Knowledge in Translation: Global Patterns of Scientific Exchange, 1000-1800 CE - Hardcover

Preface
 
 
This volume is an inquiry into the global patterns and global implications of scientific investigation from 1000 to 1800 CE, one that pursues history of science in light of the expanding fields of world and global history. The interest of world historians in history of science can hardly be surprising. Especially in the past twenty years, the overlapping fields of world history and global history have developed rapidly, addressing the whole of human history, but with particular focus on global interconnections of the early modern and modern eras. Key contributions in this era of expanding publication focused on environmental and migration history, supplementing earlier world-historical concentration on civilizational, imperial, and political history. Additional contributions emerged in economic history at the turn of the twenty-first century, especially through comparison of European and Asian centers of economic life. World historians showed interest in technological change though not much in global scientific connections. Social, cultural, and intellectual issues, while they advanced in many fields of historical study during the late twentieth century, did not develop vigorously within world-historical context. Thus, world-historical thinking and research unfolded in uneven fashion, especially because of the widely ranging topics of interest. Nevertheless, the desire for comprehensive and systemic approaches to the past inevitably brought globalists to the history of science.
            The World History Center at the University of Pittsburgh opened in 2008 as a center for research, institutional development, and teaching in world history. It benefited from its establishment within a department of history with a strong tradition in social history and benefited further from proximity to the university's well-known Department of History and Philosophy of Science and its associated Center for Philosophy of Science. Within a year of its establishment, the World History Center came to be a partner in a publication initiative with the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and the University of Pittsburgh Press to synchronize the publishing activity of the press with key strengths of the university. The full initiative, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, has resulted in collaborations and activities that are supporting the press's efforts to expand its publishing program in the history of science. It has allowed for the employment of a new acquiring editor at the press, three postdoctoral fellows and two distinguished lecturers hosted by the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, and three conferences organized by the World History Center, supported by the employment of three postdoctoral fellows serving as co-organizers of the conferences and co-editors of the resulting volumes.
For the World History Center, this was an exciting opportunity. World history was already developing subfields in the study of empire, migration, and environment. Here was the possibility of developing a subfield in world history of science. The hope was to articulate the study of science (and technology) within world history and to identify global perspectives in the history of science.
The Center's proposal for the three conferences ranged fairly widely across time and topic. The first conference took place in May 2012 under the title 'Linnaean Worlds: Global Scientific Practice during the Great Divergence," co-directed by Patrick Manning and Daniel Rood, which resulted in the publication of Global Scientific Practice in an Age of Revolutions, 1750'1850 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015). A second conference took place in May 2014 under the title 'the Life Sciences after World War II," co-directed by Mat Savelli and Patrick Manning, which resulted in the publication of Global Transformations in the Life Sciences, 1945'1980 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018). A third conference, 'Found in Translation: World History of Science, 1200'1600 CE," on which the present book is based, took place in October 2015, co-directed by Abigail Owen and Patrick Manning. Each symposium gathered a range of junior and senior scholars with background both in history of science and global approaches, with the intention of exploring in further detail the global interactions in expansion of scientific knowledge.
In the call for papers for the 2015 conference, we asked for submissions on studies addressing sciences, exact or applied, uniting scientific insights and cultures of knowledge across linguistic or faith communities of the period 1200'1600. We sought contributions highlighting key moments of transmission, translation, and critical interpretation across linguistic and faith communities, or across boundaries of shared practice, or shared knowledge about the natural world. The contributions met these criteria, also expanding the temporal frame of this collection to 1000'1800 CE.
 
<H1>Acknowledgments
We express our appreciation to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for supporting the collaboration at the University of Pittsburgh between the World History Center, the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, and the University of Pittsburgh Press to publish innovative studies in history of science. We express our thanks to the faculty and staff of the World History Center, notably its former administrator, Katie Jones, for support of the conference and post-conference activities in support of this volume. We express our thanks to members of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, especially to Professor James Lennox for analytical insights and logistical support. And we express deep appreciation to our colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh Press, who have guided us expertly through each stage of the publication project, and particularly for the editorial work in this volume. Peter Kracht served as director of the press and Abby Collier, senior acquisitions editor, has conducted the editorial task with both substantive knowledge and editorial skill.