ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Sciences and the Ideas of Europe: Geographies, Temporalities and Actors

Session Submission Type: Organized Session

English Abstract

This panel aims to explore the relation between the sciences and ideas of and about Europe in historical context. With the emergence of international conferences and international organizations in the 19th century, internationalism has established itself as an enduring facet of scientific activity. Steeped in Enlightenment understandings of humanism, the putatively universal nature of scientific knowledge makes the sciences a facilitator of peaceful international cooperation across all boundaries, cultural, political, religious, etc. – or so the story goes in a naïve understanding of scientific internationalism. Likewise ideas of European cooperation emerging from the 19th century onward have adopted a similarly internationalist mission. The federalist aspirations of pro-Europeans during the interwar and postwar period and the establishments of the institutions of the European communities can be seen as examples of this. The session aims to examine the place that ideas of and about Europe have played in scientific activity, and to discuss the role of the historicity of the idea of Europe itself, and its various delineation to east and West, North and South, civilized or not, within history of science.

Sub Unit

• Organized Session

Chair

• Kostas Tampakis, National Hellenic Research Foundation

Individual Presentations

• Science and Europe’s Others: Robert Merton and Michael Polanyi on the Place of Authoritarianism - Geert Somsen, Maastricht University

• Science for Europe: CERN and the conceptual construction of European scientific cooperation - Luca Forgiarini

• Local Informants and “Eastern European” Knowledge Networks in Gessner’s Publications on the Elk - Christina Anne Stackpole, University of Warsaw

Session Organizers

• Luca Forgiarini

• Kostas Tampakis, National Hellenic Research Foundation