ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to present the interaction of two different cultural contexts related to intellectual curiosity and translation activity in the nineteenth century. It analyses the process among Ottoman intellectuals of creating scientific translations through its focus on the case of the materialist-monist trend in the history of modern European science. Moreover, it explores the motives for employing translations instead of compilations of texts in their originals to spread ideas, which caused another counter-translation by other thinkers of traditionalist priorities. The focus of the chapter, thus, is to question how scientific translation became a stage for transmitting modern European discourses and competing ideologies in the last decades of the Ottoman Empire.
