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The ‘national’ in international and transnational science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2012

MARK WALKER
MARK WALKER
Affiliation:
Department of History, Union College, Schenectady, NY 12308, United States. Email: walker@union.edu.
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Abstract

This essay analyses discussions of national versus international or transnational science, with an emphasis on the journal Osiris from 1986 to 2009, including the concepts of national science, national styles and characters in science, scientific internationalism, transfer of science and scientists from one nation to another, and comparison of different national examples. The author argues that perceiving science as a ‘national’ activity has not only been persistent, it is also perhaps inevitable. This special issue on transnational histories of science raises the question of what is gained and lost by such an approach. First of all, what is the distinction between ‘transnational’ and ‘international’? The dictionary defines the latter as something existing, occurring, or carried on between two nations, while the former extends or operates across national boundaries. Thus ‘international’ implies some sort of commerce. In contrast, transnational is a loosely defined term.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 45 , Issue 3: Special Issue: Transnational History of Science , September 2012 , pp. 359 - 376
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 2012

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References

1 This journal, the British Journal for the History of Science, was also examined for the same span of years for articles on nationalism versus internationalism or transnationalism. This author found no articles explicitly devoted to this topic, and only a modest amount of discussion in a few publications.

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18 Thanks to an anonymous review for this point.

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