Abstract
Using data on the ‘career’ paths of one thousand ‘leading scientists’ from 1450 to 1900, what is conventionally called the ‘rise of modern science’ is mapped as a changing geography of scientific practice in urban networks. Four distinctive networks of scientific practice are identified. A primate network centred on Padua and central and northern Italy in the sixteenth century expands across the Alps to become a polycentric network in the seventeenth century, which in turn dissipates into a weak polycentric network in the eighteenth century. The nineteenth century marks a huge change of scale as a primate network centred on Berlin and dominated by German-speaking universities. These geographies are interpreted as core-producing processes in Wallerstein’s modern world-system; the rise of modern scientific practice is central to the development of structures of knowledge that relate to, but do not mirror, material changes in the system.
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Notes
According to Wallerstein (2004b, p. 7), ‘For very many, the label “scientific” and the label “modern” became virtually synonymous, and for almost everyone the label was meritorious’.
Ben-David used a core-periphery model in his classic studies of the rise of modern science (Schott 1993, pp. 475–477); our world-systems analysis differs from his work through setting these structures, and therefore scientific practice as a core-making process, within a historical systems framework (Wallerstein 2004a).
Gascoigne has a very traditional approach to history that is ‘Whiggish’ in nature: he uses twentieth century categories to describe pre-twentieth century practices in an evolutionary argument. However, we understand that concepts such as ‘scientist’, and indeed ‘science’ and therefore ‘scientific career’, are quite problematic as descriptors for the time-scale of the modern world-system. For instance, Shapin and Thackray (1974, p. 3) have written that ‘[t]o write the history of any period before ca. 1870 primarily in terms of such unqualified modern categories is to endanger the enterprise at its inception’ with ‘teleological assumptions’. However there are intellectual practices throughout the modern world-system that have come to be interpreted as contributing to the rise of what is now understood to be ‘modern science’. These are the practices we are concerned with in this study and for which Gascoigne provides relevant information in the form of systematically organised data. Thus while we problematise the modern categories that describe the intellectual practices that are implicated in ‘the rise of modern science’, we do argue there to have been a process that can be traced through the history of the modern world-system that we will categorise as ‘scientific practice’. While these earlier practices are not precisely ‘modern science’ since they occur in different social contexts, they do represent a lineage of work leading up to modern science. And it is this lineage that we study here: obviously just because ‘science’ was not socially constructed as a concept until the late nineteenth century, this does not mean that practices that are now viewed as ‘scientific’ were not undertaken before the modern conceptualizations. We are interested in this lineage of practice, which for ease of presentation we call scientific practice.
For more detail on the latter see Davids (2001).
We appreciate that the author provides ‘only a brief and broad introduction’ (p. 12) but it is in such limiting situations, where hard choices of inclusion and exclusion have to be made, that essential thinking is revealed.
Powell (2007) similarly takes a largely place-orientated perspective in his review of geographies of science within and beyond the discipline of geography but points out the potential for future work on movement and circulation.
Humanistic approaches to human geography were a reaction against studies of spatial models that reduced human beings to automatons (e.g. ‘economic man’). The critique involved replacing theories of space by meanings of place in which interpretation of people was much more complex and recognisably human. This has carried over into studies of scientific practice through prioritizing place over flows but this is now changing: see Livingstone (2003), who discusses ‘Circulation: Movements of Science’ as one of three key ‘geographical modalities’ in his seminal exploration of geographies of science (the other being ‘Site: Venues of Science’ and ‘Region: Cultures of Science’).
See footnote 4 above.
Wallerstein employs a critical realist methodology that encompasses two main approaches: intensive research and extensive research (Sayer 1992). The former involves detailed study of the agents/actors who create the processes, whereas extensive research focuses on the broad patterns of (usually) quantitative data. Extensive research is often used as a prelude providing the statistical context for intensive research. This paper is an exercise in extensive social science; patterns of nodes and networks are described but the detailed interpretation of the agents in these places and flows is a further step towards improving understanding of the ‘rise of science’ that is not attempted here.
Castells uses the two spaces to argue that contemporary globalization is characterised by spaces of flows dominating spaces of places as the key social space. We follow Giovanni Arrighi (1994) who shows that such an imbalance is not unique to the present; the concepts can be used as historical categories; see also Taylor (2007).
The limiting cases of a purely fluid space of flows and a purely inert space of places do not exist in social relations; see Taylor (2007).
See John Allen’s (1999) discussion on ‘city networks’ versus ‘networks of cities’.
Other relevant flows include academic travel. See, for example, Jöns (2008).
Of course, these sources are notoriously ‘Whiggish’ in nature (see footnote 4) but nevertheless they do provide relevant information for deriving a sample of relevant individuals who have contributed to the ‘rise of modern science’. In this way we employ a ‘collective biography’ or basic prosopographic approach through aggregating ‘career’ paths in knowledge production. This is the lineage of modern science described below. Like any empirical study the results are only as good as the data; in this case we treat Gascoigne’s massive encyclopaedic work as a reasonable starting point, while recognising that it could be improved. But that is for another research effort; the credibility of the results presented below do strongly suggest that Gascoigne provides a reasonable initial basis for describing the lineage of modern science.
These centuries also broadly fit Wallerstein’s (1974, 1980, 1989) chronicling of the early modern world-system: creation centred on the sixteenth century (reorientation of Mediterranean economy), consolidation centred on the seventeenth century (rise of North West Europe especially the Dutch), rivalry centred on the eighteenth century (mercantile struggles), and expansion centred on the nineteenth century (industrial revolution). Note also that Fig. 1 contrasts with Riddle’s (1993) data on university foundings (Fig. 2, p. 55), which, as she points out (p. 55), show no relation to Wallerstein’s world-system cycles. Clearly scientific practice and the establishment of universities are distinctive and separate processes, the latter being particularly influenced by political structures (Riddle 1993). For spatial patterns of university foundations from 1500 to 1800, see Frijhoff (1996, pp. 95–105).
Return to a previous workplace was also listed.
As we focus on the rise of modern science in Europe, information on US-American scientists (predominantly 19th century) was also excluded from the study.
One of the most obvious features of these maps is that they each have a wide distribution of scientists across Europe. And yet, during the four centuries they cover, developments in means of transport developed greatly, culminating in railways in the nineteenth century. But the nineteenth century map (Fig. 2(d)) has roughly the same spread, with just a little expansion to the east. We know from merchant activities that travel was Europe-wide by the sixteenth century and scientists seem to have covered this same activity space throughout the times of this study.
A primate settlement pattern occurs when one centre dominates – is much larger than – all the other places.
A polycentric settlement pattern is where there are several roughly equal centres i.e. no one place dominates: it is the opposite of a primate distribution.
All of these urban places have populations under 200,000 today.
Jacobs (1969), see chapter 3 ‘Valuable Inefficiencies and Impracticalities of Cities’.
Fifer (1981) actually referred to Washington, DC as ‘a company town’.
Our study ends in 1900, but it can be noted that in several cases, in the twentieth century, ‘town’ has been able to fight back successfully against ‘gown’ turning, for example, Oxford into a major motor manufacturer and Cambridge into a high tech centre in the recent economic climate where universities are keen to show they are economic assets rather than obstacles: spin-offs are demanded in return for high levels of state support. But historically universities have been severe obstacles to economic growth: that is why so many centres of science practice in our geohistory are small places.
For an orthodox discussion of the town-gown conflict, see Brockliss (2000).
Hegemonic cycles constitute the historical frame of Wallerstein’s (1984) modern world-system and are constituted by the rise, consolidation and fall of a power possessing dominant economic, cultural and political power (i.e. state hegemony). Wallerstein identifies three such cycles: Britain’s hegemony occurs after the Dutch and before American hegemony.
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Taylor, P.J., Hoyler, M. & Evans, D.M. A Geohistorical Study of ‘The Rise of Modern Science’: Mapping Scientific Practice Through Urban Networks, 1500–1900. Minerva 46, 391–410 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-008-9109-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-008-9109-8