ABSTRACT
One of the most important developments in the history of world science has been the spread of the scientific ideas and practices developed in Europe to other societies, a phenomenon caused by both “push” and “pull” factors. European political domination or missionary efforts, like those of the Jesuits, have introduced Western science into, and even imposed it on, other societies. However, some nonWestern societies have studied or adopted European science for their own purposes. Two of the most interesting cases of this “pull” phenomenon occurred in eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century Russia and Japan. No non-Western society in that period took as much interest in Western science as did those two countries. Both assumed a favorable attitude toward Western science in the early eighteenth century, but were not full-fledged members of the international scientific community for nearly a century-and-a-half later. The two countries also faced similar problems in ensuring that science
C H A P T E R
was not accompanied by “dangerous” political and religious ideas. There were, however, also huge differences between the Japanese and Russian cases.
