Introduction

Abstract

The object of this book is not to give the whole picture of the transmission of Western chemistry to modern Japan. Instead, this book is concerned with how scientific practices in different parts of the world are connected with each other. It is part of my conscious move away from the grand narrative of “Japan meets the West” or “the East meets the West,” which has for so long affected the historiography of modern science in East Asia.¹ The strategy I am adopting is to stress the highly localized and temporized nature of the science by focusing on chemistry in Britain and the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century. The other more important aspect of this book is to look at human encounters in physical spaces. Scholars have identified various kinds of human agents as an essential medium of global circulation, communication, and appropriation of knowledge, which has inspired my approach.² As will become clear, however, I take spaces unusually seriously as an independent agency because they fundamentally affect the nature of human encounters. This approach is summed up in the subtitle of this book, “the lab as contact zone.” By applying the concept of the contact zone this book sheds new light on the relevance of spaces and localities to scientific practice.³