Abstract
This essay uses the parable of "The Blind Men and the Elephant" alongside two vignettes relating to the British and American Empires to explore a series of propositions about the world in terms of teaching the science/knowledge divide in global history. It is intended to prompt debate about some of the blind spots that endure in the history of science as well as various challenges around method for the history of knowledge. At the heart of the essay are concerns about planetary health and human values. It parses the world in ten theses relating to spaces and geographies, languages and translations, ontologies and unknowns, ruptures and revolutions, experiments and random controls, borders and ancestry, personhood and legal fictions, governance and ignorance, intellectual property and piracy, and measures and metrics. Because scholars must train deeply and teach broadly, it invites everyone to think about how to trespass judiciously and study responsibly. It features ideas about reality, truth, conflict, and consciousness that can easily be overshadowed but are worth taking seriously for anyone who wants a more just world.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 152-199 |
| Number of pages | 48 |
| Journal | Capitalism |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 1 2024 |
Funding
Note: I wrote this in dialogue with Andrew Amstutz, Shireen Hamza, and Eric Gurevitch. We had a fabulous set of exchanges about the first draft and I am indebted to them for their engagement (and entirely responsible for errors). I am grateful also to Carolyn Biltoft, Bernie Lightman, Marc Flandreau, Susan Pearson, Charu Singh, Robyn d\u2019Avignon, and Mischa Suter for their feedback and encouragement. The content builds upon a graduate seminar I regularly teach that typically attracts students training in area studies such as African, Latin American, European, North American, Asian, and Middle Eastern history. Few students enter as historians of science in-the-making, but all understand that historicizing technology, medicine, and epistemology in the part of the world they study is a net benefit, especially as future teachers. One of my own greatest teachers was my mother Susan Tilley (1945\u20132023) who first introduced me to so many subjects I now explore, including the Rig Veda and metaphysics. Background research for this essay was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (#1456984).
Keywords
- Empires
- borders
- governance
- ignorance
- intellectual property
- ontology
- personhood
- reality
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- History
- Economics and Econometrics