title: I am knowledge. Get me out of here! On localism and the universality of science.
abstract: It has become increasingly common in historiography of science to understand science and its products as inherently local. However, this orientation is faced with three problems. First, how can one explain the seeming universality of contemporary science? Second, if science is so reflective of its local conditions of production, how can it travel so effortlessly to other localities and even globally? And third, how can scientific knowledge attain validity outside its context of origin? I will argue that the notion of standardization and theories of delocalization manage to explain the 'globality' of science, but that localism denies 'universality' if it is understood non-spatially. Further, localism limits the validity of scientific knowledge unacceptably inside the laboratory walls or other boundaries of knowledge creation. This is not consistent with scientific practice. I will consider on what grounds extra-local knowledge inferences that transcend the boundaries of locality could be seen as justified.
authors.affiliation: University of Leiden, P.O. Box 9515, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands. j.kuukkanen@phil.leidenuniv.nl
authors.forename: Jouni-Matti
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Kuukkanen
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D019359:Knowledge; D010684:Philosophy; D012586:Science