Science and Place 379term ‘science’ has diverse meanings, each of them legitimate.”^2 My sug-
gestion is that what passes as “science” is different not only from time
to time, but also from place to place. The kinds of activities that go on
in an astronomical observatory are different from those carried out in a
museum or a botanical garden. Lindberg makes the comment that if “the
historian of science were to investigate past practices and beliefs only in-
sofar as those practices and beliefs resemble modern science, the result
would be a distorted picture.”^3 The same sentiments can appropriately
be given a spatial rendering. That is, if the student of science were to
investigate practices and beliefs in different spaces only insofar as those
practices and beliefs resemble what passes for science in one place—say,
the laboratory—the result would be a distorted picture.
From a geographical standpoint, it is pleasing to note the degree to
which historians and sociologists of science have begun to “put science
in its place.” By this I mean that the place- specifi c character of scientifi c
inquiry has recently become a focus of attention. Allow me to identify
what I consider three diagnostic moments in this spatial turn, though
others could certainly be isolated. First, the 1991 thematic issue of Science
in Context—devoted to “The Place of Knowledge: The Spatial Setting and
its Relations to the Production of Knowledge”—fi rmly placed space on
the agenda. Conceived as an antidote to idealist conceptions of science as
disengaged and transcendental, the editorial introduction emphasized the
situatedness of science due to how particular venues conditioned ways of
knowing, installed means of securing credibility, established standards of
justifi cation, and shaped meaning.^4 To Ophir and Shapin, the traditional
resort to local factors only as an explanation for deviations from universal
objectivity was hopelessly inadequate.^5
Three years later, in March 1994, the British Society for the History of
Science sponsored a conference with the theme “Making Space: Territo-
rial Themes in the History of Science,” selected papers from which were
published in 1998. Here again the signal was clear: as the editors insisted
in their introductory remarks, if a science “is to be produced and sus-
tained” it has to be “credible and embodied” and “spatially located.” This
meant that what they called “spatialized approaches” to understanding
scientifi c practice could provide insights and perspectives otherwise not
available.^6 Of key signifi cance here was the way in which the interlacing
cords of knowledge, power and place, delivered cognitive, instrumental
and moral authority to privileged scientifi c sites. Throughout, the location
of scientifi c activity was shown to have been intimately connected with
such matters as who engaged in scientifi c pursuits, what was investigated,
how inquiries were pursued, and what passed as good practice.