Our task in this course will be to investigate the various ways in which natural scientists reconciled the universal claims they associated with specific forms of knowledge about nature and the national aspirations which so many of them also entertained during the long nineteenth century. Themes familiar from the canons of nationalism—comradeship with people one has never met, collective memory (in the form of textbooks), a growing capacity to imagine a collective future—all figure with scientists as well. Yet our aim is not simply to add case studies of scientists to methodologically familiar intellectual drivers of nationalism from literature, philology, history, philosophy, sociology, or the fine arts. The development of rational forms of administration that were often crucial to understanding how nationhood was constructed must sometimes be investigated in close relation to science in particular. Both forms of patronage and rewards for achievement (discoveries and inventions) that might seem peculiar to universal science can be more clearly explicated within processes of national formation. The very notion of "scientific community" as a historical social formation indeed owes much to nation-building tropes, notwithstanding its cosmopolitan claims.
- Instructor: Karl Hall