Locating state science : construction and circulation of state knowledge in Europe, 1750-1850 – EUROSCIENTIA

The EUROSCIENTIA project aims at combining searching academics from various knowledge areas around a French-German knot. It is devoted to the study of state knowledge building and institutionalization as it developed in many different contexts between 1750 and 1850.
"State Knowledge" is here to be understood as multiple knowings, which were conceived and reshaped both for and by states and there active brains. The main goal is to reach a better understanding of how the Republic of letters converted into a national and transnational (as international) web. The spatial metaphor leads as commonly to an abstract topology (dedicated to knowledge areas insofar as they remain contiguous and dependent) and to an objective geography addressing to localities, to flows and webs intertwining capital cities and territories. A particular attention will be granted to the impact of territorial metamorphoses which occured from revolutionary wars and French first Empire manoeuvres. As a French-German development, this very project will allow various working stances including both distance and proximity : distance between institutions and knowledge practices, territorial and political proximity. Furthermore, knowledge pay-backs from non european worlds will not be outcasted. Working days, seminars and a doctoral workshop will punctuate this program. An open-access web-site will bring to the academic community the team main achievements and a dynamic mapping dedicated to state knowledges in Europe. As a closing point, a collective work will be published (in English-language).