Mapping the Universe of Knowledge: Internationalism and National Interest in Modern Science

Time: 6:00pm

Location: Chemical Heritage Foundation, 315 Chestnut Street

Admission is free. Please register online at chemheritage.org/events.

The concept of “information overload” is nothing new. It began as the printing press inexorably increased publication, and by the late 19th century, the feeling of “overload” had become intolerable for many. In response, Paul Otlet (1868-1944) established the International Biographical Institute in Brussels in 1895. Otlet’s database incorporated an elaborate system of call numbers and record cards – more than 15 million by the time the project folded in 1934.

In his Fellow in Focus talk, Robert Fox sets Otlet’s initiative in the context of the universalist and humanitarian ideals prevalent in the 40 years before World War I. Pacifism, anticolonialism, feminism, and socialism were accompanied by an explosion in efforts to internationalize science through agreements on such aspects as physical standards and units and nomenclature (notably in chemistry). But the war undermined such ideals, and science in the interwar years increasingly served national interests. Universalism, though, has reasserted itself through the Google Books Library Project, which Fox sees as a latter-day manifestation of the ideals that inspired Otlet, even as the controversy surrounding the project reminds us of the obstacles universalism still encounters.

Robert Fox is the emeritus professor of the history of science at Oxford University and a Cain Distinguished Fellow at the Chemical Heritage Foundation.