Patterns of Appropriation in the Greek Intellectual Life of the 18th Century

Abstract

Reception or transmission studies are not, of course, something new. There have been studies discussing the diffusion of the new ideas about nature in England, Scotland, France, the Low Countries and Germany during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Many problems related to the reforms by Peter the Great in Russia have also been analyzed. There have been studies on the introduction of the new scientific ideas in Latin America. So is the case for many aspects of science in the Scandinavian countries. Furthermore, there have been many studies on the question of science, technology and imperialism. There have also been accounts of the establishment of university chairs in many countries. The introduction of modern physics in a number of countries is also well documented. The reactions to the Darwinian theory have been the subject of serious scholarship. Nevertheless, studies in languages other than the local languages for the Balkans, the Ottoman Empire, the Central European countries, the Baltic countries, Portugal, but also Spain have been very few and mostly from a philological point of view. The lack of studies for any subject by itself does not, of course, constitute a legitimate reason for starting to work on it; nevertheless, recent developments in the history of science raised many interesting historical questions to warrant an analytical discussion of these issues (Gavroglu 1999, Abartouy et al. 2001).

John Stachel has not only been a very astute observer of what is happening in the uneasy and, perhaps, dangerous times we are living. John is in fact the kind of intellectual Karl Marx must have had in mind when he wrote the 11th thesis on Feuerbach: The point is not (only?) to understand the world but to change it. Though such changes implied by the 11th thesis have proven to be excruciatingly difficult, it is an optimistic sign to know that there are still people like John, with such a committed agenda to what has been envisioned more than 150 years ago.