ABSTRACT
History of science and environmental history can provide complementary perspectives on science, place and nature. Historians of science have examined scientific knowledge and practices in relation to institutions, disciplines and the political, economic and social contexts of science. The chapter argues that one approach to reconciling these divergent perspectives, and constructing an environmental history of science, is the critical examination of situated and mobile science. It is concerned with the place and movement of knowledge and ideas about nature – between East and West, and North and South. Numerous historians of science have discussed the importance of the sites of science, focusing on the local circumstances in which research is practised and knowledge is constructed and stabilized. The chapter suggests that the situated and mobile characteristics of science have been essential to the construction of knowledge, the assertion of its authority across space and its ties to political and other forms of authority.
