Prerogatives of European Intellect: Historians of Science and the Promotion of Western Civilization

This text was prepared for the colloquium “Mathematical Europe: Myth or Reality?” organized by Catherine Goldstein and James Ritter and held in Paris during April 1992. Circumstances prevented its presentation at that time.

On Ptolemaic-inspired instruction in late nineteenth-century Morocco and Delphin Cambodia Gaston , “L'astronomie au Maroc”, Journal asiatique, xvii (1891), 179–201; Tannery Paul , “Sur un manuel cambodgien d'astronomie, le ‘Kbuon sauriat’ [1905]”, in Tannery , Mémoires scientifiques , xv, ed. by Heiberg J-L. and Zeuthen H-G. (Toulouse, 1939), 392–406, related correspondence on following pages. Tannery's Mémoires scientifiques, in seventeen volumes, appeared under various editors between 1912 and 1950.

Salaman Redcliffe , The history and social influence of the potato, ed. by Hawkes J. G. (Cambridge, 1949; 1985); Wolf Eric R. , Europe and the people without history (Berkeley, 1982); Mintz Sidney W. , Sweetness and power: The place of sugar in modern history (New York, 1985).

Raman V. V. and Forman Paul , “Why was it Schrödinger who developed de Broglie's ideas?”, Historical studies in the physical sciences, i (1969), 291–314; Sivin Nathan , “Why the scientific revolution did not take place in China — or didn't it?”, Chinese science, v (1982), 45–66; Nersessian Nancy , “‘Why wasn't Lorentz Einstein?’: An examination of the scientific method of H. A. Lorentz”, Centaurus, xxv (1986), 205–42; Pyenson Lewis , “Why science may serve political ends: Cultural imperialism and the mission to civilize”, Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, xiii (1990), 69–81.

The observation is Thomas Kuhn's.

Pyenson Lewis , “Over the bounding main”, Historical studies in the physical and biological sciences, xx (1990), 407–22.

Osler William , Chauvinism in medicine: The address in medicine, Canadian Medical Association, Montreal, Sept. 17th, 1902 (Montreal, [1902]), 5; reprinted from the Montreal medical journal. Osler as a historian of science in Pyenson Lewis , “What is the good of history of science?”, History of science, xvii (1989), 353–89.

Osler William , The anti-venereal campaign, being the annual oration of the Medical Society of London, 1917 (London, 1919), 290–312, pp. 294–5, reprinted with original pagination from Transactions of the Medical Society of London, xl (1917); idem, The nation and the tropics: Address delivered in the London School of Tropical Medicine, October 26, 1909 (Oxford, [1909]), 4–6.

Rashed Roshdi , “La notion de science occidentale”, in Human implications of scientific advance: Proceedings of the XVth International Congress of the History of Science, Edinburgh 10–19 August 1977, ed. by Forbes Eric G. (Edinburgh, 1978), 45–54, revised and enlarged in Rashed , Entre arithmétique et algèbre: Recherches sur l'histoire des mathématiques arabes (Paris, 1984), 301–18. Rashed has elaborated on the matter, with special attention to the Ottoman empire, in “Science classique et science moderne à l'époque de l'expansion de la science européenne”, in Science and empires , ed. by Petitjean Patrick Jami Catherine , and Moulin Anne Marie (Dordrecht, 1992), 19–30, p. 20. Complementing Science and empires is the Journal of the Japan-Netherlands Institute, iii (1991), edited by Remmelink W. G. J. and devoted entirely to papers of the First Conference on the Transfer of Science and Technology between Europe and Asia since Vasco da Gama (1498–1998); the contributors are Cohen H. Floris Davids Karel Ihsanoglu Ekmeleddin Vogel Hans Ulrich Keiji Yamada Tadashi Yoshida Beukers Harm Werger-Klein K. E. Grove Richard Kumar Deepak Deloche Jean Varadarajan Lotika , and Knapp Gerrit J. Remmelink's volume is the single best introduction to current views about science East and West over the past five centuries.

Merz J. T. , A history of thought in the nineteenth century (4 vols, Edinburgh, 1904–14; New York, 1965), iv, 260. On Merz's enterprises in chemicals and electricity, Hughes Thomas P. , Networks of power: Electrification in Western society, 1880–1930 (Baltimore, 1983), 249, 448–51; on Merz's intellectual undertakings, Hoernlé R. F. Alfred , “The philosophical work of Dr. Merz”, Proceedings of the University of Durham Philosophical Society, iv, pt. 4 (1922–23), 233–90. The first volume of Merz's History appeared in 1896; the edition chosen for the 1965 reprinting is apparently an unaltered reprinting of the 1896 edition.

Merz , History (ref. 9), i, 15–20.

ibid., i, 14–15.

Spingarn J. E. , “American scholarship: Les belles-lettres et l'érudition en Amérique au point de vue académique”, in Congress of Comparative History, Paris 1900, section 6, Histoire comparée des littératures (Paris, 1901), 243–7.

Quesada Ernesto , La enseñanza de la historia en las universidades alemanas (La Plata, 1910), 1035–49 for a summary of Lamprecht, upon whose vision Quesada sought to build the discipline of history at La Plata. Ringer Fritz , The decline of the German mandarins (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), 302–4 for Lamprecht's “rather turbulent mixture of anthropological information, imaginative portraiture, and embarrassingly superfluous rhetoric about psychosocial laws”. Lamprecht's Diapason is rendered in English as the dominant — the fifth degree of the major or minor scale, although no discussion is given to the musical allusion: Lamprecht Karl , What is history? , transl. by Andrews E. A. (London, 1905), 119. On Quesada as a germanophile, Simons-Stoecker Haenni , “Die Quesadas als Förderer geistiger Beziehungen zwischen Argentinien und Deutschland”, Ibero-Amerikanisches Archiv, vii, no. 2 (1929), 1–6; and Pyenson Lewis , Cultural imperialism and exact sciences: German expansion overseas, 1900–1930 (New York, 1985), 210, 213.

Lamprecht , 1907, cited by Quesada , Enseñanza (ref. 13), 914–15.

ibid., 961.

Lamprecht , 1907, cited in ibid., 914–15.

Lamprecht , What is history? (ref. 13), 28, 97–98; on Lamprecht and his stages of civilization, see Romein Jan , The watershed of two eras: Europe in 1900 , transl. by Pomerans Arnold J. (Middletown, Ct, 1978), 449–50.

Lamprecht Karl , Die kulturhistorische Methode (Berlin, 1900), 7–13.

Delorme Suzanne , “La naissance d'Isis: Premiers rapports entre Henri Berr et George Sarton”, in Eleventh International History of Science Congress, Warsaw , Actes (Wrocław, 1967), ii, 223–32, p. 224.

Quesada , Enseñanza (ref. 13), 1019–20.

ibid., 1042.

Adams Henry , The education of Henry Adams: An autobiography (Boston, 1918), 434, 441, 476.

ibid., 477–83.

Kipling Rudyard and Balestier Wolcott , The Naulahka: A story of East and West (1891; New York, 1899), 1, 65, 70, 102, in sequence.

In the Oxford English dictionary, s. v. “West”. The term ‘West’ appears in the work of historians like Michelet, Ranke, and Curtius, but none makes sustained use of it; their main focus is directed toward “European” history. Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm (Leipzig, 1965–), s. v. “Abendland”; Trésor de la langue française , xii (Paris, 1986), s. v. “Occident”. See Pyenson Lewis , “The ideology of Western rationality: History of science and the European civilizing mission”, Science and education, to appear.

Osler , The nation and the tropics (ref. 7), 3–6.

Conrad Joseph , Under Western eyes (1911; London, 1926), 109, 112, 141, 169, 189, in sequence.

Tannery , “Programme d'un cours d'histoire des sciences”, in Mémoires (ref. 1), x, 1–9.

Tannery , “Histoire des sciences: Mathématiques”, ibid., 15–36, p. 30.

Tannery , “Congrès d'histoire des sciences”, ibid., 11–14.

Tannery , “De l'histoire générale des sciences”, ibid., 163–82, p. 163.

Tannery , “Du programme d'une histoire générale des sciences”, ibid., 219–26, p. 223.

Tannery , “Discours sur l'histoire générale des sciences”, ibid., 227–40.

Tannery , “Les sciences en Europe”, ibid ., xvii, 134, from Tannery's contribution to the collective history of Lavisse and Rambaud published in 1893; Tannery , “Discours sur l'histoire générale des sciences”, ibid., x, 226–40, p. 226 for Tannery's (posthumously published) definition of civilized peoples.

Cerf Léopold , who published Tannery's edition of Descartes, was condemned as a “Jew” for not providing Tannery with copies of the work for review and for personal use. Tannery to Eneström, 9 Jan. 1900, ibid., xiv, 377–80.

Quesada lists 26 professors teaching history of science or medicine at German universities in 1909. Among the best known are Karl Sudhoff, Hermann Kerschensteiner, Wilhelm His, Julius Pagel, Felix Bernstein, Wilhelm Förster, and Leopold Ambronn. Quesada , Enseñanza (ref. 13), 722–8. Apart from the chair in history of science at the Collège de France — founded for Comte's disciple Pierre Laffitte — in 1903 the discipline was taught at the Sorbonne, at Lyons, and at Montpellier. Tannery , Mémoires (ref. 1), xvii, 37.

The broad extent of research and writing in history of science during the later part of the nineteenth century is brilliantly surveyed by Piñero José María López , “Las etapas iniciales de la historiografía de la ciencia: Invitación a recuperar su internacionalidad y su integración”, Arbor , cxlii, nos. 558–60 (1992), 21–67, pp. 32–41. López Piñero's learned essay is the single best introduction to the issues discussed in the following pages. Complementary works include: Babini José , Ciencia, historia e historia de la ciencia (Buenos Aires, 1967); Cohen I. Bernard , “The many faces of the history of science”, in The future of history , ed. by Delzell Charles F. (Nashville, 1977), 65–110; Thackray Arnold , “History of science”, in A guide to the culture of science, technology, and medicine , ed. by Durbin Paul T. (New York, 1980), 3–69; Struik Dirk , “The historiography of mathematics from Proklos to Cantor”, NTM: Schriftenreihe für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Technik und Medizin, xvii, no. 2 (1980), 1–22.

Tannery to Cantor, 11 Dec. 1899, in Tannery , Mémoires (ref. 1), xiii, 371–3.

Cantor to Tannery , 24 Dec. 1899, ibid., 375–6.

Tannery to Cantor , 9 Jan. 1900, ibid., 377–8.

Information on the congress and its participants from its collected papers: Congress of Comparative History, Paris 1900, Annales internationales d'histoire (7 vols, Paris, 1901–2), preceded by a list of members.

A notable participant in this category was the ambassador of Turkey to Belgium, father of the mathematician Constantin Carathéodory; His Excellence registered for the section devoted to general and diplomatic history. On Thureau-Dangin, see Høyrup Jens , “Changing trends in the historiography of Mesopotamian mathematics: An insider's view” (Institute of Communication Research, Educational Research, and Theory of Science, Roskilde Universitetscenter, 3. Raekke: Preprints og reprints, no. 3; Roskilde, 1991), 6–10.

Berr promoted history of science throughout his life. In his Revue de synthèse historique he published the work of historians of science. When he established his Centre de Synthèse in Paris in 1925, history of science was one of its four sections. The International Academy of History of Sciences found lodgings, from the time of its creation in 1929, in the same building as Berr's centre. Sarton George , “Henri Berr (1863–1954): La synthèse de l'histoire et l'histoire de la science”, Centaurus, iv (1956), 185–97; Delorme , “Naissance d'Isis” (ref. 19), 224, for Sarton's invitation to Berr in 1912.

Congress of Comparative History, Paris 1900, section 5, Histoire des sciences, ed. by Tannery Paul (Paris, 1901).

In International Congress of Philosophy, Paris 1900, Logique et histoire des sciences (Bibliothèque du Congrès International de Philosophic, iii; Paris, 1900): Cantor Moritz , “Origines du calcul infinitésimal”, 3–25; Milhaud Gaston , “Note sur les origines du calcul infinitésimal”, 27–47; Günther , “Histoire des origines de la loi newtonienne de la gravitation”, 49–75; Bouasse Henri , “Sur l'histoire des principes de la thermodynamique”, 77–132; Russell Bertrand , “L'idée d'ordre et la position absolue dans l'espace et le temps”, 241–77, p. 276; Poincaré Henri , “Sur les principes de la mécanique”, 458–94, pp. 477–8. In the congress's volume Histoire de la philosophie (Bibliothèque du Congrès International de Philosophie, iv; Paris, 1902): Picavet François , “La valeur de la scolastique”, 239–57; Tannery Paul , “Des principes de la science de la nature chez Aristote”, 211–21. Shortly before the First World War, Koyré began a doctoral dissertation on St Anselm under Picavet; a decade later Koyré received a so-called university doctorate from the Sorbonne for his treatise on St Anselm's idea of God. Dictionary of scientific biography , ed. by Gillispie Charles C. (16 vols, New York, 1970–80), s. v. “Koyré”.

Cantor Moritz , “L'historiographie des mathématiques”, in Compte rendu du deuxième Congrès International des Mathématiciens tenu à Paris du 6 au 12 août 1900 , ed. by Duporcq E. (Paris, 1902), 27–42.

Milhaud Gaston , “Sur un point de la philosophie scientifique d'Auguste Comte”, in Histoire des sciences (ref. 44), 15–26.

Gley Emile , “Influence du positivism sur le développement des sciences biologiques en France”, in ibid., 164–70.

Weber Louis , “L'idée d'évolution dans ses rapports avec le problème de la certitude”, in International Congress of Philosophy, Paris 1900, Philosophie générale et métaphysique (Bibliothèque du Congrès International de Philosophie, i; Paris, 1900), 435–57. In Histoire de la philosophie (ref. 45): Belot Gustave , “L'idée et la méthode de la philosophie scientifique chez Aug. Comte”, 413–72; Groppali Alexandre , “La sociologie considérée comme science philosophique”, 165–80.

Paul Harry , “Scholarship and ideology: The chair of the general history of science at the Collège de France, 1892–1913”, Isis, lxxvii (1976), 376–97, pp. 381, 387. Houssay Frédéric , “Les théories atomiques en biologie”, in Logique et histoire des sciences (ref. 45), 595–607, p. 596.

Congress of Comparative History, Paris 1900, Procès-Verbaux sommaires (Paris, 1901), 30. The comission originally consisted of Tannery, the epistemologist André Lalande, and the doctors Dureau and Sicard de Plauzoles.

Tannery to Loria, 28 Dec. 1902. Tannery , Mémoires (ref. 1), xv, 462–4.

Tannery Paul , “Pour le progrès de l'histoire des sciences”, ibid., xix, 103–12.

Ibid.

Tannery to Bobynin , 24 Jan. 1904, ibid., xiii, 165–7.

Eneström to Tannery , 31 Jan. 1904, ibid., xiv, 413.

Tannery to Loria , 23 Nov. 1903, ibid ., xv, 473–5. Tannery to Ludwig Stein, 28 Nov. 1903, ibid., xvi, 377–81, for another example of Tannery's politicking with French colleagues with regard to an international project — in this case publishing a corpus philosophorum; Tannery mentions that his vision of the bibliographical project is difficult to realize.

Tannery to Blanchard , 1 Nov. 1903, ibid., xiii, 160–3.

Léon to Tannery , 16 Nov. 1903, ibid., xv, 435–6.

Tannery to Stein , 1 Nov. 1903, ibid., xvi, 375–7.

In Claparède E. (ed.), Congrès International de Philosophie, rapports et comptes rendus (Geneva, 1905): Mentré F. , “La simultanéité des découvertes scientifiques”, 916–24; Milhaud Gaston , “Note sur l'idée de science”, 693–705.

Cantor Moritz , “Einfürung in die Geschichte der Mathematik: Hinweis auf neue Resultate”, in Verhandlungen des dritten internationalen Mathematiker-Kongresses in Heidelberg vom 8. bis 13 August 1904 , ed. by Krazer A. (Leipzig, 1905), 497–501. The tree metaphor appeared in the work of a number of mathematicians in the years around 1900, notably Felix Klein and Hermann Weyl. Pyenson Lewis , The young Einstein: The advent of relativity (London, 1985), 148.

Tannery Jules , “Paul Tannery”, in Congrès International (ref. 61), 775–97, Sudhoffs observation on p. 796.

Piñero López , “Etapas iniciales” (ref. 37), 41–57. López Piñero contends that history of medicine emerged as a discipline in the nineteenth century and that it stood behind the fortunes of the discipline of history of science.

Weber , “Science as a vocation”, transl. by John Michael , in Max Weber's ‘Science as a vocation’ , ed. by Lassmann Peter Velody Irving , and Martins Herminio (London, 1989), 3–31, p. 6.

Tönnies Ferdinand , “La synthèse créatrice”, in Philosophie générale et métaphysique (ref. 49), 415–34, p. 423, where Tönnies cites his seminal publication of 1887; Weber , “Science as a vocation” (ref. 65), 15.

Glick Thomas F. , George Sarton i la història de la ciència a Espanya , transl. by Viladrich Mercè (Barcelona, 1990), for Sarton's relationship with the Spanish Arabists. Peter Novick dates the historical defence of the West, in United States historiography, from the 1920s; U.S. historians followed their European colleagues, however, in embracing the concept of the West well before the First World War. Novick Peter , That noble dream: The ‘objectivity question’ and the American historical profession (Cambridge, 1988), 281–313.

The author's trilogy is relevant: Pyenson Lewis , Civilizing mission: Exact sciences and French overseas expansion, 1830–1940 (Baltimore, 1993); Empire of reason: Exact sciences in Indonesia, 1840–1940 (Leiden, 1989); Cultural imperialism and exact sciences: German expansion overseas, 1900–1930 (New York, 1985).

Pyenson Lewis , Neohumanism and the persistence of pure mathematics in Wilhelmian Germany (Philadelphia, 1983); Said Edward W. , Orientalism (New York, 1978).

Romein , Watershed (ref. 17), 47.

Keylor William R. , Academy and community: The foundation of the French historical profession (Cambridge, Mass., 1975), 160–1 for internationalism in the context of the community of French historians. Crawford Elisabeth , Nationalism and internationalism in science, 1880–1939: Four studies of the Nobel population (Cambridge, 1992), 38–39 for the late nineteenth-century internationalist movement.

White Hayden , Metahistory: The historical imagination in nineteenth century Europe (Baltimore, 1973), 195, 212, 343.

Hegel's lectures on the history of philosophy , transl. by Haldane E. S. and Simson Frances H. (3 vols, 1892–96; London, 1968), i, 95; iii, 25; i, 117. Last quotation from Hegel , The philosophy of history , transl. by Sibree J. (1899; New York, 1956), 410–11. Not once in Metahistory (ref. 72) does Hayden White cite these and related passages of Hegel's. One of Rashed's merits is to have clearly identified the Hegelian precedent. Rashed, “Notion” (ref. 8), 305. Naïve and uncritical use of the word “West” is a structural feature of “Western” scholarship today, for example in two recent, major surveys: Von Laue Theodore H. , The world revolution of Westernization: The twentieth century in global perspective (Oxford, 1987); Lindberg David C. , The beginnings of Western science: The European scientific tradition in philosophical, religious, and institutional context, 600 B.C. to a.d. 1450 (Chicago, 1992). The matter is less ambiguous for some East Asian scholars, who apparently understand “West” to mean everything — kit and caboodle — tracing roots to Mediterranean cultures. Nakayama Shigeru , Academic and scientific traditions in China, Japan, and the West, transl. by Dusenbury Jerry (Tokyo, 1984); Joseph Needham identifies the West with Europe tout court: Needham , “Les rôles respectifs de l'Europe et de la Chine dans l'évolution de la science oecuménique [1967]”, in Needham , Dialogue des civilisations Chine-Occident: Pour une histoire oecuménique des sciences , transl. by Fèvre Francine and Foster Marie-Brigitte , ed. by Métailié Georges (Paris, 1991), 270–302. As suggested in Schafer's Edward H. Golden peaches of Samarkand: A study of T'ang exotics (Berkeley, 1963), 7–39, Chinese civilization in the T'ang (seventh through tenth centuries) considered the West to begin in Chinese Turkestan. Japan was long familiar with South Asia by way of Chinese texts; beginning with Portuguese contacts in the sixteenth century, taisei (Far West) denoted Europe exclusively. I am grateful to Nathan Sivin and Setsuko Tanaka-Blackmore for enlightenment on these points. 74. Harris Marvin , The rise of anthropological theory (New York, 1968), 64–66 for the Comtean-Hegelian affinity; Merz , History of thought (ref. 9), iv, 482–3 for Comte and Hegel compared.