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Science appeared in modern Greece in the first decades after its establishment as a sovereign state in 1828. The University of Athens, the Royal Observatory, the Botanical Garden, and the Natural History Museum were quickly established as spaces of scientific activity. Greek scientists were enthusiastic participants in the emerging Greek public sphere, often not only as science experts, but also as poets, intellectuals and political personae. In a space whose cultural, intellectual and historical boundaries were still being negotiated, the choice of language was not a given but a pressing, sensitive national desideratum. This article examines how Greek scientists used languages to communicate with their peers and with their publics, how they handled terminology and nomenclature, and how the issues surrounding the Greek language in particular affected their practice as scientists. The article aims to show that, in nineteenth-century Greece, languages were not passive, neutral vehicles of communication, but rather integral (though tacit) components of the practice of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given that translation is always an imperfect process, why do people single out certain words as simply untranslatable? This article looks at one such supposedly untranslatable term, the German word Wissenschaft. Rather than take the word’s status as a given, it examines the historical processes through which Wissenschaft came to be seen as a word impossible to render into English. The article examines a mid-nineteenth century debate about Francis Bacon to show that as late as the 1860s “science” and “Wissenschaft” were still treated as comparable terms. Wissenschaft began to seem untranslatable only later in the nineteenth century, as part of a critique that set German national character in opposition to the supposedly shallow materialism of the British. After this initial divergence, scholars in the twentieth century continued to elaborate on the difference between the terms, with lasting implications for our retrospective understandings of nineteenth-century intellectual life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines contemporary Latin American historical writing about natural history from the nineteenth through the twentieth centuries. Natural history is a "network science," woven out of connections and communications between diverse people and centers of scholarship, all against a backdrop of complex political and economic changes. Latin American naturalists navigated a tension between promoting national science and participating in "universal" science. These tensions between the national and the universal have also been reflected in historical writing on Latin America. Since the 1980s, narratives that recognize Latin Americans' active role have become more notable within the renewal of the history of Latin American science. However, the nationalist slant of these approaches has kept Latin American historiography on the margins. The networked nature of natural history and Latin America's active role in it afford an opportunity to end the historiographic isolation of Latin America and situate it within world history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Neot Kedumim, a Biblical landscape and nature reserve in Israel created by botanist Ephraim Hareuveni and his son Noga Hareuveni. According to the author, the Hareuvenis used botany to shape Biblical texts into a landscape narrative and contribute to the production of an Israeli national identity. The impact of multiculturalism on the reserve and its efforts to attract new audiences are also discussed.

In the midst of mounting environmental problems in urban Iran, the status of science is becoming more prestigious among various segments of the population. Consequently, debates and discussions about the environment are increasingly taking place, especially among Iranian environmentalists. Are environmental problems in Iran addressed and understood synonymously as in the West, where scientific rationality is expected to provide objective explanations about environmental problems and their solutions? Viewing conceptions of nature as a key investigation site, this study explores distinctive manners in which discourses and practices of the environment unfold in Iran. I argue that, while the scientific-ecological conception of nature is the mainstream framework assumed in environment-related research and programs, another conception of nature—related to Iranian nationhood—also makes key contributions to the environmentalists' understandings of recurring environmental problems. It is further argued that the concept of heteroglossia allows us to examine how these conceptions of nature dialogically appear and evolve in Iranian contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the reputation of psychologist Kenneth James William Craik, highlighting his influence on developments in psychology following World War II. The author notes Craik's work on visual perception and his book "The Nature of Explanation," and special attention is paid to Craik's respected posthumous reputation and endorsements of his work. Other topics include criticisms of Craik's work, the influence of Craik's design of equipment for experiments, and the relationship between nationalism and psychology.

A case study of secondary experimental science instruction in Belgium demonstrates the importance of cross-national communication in the study of science education. Belgian secondary science education in the years 1880-1914 had a clear internationalist dimension. French and German influences turn out to have been essential, stimulated by the fact that Belgium, as a result of its geographical position, considered itself as the centre of scientific relations between France and Germany, and as actually strengthened by its linguistic and cultural dualism in this regard. This pursuit of internationalist nationalism also affected the configuration of chemistry and physics as experimental courses at Belgian Royal State Schools, although the years preceding WWI are usually characterized as a period of rising nationalism in science, with countries such as Germany and France as prominent actors. To what extent did France and Germany influence Belgian debates on science education, science teachers' training, the use of textbooks, and the instalment of school laboratories and teaching collections? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: John Dee’s arrangements at his Mortlake house have received some attention as an English ‘academy’ or ‘experimental household.’ His ideas for St Cross, which he requested as a suitable living in 1592, have received less detailed attention. This paper examines Mortlake and his St Cross plans in detail and argues that, at their core, they shared an aspiration to create a national research institute. These plans are related to the context of Dee’s pursuit of royal patronage and his idea of the social and intellectual role of the natural philosopher. His ideas for a research institute are also placed in the context of alternatives to traditional sites of learning, including contemporary academies, princely courts, and independent establishments, indicating that Dee’s ideas, while part of a Renaissance vogue for such alternatives, were independent of other models. Discussion includes the historiographic debate regarding openness versus secrecy in the pursuit of natural knowledge. Finally, Dee’s ideas are contrasted with Francis Bacon’s proposal for a research institute, which also originated in the 1590s and culminated in ‘Solomon’s House.’ [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article analyses the awarding of the Royal Society's Copley Medal to James Prescott Joule (1870), Julius Robert Mayer (1871) and Hermann Helmholtz (1873) in the wake of the establishment of the law of conservation of energy during the 1850s and 1860s. It seeks to reconstruct the context in which the awards occurred, emphasizing at once a combination of individual scientific achievement, advocacy on behalf of Joule's supporters, nationalism, and the special role that Helmholtz played thanks to the strong social relationship that he had developed with the British scientific elite in the two decades before receiving his award, the last of the three. The award in turn strengthened that relationship, as the great subject of discussion in physics now gradually turned from thermodynamics to electromagnetism and to reaching practical agreements in electrical metrology between the British, the Germans and others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers the author's insights on the significance of high technological communications to the social, political, and economic forms of China and in addressing the authoritarian trends of the country. He argues on the principle of scholar Elizabeth Einstein regarding the revolution of Chinese print culture from medieval or scribal to modern print culture in which it mentions that China and Japan underwent print revolutions between 1500 and 1800. It explores the possible implications of new technologies such as the telegraph, fax machines, and telephones in at the turn to twentieth century in China, in which he adds that the high information highway can be easily hijacked in the name of nationalism.

In his anthology of socio-political essays, Evolution and Human Life, Oka Asajirō (1868-1944), early twentieth century Japan's foremost advocate of evolutionism, developed a biological vision of the nation-state as super-organism that reflected the concerns and aims of German-inspired Meiji statism and anticipated aspects of radical ultra-nationalism. Drawing on non-Darwinian doctrines, Oka attempted to realize such a fused or organic state by enhancing social instincts that would bind the minzoku (ethnic nation) and state into a single living entity. Though mobilization during the Russo-Japanese War seemed to evince this super-organism, the increasingly contentious and complex society that emerged in the war's aftermath caused Oka to turn first to Lamarckism and eventually to orthogenesis in the hopes of preserving the instincts needed for a viable nation-state. It is especially in the state interventionist measures that Oka finally came to endorse in order to forestall orthogenetically-driven degeneration that the technocratic proclivities of his statist orientation become most apparent. The article concludes by suggesting that Oka's emphasis on degeneration, autarkic expansion, and, most especially, totalitarian submersion of individuals into the statist collectivity indicates a complex relationship between his evolutionism and fascist ideology, what recent scholarship has dubbed radical Shinto ultra-nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years questions concerning the impact of public research funding have become the preeminent site at which struggles over the meanings and value of science are played out. In this paper we explore the 'politics of impact' in contemporary UK science and research policy and, in particular, detail the ways in which UK research councils have responded to and reframed recent calls for the quantitative measurement of research impacts. Operating as 'boundary organisations' research councils are embroiled in what might be characterised as the 'politics of demarcation' in which competing understandings of the cultural values of science are traded, exchanged and contested. In this paper we focus on the way the UK's 'Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council' (EPSRC) has responded to contemporary policy discourses concerning the impacts of public research expenditure. We argue that, in response to the shifting terms of contemporary science policy, the EPSRC has adopted three distinct strategies. Firstly, in collaboration with other research councils the EPSRC have emphasised the intellectual and metrological challenge presented by attempts to quantify the economic impact of public research expenditure, emphasising instead the cumulative impacts of a broad portfolio of 'basic science'. Secondly, the EPSRC has sought to widen the discursive meaning of research impacts - specifically to include societal and policy impacts in addition to economic ones. Thirdly, the EPSRC has introduced a new framing into the 'impact agenda', preferring to talk about 'pathways to impact' rather than research impacts per se. In responding to government priority setting, we argue that the EPSRC has sought to exploit both the technical fragility of auditing techniques and the discursive ambiguity of notions of impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the Danish Galathea Deep Sea Expedition between 1950 and 1952, focusing on how the expedition helped to support nationalism and restore Denmark's national pride after World War II in the postcolonial era. The scientific expedition was notable for its collaboration with on board journalist and press representatives who served to bolster public interest for the project and create a record of the expedition's work. Also discussed are the expedition organizers marine biologist Anton F. Bruun, journalist Hakon Mielche, and Vice-Admiral Aage H. Vedel.

The article discusses the work of U.S. geologist James Dwight Dana (1813-1895) in developing the first comprehensive theory of the geological systems underlying the Pacific Ocean and its surrounding landmasses. His travels with the U.S. Exploring Expedition (1838-1842) are discussed, as is his later focus on continental geology, specifically the American West, during the period of westward U.S. exploration and expansion. The influence of nationalism and notions of American exceptionalism on this later work is also discussed.

Kant's conception of the relationship between metaphysics and natural science is more complex than it is often taken to be. He claims that: (1) the idea of metaphysics as a science functions as a model for the natural sciences; (2) that the natural sciences should serve the aims of metaphysics according to its "worldconcept"; and (3) that the natural sciences are constrained by presuppositions that belong to critically refined metaphysics. Discussions of Kant's philosophy of science from neo-Kantianism up to the present for the most part only address (3). Against this, I will argue that (3) only follows from (2) and (1) only from (3). Moreover, these connections lead to problems, which I then discuss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spanish abstracts are presented for the articles published in this issue of the journal including "La estadística y el curso de la razón pública: compromiso e imparcialidad en un mundo cuantificado" by Theodore M. Porter, "Patents for Invention: Setting the Stage for the British Industrial Revolution?" by Christine MacLeod and "Invención, Nacionalismo Tecnológico y Progreso: el discurso de la propiedad industrial en la España del siglo XIX" by David Pretel.

This paper explores how science became a toolbox for the rationalisation of the monarchy: that is, of the government of the people and of its territories. We will analize how the Earth was transformed in a mensurable, geodesic artefact; how a plant was managed in order to be considered a reliable medication; and how the notion of patriotic bound was deployed into an algebraic system for accountancy. Nobody like the scientists had dreamt so much of disciplines, instruments and formulas. Nor had anybody shown such an overwhelming passion for translating all problems into symptoms, signs and numbers. And so it was that the state became a scientific question, and science became a matter of state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores how the government of Switzerland attempted to depoliticize and demilitarize international institutions in high-energy physics, space research, and molecular biology in an effort to make science neutral during the 1950s and 1960s. Particular attention is paid to investigating how participation in these "neutralized" institutions supported Swiss neutrality policy and strengthened its national identity. This co-production of neutral science and neutral state is examined through the role of the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs and Swiss scientific statements in the creation of institutions devoted to international cooperation in nuclear physics, space research, and molecular biology.

The article analyzes the creation of the "European vision" for converging technologies by the European Commission in 2003-2004 and a 2007 report on innovation processes in the "European knowledge society." Particular attention is paid to the contributions of historians, sociologists, and philosophers of science and technology in the quest for a transnational European identity. The goals of the Sixth Framework Program of the European Union which provided research funding to develop a culture of scientific and technological cooperation between EU countries are examined. The creation of the Converging Technologies for the European Knowledge Society scheme is assessed.

The article discusses how Indians who were awarded degrees by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed a technological elite group of engineers in the last days of India's colonial period. Particular attention is paid to how their careers demonstrated a technological nationalism in India and foreshadowed the growth of the technology sector following independence. The connections between MIT-trained engineers and the nationalist movement in India are examined. It is noted that three families associated with Mahatma Gandhi sent nine sons to MIT. The work of engineers Devchand Parekh and Bal Kalelkar is discussed.

The article traces attempts to "demarginalize" Canadian scientists, the Canadian nation, and its nature by remaking atmospheric research and the practice of reading ionograms. Particular attention is paid to research conducted in the late 1940s by Canadian researchers focusing on the turbulent ionosphere above Canada that disrupted high-frequency communications throughout the northern regions by making ionograms illegible. The work of scientist Frank Davies to position ionospheric research as a solution to international communications concerns and its impact on post-World War II Canadian identity is discussed. How the research helped Canada gain increased autonomy from Great Britain and the U.S. is investigated.

The article examines a debate surrounding the establishment of a medical research institution in the 1900s during a period of growing Indian nationalism in colonial India. Particular attention is paid to how members of the medical community imposed the political identities of nationalism on British colonial practices of medical science. How doctors drew from emerging ideas of social welfare and health to help shape the national identity of a changing Indian nation is explored. The influence of the Indian Medical Service as a dominant force and institution of colonial medicine is assessed. The proposal for a Central Medical Research Institute facility is discussed.

The article explores the importance of fieldwork in the formation of cultural identity in three phases of Chinese geological education designated as pre-revolutionary (1903-1912), the Geological School period (1916-1918), and the early years of the Peking University Department of Geology (1918-1928). The reviews seeks to demonstrate the significance of the human body in connecting the physicality of the individual to the national collective. It is argued that Chinese identity was primarily defined by a willingness to remake oneself for the sake of the nation. The impact of students who had studied abroad such as Ding Wenjiang and Zhang Gongzhao after the republican revolution of 1911 and the formation of the Geological Section in the Bureau of Mines is discussed.

The article discusses how the states of Russia and Ireland defined themselves as scientific nations through an examination of the work of the mid-19th century scientists Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev and Thomas Andrews. Both scientists were involved in the discovery of the critical point or boundary between liquids and gases. How they approached their research as a means of integrating science into the national identity of their respective countries is assessed. It is suggested that a comparison of the two scientists and their work allows for a better understanding of the relationship between national identity and science in countries that developed nationalist movements after industrialization.

The article discusses two scientific expeditions of the Pacific region during the French revolutionary period. The sea voyage under the command of Jean-Antoine Bruny d'Entrecasteaux between the years 1782 and 1794 and another by Nicolas Baudin from 1801 to 1804 are examined. It is suggested that both of the expeditions demonstrated the importance of scientific inquiry to the sovereignty of the French nation. Details concerning how the naval and scientific personnel on board these expeditions behaved as "scientific" citizens are presented. Disputes over assigning proper credit of discoveries through publication are said to reveal the difficulties of making science a national project.

The article introduces several articles appearing in this edition of the journal including "Projections of the Revolutionary Nation: French Expeditions in the Pacific, 1791-1803,” by Carol E. Harrison, “Material Experiments: Environment and Engineering Institutions in the Early American Republic,” by Ann Johnson, and “Points Critical: Russia, Ireland, and Science at the Boundary,” by Michael D. Gordin.

Abstracts are presented for the articles published in this issue of the journal including " Statistics and the Career of Public Reason. Engagement and Detachment in a Quantified World" by Theodore M. Porter, "Patents for Invention: Setting the Stage for the British Industrial Revolution?" by Christine MacLeod and "Invention, Techno-Nationalism and Progress: The Discourse of Intellectual Property in Nineteenth-Century Spain" by David Pretel.

The article discusses the re-election of India's prime minister Manmohan Singh and implications it has for future scientific activities. A nuclear trade arrangement that Singh's previous administration made with the U.S. in 2008 is expected to proceed. The article also notes Singh's United Progressive Alliance (UAP) and its plans to increase government funding for science.