: Travel, empire and the early Royal Society of London. Part 1: Englishmen on tour. Part 2: The land of experimental knowledge”, Canadian journal of history, xxxiii (1998), 1998–85; xxxiv (1999), 24–50. For a recent review see “Focus: Colonial science”, Isis, xcvi (2005), 2005–87, which includes introduction by Londa Schiebinger, “Forum introduction: The European colonial science complex”; and papers by Harrison Mark , “Science and the British empire”; Cañizares-Esguerra Jorge , “Iberian colonial science” (the paper focuses on Spain with scarce allusions to Portugal); Harris Steven J. , “Jesuit scientific activity in the overseas missions, 1540–1773”; and Osborne Michael A. , “Science and the French empire”. It is also the case that in what relates to technology the issues pertaining to innovation and reliable knowledge have to be taken into consideration in order to further elucidate the relationship between the (colonizing) centre and the (colonized) periphery.

This is a strong point in Said Edward W. , Orientalism (London, 1978), and also in Ranajit Guha, History at the limit of world history (New York, 2002). Guha is the leader of the subaltern studies group in India, which has notably contributed to the historiographical revision of colonial science. In his words: “The noise of world-history and its statist concerns has made historiography insensitive to the sighs and whispers of everyday life … the events and sentiments which inform the prose of the world remain unacknowledged” (p. 73); “We [indigenous historians in India] work within the paradigm it [world-history] has constructed for us, therefore far too close and committed to it to realize the need for challenge and change” (p. 5). See also Raina Dhruv , Images and contexts: The historiography of science and modernity in India (Oxford, 2003); and Arnold David , “Europe, technology, and colonialism in the twentieth century”, History and technology, xxi (2005), 2005–106.

While the concept of appropriation has been used in the history of science for many years (see for example Sabra A. I. , “The appropriation and subsequent naturalization of Greek science in medieval Islam: A preliminary statement”, History of science, xxv (1987), 223–43), we use the concept of appropriation in a novel way, firstly, when contrasting ‘appropriation’ with ‘transmission’, and, secondly, when studying the possibilities for using it for the sciences as a term denoting the “point of view of the receivers”, “the transformation of knowledge”, etc. On the other hand, the concept of appropriation and the notion of the active receiver has been around for a long time, in the history of art, literature, and anthropology. It has been extensively used to analyse the active role of the public in cultural phenomena of communication and reception by French authors such as Foucault M. de Certeau M. Ricoeur P. Chartier R. , See especially Chartier Roger , “Culture as appropriation: Popular cultural uses in early modern France”, in Kaplan Steven L. (ed.), Understanding popular culture: Europe from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century (Amsterdam, 1984), 229–53. In that context ‘popular culture’ might have some analogies with ‘periphery’ in terms of appropriation from below. For a recent overview, see Burke Peter , History (ref. 3), 101–4. In what relates to the uses of appropriation in art studies see Baxandall M. , Patterns of intention: On the historical explanation of pictures (New Haven, 1985), especially pp. 58–62. In order to stress the new perspective Baxandall lists a number of notions which can be used only within such a framework: “Draw on, resort to, avail oneself of, appropriate from, have recourse to, adapt, misunderstand, refer to, pick up, take on, engage with, react to, quote, differentiate oneself from, assimilate oneself to, align oneself with, copy, address, paraphrase, absorb, make a variation on, revive, continue, remodel, ape, modulate, travesty, parody, extract from, distort, attend to, resist, simplify, reconstitute, elaborate on, develop, face up to, master, subvert, perpetuate, reduce, promote, respond to, transform, tackle …” (p. 59).

Livingstone D. , Putting science in its place: Geographies of scientific knowledge (Chicago, 2003). See also Ophir A. Shapin S. (eds), The place of knowledge: The spatial setting and its relation to the production of knowledge (Science in context, iv/1 (1991)).

Secord James E. , “Knowledge in transit”, Isis, xlv (2004), 654–72; Wise Norton , “Keynote address”, introductory talk at HoST Annual Workshop “The circulation of science and technology: Places, travels and landscapes”, 5–6 June 2006, Lisbon, published as “What can circulation explain? The case of Helmholtz's frog-drawing-machine in Berlin”, HoST, i (2007), 2007–71. Many inspiring concepts (“centres of calculation”, “immutable mobiles”, etc.) were introduced by B. Latour in his famous Science in action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society (Cambridge, MA, 1987), although some, like “immutable mobiles” as “intact” objects that do not change in any transit, rest in stark contrast to our argument.

For the circulation of technology, and especially for the recent emphasis on the active role of users rather than innovators in the process of appropriation of technology, see Edgerton David , The shock of the old: Technology and global history since 1900 (London, 2006); idem, “From innovation to use: Ten (eclectic) theses on the history of technology”, History and technology, xvi (1999), 1999–26; idem, “Creole technologies and global histories: Rethinking how things travel in space and time”, HoST, i (2007), 2007–110; and Oudshoorn Nelly Pinch Trevor (eds), How users matter: The co-construction of users and technologies (Cambridge, MA, 2003).

Simões A. Carneiro Ana Diogo Maria Paula , (eds), Travels of learning: A geography of science in Europe (Dordrecht, 2002).

Simões Ana Carneiro Ana Diogo Maria Paula , “Building the Republic of Letters: The scientific travels of the Portuguese naturalist Correia da Serra (1751–1823)”, Revue de la maison française, i (2004), 33–50.

Patiniotis Manolis , “Scientific travels of the Greek scholars in the eighteenth-century”, in Simões (eds), op. cit. (ref. 21), 47–75.

Nieto-Galan Agustí , “Under the banner of the Catalan industry: Scientific journeys and technology transfer in nineteenth-century Barcelona”, in Simões (eds), op. cit. (ref. 21), 189–212.

Belmar A. García Sánchez J. R. Bertomeu , “Constructing the centre from the periphery: Spanish travellers to France at the time of the Chemical Revolution”, in Simões (eds), op. cit. (ref. 21), 143–88; and Carneiro Ana , op. cit. (ref. 9).

Gouzévitch Irina Gouzévitch Dmitri , “Travelling interchanges between the Russian empire and western Europe: Travels of engineers during the first half of the nineteenth-century”, in Simões (eds), op. cit. (ref. 21), 213–31; and Carneiro Ana Areias Dores Leitão Vanda Pinto Luís Teixeira , “The role of travels in the internationalization of nineteenth-century Portuguese geological science”, in Simões (eds), op. cit. (ref. 21), 249–97.

Nieto-Galan Agustí , “Free radicals in the European periphery: ‘Translating’ organic chemistry from Zurich to Barcelona in the early twentieth century”, The British journal for the history of science, xxxvii (2004), 167–91.

Some important books on the history of scientific teaching have been published in the last decade. See Olesko K. , Physics as a calling: Discipline and practice in the Königsberg seminar for physics (Ithaca, 1991); Warwick A. , Masters of theory: Cambridge and the rise of mathematical physics (Chicago, 2003); and Kaiser D. , Drawing theories apart: The dispersion of Feynman diagrams in postwar physics (Chicago, 2005). For a review of old and recent studies, see Kaiser D. (ed.), Pedagogy and the practice of science: Historical and contemporary perspectives (Boston, 2005), and Olesko K. , “Science pedagogy as a category of historical analysis: Past, present, and future”, Science & education, xv (2006), 2006–80. This paper is included in Bertomeu-Sánchez J. R. García-Belmar A. Patiniotis Manolis Lundgren Anders (eds), Textbooks in the scientific periphery (special double issue of Science & education, xv (2006)).

Bertomeu-Sánchez (eds), op. cit. (ref. 28).

Kuhn T. S. , The structure of scientific revolutions, 2nd edn (Chicago, 1970), 10. Olesko Besides , “Science pedagogy” (ref. 28), see also Kaiser D. (ed.), Pedagogy and the practice of science: Historical and contemporary perspective (Cambridge, 2005).

See four case studies on the chemical revolution in the scientific periphery: Carneiro Ana Diogo Maria Paula Simões Ana , “Communicating the new chemistry in eighteenth-century Portugal: Seabra's Elementos de Chimica”, in Bertomeu-Sánchez (eds), op. cit. (ref. 28), 671–92; Bertomeu-Sánchez José Ramón García-Belmar Antonio , “Pedro Gutiérrez Bueno's textbooks: Audiences, teaching practices and the Chemical Revolution”, ibid., 693–712; Selligardi Raffaella , “Views of chemistry and chemical theories: A comparison of two university textbooks in early nineteenth-century Bologna”, ibid., 713–38; and Jacobsen Anja Skaar , “Propagating dynamical science in the periphery of German Naturphilosophie: H. C. Ørsted's Romantic research school”, ibid., 739–60.

For a very interesting discussion on the spread of a “paper tool” see Kaiser D. Ito K. Hall K. , “Spreading the tools of theory: Feynman diagrams in the USA, Japan and the Soviet Union”, Social studies of science, xxxiv (2004), 879–922. On the transfer of technical skills, see Lundgren A. , “The transfer of chemical knowledge: The case of chemical technology and its textbooks”, in Bertomeu-Sánchez , op. cit. (ref. 28), 761–78. For a critical review of some of these issues, see Olesko K. , “Tacit knowledge and school formation”, Osiris, n.s., viii (1997), 16–29, and the introduction and papers included in Bertomeu-Sánchez . (eds), op. cit. (ref. 28).

Some examples of research schools in the scientific periphery are discussed in Santesmases and Muñoz, op. cit. (ref. 4); Amaral I. , “The emergence of new scientific disciplines in Portuguese medicine: Marck Athias's histophysiology research school, Lisbon (1897–1946)”, Annals of science, lviii (2006), 85–110; and Nieto-Galan , “Free radicals” (ref. 27).

On this topic, see Gouzevitch I. , “The editorial policy as a mirror of Petrine reforms: Textbooks for engineers and their translators in early eighteenth century Russia”, in Bertomeu-Sánchez (eds), op. cit. (ref. 28), 841–62; and Petrou G. , “Translation studies and the history of science: The Greek textbooks of the eighteenth century”, ibid., 823–40. See also Rupke N. , “Translation studies in the history of science: The example of ‘Vestiges’”, The British journal for the history of science, xxxiii (2000), 2000–22, and Montgomery S. L. , Science in translation: Movements of knowledge through cultures and time (Chicago and London, 2000).

Palló Gabor , “The Encyclopaedia as textbook: The first Hungarian textbook”, in Bertomeu-Sánchez (eds), op. cit. (ref. 28), 779–99. For a general overview on this topic, see Yeo R. , Encyclopaedic visions: Scientific dictionaries and Enlightenment culture (Cambridge, 2001).

See Secord , op. cit. (ref. 19), and Shinn T. Whitley R. (eds), Expository science: Forms and functions of popularization (Boston, 1985). For additional bibliography and a broader discussion, see Papanelopoulou Faidra Nieto-Galan Agustí Perdiguero Enrique (eds), Popularizing science and technology in the European periphery, 1800–2000 (Aldershot, forthcoming 2008).

Cooter R. Pumfrey S. , “Separate spheres and public places: Reflections on the history of science popularization and science in popular culture”, History of science, xxxii (1994), 237–67.

The issues at stake were discussed in several papers presented at the 5th STEP meeting, 1–3 June 2006 (Mahon, Spain). Some will be included in Papanelopoulou (eds), op. cit. (ref. 36). Such is the case, for example, with J. Simon Castel, “Ganot's textbooks of physics: Translation, the making of the book and the transit of knowledge”; and Vanpaemel G. Van Tiggelen B. , “Science for the people: The Belgian Encyclopédie populaire and the constitution of a national science movement”.

Besides the mentioned collective volumes, a recent relevant STEP project on comparative history is “Science and technology in the press: Impressions at the beginning of the twentieth century”. It brings together research teams from Spain, Greece, Portugal and Denmark. See the papers presented at the 5th STEP meeting: Ana Simões, Conceição Tavares, Ana Carneiro and Maria Paula Diogo, “Newspapers' views on science and technology: Impressions from Portugal at the beginning of the twentieth century”; Hjermitslev Hans Henrik Andersen Casper , “Newspapers' views on science and technology in Denmark”; González Matiana Herrán Néstor Piriz Enric Perez Núria Nieto-Galan Agustí , “Science at the fin de siècle in Barcelona” and Mergoupi—Savaidou Eirini Tzokas Spyros Papanelopoulou Faidra , “National identity and progress in the popular accounts of science and technology in the Greek press 1900–1914”.

See Papanelopoulou (eds), op. cit. (ref. 36) for further discussion and bibliography.

An overview of the advantages and drawbacks of comparative history approaches is presented in the paper by Pyenson Lewis , “Comparative history of science”, History of science, xl (2002), 1–33.