Science de-internationalized?: The challenges of a learned society in the post-napoleonic era

• Autores: Magne Njastad
• Localización: The Circulation of Science and Technology: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science. Barcelona, 18-20 November 2010 / coord. por Antoni M. Roca Rosell, 2012, ISBN 978-84-9965-108-8, págs. 483-486
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Learned societies of the 17th and 18th centuries formed an international network for exchange of scientific ideas and results through correspondence and circulation of publications. The era of the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars meant a blow to this network. In the post-Napoleonic era, learned societies had to find their place in a new order of scientific knowledge, where the universities were to play a more important part.

    This paper will deal with how one such society, The Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters, met these challenges in the period ca. 1810-1870. The society, which had been founded in 1760 in the city of Trondheim, had participated in the international exchange of scientific knowledge through the network of learned societies, but by the turn of the century, it found itself in a peripheral position, both due to the lack of active members, but also hastened on by the troubled political situation. The Society met this challenge by reinventing itself as a locally based organization, aiming to play an important role on the national stage, and with pretences to uphold its international network.

    The first two goals were successfully achieved, but the society struggled to place itself in a meaningful international context. Most successfully, this was done in the exchange of publications and the maintenance of the best scientific library in Norway, and partly it was done by trying to engage the personal networks of the leading members abroad. By the second half of the century, it was obvious that these strategies had to be based in a scientific environment of a more professional nature, such as a university or a research-based museum. The latter course was chosen by the society around 1870.