Research Seminar January 23rd: Ana Simões (Centro Interuniversitário de História das Ciências e da Tecnologia , Portugal) - Shifting European Centers and Peripheries: The Case of Portugal and the Naturalist Correia da Serra (1751-1823)

Studies oriented towards the phenomena of circulation have spurred a growing understanding of imperialism and colonialism as historical movements that created opportunities for interaction with native traditions and systems of knowledge, giving way to mutual appropriations and reconfigurations.

In this talk I reappraise aspects of the recent historiography of circulation, with recourse to the conceptual and methodological apparatus developed in the context of the Science and Technology in the European Periphery (STEP) international network. By re-directing the discussion to encounters, exchanges and divergences that took place within Europe mostly in the 18th century, I re-appraise three major issues: circulation, locality, and the mutual reconfigurations of centres and peripheries. My contention is three-fold. First, circulation is not only a way of transmitting or spreading knowledge but also a way of producing it. Second, locality is not necessarily coincident or constrained by location. Third, centres and peripheries must be regarded as co-constructed and mutually dependent entities whose status changes in time, and not as tokens of a steady, hierarchical geography.

By calling attention to the work of intercultural subjects, often absent from traditional historical narratives, by following their movements across disciplinary and territorial borders, and asserting their role in the production of scientific and technical knowledge, historians will be able to weave more nuanced stories about the complex and multifarious cultural encounters, which molded the European intellectual space that shaped the notion of European science.

In my talk, I will illustrate the former considerations by recourse to the wanderings and accomplishments of the Portuguese naturalist, and diplomat Abbé Correia da Serra (1751-1823), a member of the informal group of the estrangeirados (Europeanized intellectuals) and an active participant in an extended network of intellectuals and scholars who contributed to shape the various versions of the Enlightenment in Europe.