Politics, geopolitics, and the history of science: on James Secord’s “Inventing the scientific revolution”

Abstract: Since the institutionalisation of the history of science as a discipline in the early 1950s, the “Scientific Revolution” has been its master narrative and central organising principle. However, this narrative has attracted critical scrutiny since the last decades of the twentieth century. For many historians, the idea of the Scientific Revolution was formulated when the history of science was confined overwhelmingly to North American and British institutions. Instead of focusing on Europe and the West, it might be more fruitful to recognise the influence of post-Second World War politics in shaping the concept, while also taking into account the demographic changes in the discipline, which today includes women and men from all over the world.