The dream that never dies: the ideals and realities of cosmopolitanism in science, 1870–1940

Abstract

In the half-century before the Great War, collaborative international ventures in science became increasingly common. The trend, manifested in scientific congresses and attempts to establish agreement on physical units and systems of nomenclature, had important consequences. One was the fear of information overload. How were scientists to keep abreast of the growing volume of books, journals, and reports? How were they to do so in an era without a common language? Responses to these challenges helped to foster new departures in cataloguing, bibliography, and an interest in Esperanto and other constructed languages. By 1914, the responses had also become involved in wider movements that promoted communication as a force for peace. The Great War dealt a severe blow to these cosmopolitan ideals, and the post-war reordering of international science did little to resurrect them. A “national turn” during the 1920s assumed a darker form in the 1930s, as totalitarian regimes in the Soviet Union, Italy, Germany, and Spain associated science ever more closely with national interests. Although the Second World War further undermined the ideal of internationalism in science, the vision of science as part of a world culture open to all soon resurfaced, notably in UNESCO. As an aspiration, it remains with us today, in ventures for universal access to information made possible by digitization and the World Wide Web). The challenge in the twenty-first century is how best to turn aspiration into reality.