modern science proclaims itself objective, rational and international: the periodic table of the elements hangs upon the chemistry laboratory wall in Berkeley, Berlin and Beijing, the writ of Boyle's Law runs all around the globe. Science is said to be a universal language or culture, transcending national boundaries and nationalistic rivalries. To a fair degree this is true. A profusion of poetries, philosophies, aesthetics and theologies litters the continents, but there is only one scientific enterprise in the commonly accepted sense. When an Indian scientist changes places with an Italian, or an Argentinian with an Austrian, no conceptual problems are posed. Nobel Prizes symbolize the unity of science today.

This quality of universality is much prized and celebrated. It is therefore hardly surprising that historical accounts have sought to demonstrate that the pursuit of natural knowledge in earlier centuries was equally independent of, and superior to, subjective, personal, local and other essentially contingent factors. Science (we are often told) owed its progress to a commitment to strict scientific method (whether that be induction, deduction, experimentalism, or whatever) and, above all perhaps, to genius, the Odyssey of the brilliant Mind, lost in thought, confronting the external realities of Nature.