East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal (2012) 6:249–258

DOI 10.1215/18752160-1626191

The Global Turn in the History of Science

Fa-ti Fan

Received: 9 February 2012 / Accepted: 9 February 2012

q National Science Council, Taiwan 2012

Abstract This essay discusses the recent rise of interest in the global history of
science. It first explains the central characteristics of this new scholarly development
and distinguishes it from the earlier projects of studying science in a world-historical
context pursued by George Sarton and Joseph Needham. It then identifies and critiques
two images or models that have been widely adopted by scholars to discuss science in a
global context, namely, circulation and trade. Finally, the essay considers the relation-
ship between the global and the regional and suggests that it is time for East Asian STS
to take a global turn.

Keywords Joseph Needham
global science
circulation of knowledge
trading

zone
scientific exchange

1 Global History of Science

Historians of science have lately discovered the global. In recent years, books, articles,
and conferences devoted to global history of science and technology are appearing at a
rapid rate (Roberts 2009; Sivasundaram et al. 2010). It is an exciting development, but
as is often the case with new intellectual turns, there are as many questions and
challenges as opportunities waiting in the paths ahead. The intellectual terrain is
still barely recognizable. There aren’t yet well-defined topics, themes, problematics,
and methodologies, though there are certain discernible trends.
I said “discovered,” but one can plausibly argue that it was really a rediscovery, for
the forebears of the academic discipline of history of science—notably George Sarton
and Joseph Needham—championed a global view of history of science. There were
important differences between the two polymaths’ historical visions and narratives of
science, yet they both insisted on seeing and writing history of science from a global or
world-historical perspective. Sarton was a humanist and internationalist with a strong
bent of Enlightenment universalism (Sarton 1931 [1987]). Needham blended Marxist
cosmopolitanism with a romantic love for China (Blue 1998; Finlay 2000). Both

F. Fan (*)
Department of History, State University of New York at Binghamton, Binghamton, NY 13902, USA.
e-mail: ffan@binghamton.edu
250 F. Fan

soared above Eurocentric parochialism. Sarton recounted the scientific achievements

of the East (meaning ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Islamic civilization) and their
contributions to the West. Needham’s vision was encapsulated in his famous metaphor
of premodern rivers of civilizations flowing into the ocean of modern science. Sarton,
inheriting Auguste Comte’s positivism, regarded the history of science as progress by
cumulative advancements. Influenced by historical materialism, Needham empha-
sized the impact of economic and sociological conditions on science (e.g., his “bu-
reaucratic feudalism”). Sarton placed experimental and mathematical science in the
center of the history of science. In comparison, Needham paid far more attention to
technology, especially technological inventions and innovations.
Later generations of historians of science, at least in the United States, lost for
decades this global, inclusive, and cosmopolitan perspective. They focused almost
exclusively on Europe and later the United States. The reasons were many, but the
influx of the history of ideas, the brilliance of Alexandre Koyré’s work, the aversion to
the materialist view, condescension to history of technology, academic specialization,
and the narrowing of language training all played a role. However, several new devel-
opments in the history of science and neighboring disciplines eventually made an
impact. The methodological challenges to the established tradition in the 1980s and
1990s, ranging from STS to postcolonial studies, shook the discipline’s complacency.
The expansion of research on science and empire/colony brought other parts of the
world into the canvas. A burst of interest in voyages, explorations, and natural history
prompted historians of science to cast their gaze around the globe (Golinski 1998;
Miller and Reill 1996; MacLeod 2000; Rozwadowski 2008).
Then there was the influence from general history. New trends in general history—
for example, the Atlantic world, “connected history,” the global history of European
empires, and the inclusion of global/world history into college curricula—overflowed
into the field of history of science (Bailyn 2005; Subrahmanyam 1997; Bayly 2003;
Darwin 2008). Moreover, there was also the historian’s response to the explosion of
academic and public interest in the 1990s in the presumed phenomenon of “globali-
zation.” Sociologists, political scientists, and cultural studies critics turned their ana-
lytical attention to the issues of “globalization,” in part as criticisms of journalistic
commonplaces and neoliberal self-congratulations. Historians, being historians, did
what they do best. They asked: Could many things about what has been labeled as
globalization in the late twentieth century be not so new after all? They noted the
changes, but they were also interested in the continuities, contingences, influences,
and legacies over time (Hopkins 2002). After all, people and societies have been
migrating, trading, and transmitting knowledge and material objects over continents
since time immemorial. Can’t we, therefore, call the Middle Ages global, too (Heng
et al. 2012)?
Historians of science have taken up some of these ideas, themes, and problems.
Scholars of early modern science, of science and empire, and of recent science and
technology have begun to discuss science in global contexts or global history of
science. European empires of the early modern period extended over much of the
globe, and the collecting and transmission of knowledge, information, and material
objects constituted a crucial part of the scientific revolution (Cook 2007; Delbourgo
and Dew 2007). The increasing interest in artisanal or other nonelite knowledge,
practices, and skills led to a new recognition of the extent to which European sci-
The Global Turn in the History of Science 251

ence—which was really a diverse and heterogeneous body of knowledge, institutions,

and practices—owed to multiple, including non-Western, traditions of knowledge
(Smith and Schmidt 2008). Historians of twentieth-century science have examined
aspects of science and war in the international/global contexts of World War II and the
cold war (Sachse and Walker 2005; Krige and Barth 2005). Finally, the history of
global science is gaining popularity. In order to understand the development of global
science, it is often necessary to include some global history of science. For example, it
would be difficult to understand the development of climate science without referring
to the history of meteorological research across the globe (Fleming and Jankovic 2011;
Weart 2003).1
Of course, this new breed of global history of science is distinct in crucial ways
from what Sarton and Needham did. Generally speaking, global history is differen-
tiated from world history by its focus on global connections/interactions and patterns
and by its attempt to see the globe as a whole (Manning 2003; Mazlish 1998).2
Traditional world history often treats the world as a stage on which successive or
contemporaneous peoples, states, and events took place. Civilizations and empires
rose and fell. In contrast, global history is more interested in identifying and analyzing
certain aspects or themes of global/transregional interactions and patterns (e.g., global
migrations). Not everyone will agree with this distinction, but I think it is an effective
one and can help us discern certain important features of the global history of science.
For instance, different from Sarton and Needham, a global historian of science will be
unlikely to use civilization—such as Chinese civilization or East Asian civilization—
as an analytical unit or a historical explanation (Hart 1999).3 Furthermore, global
history of science concerns itself mainly with the interrelations and transmissions of
knowledge and other matters of science across regions. Neither Sarton nor Needham
embraced that as their primary research focus, though both would have been sym-
pathetic to it. Generally speaking, historians of science have become much more
interested than before in “knowledge in motion,” in global contexts or otherwise.
Instead of looking at science and technology as products in a particular nation or
civilization, the main focus of global history of science is on the transmission,
exchange, and circulation of knowledge, skills, and material objects.
Along these lines, new tools and perspectives have been developed or adopted to
study history of science in global contexts. Here I discuss briefly two concepts that
have gained much currency in studying the global history of science: circulation and
trade.

2 Circulation

The concept of circulation has become a buzzword in the history of science. It re-
inforces the now accepted view that knowledge production and scientific practice

1 The increased attention might have been due in part to the fact that some historians of science have been

very visible in public debates over the topic of global climate change (Oreskes and Conway 2010).
2 The editorial position of the Journal of Global History generally follows this definition of global history.
3 But, of course, even in this post-Said era, there are scholars who believe in the explanatory power of

stereotypical civilizations (e.g., Huff 1993, 2010).

252 F. Fan

were not confined to the familiar sites of scientific societies, museums, and labora-
tories. Ideas and information transmitted by networks and often across cultures played
a major role in the making of modern science (Raj 2007). Equally important is the
circulation of material objects. The circulation of specimens and other objects of
nature in maritime trade, for example, contributed to the development of natural
history in the early modern world. Such objects were also instrumental to cultural
exchange in global encounters. The circulation of knowledge, human actors, and
material objects grew as the globalizing process expanded in the later centuries.
The practice and institutions of science cannot be properly understood outside this
global context.
The concept of circulation has obvious merits. Compared with Bruno Latour’s
“centers of calculation” (1987), for example, it shifts attention away from the pre-
sumed centers, emphasizes the two-way flows of knowledge, and, in resonance with
the global turn in the history of science, takes a broad view of the participants, actions,
and sites in the enterprise of science. As a concept, it has been employed to discuss the
movements of knowledge and material objects within Europe as well as between
Europe and other parts of the world. The circulation of knowledge could take place
among, say, social classes, localities, and institutions. It occurred between city and
country, capital and province, metropole and colony, and Asia and Europe. Instead of
locating the production of knowledge at the “centers,” the image of circulation
suggests that both metropole and colony, for example, were vital components of a
process that is continuously generating and reconfiguring knowledge. The interpretive
framework thus tries to break down fixed categories. It encompasses broad spaces
rather than concentrates on one privileged spot (e.g., a “center of calculation”). It
focuses on the process and movement instead of the finished product.
The image of circulation, however, can be misleading. It tends to suggest that
people, information, and material objects flowed smoothly along networks and
channels.4 Circulation appears to be a “natural” or default condition. Yet, not only
did the movement of knowledge and material objects require work—consider the
efforts put in to transport plants and animals, live or dead, across oceans—but its
trajectory may not have been as teleological as circulation would imply.5 Why should
one assume that the movement looped around in a closed circuit? Weren’t some
movements open-ended? If so, why should we use the notion of circulation? Besides,
not all things circulated the same way. Some traveled far and fast; others stalled.
Therefore, what is called “circulation” may have been really a series of negotiations,
pushes and pulls, struggles, and stops and starts. The image of circulation tends to
impose too much unity, uniformity, and directionality on what was complex, multi-
directional, and messy. It also tends to substitute a general metaphor for a careful
examination of what actually happened. There are risks in accepting the metaphor too
readily. For instance, the image of smooth circulation probably doesn’t encourage a
critical analysis of, say, power relations in science.
Therefore, it is important to ask critical questions when the notion of circulation is
applied to particular historical cases. What was being circulated? Since not all things

4 A special issue of British Journal for the History of Science (Terrall and Raj 2010) discusses some of

these issues.
5 On the transport of specimens, see Fan 2004: chaps. 1 and 2.
The Global Turn in the History of Science 253

circulated equally, it is necessary to distinguish among different things in circulation.

What were the zones or spaces of circulation? Certain things or people might circulate
in certain zones but not in others. If that is the case, what were the boundaries of
circulation—boundaries that marked the zones of circulation? Who and what facili-
tated circulation? What were the means and mechanisms of circulation? What were
the barriers and hindrances? One should also ask what happened to the objects of
science during the circulation. Did they go through mutations, transformations, and
reconfigurations? If so, wouldn’t it be helpful to treat a circulation rather as a series of
translations?
These questions aside, one can still recognize the importance of knowledge and
material objects in transit in modern science. Its importance is reflected in part in the
measures set up to regulate, monitor, and control the flow. To underline this point, we
can use the regulation of human migration as an analogy. It has been convincingly
argued that the effort to tighten border control and identity documentation, rep-
resented by the modern passport system, cannot be separated from the rise of global
mobility as well as of nation-state sovereignty in the nineteenth century (McKeown
2008). On the one hand, global networks facilitated the migration of people; on the
other, political entities asserted their authority and imposed restrictions on such move-
ments. Just as the circulation of material objects, such as specimens, was crucial to
science, the regulation, monitoring, inspection, and control of the same had conse-
quences in science.6 It is therefore imperative to investigate the historical reasons and
circumstances that fostered or hindered the movement of knowledge or material
objects, that is, to find out how and why certain mechanisms were introduced to control
the coming and going of people and things. This is an unusual, but necessary, per-
spective on the topic of the circulation of knowledge and material objects in science.

3 Trade

Another image or concept that has become popular among scholars to talk about global
history of science is “trade.” In many ways, it makes real sense to link science to trade.
Arguably, the rise of modern science had much to do with commerce and trade in the
global context. Voyages, maritime trade, and the East India companies were inter-
twined with scientific activities (Findlen and Smith 2001; Smith and Schmidt 2008;
Cook 2007; Schaffer et al. 2009). Thus, the language of trade is not simply a metaphor
but an attempt to reconstruct the close historical connections between science and
commerce. Just like circulation, the perspective of trade provides a useful approach to
history of science that foregrounds knowledge in motion and scientific contact.
With the attention on trade and commerce, the question of how scientific exchange
took place naturally arises. How do we analyze the problem of scientific contact and
exchange? Mary Louise Pratt’s concept of “contact zone” has been widely used by
scholars of postcolonial studies to discuss colonial encounters (1992). Some historians

6 Examples may include the national control of exotic species and international regulations of medical

quarantine and sanitation (Pauly 1996; Sealey 2011).

254 F. Fan

of science have used it in their works on science in imperial/colonial contexts (Fan

2007b; Schiebinger 2004). The notion is much more concerned with power relations
than trade. (As such, it is more relevant and poignant than the language of trade in
interpreting certain historical situations.) The problem is that the concept is vague and
provides historians of science with few analytical tools. In comparison, Peter Gali-
son’s “trading zone” (1997), which is also frequently adopted by historians of science
to talk about scientific contact, is more systematically developed. As its name shows,
the concept draws on the analogy of trade.
In Galison’s original formulation, the “trading zone” is a very specific concept. He
uses it to explain the ways in which well-defined research communities in high-energy
physics, with their distinctive cultures, coordinate their actions and beliefs for scien-
tific research. As the field of high-energy physics grew over the twentieth century, the
theorists, experimenters, and instrument makers diverged, formed their own commu-
nities, and developed their own cultures. But in order to pursue their research, these
communities needed each other, and they had to find ways to work together. Galison
uses economic and sociolinguistic terms to explain how this was done. He makes an
anthropological analogy. Tribes that speak different languages can create a contact
language or pidgin to communicate, at least adequately enough, for the purpose of
trade. The activity of trade depends on the coordination of action but does not require
full translation of knowledge. Similarly, in high-energy physics, the communities of
theorists, experimenters, and instrument makers have developed contact languages to
coordinate their actions; the place or zone in which such coordination occurred is
called the “trading zone.”
The concept of “trading zone” has been influential among historians of science,
philosophers of science, and STS scholars (Gorman 2010). It has been adopted to
discuss historical cases far beyond high-energy physics. I am totally unqualified to say
if the model is an accurate description of what actually happened in high-energy
physics. I am happy to assume it is. Nevertheless, I have doubts and reservations
when it is applied, indiscriminatingly, to all kinds of scientific encounters, because
I think it can be misleading. Here I can only list a few of my reservations.
To begin with, the economic analogy—trading—does not capture the range and
diversity of scenarios of scientific contact. Scientific contact and knowledge exchange
can happen under widely differing circumstances—for example, coercion for infor-
mation; migrations of people and their knowledge, skills, and talent; knowledge
transmitted through kinship or under moral/political authority; and many other situ-
ations that are far cries from trading—and yet are major elements of the global history
of science. Second, a related problem is that the “trading zone” model says little about
power relations, which is crucial to understanding many kinds of scientific encounters,
not the least science in imperial and colonial settings. Third, the model implies that
there are no substantive changes to the communities and their cultures during and after
the contact. The parties find ways to work together for a common cause, and that is the
essence of their contact. But surely there are scientific encounters that have deeper and
more lasting effects. Can they be properly explained by this model? Fourth, contact
languages are tools for coordinating the parties to accomplish certain goals. They are
not designed to translate substantive knowledge. The model does not try to explain
cases in which the scientific communities learn from each other and increasingly share
The Global Turn in the History of Science 255

more substantive knowledge and practice.7 Fifth, the concept, relying mainly on
linguistic metaphors, does not deal specifically with the problems of materiality and
embodied practice in science.8 Sixth, the analogy of trading may not adequately
describe more enduring kinds of collaboration. It also has little to say about conflict,
contention, and rivalry in scientific contact. Seventh, finally, the model was created to
explain highly developed, specialized, and institutionalized scientific communities in
a recent area of research. Does it apply to other historical situations, for example, cases
in which historical actors had fluid occupations and identities and when their knowl-
edge and skills were not so specialized, professionalized, and institutionalized?9
These comments are not criticisms of the concept of “trading zone” itself. They are
instead questions about its applicability and usefulness in studying many kinds of
scientific contact in the global history of science. To be sure, many scholars have used
the concept only loosely. They probably regarded it as a ready-made tool for probing
problems of scientific contact. The particular features of the concept, as articulated in
Galison’s account of high-energy physics, seemed less relevant than a general notion
of scientific exchange. In this way, the concept of “trading zone” may have contributed
broadly to research on scientific contact. Unfortunately, the problem is that the con-
cept, however powerful it may be, cannot substitute for careful examinations of var-
ious historical situations and scenarios. For this reason, I suggest that we should be
cautious about adopting such concepts or metaphors as trading or the “trading zone”
unless the historical cases under examination warrant it.

4 Global/Regional

I have commented on some of the opportunities and challenges in the global history of
science. Without making this essay unduly long, I would like to add a few words
indicating the ways in which global history of science may contribute to East Asian
STS (including the history of East Asian science). One important connection between
the two areas of research is the relationship between the global and the regional.
Although global history of science, by definition, must look beyond any particular
region, it cannot ignore the regional, for regional differences and boundaries could be
substantial and should not be dismissed. It would be hard to deny, for example, that
there was a shared written language and textual tradition among the cultural elites in
China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam for centuries until the nineteenth century, just as
there was a shared language and textual tradition in Latin Europe. It is certainly
worthwhile to consider the circulation of knowledge, texts, material objects, and
people within such regions (Elman 2008; Fan 2008; Kim 2010). Texts on medical

7 The “trading zone” model suggests that a contact language or pidgin may stabilize and become a “natural

language” or “creole.” It is not clear, though, how this possibility may explain the scenario I just described.
8 Galison masterfully incorporates architecture or the material place of the “trading zone” into his account,

but he otherwise says little about material culture, embodied knowledge, and so forth, in the “trading zone.”
It is curious because material culture is the central concern of the book. One wonders if the problem reflects
the limitations of the linguistic model.
9 This scenario is not limited to the past. It exists in modern high-tech societies as well as in historical or

“traditional” ones. I am not sure that “trading zone” is the most suitable model for understanding these kinds
of scientific contact.
256 F. Fan

plants in Chinese, for example, were circulated to Korea and Japan, where the elites
studied them according to their interpretations of the shared textual tradition as well as
the vernacular traditions in their own societies (Suh 2007).10 It would be problematic,
however, to call such a region and its corresponding elite tradition a civilization,
because the concept of civilization tends to homogenize what was within, reduce
the importance and diversity of vernacular traditions, flatten the differences between
elite and nonelite traditions, and privilege a static “civilization,” however one defines
it, over historical contingencies as well as social and political conditions.
Therefore, what may be meaningfully defined as a region depends on what a scholar
aims to study. There isn’t one “East Asia” ready to be discovered. There are only
multiple regions superimposed on each other. The region of a vernacular tradition of
science, technology, or medicine is likely different from that of an elite written
tradition.
Hence, recognizing a shared elite tradition must not prevent us from paying due
attention to the many vernacular traditions, local variations of a shared elite tradition,
and the strong connections between the so-called “East Asia” and other, equally
complex regions (e.g., “Central Asia”). Here, similarly, textual traditions were trans-
mitted along with broad contact of vernacular traditions (reflected in the Tibetan as
well as Mongolian herbals of the Qing Empire, such as the Jingzhu bencao and the
Mengyao zhengdian). Perhaps we can visualize the image of layers of regions defined
by circulations of various matters of science in different degrees of density.11 It will be
interesting to ask questions about the circulation, translation, boundaries, barriers,
facilitators, and localities of knowledge production and transmission. To what extent
and in what ways did the state, language, trade, human movements, social networks,
religion, and geopolitics play a role in the formation of those regions?12
Conversely, one should note the very fact that knowledge in motion often tran-
scended the regions (i.e., the zones of relatively dense concentration of such circula-
tions) and reached the far distance. Although East Asian STS concerns itself mostly
with East Asia, it cannot ignore the global. Set in the contemporary world, this seems
obvious. One can hardly understand technoscience in East Asia without considering
the transnational and global networks of science and technology. What is less recog-
nized is the fact that knowledge, skills, people, texts, and material objects have always
been on the move; it is not simply a phenomenon of “globalization” of the late twen-
tieth century, despite the obvious differences between historical periods. Unfortu-
nately, most of our research falls well within the conventionally defined East
Asia—and indeed, within the nation-states.13 Circulation, contact, exchange, transfer,
and other transnational/transregional issues remain largely unexplored. Perhaps it is
also time for East Asian STS to take a global turn.

10 Apparently, the appropriation of such knowledge was not limited to the cultural elite (Shin 2010).
11 For a critical review of the definitions of continents and regions, see Lewis and Wigen 1997.
12 For example, it may be interesting to ask how the region defined by a state (e.g., the Qing state and its

ambition to rule a multiethnic/linguistic empire) intersected with various regions defined by written, lin-
guistic, and vernacular cultures.
13 Not surprisingly, works on science, technology, and medicine and colonialism/imperialism tend to pay

more attention to transregional/intraregional connections (Anderson 2009; Tsukahara 2007; see also
Tsukahara 2009). On the importance of transnational/transregional history, see, for example, Fan 2007a,
Kuo 2009, Kuo 2010, and Wang 2010.
The Global Turn in the History of Science 257

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