Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

The Spatial Turn: Geographical Approaches in the History of Science

  • Published:
Journal of the History of Biology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Over the past decade or so a number of historians of science and historical geographers, alert to the situated nature of scientific knowledge production and reception and to the migratory patterns of science on the move, have called for more explicit treatment of the geographies of past scientific knowledge. Closely linked to work in the sociology of scientific knowledge and science studies and connected with a heightened interest in spatiality evident across the humanities and social sciences this ‹spatial turn’ has informed a wide-ranging body of work on the history of science. This discussion essay revisits some of the theoretical props supporting this turn to space and provides a number of worked examples from the history of the life sciences that demonstrate the different ways in which the spaces of science have been comprehended.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Alberti, Samuel J. M. M. 2005. Objects and the Museum Isis 96: 559–571

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Allen, D. E. 1976. The Naturalist in Britain. London: Allen Lane

    Google Scholar 

  • Bloor, David. 1997. Remember the Strong Program? Science, Technology and Human Values 22: 373–385

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bloor, David. 2007. Ideals and Monisms: Recent criticisms of the Strong Programme in the Sociology of Knowledge. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 38: 210–234

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brockway, Lucile. 1979. Science and Colonial Expansion: The Role of the British Botanic Gardens. New York and London: Academic Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Browne, Janet. 1996. “Biogeography and Empire.” Nicholas Jardine, James A. Secord and Emma C. Spary (eds.), Cultures of Natural History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 305–321

  • Davidovitch, Nadav, Zalashik, Rakefet. 2006. Medical borders: historical, political and cultural analyses. Science in Context 19: 309–316

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Daston, Lorraine and Galison, Peter. 1992. “The Image of Objectivity.” Representations 40: 81–128

  • Dritsas, Lawrence. 2005. From Lake Nyassa to Philadelphia: A Geography of the Zambesi Expedition, 1858–64. British Journal for the History of Science 38: 35–52

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Evenden, Matthew D. 2004a. “Locating Science, Locating Salmon: Institutions, Linkages and Spatial Practices in Early British Columbia Fisheries Science.”Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 22: 355–372

  • Evenden, Matthew D. 2004b. Fish Versus Power: An Environmental History of the Fraser River. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

  • Forgan, Sophie. 1998. ‹But indifferently lodged’…: Perception and Place in Building for Science in Victorian London. In C. Smith, J. Agar (eds.), Making Space for Science: Territorial Themes in the Shaping of Knowledge. Basingstoke: Macmillan. pp. 195–215

    Google Scholar 

  • Forgan, Sophie. 1999. Bricks and Bones: Architecture and Science in Victorian Britain. P. Galison, E. Thomspon (eds.), The Architecture of Science. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. pp. 181–208

    Google Scholar 

  • Forgan, Sophie. 2005. Building the Museum: Knowledge, Conflict and the Power of Place. Isis 96: 572–585

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gieryn, Thomas F. 2000. A Space for Place in Sociology. Annual Review of Sociology 26: 463–496

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thomas F. Gieryn 1999. Cultural Boundaries of Science: Credibility on the Line. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

  • Gieryn, Thomas F. 2006. The City as Truth Spot: Laboratories and Field Sites in Urban Studies. Social Studies of Science 36: 5–38

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Golinski, Jan. 2005. Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History of Science. 2ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Gunn, Simon. 2001. The Spatial Turn: Changing Histories of Space and Place. S. Gunn, R. J. Morris (eds.), Identities in Space: Contested Terrains in the Western City since 1850. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 1–14

    Google Scholar 

  • Harris, Steven. 1998. Long Distance Corporations, Big Sciences, and the Geography of Knowledge. Configurations 6: 269–305

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, Nuala J. 2006. Cultivating Science and Planting Beauty: The Spaces of Display in Cambridge’s Botanic Gardens. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 31: 42–57

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Keeling, Arn M. 2007. Charting Marine Pollution Science: Oceanography on Canada’s Pacific coast, 1938–1970. Journal of Historical Geography 33: 403–428

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Keighren, Innes M. 2006. “Bringing Geography to the Book: Charting the Reception Of Influences of Geographic Environment.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographics 31: 525–540

    Google Scholar 

  • Kennedy, Alasdair. Forthcoming. “In search of True Prospect: Making and Knowing the Giant’s Causeway as a Field Site in the Seventeenth Century.” British Journal for the History of Science

  • Kimble, George H. T. 1951. The Inadequacy of the Regional Concept. D. L. Stamp, S. W. Wooldridge (eds.), London Essays in Geography: Rowell Jones Memorial Volume. London: Longmans. pp. 151–174

    Google Scholar 

  • King, Nicholas B. 2004 The Scale Politics of Emerging Diseases. Osiris 19: 62–76

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kirsch, Scott. 2004 Harold Knapp and the Geography of Normal Controversy: Radioiodine in the Historical Environment. Osiris 19: 167–181

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kohler, Robert E. 2002. Landscapes and Labscapes: Exploring the Lab-Field Border in Biology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

  • Kraft, Alison, Alberti, Samuel J. M. M. 2003. ‹Equal Though Different’: Laboratories, Museums and the Institutional Development Of Biology In Late-Victorian Northern England. Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 34: 203–236

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kuklick, Henrika, Kohler, Robert E. 1996. Science in the Field: Introduction. Osiris 11: 1–14

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lewens, Tim. 2005. Realism and the Strong Program. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56: 559–577

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Livingstone, David N. 1992. Darwinism and Calvinism: the Belfast–Princeton connection. Isis 83: 408–428

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Livingstone, David N. 1995. The Spaces Of Knowledge: Contributions Towards a Historical Geography of Science. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 13: 5–34

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Livingstone, David N. 2003. Putting Science in its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Livingstone, David N. 2006. The Geography of Darwinism. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 31: 32–41

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Livingstone, David N. 2007. Science, Site and Speech: Scientific Knowledge and the Spaces of Rhetoric. History of the Human Sciences 20: 71–98

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Matless, David and Cameron, Laura. 2006. “Experiment in Landscape: the Norfolk Excavations of Marietta Pallis.” Journal of Historical Geography 32: 96–126

  • Matless, David. 2003. Original Theories: Science and the Currency of the local. Cultural Geographies 10: 354–378

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mitman, Gregg. 2003. Natural History and the Clinic: The Regional Ecology of Allergy in America. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 34: 491–510

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mitman, Gregg, Murphy Michelle, Sellers Christopher. 2004. Introduction: A Cloud Over History. Osiris 19: 1–17

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moore, James. 2005. Revolution of the Space Invaders: Darwin and Wallace on the Geography of Life. D. N. Livingstone, C. W. J. Withers (eds.), Geography and Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 106–132

    Google Scholar 

  • Naylor, Simon. 2005. Introduction: Historical Geographies of Science – Places, Contexts, Cartographies. British Journal for the History of Science 38: 1–12

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ophir, Adi, Shapin, Steven. 1991 The Place of Knowledge: A Methodological Survey. Science in Context, 4, 3–21

    Google Scholar 

  • Outram, Dorinda. 1996. “New Spaces in Natural History.” Nicholas Jardine, James A. Secord and Emma C. Spary (eds.), Cultures of Natural History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 249–65.

  • Parry, Bronwyn. 2006. New spaces of biological commodification: the dynamics of trade in genetic resources and ‹bioinformation’. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 31: 19–31

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Raffles, Hugh. 2001. The use of butterflies. American Ethnologist 28: 513–548

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rouse, Joseph. 1992. What are cultural studies of scientific knowledge? Configurations 1: 57–94

    Google Scholar 

  • Rupke, Nicolaas. 1999. A Geography of Enlightenment: The Critical Reception of Alexander von Humboldt’s Mexico work. D. N. Livingstone,C. W. J. Withers (eds.), Geography and Enlightenment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 319–340

    Google Scholar 

  • Rupke, Nicolaas. 2000. Translation Studies in the History of Science: The Example of Vestiges. British Journal for the History of Science 33: 209–22

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rupke, Nicolaas. 2006. Alexander von Humboldt: A Meta-Biography. New York: Peter Lang

    Google Scholar 

  • Schiebinger, Londa. 2005. Prospecting for Drugs. L. Schiebinger C. Swan (eds.), Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce and Politics in the Early Modern World. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 119–133

    Google Scholar 

  • Secord, James A. 2000. Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Secord, James A. 2004. Knowledge in Transit. Isis 95: 654–672

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shapin, Steven. 1995. Here and Everywhere: Sociology of Scientific Knowledge. Annual Review of Sociology 21: 289–321

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shapin, Steven. 1998. Placing the View from Nowhere: Historical and Sociological Problems in the Location of Science. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 23: 5–12

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, Crosbie and Agar, Jon. (eds.) 1998. Making Space for Science: Territorial Themes in the Shaping of Knowledge. London: Macmillan

  • Spary, Emma. 2000. Utopia’s Garden: French Natural History from Old Regime to Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Spary, Emma. 2005. Of Nutmegs and Botanists. L. Schiebinger, C. Swan (eds.), Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce and Politics in the Early Modern World. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 187–203

    Google Scholar 

  • Star, Susan L., Griesemer, James R. 1989. Institutional Ecology, ‹Translations’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s museum of vertebrate zoology, 1907–39. Social Studies of Science 19: 387–420

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Verne, Jules. 1998 [1871]. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas. Oxford: Oxford University Press

  • Withers, Charles W. J. 2001. Geography, Science and National Identity: Scotland since 1520. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Withers, Charles W. J. 2002. The Geography of Scientific Knowledge. Nicolaas, Rupke (ed.), Göttingen and the Development of the Natural Sciences, Göttingen: Wallstein, pp. 9–18

    Google Scholar 

  • Yanni, Carla. 1999. Nature’s Museums: Victorian Science and the Architecture of Display. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Yanni, Carla. 2005. History and sociology of science: interrogating the spaces of knowledge. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 64: 423–425

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen’s University, Belfast, BT7 1NN, UK

    Diarmid A. Finnegan

Authors
  1. Diarmid A. Finnegan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Diarmid A. Finnegan.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Finnegan, D.A. The Spatial Turn: Geographical Approaches in the History of Science. J Hist Biol 41, 369–388 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-007-9136-6

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-007-9136-6

Keywords

Search

Navigation