Anglo-Swedish scholarly correspondence from the mid-eighteenth century contains repeated mentions of two merchants, Abraham Spalding and Gustavus Brander. The letters describe how these men facilitated the exchange of knowledge over the Baltic Sea and the North Sea by shipping letters, books and other scientific objects, as well as by enabling long-distance financial transactions. Through the case of Spalding and Brander, this article examines the material basis for early modern scholarly exchange. Using the concept of logistics to highlight and relate (...) several mercantile practices, it examines ways of making scholarly knowledge move, and analyses merchants’ potential motives for offering their services to scholarly communities. As logisticians in the Republic of Letters, these merchants could turn their commercial infrastructure into a generator of cultural status valid in both London and Stockholm. Using mercantile services, scholarly knowledge could in turn traverse the region in reliable, cost-effective and secure ways. The case of Spalding and Brander thus highlights how contacts between scholarly communities intersected with other contemporary modes of transnational exchange, and it shows how scholarly exchange relied on relationships based on norms different from the communalism often used to characterize the early modern Republic of Letters. Thus the article suggests new ways of studying early modern scholarly exchange in practice. (shrink)

This essay pushes the history of a scientific discipline, morphology, toward a broader philosophically informed and cross-disciplinarily engaged history of knowledge. It shows that by looking at how knowledge and practices circulated between scientific disciplines (such as biology) and technoscientific ones (like architecture and design) we can better understand how (morphological) knowledge was produced. By doing so, the analysis contributes to the study of the mechanisms of knowledge exchange between the organic and the technical worlds and, (...) more broadly, to the study of the dynamics of knowledge circulation. First, the essay analyzes the engineering studies of organic form conducted by the Austro-Hungarian botanist Raoul Heinrich Francé (1874–1943) and the Scottish polymath D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860–1948). Subsequently, the essay moves to twenty-first-century morphogenesis. It examines the transfer of the notion of morphospace, a paleontological practice of data visualization, into biology-inspired architectural design. The conclusion deals with the broader features of knowledge transfer and circulation. Twentieth- and twenty-first-century morphologists successfully translate and transfer morphogenetic processes from nature into technical artifacts to achieve technical solutions to given problems. In the translation of organic morphogenesis into a technical process, evolution’s intrinsic historical contingency was deliberately left behind. (shrink)

This article examines the phenomenon of the “global circulation of low-end expertise” through an exploration of the social dynamics surrounding American oil drillers who migrated from the Pennsylvania oil region to British colonial Burma during the early 1900s to the mid-1930s. These working-class drillers, with practical knowledge in oil drilling acquired through familial and community networks, played a crucial role in operating mechanized oil wells and providing geological expertise in colonial Burma. Positioned between labor-intensive agricultural economies in colonial (...) Asia and the higher echelons of British colonial society, these drillers occupied an intermediate social location. Despite their indispensable expertise, they were marginalized due to their lower social standing, leading to their expertise being disregarded by their superiors and forgotten over time. By understanding the complexities of the “global circulation of low-end expertise,” this study sheds light on the social construction and erasure of the expertise held by these working-class drillers, revealing overlooked aspects of global histories of science and labor and highlighting the need to reassess dominant historical narratives on knowledge-labor. (shrink)

Circulating the Code: Print Media and Legal Knowledge in Qing China. By Ting Zhang. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2020. Pp. xi + 252. $95, $30.

This article is based on a perspective on circulation of knowledge that allows the consideration of science as the result of the encounter between diverse communities. We tell a story that constantly changes places, scales, and cultures in order to stress the importance of networks as an alternative to the centre/periphery trope, which entangles world histories of science. The result is a picture much more complex and intertwined than the one suggested by these simplifying dichotomies. We focus on (...) a case study that illuminates the process of knowledge production in non-European spaces of modernity. The return of the Society of Jesus to the newly independent nation-states of Latin America is the point of departure to analyse the circulation of a specific scientific idea in Ecuador: Darwin’s theory of biological evolution through natural selection. The article follows the paths of three different knowledge makers whose encounters are seen as sites of knowledge production: a religious order, a Latin American... (shrink)

There are many case studies showing the benefits of the conceptual framework of Actor– Network Theory. It is enough to mention the classic texts by Bruno Latour on the Amazon forest and Michel Callon on scallop fishing. However, there are not many case studies discussing the circulation of knowledge in the humanities with the use of vocabulary taken from ANT. This text tries to partially fill the gap, analyzing a case encompassing the areas of both literary studies and (...) philosophy. The main topic of the paper is the circulation of Jacques Derrida’s views – or the views attributed to Derrida – as exemplified by one of his theses. The purpose of the text is not to reflect on the value of Derrida’s reflections, but only to show how the knowledge of his thought spread from France, through the USA, to Poland, from the 1960s to the beginning of the 21st century. Besides proving that the ANT vocabulary is suitable for studying the phenomenon of the circulation of knowledge in the humanities, the case study also shows that this vocabulary should be enriched. The author of the text proposes the concept of symbolization to better understand how Derrida and the ideas attributed to him have been perceived in various texts. (shrink)

Through ten case studies by international specialists, this book investigates the circulation and production of scientific knowledge between 1750 and 1945 in the fields of agriculture, astronomy, botany, cartography, medicine, statistics, and zoology. The book will interest scholars and undergraduate and graduate students concerned with the connections between the history of science, imperial history, and global history.

À la fin du xixe siècle, avec l’achèvement des jalons d’un enseignement supérieur colonial en Algérie – création des écoles d’enseignement supérieur en Algérie en 1880 et fondation d’une université coloniale en terre algérienne, dotée d’un système facultaire en 1909 –, le paysage universitaire colonial prend son essor et se développe considérablement. La circulation d’universitaires métropolitains qui traversent la Méditerranée pour venir s’installer souvent durablement en Algérie, est le fait de botanistes, géologues, médecins et de mathématiciens. Cette contribution se (...) focalise sur l’analyse des circulations et des échanges dans le domaine des mathématiques entre la métropole et le territoire algérien. Elle propose d’examiner les évolutions de ces circulations à travers les trajectoires et les parcours d’universitaires qui ont soit effectué un séjour court en Algérie (le passage par l’École des sciences d’Alger pouvant servir de tremplin pour une carrière universitaire en métropole) ou qui ont effectué toute leur carrière universitaire et scientifique en Algérie. Cette focale, qui prend en compte la période 1868 à 1941, s’interroge en arrière-plan sur la contribution (ou non) du système colonial à la formation de jeunes mathématiciens algériens musulmans. (shrink)

It is the aim of this article to put questions of maintenance and repair in the history of science and technology under scrutiny, with a special focus on technologies and methods of transportation. The history of transportation is a history of trying to avoid shipwrecks and plane crashes. It is also a history of broken masts, worm-eaten hulls, the flat tires of cars, and endless delays at airports. This introductory article assesses the technological, scientific, and cultural implications of repairing and (...) maintaining transportation networks. We argue that infrastructures for maintenance and repair played just as important a role in the history of transportation as the wharves and factories where ships, cars, trains, and airplanes were originally built. We also suggest that maintenance and repair are important sites of knowledge production, and a historical account of these practices provides a new, decentered narrative for the development of modern science and technology. (shrink)

The Kunstkammer of the Electors of Saxony, founded in Dresden around 1560, housed one of the richest collections of tools and scientific instruments in its day. A close analysis of the optical objects in the collection in the decades around 1600 is undertaken here—in particular, their arrangement by a mathematically trained curator, Lucas Brunn, and their use in an ‘experiment’ by a distinguished visitor, Johannes Kepler. It is argued that the selection, display and use of optical objects within this collection (...) reflect a specific, playful image of optics promoted at the Saxon court.Keywords: Court collections; Optics; Instruments; Perspective; Wonder. (shrink)

Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815), a physician who graduated from the University of Vienna, invented a therapy based on the concept of a universal fluid, similar to electricity, that flowed through all living things. By restoring the circulation of this fluid in the nerves of human bodies, he believed he could cure illness without resorting to medication. Few medical theories have enjoyed as great success as Mesmer's, first among French high society and then in Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, (...) Russia, Britain, and the US. Mesmerism was the circulatory phenomenon par excellence. Its success was founded not only on the hypothesis of the circulation of a fluid common to human physiology and the entire universe, but also on the scientific practices of the time—correspondence, translations, and periodicals—and some ardent and highly active supporters who ensured its spread. However, far from functioning along the lines of direct exportation–importation from one country to another, or a centre to the periphery, mesmerism's dissemination was the work of diffuse institutions and individual mobilities influenced by the modalities of communication. In seeking to reconstitute the wellsprings of these circulations, the first sources that come to mind are printed matter: the many pamphlets and especially the articles and reviews that appeared in periodicals, as well as the Romantic literature that flourished after 1810. Such documents are foundational for authoritative studies of mesmerism in Germany, which proceed from the thesis of successive “waves” of reception. Such sources, however, are somewhat misleading. Rather than taking them as our starting point, it would be better to reconstitute the channels of information by using many sources, both printed and handwritten. The complexity of the circulation of knowledge generated by mesmerism is implicitly testament to the difficulties arising from the institutionalization of this current. (shrink)

In this contribution, we analyse the treatment of professional practice in two training sequences dedicated to the teaching of written French. Firstly, we examine the characteristics of the training devices organised with a combination of school field and training institution scheme. We then focus on interactions between trainer and trainees within two training activities aimed at sharing and reflecting on practicum. The interest of this double perspective lies in the understanding of knowledge circulation between school field and training (...) institution and how this circulation serves the development of teachers’ action. (shrink)

This book examines the institutional development of Chinese sociology from the 1890s to the present. It plots the discipline’s twisting path in the Chinese context, from early Western influences; through the institutionalization of the discipline in the 1930s-40s; its problematic relationship with socialism and interruptions under Marxist orthodoxy and the Cultural Revolution; its revival during the 1980s-90s; to the twin trends of globalization and indigenization in current Chinese sociological scholarship. Chen argues that in spite of the state-building agenda and persistent (...) efforts to indigenize the discipline, the Western model remains pervasively influential, due in large part to the influence of American missionaries, foundations and scholars in the formation and transformation of the Chinese sociological tradition. The history of Chinese sociology is shown to be a contingent process in which globally circulated knowledge, above all the American sociological tradition, has been adapted to the changing contexts of China. This engaging work contributes an important country study to the history of sociology and will appeal to scholars of Chinese history and disciplinary historiography, in addition to social scientists. (shrink)

This special issue looks at some of the ways that images are adopted, co‐opted, and adapted in the life sciences and beyond. It brings together papers that investigate the role of visualization in scientific knowledge‐production with contributions that focus on the distribution and dissemination of knowledge to a broader audience. A commentary provides a critical perspective. In this editorial we introduce circulation as a practice to better understand scientific images. Along two themes, we highlight connections across the (...) papers. First, the social life of scientific representation follows the contexts, settings, and spaces through which images circulate. Second, authorship, expertise, and trust inform the capacity and the failure of images to circulate. Altogether, this volume raises a set of new questions about circulation as practice in the historiography of images in the life sciences. (shrink)

(1941). A survey of the growth of knowledge about certain parts of the foetal cardio-vascular apparatus, and about the foetal circulation, in Man and some other mammals. Part I: Galen to Harvey. Annals of Science: Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 57-89.

Une étude pluridisciplinaire sur la mobilité des connaissances dans le cadre de l'accroissement des moyens de communication. Les auteurs décrivent comment les savoirs issus de domaines différents se mêlent et s'enrichissent mutuellement, au profit de la résolution de problèmes jusqu'alors impossibles à solutionner depuis une seule matière.

The Song Empire had a larger population, a higher agricultural output, a more efficient infrastructure, and a more extensive monetary system than any previous empire in Chinese history. As local jurisdictions during the eleventh century became entangled in empire-wide economic relations and trans-regional commercial litigation, imperial officials sought to reduce the bewildering movement of people, goods, and money to an immanent cosmic pattern. They reasoned that because money and commerce brought to imperial subjects the goods they required to survive, money (...) and commerce must be beneficent, and because they were beneficent, they must conform to the immanent pattern of the moral cosmos, as did everything else that was enduringly sustaining of life and wellbeing. And because money and commerce conformed to the moral cosmos, officials attempted to understand their workings by analogy with other phenomena that sustained human life, such as the flow of water and the circulation of vital essences through the human body. During the 1030s and 1040s, officials and scholars believed that knowledge of the cosmic pattern lay within their grasp, and that this knowledge would allow them to align culture with nature, and the present with hallowed antiquity. By the 1080s, however, this intellectual optimism had been defeated by irreconcilable disagreements about financial and economic policy. The failure of the attempt to understand finance by natural analogy draws attention to the underlying ideological insistence on moral learning as the basis for political power, and to the very limited range of economic discourse that has been preserved in eleventh-century texts. (shrink)

Bruno Latour claims to have shown that a Kantian model of knowledge, which he describes as seeking to unite a disembodied transcendental subject with an inaccessible thing-in-itself, is dramatically falsified by empirical studies of science in action. Instead, Latour puts central emphasis on scientific practice, and replaces this Kantian model with a model of “circulating reference.” Unfortunately, Latour's alternative schematic leaves out the scientific subject. I repair this oversight through a simple mechanical procedure. By putting a slight spin on (...) Latour's diagrammatic representation of his theory, I discover a new space for a post-Kantian scientific subject, a subject brilliantly described by Ludwik Fleck. The neglected subjectivities and ceaseless practices of science are thus re-united. (shrink)

The protests at the Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA) that began in November 2014 as a reaction to severe cuts in the department of humanities have sparked a broad debate nationally and even internationally about the future of the university and the values and ideals that should define it. It turned out that dissatisfaction was much more widespread in different parts of the university than some had previously thought, and many turned out to share the concerns first put forward in the (...) humanities department, to extend beyond the borders of the university and the country. Increasing focus on getting as many students as possible to graduate promptly has shifted the attention ever more towards quantitative indicators for the evaluation of education rather than qualitative ones, leading to raising the question of whether the quality of education has suffered from these priorities. How did this come about and what could be done to improve this quality? In this essay we briefly consider the history of the university as an institute that aims to combine research and education, subsequently mentioning some more recent challenges for the university, finishing it with a brief description of a ‘circulation model of education’ that we consider to be a fruitful source for answering some of the challenges we identified from the current discussions. In this model circulation rather than unidirectional traffic occurs between different elements: circulation between research and education, between insights of teachers and of students, between disciplines, between general and contextualized knowledge, between disciplinary and experi- ential knowledge, between doing research and (meta-)reflection upon research, and so on. (shrink)

This article explores the influence of textual structures on the acquisition of knowledge in popularization discourses related to biopesticides. Following a terminological insight into the linguistic and cognitive complexities of the notion, we proceed to a semantic analysis of press articles in major Anglo-Saxon newspapers, focusing on the explanation strategies used by the media to simplify their presentation. We show that in the mediation process, biopesticides are systematically described as being environmentally friendly, and opposed to chemical pesticides, consistently shown (...) to be detrimental to the environment. We hypothesize that this simplistic binary framing is exploited by journalists as it is easy to understand in a context of agroecological transition and commonly shared distrust for chemical pesticides. In that respect, it proves to be adequate for purposes of explanation and simplification. However, by outlining this discursive process based on duality, we aim to draw attention to the potential misconceptions of plant protection issues in general, and biopesticides in particular. We ultimately demonstrate that when adopting other perspectives, this dual framing proves to be inadequate for the construction of knowledge by any non-expert press reader. (shrink)

The ‘how’ and the ‘why’ of knowledge circulation is explored in a study of the encounter between American and British nuclear scientists and engineers who together developed a gas centrifuge to enrich uranium in the 1960s. A fine-grained analysis of the transnational encounter reveals that the ‘how’ engages a wide variety of sometimes mundane modes of exchange in a series of face-to-face interactions over several years. The ‘why’ is driven by the reciprocal wish to improve the performance of (...) the centrifuge, though this motive is embedded in the asymmetric field of the ‘special relationship’ in nuclear matters between the United Kingdom and the United States. The result of the encounter is co-produced, hybrid knowledge in which the national provenance of the contributions from each side of the Atlantic is at once diluted and a contested site for the affirmation of national power. (shrink)

In social systems or spaces, distance between the centre and the periphery breeds epistemic injustice. There are growing accounts of epistemic injustice in health-related fields, as in the article by Pratt and de Vries.1 The title of the article asks: ‘Where is knowledge from the global South?’ Like me, you may answer by saying: ‘Knowledge from the global South is in the global South’. That answer says a lot about how we right epistemic injustice done to actors in (...) the global South or the periphery, including in health ethics. Pratt and de Vries identified four sets of actors (individuals, institutions, journals and funders) responsible for righting epistemic injustice. For three of the four sets of actors, they recognised the need for—or the possibility of—symmetry between global North and global South. Except journals. They did not seriously consider that journals are either present in or could belong to the global South; to the periphery. Platforms for knowledge exchange, circulation, cultivation and curation—such as journals, conferences, publishers, blogs, archives, seminars, books and the media, social or traditional—are neither physically nor epistemically neutral. They are situated. The BBC cannot do for Nigeria or Australia what it does for Britain; neither can the BMJ. Many of us take our position at the centre or periphery as neutral, natural, necessary or permanent. But the African American writer Toni Morrison proved the opposite with her career: ‘I stood at the border, stood at the edge and claimed it as central. l claimed it as central, and let the rest of the world move over to where I was.’2 Although physically in the USA, Toni Morrison was writing …. (shrink)

Histories of communication are still relatively rare birds, but this one is distinctive on several grounds. The two authors are/were undisputed giants in the field. Ken Cmiel, the originator of the book, still unfinished when he suddenly died in 2006, was a cultural historian of communication; his best friend, John Peters, is one of the world leaders in the intellectual history of communication. In completing that unfinished manuscript, Peters has performed astonishing prestidigitation here in creating an effective hybrid: he retains (...) the core of Cmiel's account, while creating a unique book that, courtesy of Peters, brilliantly spins out the solid Cmielian core and its material traces into gorgeous reflections on aspects of how we make our way through a world of images and information. Promiscuous Knowledge constructs a cultural and intellectual history of information, images, and conceptions of knowledge since the 17th century, with an emphasis on the American context since the 19th century. Cmiel/Peters sketch the way in which various containers for information-knowledge, expertise, abridgment, books, digests, encyclopedias, museums, etc.-have variably organized gluts of information, and how these containers have eroded since the 1970s. A parallel throughline traces social attitudes and practices around images and key media for circulating and experiencing them. Cmiel envisioned the largest contour of the book as a contribution to the history of truth and truth-making. His protagonists are pictures and facts, images and information. They enact a process of gradual dismantling, erosion, or collapse of the mass culture system from last century into the present. Promiscuous knowledge has a new face, courtesy of the online universe full of filter bubbles, echo chambers, and fake news. Google offers a single portal to a churning mass of confusion; it lacks a principle of inclusion/inclusivity, it has no way of framing the whole. Peters has shaped what Cmiel started out with into a better Trump-era book than an Obama-era book. And he has retained its core: a brief history of how we left the world of fact for the world of information. (shrink)

In recent decades, an increasing interest in the dynamics of collections has brought to view how objects circulate as parts of networks of knowledge and how collections can acquire new meanings. Introducing this special issue on Collections, Knowledge, and Time, we want to shift focus from geographical circulation towards the temporal dynamics of collections: the layering and interweaving of asynchronous temporalities as collections are preserved, frozen, reinterpreted, sampled, and destroyed over time, and how these temporalities constitute (...) class='Hi'>knowledge potentials. We treat collections broadly across museums of history of medicine, history of science, and ethnography, and scientific institutions including biobanks, seed banks, and fly centres, to investigate the considerable overlap in collection practices, as well as how objects can move between cultural historical and scientific uses. We limit ourselves, however, to epistemic collections, mainly scientific ones, assembled with research as a main purpose. This introduction first explores apparently mundane collection practices such as preservation and care, as well as technologies such as freezers and boxes, to unravel them as temporal practices that make stored items transcend time. We then discuss historical practices across cultural and scientific collections to show how historical thinking plays a central part in scientific collection work and how new scientific methods shape investigations of the past. Finally, we outline the potentialities for future knowledge in collections. In conclusion, we sketch out a pluralist epistemology of collections focusing specifically on how the dynamics of time create multiple epistemic potentials for historical scholarship and scientific research in the present and future. (shrink)

Alfred Sohn-Rethel did not just elaborate a materialist theory of knowledge, he also introduced the term ‘real abstraction’ into Marxist debate. However, he locates the origin of commodity abstraction solely in the sphere of circulation, conceiving of production itself as a mere metabolism with nature. This conception, in which the critique of capitalism aims exclusively at distribution, and which rejects the Marxian concept of ‘abstract labour’, remains widespread. It is our express intention here to undertake a critique of (...) such a conception for the benefit of a critique of the very mode of capitalist production. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay looks at the problem of the global circulation of modern scientific knowledge by looking at science translations in modern Arabic. In the commercial centers of the late Ottoman Empire, emerging transnational networks lay behind the development of new communities of knowledge, many of which sought to break with old linguistic and literary norms to redefine the basis of their authority. Far from acting as neutral purveyors of “universal truths,” scientific translations thus served as key (...) instruments in this ongoing process of sociopolitical and epistemological transformation and mediation. Fierce debates over translators' linguistic strategies and choices involved deliberations over the character of language and the nature of “science” itself. They were also crucially shaped by such geopolitical factors as the rise of European imperialism and anticolonial nationalism in the region. The essay concludes by arguing for the need for greater attention to the local factors involved in the translation of scientific concepts across borders. (shrink)

This article explores the uptake and circulation of ‘transgender’ in academic and philanthropic institutions, as a way of taking seriously Robyn Wiegman’s call for a divergentist approach. In so doing, the article aims to demonstrate the intimate entanglements between non-profit and academic spheres and identity knowledges therein. Taken together, both contexts reveal the messiness and complexities of institutionality, not only as a lived reality for individuals such as philanthropy professionals and academics, but also as an object of study itself.

The alleged emergence of a ‘post-truth’ regime links the rise of new forms of social media and the reemergence of political populism. Post-truth has theoretical roots in the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies, with sociologists of science arguing that both true and false claims should be explained by the same kinds of social causes. Most STS theorists have sought to deflect blame for post-truth, while at the same time enacting a normative turn, looking to deconstruct truth claims and (...) subject expertise to criticism. Steve Fuller has developed a positive case for post-truth in science, arguing that post-truth democratizes science. I criticize this argument and suggest an alternative approach that draws on the prehistory of the field in the 1930s and 1940s, when philosophers and sociologists sought to define the social conditions necessary for reliable knowledge production that might stem mass media irrationalism. (shrink)

This study explored tacit knowledge based on an expert nurse's practice who cares for stroke patients by using the hermeneutic phenomenological approach. The participant (‘Ms. A’) was a nursing researcher and college faculty member involved in the education of advanced practice nurses; her specialty was stroke rehabilitation nursing. She was asked to describe the meaning and value she gained from her memorable nursing experiences. Four interviews—approximately 1 h each—were conducted, and the associated data were interpreted together with the participant (...) based on the method of interpretive circulation. Notably, the analysis was ended when a fusion of horizons was recognized. The participant recalled her nursing experiences based on six model cases. During the analysis, the following five elements were extracted: [belief in the ability of vulnerable people to survive]; [being together]; [respect for human dignity]; [preparedness to respond to and bear suffering together]; and [theoretical knowledge base approaches true understanding of patient experience]. Further, the nursing model—the Roy Adaptation Model—utilized by Ms. A in the process of recognizing humans as whole beings was deeply interpreted and implemented as a guideline for her implicit advanced practice. Moreover, her deep understanding and utilization of theoretical knowledge base also built the foundation for her implicit advanced practice. In conclusion, Ms. A's tacit knowledge and the elements support the process of tacit knowledge acquisition. Her narratives, hermeneutic attitude as an interpreter, and learning attitude throughout interaction with others will strongly help her knowledge development. We intend to continue the study with multiple participants and explore the structure of tacit knowledge possessed by advanced practitioners. Future endeavours will include the development of a tacit knowledge learning strategy. (shrink)