Senses of Localism

Hist. Sci.
, l (2012)
Senses of localism
Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen
Leiden University
A generation ago scientific ideas floated free in the air, as

historians gazed up at them in wonder and admiration
Adi Ophir and Steven Shapin1
Introduction
“That knowledge is ineluctably local and variable is hammered home again and
again”, exclaimed James A. Secord in 2004 at the fifth joint meeting of the history of
science societies.2 In a recent issue of Isis, Peter Galison writes that “the turn toward
local explanation … may well be the single most important change in the last thirty
years” and names ‘locality’ as one of the most important problems in the history and
philosophy of science.3 These two remarks testify to the significance of the spatial-
ist and localist perspectives on science in historiography of science. It would not
be difficult to compile a long list of authors dealing with the issue of spatiality and
locality of science, remembering that discussion on the circulation and movement
of knowledge and other products of science stems from the observation that science
is a local phenomenon in the first instance.4
The local or more generally spatial turn undoubtedly is a significant change in
theory and practice of historiography of science. But what exactly is this change? What
kind of reform in thinking and writing about science and its history has it introduced?
The spatial turn has brought forward new, previously largely neglected, geographical
questions. It has also introduced entirely new concepts or re-problematized a number
of old ones. But what is the historiographical significance of geographical queries?
And what do the concepts, such as ‘location’, ‘space’, ’universal’ and ‘global’ mean?
These are the questions that I intend to examine in this paper. The tone of this paper
is expository rather than critical. My aim is to bring some clarity on the issues that
arise in the localist discourse. That is, the purpose is to draft the basic conceptual and
historiographical positions in this relatively young research field, historical geography
of science, also trying to pinpoint the challenges of each of them, without however
arguing for one or the other position in the debate. There is one book that needs to
be highlighted. David Livingstone’s Putting science in its place: Geographies of
scientific knowledge has served as an excellent and lucid exposition of localism in
historiography of science and geography of science more generally.5
This paper is inspired by an observation that the spatial turn may alter theoretical
landscape significantly when compared to earlier historiography of science, in which
the central questions often stemmed from philosophy of science or philosophical
history of science. Ophir and Shapin have remarked that the localization of science
0073-2753/12/5004-0477/$10.00 © 2012 Science History Publications Ltd

478 · Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen
may be epistemically and ontologically implicating.6 However, the turn toward

localities and local questions leaves a wide variety of historiographical questions
and inquiries open and possible. Some of them may signal a professional awaken-
ing to new kinds of problems and topics, while others are manifestations of certain
methodological approaches, and still others imply significant ontological and other
philosophical consequences. My goal is to shed light on all these issues. And yet the
primary concern is to spell out what kind of philosophical or metaphysical view is
implied by localism and how it compares to a contrasting, universalist, explanatory
alternative in historiography of science.
The first main part of the paper is devoted to outlining what I call complementary
(localist) options in historiography of science. They tend to enrich our view and
understanding of science, detailing previously ignored information on locations of
science, but are not necessarily in contradiction with older philosophical histories of
science. After that I draft the methodological options in localism. Common to them
is an instrumental attitude to the locations of science. They study bounded localities
in order to acquire knowledge that would otherwise be difficult to formulate or be
without proper warrant. The third and the central part of this essay concentrates on
metaphysical views of localism and universalism. The central claim is that different
historiographical strategies used to explain the globality of contemporary science
imply different metaphysics. In the end I attempt to say where the burden of proof
lies in historiography of science with both of these options. This comes down to an
issue whether geographically separate branches of science would converge or not,
if they don’t or wouldn’t have come in contact with each other. The localist would
typically deny that they converge and the universalist insists that they do.
Embodying science
For the first it is good to say a few words on what ‘local explanation’ or ‘local perspec-
tive’ on science means. In general and as a first approximation, it refers here to all the
positions that regard science and/or scientific knowledge as local in some sense, or
explains them by reference to locally existing factors. This definition is naturally not
very precise. It is intended to narrow the scope of investigation somewhat and enable
further considerations that specify the senses of localism further. The bottom line
is that one can be a localist or adopt a localist orientation in many different senses.
In order to explicate in more detail what localism implies one needs to understand
the general shift that the spatial and local turn brought in historiography of science.
It is probably fair to call the conception of science that has been and still is common
in philosophy of science a disembodied conception of science. According to it, sci-
ence is universal in some sense; it is something that has the same universal features
everywhere and something that is not located or embodied specifically anywhere
in any specific (bodily) form. This singularity presumption enabled the debate on
the nature of science (in singular), on the method of science a couple of decades
ago, for example. It is of course possible to talk about the locations of science from
the universalistic philosophical perspective, but the order of investigation is from
Senses of localism · 479
universality to locality. In other words, science is first assumed to possess universal

features, which may then be manifested or exemplified in multiple locations. Further,
locations don’t modify these inherent universal features of science.
Joseph Rouse has characterized the disembodied conception of science aptly. He
has argued that there is a “theoretical” view, according to which scientific knowledge
and laws are universally valid, and the local environment in which scientific research
is performed is merely incidental to what is being explored or tested. According to
this view, any particular location of research merely provides an instantiation of
universal scientific claims. Further, the local features of knowledge production form
a potential threat to the objectivity and universality of knowledge, and are therefore
taken into account only in so far as the particular local conditions and facts enable
an application and instantiation of such a universal law.7
It may be said that the spatial turn begins with a reaction against the aprioristic and
non-empirical thinking mode that was current at least until the 1970s. Philosophers,
and most historians as well, had studied science through certain preconceptions of
its (progressive, cumulative etc.) nature and with a given set of typically epistemic
concepts (such as rationality, truth, knowledge, justification) that were supposed to
describe and explain its functioning and outcomes. Historians and sociologists of
science felt the need to take a look at where, how and by whom science actually is
practised and draw conclusions on its nature afterwards, not prior to these investiga-
tions. The sites in which sciences are first created became the primary historical focus.
Now, the embodied conception of science, common in contemporary historiography
of science, is an outcome of studies that have focused on the actual locations in which
science is practised and on the means with which it is actually realized. Through these
kinds of investigations science, or better sciences, became situated and embodied.
The title of Steven Shapin’s recent book (2010) well illustrates the fundamental idea
in its mockery of the disembodied conception: Never pure: Historical studies of sci-
ence as if it was produced by people with bodies, situated in time, space, culture, and
society, and struggling for credibility and authority.8 The question implied in the title
is good. How could philosophers and historians of earlier generations have imagined
that science is produced by no-one, nowhere and non-temporally?
Complementary options
While it is clear that localist studies have contributed to our understanding of science,
not all approaches challenge philosophically the pre-existing conception of science.
This is not to say that they could be described as implying a disembodied conception
of science either. The idea is that focusing on a previously neglected question on
how science is created in localities and how science travels may be complementary
without any immediate philosophical implications.
David Livingstone outlines one kind of localist orientation as follows. “Scientific
practice is influenced by these spatial settings in a number of ways.... The site-specific
conditions of knowledge making are immensely different. So too are the ways in which
knowledge accumulated moves out from its site of origin into the public sphere.”9 It
is not difficult to accept that the site-specific conditions of knowledge and the ways
in which knowledge move from site to site differ and that we do not know enough
about that. In other words, if we remind that science is created in time and place,
practised by people in some locations, and add that we need to study these issues
as well, it opens new inquiries and questions, but the remark itself is not something
that the universalist could not in principle be able to accept.10
If the message is for example that science was created in London, Amsterdam and
Paris with (mostly) men with certain cultural background and presumptions, it is a
timely reminder in the universalistic debates on scientific knowledge, methods and
laws, but can be accepted by the universalist. Of course no one believes that science is
literally something God-given that descended from heaven, but practically everyone
accepts that it is created in some geographical locations. Naturally it is also possible
to imply something more by ‘location’. I will return to it later.
This is the reason to call this kind of localist orientation a reminder that local-
ity matters in science. It might also be dubbed weak localism. Often weak localist
arguments use such words as ‘influence’ or ‘shape’11 when one describes the relation
between science and its location. I am not suggesting that the localist studies that do
not engage in epistemically and ontologically loaded debates weren’t interesting and
important as such. On the contrary, they have the potential to enrich our understand-
ing of scientific practice in various ways. David Livingstone has drafted the kinds
of questions that may open. For example, we may ask who was permitted access to
the privileged places of knowledge generation. Steven Shapin has told us that in the
eighteenth-century England it was Gentleman or those deemed to have that status.12
Did the line separating ‘insiders’ from ‘outsiders’ map onto any other contours —
say, of gender, class, status, ethnic group, or professional standing? And how was
the work divided up among those who could cross the threshold into the knowledge-
making territory?13 Further, we can be interested in numerous places where science
actually was practised, a question that certainly has not received sufficient attention in
philosophical examinations of science. The list is long: sciences have been practised
in cathedrals, tents, coffeehouses, public houses, libraries, lecture theatres, salons,
nurseries, observatories, churches, workshops, artists’ studios, mechanics’ institutes,
laboratories, learned societies, stock farms, shipyards, game reserves, etc. To point
this out and detail these places of science is historically enlightening. As Livingstone
says, this new focus can “considerably widen our awareness of the range of spaces
in which scientific knowledge has been produced and propagated”.14
These are all legitimate questions and areas of inquiry. In fact, the reminder that
locality influences science can and possibly has already grown to an entirely new
field in history of science: (historical) geography of science well summarized in Liv-
ingstone’s book. In this sense, it complements the existing understandings of science
comparable to the way that the studies of economic and social history complements
our view of society composed on the basis of political history and history of ideas.
However, the central (unanswered) question is whether locality also becomes a
cognitive factor in science in the sense that location leaves a permanent imprint on a
science, the consequence of which is that one location leaves one kind of permanent
imprint, another a different kind. Or does ‘locality’ stay as an ‘external’ factor so that
science attains some kind of inevitability towards harmonization despite the fact that it
is practised in different localities? We may compare this question to the examinations
of how gender influences sciences. The role of women may, for example, be studied
from the point of view of equality or fairness, pointing out that earlier societies have
discriminated women in science and traditional histories have in addition neglected
the roles of women in histories of science. However, this does not yet mean that
the participation of women in science has any significant and lasting impact on the
nature and the development of science. Perhaps both men and women are governed
by the same internal logic of science, and perhaps nature is equally accessible to both
sexes. The claim that the cognitive significance goes much further, both in localist
and gender studies, requires further explication and substantiation. The third major
section of the paper is devoted to fleshing this out.
Methodological options
The localist approach on science is closely related to empiricism in historiography of

science. To put it differently, one of the central features of localism is the rejection
of aprioristic orientation on science that explains science with the help of universal
and non-situated abstract concepts. I have elsewhere argued that the decades since
the emergence of historical philosophers of science is a period of the deepening
empiricization of historiography of science.15 An inherent element of this process is
an increased interest in the material and local conditions in which science is practised.
This may again be contrasted to the ‘theoretical’ or ‘philosophical’ approach that
examines science through a few chosen a priori concepts, such as rationality, reason
and truth. Therefore, on the methodological level, the essence of localism can be said
to be its rejection of a priorism in historical studies of science. It is a movement for
more intensive empiricism which, as a consequence of this, rules universalism out
as an inaccurate and unwarranted description of science.
We can explicate the methodological options that localism entails now in more detail.
In his assessment of the problems of locality and globality in historiography of science,
Galison writes that microhistory is an example of an approach that makes the study of
locality possible. According to Galison, representative examples of microhistory are
Carlo Ginzburg’s The cheese and the worms in general historiography and Latour and
Woolgar’s laboratory study Laboratory life in science studies. He writes that microhis-
tory is meant to be a display through particular detail of something general, but it is not
a way to reach generalizations as such. Galison contrasts microhistory to James Bryant
Conant’s programme Case Studies in Experimental Science in Harvard, the intention
of which was to reach Baconian kind of generalizations on science on the basis of
historical case studies. Galison understands microhistory as exemplification without
typicality, but leaves open what is meant by “exemplification without typicality”.16
If we accept the idea that microhistory attempts to exemplify, we can further
characterize the rationale to practice microhistory. It is reasonable to assume that a
scholar uses the method of exemplification if, first, the object of research requires
highly focused attention and, second, if the study can nevertheless be expected to have
wider applicability or information value. In other words, the phenomena researched
are expected to be general and not confined to only one locality despite the fact
that the only way to learn about them may be through a highly-focused local study.
Laboratory research work that Woolgar and Latour investigate in their Laboratory life
arguably intends to enlighten us about the ways in which laboratories function and how
knowledge is manufactured in them, and not only how it happened in that particular
laboratory at the Salk Institute. Ginzburg understands a village as a microcosm that
enables one to learn how people of different rank lived and thought in the past. An
attempt to describe people’s lives directly on a much larger scale, such as a nation,
would be difficult to accomplish and would probably result in poor pictures of the
past, descriptively speaking. The main historical contribution is that Menocchio’s
thinking tells us about the ancient cosmological worldview of peasants and millers,
something that cannot otherwise be easily reached.17
A research of a local scientific culture may thus reveal to us something general
about science or scientific cultures. Isn’t this the message of Leviathan and the air-
pump, for example?18 Did Schaffer and Shapin hope only to communicate about
Hobbes’s and Boyle’s dispute on air pumps, or only about the particular historical
setting of their dispute? This is unlikely. They did that, but they also intended to
show something general about science; how disputes are conducted and settled; how
scientific disputes are an inherent part of the wider societal and political context,
which in their case was the aftermath of the English Civil War. Consider how the
study of Hobbes’s and Boyle’s different views on the role of experimentation in
science is used to draw the general conclusion that “any institutionalized method
for producing knowledge has its foundations in social conventions”. Further, the
authors state categorically that “the notion of replication is basic to fact-production
in experimental science”.19 To take one more example, the conclusion of the whole
study ends with a conviction that “solutions to the problem of knowledge are solu-
tions to the problem of social order”.20
Localist studies may thus pave the way for more general conclusions. One does
not produce case studies in order to test general hypotheses, but studies locality in
order to find patterns with wider applicability. Wider applicability is not the only
contribution of these studies but nevertheless is an essential part of ‘microhistorical’
investigation. Although the historical details are interesting and valuable as such,
they also serve a function: they are meant to exemplify the functioning of a certain
culture, such as a scientific culture, in and beyond that one locality. It is also possible
to go further than this in methodological purposefulness. My view is that certain
kinds of localist studies embody methodological attitudes towards localities in a
more programmatic form and use knowledge about local cultures to form general
principles or other conclusions on scientific culture in general. In any case, this kind
of approach represents one conceptual possible in the conceptual field of localism.
Let’s take a look at this kind of option in more detail.
Recent historiography has avoided grand explanatory schemes of history and

concepts that seem to transcend actors’ perspectives and their contexts of origin.
Motivated by the desire to base one’s narratives empirically on as firm a footing
as possible, current historiography tends to take local contexts at their face value
and only refer to factors that can be found in a given particular locality. The start-
ing point may be to assume, for methodological reasons, that science is local, and
nothing more, and further, that it is only explainable by reference to locally existing
factors. A case in point is anthropological studies of science that were an antidote
against empirically flimsy interpretations of history. The anthropological studies
require that investigators adopt an agnostic stance towards the object of research and
pretend ignorance, because only in this way can one rid oneself from pre-empirical
(and incorrect) conceptions of what science and knowledge are, and form a more
accurate and empirically warranted view of science. As Latour said in Science in
action, “Surprisingly few people have penetrated from the outside the inner workings
of science and technology, and then got out of it to explain to the outsider how it all
works”.21 The empiricist tone is similar in Pasteurization of France: “I use history
as a brain scientist uses a rat, cutting through in order to follow the mechanisms that
allow me to understand at once the content of a science and its context.”22 It is typical
for Latour to say that he is merely following “the veins and arteries” of science,23 “the
actor’s own way”, 24 or “the social fluid wherever it leads them”.25 Further, Latour’s
six general principles in Science in action are presented as general conclusions of
his research programme and represent Latour’s “personal summary of the empirical
facts at hand after a decade of work in this area”.26
Latour’s local focus and specifically his tools to make sense of scientific travel have
been endorsed by many historians of science, and even by many of those who are
critical of some other aspects of his theory.27 However, it is significant that, although
Latour begins his investigations with narrowly focused localist studies, the conclusion
he reaches is a set of general principles that apply well beyond any locality. Compare
for example Latour’s third principle: “We are never confronted with science, tech-
nology and society, but with a gamut of weaker and stronger associations.”28 This
principle is categorical and the kind of general conclusion that allegedly applies in
all studies of science. It seems obvious that such a principle cannot be reached by
studying one locality alone. We can therefore think that it is assumed either a priori
or shown to be empirically warranted through several localist studies.
Latour has explicitly committed to empirical research, and therefore the warrant
of the general principle comes down to localist-empirical studies of science (i.e.
“personal summary of the empirical facts”). In this sense, the commitment to a local
perspective is methodological. As a starting point, it is assumed that everything is
local and locally explainable, and then this approach is used as a method to acquire
a more accurate understanding of science that thus results in empirically justified
generalizable views of it. In brief, Latour studies localities but builds theories or
constructs general principles.
Methodological localism may well be compared to methodological relativism by
Harry Collins and SSK more generally. Methodological relativism does not assert
relativism, i.e., it is not a commitment to a philosophical doctrine that truth, for
example, is relative to a culture or social life. Methodological relativism merely
implies that one studies scientific action “treat[ing] the world as if it had no effect
what people believe about it”.29 ‘Nature’ as a shared constant between all participants
is discounted as non-explanatory from the investigation and knowledge is treated as
if it is relative to social contexts. In other words, methodological relativists are not
disputing reality or nature, but refusing to them any ‘sociological cash-value’.30 To
repeat, this is a starting point of a study, and not its conclusion or output. In this way,
it is believed one can find more about the functioning of science, i.e., what the real
driving forces behind the dynamics of science are. In a similar fashion, methodologi-
cal localism proceeds by assuming that the most warranted orientation available is
to treat everything as if they are local and only local. However, this kind of study
is compatible with the conclusion that the same elements are shared across several
localities, making those entities something extra-local or general.
Localism as exemplification and methodological localism imply instrumentalism
with regard to the localities they research. The difference is that the latter prescribes
the right way to acquire sound knowledge about one’s object of research. That is,
knowledge has to be justified by direct reference to or be reducible to entities that
are clearly present and identifiable in the original local contexts. The former does not
prescribe any such general method, but merely uses localities for material reasons,
often in the absence of any direct sources or documentation of the object investi-
gated (e.g. the world view of peasants in the Middle Ages) or because the object of
research is too large to be directly studied. The difference between the two might
be expressed briefly as follows: localism as exemplification is a way to expand our
knowledge, which would be impossible by other means, whereas methodological
localism is primarily an attempt to acquire well corroborated (general) knowledge,
the validity of which extends beyond a particular locality.
Localism and universalism as metaphysical alternatives
The localist perspective may also imply a much more substantial view of what science
is and how it is practised. Strong localism takes us from the rejection of a priorism
in favour of locally focused empirical studies, shared between all localist orienta-
tions, to a fundamental challenge of the universalist conception of science. In other
words, localism implies a radically different kind of metaphysics to the universalist
one. And because of this, it requires different kinds of historiographical explanatory
strategies. This is to say that different kinds of metaphysics underlie the debates on
the universality or the globality of science between localists and “philosophical-
theoretical views”. One indication of this is the development of theories of ‘circulation’
or ‘delocalization’ of science by the former, as we will see soon.
Charles W. J. Withers suggests in his historiographical survey of the term ‘place’
that historians of science have been working with the notion of space both as
location and as constitutive locale. He points out that the recognition that science
is produced in some place is hardly new or revolutionary. Obviously it has to be

produced somewhere. It is noteworthy that in this manner of speaking ‘place’ and
geographical location are synonymous or nearly synonymous. This is also the reason
why I argued above that the mere localization of science to geographical locations
can be accepted by the advocates of the disembodied conception of science without
too many difficulties and that some localist studies function as complementary and
enriching to the traditional view. But if ‘place’ is taken as ‘locale’, the spatialization
of science is clearly much more implicating.
The idea of science produced in locale is that science is “conditioned by place, is
produced through place as practice rather than simply in place”.31 Livingstone says
similarly that “space is not … simply a stage on which the real action takes place.
… it is itself constitutive of human interaction”.32 The simple geographical grid view
that reminds that science is produced in locations does not change how we perceive
science although it may add many details to it. But when it is claimed that science is
produced through ‘locales’, it defines the site of production as a three-dimensional
comprehensive scene through which science and its production are constituted and
manufactured. If we now contrast the universal of conception of science to this kind
of localist understanding, the differences become apparent. Even if the universalist
accepts that science is produced somewhere, in some place, the place is not signifi-
cant. It does not leave an imprint on the content of science nor does it ‘constitute’
science and not in any case in the way that would not be found in other locations of
science. The universality of science or the universality of the factors that produce
science is taken as given. By contrast, the localeist or strong localist begins with the
assumption that the locale and conditions in which science is produced are unique
(there are no two exactly similar locales) and the transportation of a science of one
locale or its outcomes to another site requires special effort.
In order to outline the difference between the strong localist and the universalist in
more detail, we focus on two different levels of analysis. First, I further explicate the
metaphysical or ontological commitments between them. After that we focus on how
the historiographical explanations of science diverge from each other because of this.
Metaphysics of localism
Now we need to ask more precisely what kinds of objects are taken as ‘local’ or ‘uni-
versal’. We may say that metaphysically strong localism is a form of particularism,
according to which only particular or individual objects exist, and therefore, there
are no universals. The extreme kind of localism in historiography would be the view
that everything in science and its conditions of production are unique individuals or
particulars. It is not far-fetched to compare strong localism to a much older histo-
riographical school, the nineteenth-century historicism. Historicism situated in, and
understood historical phenomena via, unique historical contexts or periods. Localism
naturally locates sciences in their unique constitutive spatial locations, but the central
idea of particularization is the same. The previous operated with temporal parameters
and the latter with geographical, but both commit in principle to particularism with
regard to the phenomena explained.

One symptom of localist particularism is the view that the concept of science is
too wide a category. Livingstone comments that if we position location at the centre
of scientific way of knowing, as the geography of science suggests, “it renders sus-
pect the idea that there is some unified thing called science”.33 We can talk about
“Bristol science, Manchester science and Newcastle science”, but this is not the
same as science in Bristol, science in Manchester or science in Newcastle.34 Or to
put it yet more directly:
Science is not to be thought of as some transcendent entity that bears no trace of
the parochial or contingent. It needs rather to be qualified by temporal and regional
adjectives. At one scale of operations, science is always an ancient, Chinese, a
medieval Islamic, an early modern, English, a Renaissance French, a Jefferson-
ian American, an enlightenment Scottish thing — or some modifying variant.35
Shapin characterizes aptly the paradoxical nature of some recent projects that
attempt to write major narratives on science although the category of science has
been shown to be historically problematic: “There is no such thing as science and
this is a history of it.”36 I think we can, and should, go further than this, if we accept
the localeist worldview. Namely, if there is no such singular entity called ‘science’
and if the conditions of production under the label ‘science’ are always different and
unique, why talk about ‘the history of science’ at all? Radical localist particularism
would seem to result in the end of history of science and add yet one more ending to
many others that have emerged since the arrival of postmodernism in the 1980s. Like
many commentators have remarked, scientific activity is just then another kind of
social activity.37 We should ask that, if we spatialize science thoroughly in the manner
indicated in Livingstone’s quote, why should there be departments and other institu-
tions studying ‘history of science’. Why not incorporate studies of ‘sciences’ into the
units that research histories from geographical points of view, such as British history,
German history and American history. History of science would be one exemplifica-
tion in the array of social activities that take place in different geographical regions.38
However, it may be pointed out that the kind of localism that relies on the shared
category ‘social activity’ is not actually full-bloodied particularism. It localizes or
rejects all non-social, both epistemic and natural, explanatory categories, but it does
not localize the category of social activity. Scientific practice is understood as a kind
of social activity, i.e. social activity behaves like a universal. If one wishes to be con-
sistently particularist, then we ask with Latour that, if sociologists reject the a priori
postulation of the shared ‘nature’ as an explanatory notion, then why hang on to the
given concept of ‘society’ (or ‘social activity’). The consistent localist also localizes
social activity, after which it is not clear whether ‘social activities’ in two geographi-
cal localities and the outcomes that emerge from these conditions are at all similar.
Perhaps ‘social activity’ is just like ‘science’, which turned out to be a historically and
sociologically unwarranted category, and ends up being fragmented and regionalized.
It is naturally another question whether full-bloodied localism or particularism
is a plausible option. After contemporary historiography has shown that unqualified

universalism on science is implausible and empirically unwarranted, the same might
be said about radical localism. Social activity appears to be sufficiently similar across
space, suggesting that perhaps it could be treated as ‘universal’ (either as a proper
universal kind or as a family resemblance kind). In actuality, the issue is still more
complicated than this, as we will see soon. What is important now is to recognize that
localism and universalism come typically in some combinations, depending on what
we are talking about. One can be localist/particularist about one thing (e.g. scientific
method) and universalist about another without (e.g. ‘social activity’) a contradic-
tion. For this reason, it is worth outlining what objects are the main sticking points
between the strong localist and the universalist.
Let us begin with extreme positions. On the one side there is full-bloodied localism
or particularism, according to which ‘sciences’ and their production are totally unique
phenomena. On the other side we have the universalist standpoint, according to which
science and at least some of its production conditions are universal. Now it is worth
remarking that by ‘universal’ I don’t mean ‘global’ or globally everywhere, but uni-
versal existence prior to human effort for global extension. My intention is not to go
systematically through all possible positions and even less to try to name all the scholars
and schools that represent one or the other, but I will indicate some major options.
One can be universalist about the object of research of science and assume that it
is one and the same universal nature that is studied everywhere. Most philosophy of
science and older historiography of science have typically adopted this view. Cur-
rently, scientific realism is a typical expression of this line of thinking, as it commits
to the existence of universals and uniform nature, with given regularities, natural kinds
and properties, which science gradually reveals. Only recently, first sociologists of
science, and then historians, have questioned this presumption. Of course they may
not wish to deny the existence of universal nature as such, but to reject the category
‘nature’ as metaphysical and therefore as something whose value is questionable in
historiography of science. In other words, the target seems to be singular and universal
‘nature’ as the object of sciences. The message is that there is no uniform nature that
presents itself in the same way to scientific practitioners in different locales. Instead,
scientists in their contexts constitute their objects and engage with it in different ways,
depending on particular conditions in which science is practised. Latour is a good
example, as he suggests that nature is constituted only at the end of scientific proc-
ess. “The settlement of a controversy is the cause of Nature’s representation not the
consequence”, as he put it.39 Or more concretely, he claims that there was no hormone
TRF prior to scientists’ activities, and that it was produced during and through the
research process.40 Or yet more provocatively, Latour exclaims in the title of one of
his papers that “Give me a laboratory and I will raise the world”.41
One can be universalist about the rules that govern the dynamics of science. It is
not long since it was perfectly normal to assume that sciences operate according to
some kind of internal logic, universal epistemic values or a common method. The
great debates on the method of verification, falsification and corroboration by logical
positivists and empiricists and Popper imply the idea of shared and universal internal
scientific practice. Hempel’s view of covering law model can also be seen in this light.
And even Kuhn falls on the side of the universalist here, as he expressed his belief in
transparadigmatic epistemic values on various occasions. Sometimes the debate has
concentrated on the demarcation of science from non-science via scientific method,
as in Popper. The rejection of these kinds of internal and universal rules is perhaps the
clearest and most unanimous expression of the localist orientation in contemporary
historiography of science. Here we revisit the topic of anti-a priorism of contem-
porary historiography of science. It just seems that there are many ways to practice
science and many methods to follow, or not to follow, and that it just is not possible
to divide between ‘internal logic’ and ‘external factors’ in the history of sciences.
One could also be universalist about human reasoning, as can be seen in some older
historiographies of science that celebrate science as the best and purest exemplification
of human reasoning. Koyré thought that his work displayed the workings and effects of
pure reason, which worked independently of, and against external religious and politi-
cal values. Sarton in turn believed in the unity of science as one exemplification of the
unity of the whole mankind. He assumed that science exhibited a uniquely rational and
progressive reasoning.42 This kind of thinking is rejected in contemporary historiography
of science that typically stresses that science is a cultural product, specifically a Western
cultural product.43 Further universalist options may include universalism about social
factors, such as class, gender, power or economic interest, that universally explain
the manifestations of science in all contexts. The Sociology of Scientific Knowledge
appears to retain these categories as universal although it otherwise relativizes sciences
to their contexts of origin. As already mentioned, the debate on how reasonable it is to
assume any kind of social categories as universal postulations, after the universality of
‘nature’ has been rejected, has raged between sociology of scientific knowledge and
Latourian actor-network theory in social studies of science.
Localist historiography
The other level on which we need to study localism and universalism is their his-
toriographical explanations. As said above, the explanatory strategies derive from
their metaphysical commitments. However, there seems to be something on which
virtually everyone agrees and which can therefore be used as a starting point in our
discussion: Contemporary science is not, and science has not been for quite some
time, geographically local or spatially bounded. In other words, science is practically
everywhere on our globe; it is global. What is more, it appears to be strikingly
similar everywhere. Now this last observation represents a dilemma for the localists
in particular, who claim that science is particularist. In this paper, the globality of
contemporary science and the explanations given to it offer an excellent window
through which one can try to discern the respective historiographical strategies of
the localist and the universalist.
That science is global is not particularly troublesome for the universalist to explain,
although it still requires some type of explanation. Why is it that largely uniform
science is practically everywhere in the world? For the universalist this is natural
enough. One can argue this on the various levels of specificity and sophistication, but
the central idea is that science and its products, such as theories, are globally similar
because the object of research is universal.44 The most typical answer is arguably the
one that says that scientists in Greece and the USA, for example, have ended up with
the same view of scientific laws because the laws are the same. Often it is accompa-
nied by the idea that (all good) scientists apply universally validating internal logic
or method of science. In this view, it is only to be expected that their views converge.
This type of explanation is favoured by scientific realists in philosophy of science in
particular, who sometimes refer to the no miracles explanation. It says that, unless
we assume that science has managed to discover how the (universal) world really is,
the success of science would be a miracle.45
The strong localist does not believe in the universals of this kind and in any case
denies that scientists would have access to the universals of nature. She has another
kind of explanation, which does not refer to miracles either. The localists have recog-
nized the problem that the ‘universality’ of science poses to them, as a consequence
of which a specific historiographical problem has been formulated. Two decades
ago Ophir and Shapin asked, “How is it, if knowledge is indeed local, that certain
forms of it appear global in domain of application?”46 About ten years ago Shapin
thought that historians had not paid enough attention to how knowledge made in
specific places travels or how transactions occur between places.47 Now the problem
has been widely recognized and variously dubbed as the “problem of delocalization
of knowledge”,48 the “problem of construction of knowledge”,49 the “problem of
the movement of local knowledge”,50 “multiplication of the contexts”,51 “theoretical
decontextualisation”52 or just the problem of how to “outline the conditions under
which knowledge begins to move”.53 This is how Galison puts it:
The problem is this. Over the past years, we have again and again seen how tied
specific laboratory practices are to their conditions of origin. … Eventually,
though, these objects do travel, the lasers, prisms, accelerators, detectors, tubes,
and films. Hence the problem. If the original production of scientific knowledge
is so reflective of local conditions — whether they are craft techniques or reli-
gious views, material objects or forms of teamwork, how does delocalization
take place.54
A researcher of delocalization is interested in the process of transmission in which the
products and practices of science move from place A to place B. One asks what was
transferred, in what form, when, by what means, how they were received, whether
the products and practices were transformed in the process, etc. In general, the
question is what was moved and by what mechanisms. Science and its products are
treated as interchangeable commodities as in the study of international trade. If one
can examine how tea was transported from India to Britain, then why not investigate
how instruments or theories were taken between two or more places.
Some authors distinguish between ‘localization’ and ‘spatialization’. They
correspond to two opposite perspectives on the production of knowledge and on the
site of knowledge production. ‘Local’ is restricted to one geographical location. When

one is interested in the application of the materials and techniques that were possibly
developed somewhere else in a given localization, the question is about ‘localization’.
‘Space’ by contrast is something abstract, non-bounded and everywhere, perhaps a
framework in which locations are situated. When one is interested in how the locally
developed materials and techniques travel from one locality to another we are talking
about ‘spatialization’.55 We notice that ‘spatialization’ refers to essentially the same
process as the terms ‘delocalization’ and ‘decontextualization’.
The strategy that enables travelling through the space or the way in which “the
particular and the general come together”, as Livingstone says it, is standardization.
Livingstone writes, “Standardization … is the prerequisite for conquering space — the
space between the field and the centre of calculation, and the space between nature
and language…. Standardization is needed to triumph over the local, to gather the
world together, and reassemble it from standardized units of measurement”. A good
example is the Munsell Code that is used in field sciences to identify samples of earth
(something that could not be achieved by ‘colour memory’) by comparing them to
a colour chart in which each shade is accorded a standard reference number: “By it
a tiny piece of earth can participate in a universal code”. 56
Above I stated that the localists see science as a cultural product and are inclined to
emphasize its Western roots. Consequently, a number of scholars have explicated the
links between science and European colonial politics. For example, Simon Schaffer
has studied how British electro physicists and their physics laboratories of 1860–80
were part of the British imperial project through communication and spreading of
British electromagnetic standards and various forms of training worldwide.57 Latour
has similarly studied how the extension of Pasteurian science to tropics was part of
the French Imperial effort.58 Both of these works show us how science has been a
tool in Western colonial politics.
However, yet more radical a claim than this is inspired by the analysis that local-
izes the roots of contemporary science in Europe. It has been suggested that the
standards and practices of Western science seem natural and appear to be derived
from ‘nature’ itself, because they have subordinated any alternatives, i.e. pre-scientific
local practices and standards. This is to say that science has been not only an element
of colonial policy, but is also a form of colonial practice itself. Science amounts to
Western standardization of the world. Its inner core, its most fundamental standards
and practices, is a Western cultural creation that pushed alternative products of other
cultures aside. Science is the West’s dominant ‘way-of-knowing’, as Cunningham
and Williams suggest.59 In reference to this kind of view, Lissa Roberts asks rhetori-
cally, “Is it too much here to speak of the ‘empire of science’?”60 And Latour remarks
on Lord Kelvin: “The British Empire is not only ‘behind’ Lord Kelvin’s telegraph
experiments... Kelvin’s science creates, in part, the Empire, which is no longer in
the background manipulating him unwittingly but made to exist by telegraph wires
that are turned into full-blown mediators.”61
When we see science as an empire we are thinking about scientific communities or
cultures as forms of competing political entities. In principle, there could be or could

have been a different empire of science, or perhaps more limited kingdoms of science,
if another entity or entities had acquired similar powers as the West. An interesting
question is how different empires are to be compared. Is a certain accepted practice
or standard in the British Empire valid also in the Chinese Empire? Arguably not,
or if one is, then this must have been entirely coincidental. (We assume now that the
cultures have not yet been in contact and been able to harmonize their standards.)
Can the standards or practices be validated by direct reference to ‘nature’? Again,
arguably not. Democracy may be a chosen form of government in many countries,
and one can undoubtedly formulate many moral arguments for its superiority, but it
is in no way more ‘natural’ or self-evident. This then suggests that what is valid and
applicable in the current Empire of science is so only within the cultural sphere of
that empire. Outside it, validity and applicability are lost. Further, those objects that
exist in one empire may not exist at all in another. One could, in principle, create
another form of community life or culture within which different objects exist and
are applicable and different standards of validity apply.
Although the explanations that see science as a form of expanding culture, even
empire, have been widely accepted by historians interested in spatial aspects of sci-
ence, the view has also been criticized for its historical simplicity and one-sidedness.
Some historians have pointed out that while the view of Western science as an empire
extending its tentacles around the world is plausible in some cases, we would make
two kinds of mistakes if this explanation was accepted as general, covering all his-
tory of science. First, the bipolarity centre-periphery neglects that the interaction was
not a one-sided diffusion of knowledge from the centre to the periphery. Also local
cultures have contributed. Second, it has been suggested that the idea of static centres
of scientific knowledge production may distort the picture, and it would be better to
see knowledge continually moving and flowing, or ‘circulating’ between localities.62
Standardization is thus something that brings disparate locations together and
makes them parts of the same scientific network. The functional role of standardiza-
tion is that it harmonizes the ‘worlds’ or the cultures. In practice, this means that the
same or the same kinds of instruments, education, practices, methods and units are
adopted and accepted as default options in multiple localities. A uniquely important
study of standardization is metrology, which could be defined as the science of
measurement. Historical study of metrology investigates how the same units, such
as metre, ohm and kilogram, were constructed and spread all over the world. The
specific target, and the feature that gives the impression that this kind of research
hinges on something fundamental, is the historicization of objects that seem universal
and natural. In brief, historicization of the ‘universal’.
Now we can understand how the strong localist explains the globality, the seeming
non-locality, of science. If ‘globality’ denotes here global extension or global con-
nectedness, standardization through expansion or integration of cultural networks
explains why the same kinds of practices and working methods are global. Livingstone
mentions laboratory as a conscious effort to create a ‘placeless’ place to do science,
“a universal site where the influence of locality is eliminated”.63 However, metro-

logical standardization in science achieves yet something more; the impression that
the units and measures are not only global but also universal. That is, metrological
harmonization cuts most effectively the link that exists between culture and the units,
and suggests that there is a link between nature and the units. Some have seen this as
a more or less conscious and culturally defined goal. O’Connell writes that one of the
reasons that scientific papers do not cite the methods used to calibrate measurement
or production equipment is that it is part of the scientific culture to make universality
appear self-evident.64 Schaffer says metrology involves work which sets up values
and then makes their origin invisible.65
The central message of studies of historical metrology can be summarized as
follows: hiding the cultural roots results in the appearance of naturalness and in the
harmonization of the units all over the globe, making them commensurable. These
together achieve ‘universality’ that does not show any traces of locality and of compet-
ing metrologies. By showing the historicity of this process, historical studies question
that there is anything like universality per se in science. Indeed, it is important to
realize that many commentators in historical geography of science qualify the notion
of ‘universality’, by talking about the “appearance of universality”,66 the “seeming
universality”,67 “seemingly universal ideals” 68 or “apparent universality”69 suggest-
ing that we are dealing with some kind of illusion.70 Alternatively, the ‘universality
of science’ is attributed to the process of standardization that is social and situated,
making the idea of placelessness implied by the concept of ‘universality’ void.71
“Internationalism in science, insofar as it really does exist, must be considered a social
achievement, not the inevitable consequence of some inherent scientific essence.”72
In brief, for the strong localist the universality of science is the same as its globality
achieved via standardization. As we have seen, the universalist can be universalist about
various aspects of science. However, not even the universalist would insist that metro-
logical measurements derive directly from nature although she would likely hold that the
regularities that a chosen unit designates are universal. For the universalist, whose unit
will be accepted is a struggle and a subject for a sociological study, but regularities and
commensurability between different measurements (even if using different standards,
such as kilometre and mile) are due to universal nature and its universal properties.
Further, the universalist tries to undercut the argument from standardization, claiming
that successful standardization is possible only because the entities, properties and their
relations expressed in metrological standards are uniform and universal.
For the end of this section it is worthwhile to note that ‘global’ and ‘local’ are in
no way contradictory in the localist framework. Any local culture may be extended
globally in principle. Latour asks,
Is a metrological reference like the kilogram local or global? Local, since it
always resides somewhere and circulates inside special boxes using specific
signals, at certain specified times, following specific protocols. Is it global? Sure,
since without standards like the watt, the newton, the ohm, the ampere, that is,
without the Système International d’Unités, there would be no global of any
sort because no locus would have the ‘same’ time, the ‘same’ distance, the same
chemical ‘reagents,’ the ‘same’ biological reference materials, etc. There would
be no baseline, no benchmark. All sites would be incommensurable for good.73
The (metaphysical) localist, such as Latour, sees that the difference between ‘local’
and ‘global’ is a difference in degree, nothing being fully ‘local’ and nothing ‘global’
in some different qualitative sense. All comes down to a difference in the number
and strength of connections that the networks have.74 Latour asks, whether we can
“obtain some sort of universal agreement?” His answer is familiar: “Of course we
can! Provided you find a way to hook up your local instrument to one of the many
metrological chains whose material network can be fully described, and whose cost
can be fully determined.” This again is a diluted and materialized sense of ‘universal-
ity’ the meaning of which is worldwide connectedness.
Crucial tests of the localist and universalist
The tendency since the 1960s in historiography of science towards more focused localist
studies away from philosophical historiography of science can be said to be a healthy
empirical turn. Staying closer to historical data results in evidence-based, and therefore
more highly empirically warranted, narratives. However, it has sometimes led to the
conviction that one can actually “tell it as it really was in the past”, an attitude that is
found even in surprising corners.75 Now we are entering the final section of this paper
and it concentrates on the feasibility of these two options, localism and universalism,
in historiography of science. There is one mistake we should try to avoid in this task:
the “pretence” that narratives drafted either from the localist or universal point of view
are “just telling like it was”.76 I don’t think historical realism is a tenable philosophical
meta-frame with which to evaluate historiographical localism and universalism.
We need to consider the relative merits of ‘localistic’ or ‘universalistic’ narratives. I
cannot offer here any specific theory of historical judgment, but nevertheless suggest
that there are two main considerations to bear in mind: how well narratives make sense
of empirical material available and how reasonable historiographical arguments they
amount to overall. The latter question may in turn be considered in relation to inter-
nal argumentative qualities of the narrative (i.e. coherence, consistency, originality
etc.)77 and to the existing state of knowledge among practising historians of science.
At one time, a specific narrative can be clearly preferable, but an unsuccessful one
can be improved to rival the previously more successful. What is important, and
needs emphasizing, is that we are after plausible, not right or wrong, narratives and
plausibility comes in degrees. Only in extreme cases, we can say that some type of
narrative is beyond modification and definitively rejected.
To begin with, it is clear that universalism that simply assumes the universality
of nature and its properties and uses this assumption as an explanation for the glo-
bality of science is not a feasible option in contemporary historiography of science.
Localistic historiographies clearly have an upper hand in this respect, having been
able to accommodate a vast array of divergent data into their explanations and having
managed to explain the external manifestation of science with the help of local and
contextual data. Contemporary historians tend to be satisfied that “what is now called
scientific knowledge is made in local and mundane ways. It depends on no especially
genial or excessively rational methods, relies on the situated work of persuasion
and credibility and tends often to be embodied in ingenious and artful labour”,78 or
that “Treating scientific knowledge as a universal phenomenon, untouched by the
particularities of location, plainly will not do if we want to come to grips with the
immense power it exercises in society”.79 The burden of proof in this sense is in the
universalist’s corner. She has to simply give a better account of the ‘nitty-gritty’ of
science. Yet, as I have indicated, it is entirely possible, in principle, to construct a
plausible historical narrative from the universalist’s standpoint. It remains to be seen
whether someone actually manages to do it.
In order to help to judge the relative merits of the localistic and universalistic narra-
tives I outline some challenges that these need to meet. Although the current historio-
graphical climate has tipped the balance in favour of localism, let’s begin with something
that may favour universalism. That is the question whether the localistic explanation
of the ‘universal’ validity of the products of science is fully satisfactory. The localist
denies that there is proper universal validity and attributes validity to localist networks
and accommodations between human practice, including her networks, and non-social
world that have reached the point of stabilization. Nevertheless, it is not clear whether
validity can always be attributed to the networks and whether we need an account of
validity that refers to the state of affairs prior to network building and socialization. In
other words, is it plausible to suggest that the statement ‘Water is H2O’ is valid in the
remotest jungle only after and because of scientific network extension? Can scientists
afford to be agnostic whether the drug tests in a given laboratory with given sample
groups (such as animals) work also outside the laboratory? What are the grounds for
extra-local inferences that scientists need to make all the time?
The issue between universalism and localism/particularism resembles the question
which came before: an egg or a chicken. Was scientific knowledge universal before
it became global or is universality merely a result of globalization? Can scientific
laws be assumed to have been universally valid before there was science or is the
validity of them a mere consequence of the emergence of science? I don’t intend to
settle this difficult issue here,80 because there is something that is closer to historians’
evidential sources, offering a potentially easier way to choose between localism and
universalism in historiography. I suggest that there are crucial tests for both, and the
relative feasibility of localism and universalism depends on how well they manage
to meet their respective crucial tests.
Let us focus on the question why contemporary sciences are so similar all over the
world and why they have become so uniform (even if ‘science’ itself has diversified
and the fields of science proliferated). This is the process that the localist explains by
standardization and the universalist by the uniformity of nature and possibly also by a
shared scientific method or internal logic. A difficulty in finding evidence that would
unequivocally support one or the other view is that we are dealing with the shared
world, the world that does not have segregated and independent pockets of sciences,
the developments of which we could compare. We are dealing with the already con-
nected world and have to rely on the shared historiographical database. Nevertheless,
a crucial test for the localist is to show that different locales of science have produced
or would have produced different kinds of sciences. One could say that the message
of the localist historiography is that two separate lines of development from two dif-
ferent localities led to the same outcome, because the practitioners in two localities
came into contact with each other and harmonized scientific practices and standards.
In brief, the socialization of science is the cause of the ‘universality’ of science. Yet,
in order give more force to this line of thinking, the localist would ideally identify a
case in which two lines of development on comparable topics or research areas have
never been connected and therefore never converged. Different locales produce differ-
ent sciences. This would not prove localism correct, but it would strengthen its case.
Gregory Radick asks the question whether the theory of natural selection is inde-
pendent of its history in the article that bears the same name.81 He puts forward two
contrary theses. An independence thesis says that the development of the theory
was inevitable, because the facts about plants and animals saturate how much and
what one can learn about nature. Others working in different societies and contexts
would have come to the same conclusion sooner or later, and therefore, the theory
is essentially independent of any particular history. An inseparability thesis says
that the theory was a contingent development out of unique social history.82 The
theory of natural selection would not have emerged without the specific trends and
events that led Darwin to develop it. Therefore it is a product of Victorian culture
and inseparable from its history. Now the interesting question for the localist is to
think what particulars in the location of theory’s production could have changed the
historical direction and the theory.
Consider the following hypostatization on the development of Darwin’s thinking.
First some ‘facts’. Darwin’s teacher Lyell had developed a theory to explain species
extinction. He assumed that species become extinct because of dramatic environmen-
tal upset, such as climate change, that disturbs competitive balance between species.
However, Darwin observed that the fossil record did not support the theory as there
was no sign of big environmental upset, for example in South America, to explain
the extinction of certain big mammals there. Yet Darwin came across Malthus, which
prompted him to develop a theory of natural selection and to focus on the survivors,
not on the extinct species. As a result, he developed a theory of small-scale struggle for
survival. Now suppose that Darwin had not become familiar with Malthus. He might
have concluded that the population pressure and struggle did not cause extinction and
could have developed his thinking towards other directions. First, he could have contin-
ued to develop his earlier transmutationist theory that he had formulated to explain the
variation between specimens found on the Galapagos Island and the South American
mainland. Second, he could have assumed that the problem on the origins of species
was not solvable and stopped theorizing on it altogether. Or perhaps, third, he would
have suppressed the environmental evidence and concentrated on Lyell’s model.
The universalist is bound to favour Radick’s independence thesis and highlight the
factors that speak in favour of the inevitability of the theory of natural selection. The
universalist needs to show that two lines of science developing from different starting
points converge, i.e. end up with the same result, even when there is no proven con-
nection between them. This would make the explanation, that they converge because
of pre-given universality, more plausible. As a matter of fact, there is a theoretical
development from a different starting point that ended with a very similar result to
Darwin’s theory of natural selection, i.e. Wallace’s theory of the origins of species.
What is important here is that it may be claimed (but also contested, of course) that both
his social and intellectual background was different to Darwin’s, and yet he developed
a very similar theory. Was it because of the universal nature? The universalist could
for example explain the case by assuming that natural kind ‘adaptation’ is independent
of any culture and any serious investigator will discover it. For this reason, the case of
Wallace and Darwin would be an exemplification of the universal nature of science.
The universalist thus explains the convergence of science by universality itself
that is there before any socialization or harmonization. A terrific exemplification
of this kind of view is Stephen Weinberg, who writes that “Any intelligent alien
anywhere would have come upon the same logical system as we have to explain the
structure of protons and the nature of supernovae”.83 It is thus not only all humans
(of all races, sexes and cultures) but also UFOs, who end up with the same science
and knowledge. However, the cases above are difficult to construct due to the lack of
independent evidence, and therefore, one may need to rely on ‘what-if’ or counterfac-
tual historiography. Some authors have already discussed the topic under the themes
of contingency and inevitability.84 The localist could outline reasonable alternative
historical courses as above on Darwin’s intellectual development. Or perhaps, as
Radick puts it, “it is even possible to imagine alternative successful biologies which
do not include the theory [of natural selection] at all”. The universalist would con-
tinue the debate by querying whether alternative successful theory, for example, on
the basis of creationism or saltationism was really a possibility.
I would call this kind of historiography theoretical historiography of science85
or perhaps new philosophical historiography of science. The point would be to do
‘proper’ empirical historical work with an intention to test or draw some general points
about the phenomena of science. My view is that both philosophers and historians
of science would benefit from this kind of research. It would help us to assess the
merits of sometimes very different perspectives on science, stemming sometimes
from very different sets of underlying assumptions. Localism and universalism is one
such issue. I hope to have managed in this essay to shed some light on this case and
also provide some tools that can be used to choose between these two alternatives.
Acknowledgements
I thank James W. McAllister and an anonymous referee for all their comments and
suggestions.
references
1. Adi Ophir and Steven Shapin, “The place of knowledge: A methodological survey”, Science in
context, iv (1991), 3–21.
2. James A. Secord, “Knowledge in transit”, Isis, xcv (2004), 654–72, p. 659.
3. Peter Galison, “Ten problems in history and philosophy of science”, Isis, xcix (2008), 111–24, p. 119.
4. To name but a few well-known examples. A good early survey of ‘localist’ literature is Ophir and
Shapin, op. cit. (ref. 1). Other notables include Bruno Latour, Science in action (Cambridge,
1987); Peter Galison, “Material culture, theoretical culture, and delocalization”, in John Krige
(ed.), Science in the twentieth century (Amsterdam, 1997), 669–82; Peter Galison, Image and
logic, specifically ch. 9: “The trading zone: Coordinating action and belief” (Chicago, 1997);
Joseph O’Connell, “The creation of universality by the circulation of particulars”, Social studies
of science, xxiii (1993), 129–73; Donna Haraway, “Situated knowledges: The science question
in feminism and the privilege of partial perspectives”, Feminist studies, iii (1988), 575–99;
Joseph Rouse, Knowledge and power: Towards a political philosophy of science (Ithaca, 1987);
Simon Schaffer, “Late Victorian metrology: A manufactory of ohms”, in Robert Bud and Susan
E. Cozzens (eds), Invisible connections: Instruments, institutions, and science (Bellingham,
WA, 1991); see also the Focus section “Global histories of science”, Isis, ci (2010), 95–159.
5. See David Livingstone, Putting science in its place: Geographies of scientific knowledge (Chicago
and London, 2003)
6. Ophir and Shapin, op. cit. (ref. 1), 15. They write that the “identification of the place of knowledge is
part of any inquiry concerning the ontological status of scientific objects and the epistemological
standing of scientific statements. The place of knowledge lays down conditions for the appearance
of the objects of science, for their validation as real, and for the terms on which they are knowable.”
7. Rouse, op. cit. (ref. 4), 21–23 and 71–72; Cf. Ophir and Shapin, op. cit. (ref. 1), 5.
8. Steven Shapin, Never pure: Historical studies of science as if it was produced by people with
bodies, situated in time, space, culture, and society, and struggling for credibility and authority
(Baltimore, 2010).
9. Livingstone, op. cit. (ref. 5), 19.
10. In principle, one can accept influence of locality as a healthy empirical correction and an enriching
perspective on science, but remain a universalist, in thinking, for example, that science finds
many expressions due to local and historical contingencies, but that in the long run science will
end with universally valid products that have stripped the cultural and local traces of themselves.
For example, this would be a view that physicist Roger Newton, who emphasizes objectivity and
universality of science, would accept. He grants that scientific theories are subject to aesthetic,
psychological, social and cultural influences, but these influences are “ultimately irrelevant”.
Roger Newton, The truth of science (Cambridge, 2000), 200. Similarly, Lewis Wolpert, The
unnatural nature of science (London, 1992), 103.
11. E.g. Livingstone, op. cit. (ref. 5), 2–3, 5, 19, 179.
12. Steven Shapin, “House of experiment in seventeenth-century England”, Isis, lxxvii (1988), 373–404.
13. See Livingstone, op. cit. (ref. 5), 20.
14. Livingstone, op. cit. (ref. 5), 19 and p. 85. My emphasis.
15. Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen, “The missing narrativist turn in historiography of science”, History and
theory (forthcoming).
16. Galison, op. cit. (ref. 3).
17. It may be pointed out that Ginzburg’s Mennochio is not easily classified as typical of anything. For
example, Ginzburg considers whether Menocchio should be understood as an anapabtist or a
peasant radical inspired by the reformation movement, but rejects both options on good grounds.
However, Ginzburg is nevertheless identified as a miller, which goes a long way to explaining
his ‘uniqueness’. Through his profession as a miller, he came into contact with more ideas and
people than most of his formally uneducated contemporaries, which gave him good resources
and opportunities for self-learning. Admitting that it would be wrong to say that Mennochio was
a ‘typical’ miller, there is nevertheless a sense in which Mennochio had features that were shared
by other millers living at the time. These shared features make Mennochio’s story interesting.
The fact that Ginzburg feels the need to mention other millers with similar life histories, who
had got into troubles with inquisition, reinforces the point. Carlo Ginzburg, The cheese and the
worms (New York, 1983).
18. Steve Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the air-pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the experimental
life (Princeton, 1985).
19. Both quotations refer to Shapin and Schaffer, Leviathan, 225.
20. Ibid., 332.
21. Latour, op. cit. (ref. 4), 15.
22. Bruno Latour, The Pasteurization of France (Cambridge, 1988), 12.
23. Bruno Latour, Pandora’s hope (Cambridge, MA, 1999), 106.
24. Bruno Latour, Reassembling the social (Oxford, 2005), 29; also 156 and 227.
27. E.g. Simon Schaffer, “The eighteenth brumaire of Bruno Latour”, Studies in history and philosophy
of science, xxii (1991), 174–92, p. 190. There is more below on these tools of scientific travel,
such as metrology. See also Schaffer, “Introduction”, in Lissa Roberts, Simon Schaffer and
Peter Dear (eds), The mindful hand: inquiry and invention from the late Renaissance to early
industrialization (Amsterdam, 2007), 309–25.
29. Harry Collins, Changing order (Chicago, 1985), 185.
30. H. M. Collins and Graham Cox, “Relativity: Did prophecy fail?”, Social studies of science, vi (1976),
423–44, pp. 437 and 443, n. 61.
31. Charles W. J. Withers, “Place and the spatial turn in geography and in history”, Journal of the history
of ideas, lxx (2009), 637–58, p. 653. See also note 47, p. 650 for literature on spatial turn and
on geography of science.
32. Livingstone, op. cit. (ref. 5), 7. My emphasis.
35. Livingstone, op. cit. (ref. 5), 13. My emphasis.
36. Shapin, op. cit. (ref. 8), 8.
37. E.g. Collins and Evans suggest that “science [was] reconceptualized as a social activity” in the “second
wave” of science studies that began in the early 1970s. “The third wave of science studies: Studies
of expertise and experience”, Social studies of science, xxxii (2002), 235–96, p. 239; See also
Barry Barnes, “Natural rationality: A neglected concept in the social sciences”, Philosophy of
the social sciences, vi (1976), 115–26, p. 124; Steven Shapin, Scientific life: A moral history of
a late modern vocation (Chicago, 2008), 8; Livingstone, op. cit. (ref. 5), 180.
38. Sujit Sivasundaram makes an interesting remark in his “Introduction” to “Global histories of science”,
Isis, ci (2010), 95–97. While he and other authors writing in the Focus section question that
there are precise boundaries between ‘science’ and ‘indigenous knowledge’ (that are taken to
have emerged out of globalization), they worry about the fragmentation of the history of science
as a discipline. He notes that many scholars working on the history of science of non-Western
regions have had to find their institutional home in history departments. The authors wish to
integrate regional histories of science into a global one. This seems to imply that ‘science’ has
some cross-regional identity.
40. Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, Laboratory life: The construction of scientific facts (Princeton,
1983), 125, 175–76, 181.
41. Bruno Latour, “Give me a laboratory and I will raise the world”, in Karin D. Knorr-Cetina and
Michael Mulkay (eds), Science observed: Perspectives on the social study of science (London,
1983), 141–70.
42. See Rob Iliffe, “History of science”, 8 and 18. http://www.history.ac.uk/makinghistory/resources/
History_of_Science_fullversion.pdf. Accessed 2 June 2011.
43. See next section for elaboration and references.
44. Cf. Livingstone, op. cit. (ref. 5), 140.
45. On the miracle argument, see J. J. C. Smart, Philosophy and scientific realism (London, 1963); Hilary
Putnam, Meaning and the moral sciences (London, 1978); Richard Boyd, “The current status
of the realism debate”, in P. D. Asquith and T. Nickels (eds), Philosophy of Science Association
1982, ii (East Lansing, MI, 1984).
46. Ophir and Shapin, op. cit. (ref. 1), 15.
47. Steven Shapin, “Placing the view from nowhere: Historical and sociological problems in the location
of science”, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, xxiii (1998), 5–12, pp. 6–7.
48. Galison, Image and logic (ref. 4), 676.
49. Jan Golinski, Making natural knowledge: Constructivism and the history of science (Cambridge,
1988), 33 and 133.
50. Secord, op. cit. (ref. 2), 660.
51. Schaffer, op. cit. (ref. 4), 23.
52. Rouse, op. cit. (ref. 4), 112.
53. Sivasundaram, op. cit. (ref. 38), 96.
54. Galison, Image and logic (ref. 4), 677.
55. Schaffer, op. cit. (ref. 27), 190; Simon Schaffer and Lissa Roberts, “Preface”, in Roberts, Schaffer
and Peter Dear (eds), op. cit. (ref. 27), p. xx.
56. Livingstone, op. cit. (ref. 5), 175–7.
57. Schaffer, op. cit. (ref. 4).
58. Latour, The Pasteurization of France (ref. 22).
59. Andrew Cunningham and Perry Williams, “De-centring the ‘Big Picture’: The origins of modern
science and the modern origins”, The British journal for the history of science, xxvi (1993),
407–32.
60. Lissa Roberts, “Situating science in global history: Local exchanges and networks of circulation”,
Itinerario, special issue Science and global history, 1750–1850: Local encounters and global
circulation, xxxiii (2009), 9–31, p. 16. Further, at the History of Science meeting 2009 in Phoenix,
one session was entitled as “Science as Empire?”
61. Latour, op. cit. (ref. 24), 108. See also Crosbie Smith and M. Norton Wise, Energy and empire: A
biographical study of Lord Kelvin (Cambridge, 1989).
62. Roberts, op. cit. (ref. 60), 18; Roberts, “Mapping steam engines and skill in eighteenth-century
Holland”, in Roberts, Schaffer and Dear (eds), op. cit. (ref. 27), 216; Roberts and Schaffer, op.
cit. (ref. 27), pp. xx–xxi. See also the Focus section “Global histories of science”. A central aim
in these five papers is to decentre European History.
64. O’Connell, op. cit. (ref. 4), 159.
65. Schaffer, op. cit. (ref. 4), 42. According to Schaffer, William Thomson even suggested that we “cut
off all connection with the earth” in order to see what the natural measurements are (that we
make anyway).
67. Roberts, op. cit. (ref. 60), 14.
68. Roberts, “Introduction”, in Roberts, Schaffer and Dear (eds), op. cit. (ref. 27), 193.
69. Roberts, op. cit. (ref. 60), 16.
70. E.g. Latour, op. cit. (ref. 24), 228
71. Latour, op. cit. (ref. 41), 176; see also Latour, op. cit. (ref. 24), 228.
73. Latour, op. cit. (ref. 24), 228.
74. Latour, op. cit. (ref. 24), 192–4 and 219–20.
75. Shapin, op. cit. (ref. 8), 14.
76. Golinski, op. cit.(ref. 49), 204.
77. On cognitive values in historiography, see Frank Ankersmit, Narrative logic: Semantic analysis of
the historian’s language (The Hague, 1983), 218–19, 235, 252; Frank Ankersmit, Historical
representation (Stanford, 2001), 44, 63; Mark Bevir, “Objectivity in history”, History and theory,
xxxiii (1994), 328–44; Chris Lorenz, “Can histories be true? Narrativism, positivism, and the
‘Metaphorical Turn’”, History and theory, xxxvii (2002), 309–29.
78. Roberts and Schaffer, “Preface” (ref. 27), p. xvii.
80. For further discussion and references, see Kuukkanen, “I am knowledge. Get me out of here! On
localism and the universality of science”, Studies in history and philosophy of science, xlii (2011),
590–601; Francesco Guala, “Experimental localism and external validity”, Philosophy of science,
lxx (2003), 1195–205. Localism invites (inductive) skepticism towards general knowledge claims.
If a product of science is developed to be applicable under certain conditions that prevail in a
certain locality, there is no automatic reason to presume that the product also is applicable outside
the boundaries of that locality. One could argue that application is relative to the localities in which
an object is created. Extension requires showing that the similar conditions prevail also outside.
81. Gregory Radick, “Is the theory of natural selection independent of its history?”, in Jonathan Hodge
and Gregory Radick (eds), The Cambridge companion to Darwin: Second edition (Cambridge,
2009), 147–73.
82. It might be better to talk about relative contingency. The claim is that the development of the theory
was contingent with respect to any non-social factors, such as nature, but not with respect to the
specific social factors. Once the factors are there, they seem to determine the outcome. And yet,
the implication is that the set of determining social factors is not given.
83. Steven Weinberg, “Sokal’s hoax”, The New York review of books, xliii, no. 13 (1996), 11–15. In
general, these kinds of comments are not uncommon among scientists reflecting science and
history of science. See ref. 10.
84. See Hasok Chang, Inventing temperature: Measurement and scientific progress (New York, 2004);
the Focus section “Counterfactuals and the historians of science”, Isis, xcix:2 (2008); the section
“The contingentism versus inevitabilism issue”, Studies in history and philosophy of science,
xxxix:2 (2008).
85. This term is a free adaptation of Alexander Bird’s “theoretical history of science”, which he used to
describe Kuhn’s The structure of scientific revolutions. Bird’s point was that the book was not a
philosophical text but an empirical investigation of the history of science. Although the book had
philosophical relevance, it sought primarily to establish that history of science displays a certain
general pattern. See Alexander Bird, Thomas Kuhn (Chesham, 2001), 29.
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Senses of Localism

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Hist. Sci.

A generation ago scientific ideas floated free in the air, as

0073-2753/12/5004-0477/$10.00 © 2012 Science History Publications Ltd

may be epistemically and ontologically implicating.6 However, the turn toward

universality to locality. In other words, science is first assumed to possess universal

The localist approach on science is closely related to empiricism in historiography of

Recent historiography has avoided grand explanatory schemes of history and

Localism and universalism as metaphysical alternatives

is produced in some place is hardly new or revolutionary. Obviously it has to be

regard to the phenomena explained.

is a plausible option. After contemporary historiography has shown that unqualified

site of knowledge production. ‘Local’ is restricted to one geographical location. When

cultures as forms of competing political entities. In principle, there could be or could

“a universal site where the influence of locality is eliminated”.63 However, metro-

Crucial tests of the localist and universalist

You might also like

Senses of Localism

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Senses of Localism

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Copyright:

Available Formats

Hist. Sci.

A generation ago scientific ideas floated free in the air, as

0073-2753/12/5004-0477/$10.00 © 2012 Science History Publications Ltd

may be epistemically and ontologically implicating.6 However, the turn toward

universality to locality. In other words, science is first assumed to possess universal

The localist approach on science is closely related to empiricism in historiography of

Recent historiography has avoided grand explanatory schemes of history and

Localism and universalism as metaphysical alternatives

is ­produced in some place is hardly new or revolutionary. Obviously it has to be

regard to the phenomena explained.

is a plausible option. After contemporary historiography has shown that unqualified

site of knowledge production. ‘Local’ is restricted to one geographical location. When

cultures as forms of competing political entities. In principle, there could be or could

“a universal site where the influence of locality is eliminated”.63 However, metro-

Crucial tests of the localist and universalist

You might also like

is produced in some place is hardly new or revolutionary. Obviously it has to be