For Sarton, as we have seen, it was the universal validity of scientific knowledge that made science a unifier, implying that those nations that produced most of it were in the lead. There is no single answer to these questions. Still it is my contention that we can only really grasp the precise politics of scientific internationalism if we analyze how exactly it was conceived – how actors imagined that science actually promotes peaceful cooperation, and how such understandings related to more widely held worldviews. Hence there is an increasing appreciation of scientific internationalism as a political force – not just a notion that scientists entertained but an ideology that was actively promoted to political ends, such as the justification of imperial projects. 3 Mark Mazower has classified scientific internationalism among the Christian, socialist, and other internationalisms of its time Glenda Sluga has shown how its varieties were mobilized in institutions like the League of Nations and several others have scrutinized the uses of forms of scientific and technological internationalism in contexts from Britain to Brazil to Belgium. This development is receiving increasing interest by historians of science as well as historians of international relations who have stressed its political dimensions. 2 The notion that science transcends national difference and can foster international cooperation became particularly pertinent in the decades around 1900 (the “first era of globalization”), gaining popularity through international manifestations of science and technology such as the universal expositions. This idealization – which is sometimes called scientific internationalism – has a history of its own that is worth studying, especially in contrast to histories of real, on-the-ground circulations of knowledge. Science transcended the specificities of place and culture it belonged to humanity as a whole, as “the only truly solid bond between infinitely diverse people.” 1 And precisely for that universal quality, Sarton added, science was the ideal guide to international cooperation and world peace. Whereas historians today study knowledge as being affected (or even produced) by intercultural exchanges and travels through diverse locales, Sarton took his subject to be supracultural and independent from context. One of its founders, George Sarton, for example, also adopted a worldwide perspective but on entirely different grounds. It appears that Von Suttner mobilized notions of the pacific effects of science with an eye to preserving both the European system of states and the position of the aristocracy.Ĭurrent endeavors to globalize the history of science stand in stark contrast to the way science used to be considered global when the field was first established. Relating the novel to von Suttner’s own life experiences, I situate her internationalism in the social texture and international relations of the late Habsburg Empire. It tells the story of a scientific conference whose participants, by the sheer brilliance of their thought, ward off war and preserve world peace. To illustrate this, I analyze the 1911 novel Der Menschheit Hochgedanken (translated as When Thoughts Will Soar) by the famous Austrian pacifist Baroness Bertha von Suttner. In this article I argue that in order to properly historicize scientific internationalism, it is imperative to understand how actors imagined science to have pacifist effects, and to relate their technoscientific to their geopolitical imaginaries. This notion became particularly popular in the decades around 1900, the heyday of the universal expositions and the so-called first era of globalization. Historians are showing increasing interest in scientific internationalism, the notion that science transcends national differences and hence advances peace and cooperation.
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