Moving Localities and Creative Circulation: Travels as Knowledge Production in 18th-Century Europe

Abstract

In recent historiography of science, circulation has been widely used to weave global narratives about the history of science. These have tended to focus on flows of people, objects and practices rather than investigating the spread of universal patterns of knowledge. The approach has also, to a great extent, concentrated on colonial contexts and treated ‘European science’ as a more or less homogeneous knowledge realm. Furthermore, these studies of circulation have usually been tied to a contextualist view of knowledge formation in which locality is taken as a set of specificities linked with particular locations. In this article we redirect the focus of the discussion on circulation to Europe, and reference spaces that are often absent from other scholarly accounts. We will ground our discussion on a comparative study of three travelling actors from the European periphery through whom we will introduce the notion of ‘moving locality’ in order to depict circulation as a knowledge production process per se.

The astrolabe

“…The volume includes one chapter dedicated to the astrolabe (Schmidl, 2016), which, however, remains predominantly descriptive in its scope and content. As an instrument whose basic concept and design circulated through, and was adapted and expanded upon in varied geographical and cultural spaces, the astrolabe provides a case in point as regards the narrative balance between the specific contexts of its production and use, and a broader picture of knowledge evolving through processes of displacement and circulation (Raposo et al, 2014;Golinski, [1998Golinski, [ ] 2005Livingstone, 2003;Latour, 1988). These two complementary dimensions of scientific knowledge reflect important developments in the historiography of science over the last three decades or so.…”

Literatura, astronomía y política en la narrativa gráfica de magazines chilenos (1907-1915)

“…El rol activo que ejercen los públicos de la ciencia en el modo en que circula y se comunica el saber astronómico, en este caso, influye tanto en su materialidad -soporte-como en su mensaje -significado- (Broks 1993). De este modo los públicos serían profundamente activos en los procesos de interpretación, traducción y apropiación de saberes, haciendo suyos estos, como una forma de re-producirlos y transformarlos (Raposo et al 2014).…”

Earth Sciences and History in the Work of Correia da Serra (1751-1823)

“…This idea is closely tied with notions about circulation as a knowledge-making process developed by scholars such as James Secord, Kapil Raj, Lissa Roberts, Sujit Sivasundaram and Arjun Appadurai to name a few, to give visibility to non-European contexts (Raj, 2007;2010;Appadurai, 2001;Secord, 2004;Roberts, 2009;Sivasundaram, 2010), but opposes staunchly, as Xavier Polanco's idea of world-science already suggested in the 1990s (Polanco, 1990), the flattening of asymmetries that they often advocate, and re-centers historical accounts on Europe while dismissing Eurocentrism. In fact, in the meantime the vantage point of the European Periphery, as voiced by the international group Science and Technology in the European Periphery (STEP) (Gavroglu et al, 2008;Gavroglu, 2012) has drawn attention to the need of seriously taking into consideration the exchanges, mediations and negotiations taking place mostly within Europe, as integral components of global accounts (Patiniotis, 2013;Raposo et al, 2014;Gavroglu;Simões, 2016), and has argued for the co-construction of centers and peripheries, insisting on a serious assessment of how asymmetries, including power asymmetries, are built and evolve. It has re-asserted the creative role of European "invisible" actors, intermediaries and go-betweens, "backward" institutional settings, regions and countries, calling for a revision of standard historiographical accounts, and showing that "invisibility" and "backwardness" have to be understood historically.…”

“…Additionally, among other outcomes, STEP's recent reassessments have given rise to the proposal of "moving localities" as a new historiographical concept meant to deepen the creative strength of circulation as a continuous process of knowledge production, which should not be restricted to discontinuities associated with encounters in certain places (Raposo et al, 2014). Behind the notion of moving localities is the realization that one should disentangle the notion of locality from the physical notion of location, and the belief that to be operative locality should mean a complex set of connections, allegiances and commitments which travel with people, and thus extend beyond perceived and effectively marked boundaries, creating interconnected intellectual spaces over wide geographical locations.…”