ABSTRACT
Science, much more than, for example, literature, might be expected to have an academic commonality across different countries and cultures. Since the days of the formation of the Royal Society in the seventeenth century, there has been a notion of the invisible college to which all scientists belong by virtue of the common but esoteric knowledge that they hold. Although meta-scientists like Turnbull and Collins might well cast some doubt on the acultural and universalistic (Merton, 1973) nature of scientific knowledge, it nevertheless remains true today, as it has for almost the complete life-time of European science, that scholars can move from university to university across national boundaries in pursuit of their studies without cultural impediment. Indeed both the historical figure of Erasmus, and the EC’s own modern ERASMUS project, bear witness to this.
