Kapil Raj. Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of Knowledge in South Asia andEurope, 1650–1900 .Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of Knowledge in South Asia andEurope, 1650–1900 by Kapil RajReview by: Reviewed by Sujit SivasundaramIsis, Vol. 99, No. 2 (June 2008), pp. 384-385Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/591329 .

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pictorial and graphic games as analogous to Witt-genstein’s language games. Lynch’s thoughtful es-say suggests tracing material claims and followingpractices of articulation in order to come to termswith the many functions of scientific images.

These two conceptually challenging papers(only one of which is new; Lynch’s essay isreprinted) are followed by a sequence of casestudies, spanning several centuries and variousdisciplines, that provide rich examples of thecomplexities of investigating visual representa-tions. Pauwels puts his own framework to thetest in another contribution to the volume inwhich he moves from static images to an anal-ysis of the tension between mimesis and expres-sion in anthropological and sociological films.In one of her rather rare English publications,Bernike Pasveer adopts a social constructiviststance, showing how X-ray images had to beencoded with data from other diagnostic meansthrough a laborious collective process beforethey could serve as powerful medical tools.Francesco Pavese considers the role of imagesin the invention of modern science and describesthe period as one of a transformation of look-ing—a process in which similarity as a principlefor structuring heterogeneity was replaced byhomogenous measurement. Moving from sci-ence to its popularization, Massimiano Bucchiobserves how, in concert with educational re-forms in Germany, the invention of the litho-graphic process brought the new medium of thewall chart to an extraordinary flowering between1850 and 1920. John Grady zooms in on theactivities of a single graphic artist, investigatingEdward Tufte’s advocacy for innovative formsof information display. Long before the emer-gence of information design as an academicdiscipline, Tufte’s work had little influence onscientists but was embraced by policy makers.Jean Trumbo’s paper takes up the discussion atthat point, calling for training in informationliteracy for the public at large as well as forscientific communities. Trumbo eschews the re-flexive distance of the historian and sociologistin favor of an educational commitment tostrengthen scientific communication.

The two most thorough contributions to thevolume are again reprints. Alberto Cambrosio,Daniel Jacobi, and Peter Keating reveal the fac-eted chains of material articulation in scientificand visualization practices in their investigationof the collaboration between Linus Pauling andRoger Hayward, his graphic artist. Their metic-ulous analysis shows how new visual forms hadto be built on existing representations—a pro-cess of difficult balances between scientificsoundness and professional credibility. Lynch’s

strategic move out of the impasse between real-ism and social constructivism is further exem-plified in his second contribution to the volume,which focuses on how the visualization of in-visible objects results in the creation of artificialobjects through the use of instruments that lendtheir graphic properties to the natural objectsrepresented.

This volume is an exemplary manifestation of“visual literacy” and testifies to the empirical aswell as the epistemological richness of this fieldof research in the history of science. But itssoundness entails a paradox, because all butthree of the essays collected here have previ-ously been published. The volume’s coherenceis thus rather a historical product, leaving thereader with the disturbing question of whetherthis field of study may already have lost itsinnovative potential.

CORNELIUS BORCK

Kapil Raj. Relocating Modern Science: Circu-lation and the Construction of Knowledge inSouth Asia and Europe, 1650–1900. xiii � 285pp., illus., bibl., index. New York: PalgraveMacmillan, 2007. $74.95 (cloth).

The historiography of science in South Asia isnow a thriving field. Kapil Raj’s contribution tothe debate starts from a secure foothold in recentdiscussions within science studies about trustand civility, instruments and experiments, trans-lation and standardization. Relocating ModernScience is a theoretically exciting contributionthat deserves to be read very widely. This is nota historical monograph; it is a series of discretecase studies. The cases covered are a forgottenherbal of seven hundred Indian plants, the Jar-din de Loxia, commissioned by the French in thelate seventeenth century; the origins of map-making in South Asia under the Mughals andthen the English; the orientalist William Jones’srelations with his pandits in late eighteenth-century Bengal; the nature of British orientalismat the start of the nineteenth century; the func-tion of institutions such as the Hindu Collegeand the Calcutta School Book Society in makingscience; and, finally, the surveying of CentralAsia in the second half of the nineteenth cen-tury.

In weaving these fascinating and crucial sto-ries together, Raj sets a new agenda for research.“Circulation” is perhaps the most importantword in the book. Raj uses it to suggest thatEuropeans did not impose science on SouthAsia; nor did science in South Asia emerge outof a simple appropriation of indigenous knowl-

384 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 99 : 2 (2008)

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edge on the part of colonists. Instead, it resultedfrom the globalization of knowledge, artifacts,interests, and expertise. Contrary to the views ofBruno Latour, the materials of science were re-molded in the process of displacement. Themeaning of a particular locality was in turnredefined in relation to new ideas of knowledge.

The historiography of science in South Asiahas seen a number of attempts to move beyondearlier Saidian perspectives. By using “circula-tion,” Raj hopes to distinguish his account fromrecent emphases on “dialogue” and “competi-tion.” Implicit is the view that there are nouniform orders of knowledge in conversationwith or set against each other, one colonized andthe other colonizing. In taking this line, Raj isleft with the thorny issue of how to articulaterelationships of power in the colonial context.He holds to the view that indigenous mediatorswere active while also stressing that there wasan “asymmetry” in relationships between Euro-peans and South Asians. This is a difficult bal-ance to maintain—and the least successful ele-ment of his analytical framework.

The case studies are spread across a long spanof time, and the question of the historical mean-ing of Raj’s term “circulation” emerges. He as-serts that the “circulation” of the seventeenthand eighteenth centuries was tied to trade andcommercial networks; the passage of time led togreater institutionalization, as the colonial statetook more control. This is an interesting claimthat needs further exemplification in the body ofthe book: the shifts from one chapter to the nextmean that the nature of “circulation” is not eas-ily compared from one case to another. Myconcern to situate “circulation” as a historicalphenomenon emerges from a skepticism aboutthe value of models for articulating the place-ment of knowledge in South Asia and in globalhistory more generally. Having taken on boardrecent criticisms of George Basalla’s diffusion-ist framework for colonial science, we might bebetter served by a narrative that posits the natureof knowledge as shifting in historical time:sometimes “circulatory,” as Raj suggests, but atother times more “dialogic” or “enforced.” Themultiple engagements between knowledge andpolitical control in South Asia depended not juston the evolution of colonialism but also on thestatus of the indigenous participants and theirlocation in metropolitan centers or in rural pe-ripheries. Raj’s survey is open to this criticismin part because he is less sure of the historiog-raphy of South Asia, in comparison with hismasterly use of the literature on science studiesand on the history of science in Europe. It wouldbe interesting, for instance, to know how Raj

would place his work in relation to subalternstudies.

Despite these qualms, this book is a stimulat-ing read; I present my observations as contribu-tions to a discussion. Raj is a polemicist who isconfident enough to critique the work of otherscholars, which means that his book is a braveone. Relocating Modern Science is certain totake an important place in the reading lists ofscholars and students of science and globaliza-tion. It will also set a new and important point ofreference for further debate.

SUJIT SIVASUNDARAM

Eugenie C. Scott. Evolution vs. Creationism:An Introduction. Foreword by Niles Eldredge.xxiv � 273 pp., figs., apps., indexes. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press,2005. $19.95 (paper).

Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the Na-tional Center for Science Education (NCSE)since 1987, has an excellent vantage point forobserving and confronting the full range of cre-ationist influence and activity. Evolution vs.Creationism is a result of that long experienceand serves as a succinct introduction to all di-mensions—scientific, legal, historical, religious,and educational—of this highly politicized is-sue. This book is intended as a primer or hand-book to the dispute, not a comprehensive pre-sentation of evolutionary theory or a detailedrefutation of creationist arguments. Given thisbroad approach, it necessarily skimps on in-depth examination, but there are already a num-ber of helpful books dealing with particularaspects of this cultural debate, including exhaus-tive scientific refutations of creationism.

Scott, a physical anthropologist, makes nobones about the scientific worth of creationisttheories; the NCSE has been in the forefront ofresisting creationist interference, miseducation,and intrusion in the public arena and classroomsfor decades. She does, however, present cre-ationist beliefs with admirable fairness, and herbook will help the public to understand thebackground of both creationism and evolution-ary science. T. H. Huxley, tenacious early ad-vocate of evolution, famously described himselfas “Darwin’s bulldog”; Scott considers herselfmore a “golden retriever”—her approach is ge-nial and irenic rather than belligerently confron-tational, aimed at understanding the creationistopposition as much as promoting sound evolu-tionist teaching.

Belatedly, scientists and academics have re-alized that creationism is not going to disappear

BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 99 : 2 (2008) 385

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