International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS)

Drawing on recent scholarship in the history and sociology of science, imperial and colonial history as well as in the anthropology of encounter, Relocating Modern Science challenges the belief that modern science was created uniquely in the West and was subsequently diffused elsewhere.
Through a detailed analysis of key moments in the history of botany, terrestrial surveying, cartography, linguistics, scientific education, orientalism, and imperial statecraft, it demonstrates the crucial roles of circulation and intercultural encounter in the construction and reconfiguration of scientific notions and practices. It also revisits questions at the heart of recent science studies — interpersonal trust, replicability, calibration, translation, and the relationship between instruments and embodied skills — showing the complex nature of their resolution in multicultural and colonial contexts.
In addition to engaging with questions central to early-modern and modern South Asian, European, and colonial histories, this book presents a heuristic model for other world regions, periods, and fields of knowledge, as also for Postcolonial, Transnational, and Global Studies.