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Zeitschri des Max-Planck-Instituts für europäische Rechtsgeschichte

Journal of the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History


Rechts Rg
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Rechtsgeschichte
Legal History
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http://www.rg-rechtsgeschichte.de/rg22 Rg 22 2014 52 – 60
Zitiervorschlag: Rechtsgeschichte – Legal History Rg 22 (2014)
http://dx.doi.org/10.12946/rg22/052-060

Jürgen Renn

The Globalization of Knowledge in History and its


Normative Challenges

Dieser Beitrag steht unter einer


Creative Commons cc-by-nc-nd 3.0
Abstract

The paper discusses the relationship between


history of law and history of science. It argues that
just as the history of science has recently been
widened to include a more encompassing history
of knowledge, the history of law may also be
conceived of as part of a larger history of norma-
tivity. Science and law, when viewed as cultural
abstractions deriving from reflections on concrete
practices and experiences along historical trajecto-
ries, must be understood from a global perspective.
Aspects of a global history of knowledge that
shaped the emergence of modern science inform
this approach.

×
Rg 22 2014

Jürgen Renn

The Globalization of Knowledge in History and its


Normative Challenges 1
From the History of Science to the Global that some of this expansion was only achieved by
History of Knowledge force, by trying to enforce the laws of physics on
biology, for instance, or by the colonial expansion
It seems that there are some remarkable simi- of Western science, often accompanied by the
larities between current situations in the history of violent suppression of other forms of thinking.
law and in the history of science. Both are shaped Today, this picture is being criticized and re-
by strong European traditions and both have an jected on the basis of much more fundamental
urgent need to expand their horizons to a global arguments. Philosophers of science have tried in
perspective. This essay will first dwell on this vain to identify the scientific method allegedly at
parallelism and go on to discuss how the history the core of scientific rationality. And historians of
of science appears – methodologically – from a science no longer see the Scientific Revolution as
global perspective. The discussion will then be the historical breakthrough that fundamentally
extended by developing a theoretical framework changed the practice of science at large. Science
according to which both science and law can be no longer seems distinguishable from other forms
conceived as cultural abstractions with global his- of cultural practices. It has ceased to be a paradigm
tories. As I am unable to pursue this perspective in of universal rationality and presents itself as just
detail for the history of law, the third part of the one more object of study for cultural history or
essay will sketch what one could possibly learn social anthropology. Even the most fundamental
from a global history of knowledge. My most aspects of the classical image of science, proof,
ambitious hope is that this may serve as encourage- experimentation, data, objectivity or rationality
ment for developing an epistemic history of nor- have turned out to be deeply historical in their
mativity in parallel to what historical epistemology nature.
tries to achieve for the history of science. By way of This insight has opened up many new perspec-
conclusion, the normative challenges of the global- tives on the study of the history of science, which is
ization of knowledge will be discussed. actually turning more and more into a history of
The history of science has been dominated by knowledge. It thus includes not only academic
the history of Western and in particular European practices, but in addition also the production and
science. Its paradigmatic topic has been the Scien- reproduction of knowledge far removed from
tific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth traditional academic settings, for instance, in arti-
centuries. This Scientific Revolution has suppos- sanal and artistic practices or even in family and
edly given rise to modern science not only with household practices. More importantly, non-West-
specific discoveries, but by establishing a general ern epistemic practices are also considered without
scientific method, consisting in the formulation being immediately gauged against the standards of
of hypotheses which are then tested by experimen- established Western science. “On their own terms”
tation or observation. Modern science and the is the slogan under which Chinese science is
scientific method were supposedly developed in currently being analyzed, without a constant eval-
Western Europe, first in astronomy and then in uation of what it lacks in comparison to Western
physics, and from there conquered the geograph- science. Similarly, the worldwide circulation of
ical world and the world of knowledge. Even in the knowledge is now considered not just as a one-
traditional account, however, it has been admitted sided colonial or post-colonial diffusion process,

1 This paper was presented at the col-


loquium: European Normativity –
Global Historical Perspective, Max
Planck Institute for European Legal
History, 3 September 2013.

52 The Globalization of Knowledge in History and its Normative Challenges


Fokus focus

but rather an exchange of knowledge in which Local knowledge constitutes the substratum of all
each side is active and in which knowledge is other forms of knowledge, generating the global
shaped as much by dissemination as by appropria- diversity also of scientific knowledge. With all due
tion. reservation, I am tempted to suggest that a similar
In recent years, the migration of knowledge has account may be useful to discuss the universalist
become an active field of research. With few claims associated with normative issues such as
exceptions, the emphasis has been placed mostly human rights, for example.
on local histories that focus on detailed studies of The history of science can only be understood
political and cultural contexts and emphasize the against the background of a global history of
social construction of science. While this emphasis knowledge. The fragmented picture suggested by
has been extremely useful in overcoming the tradi- current cultural studies has induced us to under-
tional grand narratives, and also in highlighting estimate the extent to which the world has been
the complexity of these processes and their depend- connected – for a very long time – by knowledge.
ence on specific cultural, social or epistemic con- One might even go so far as to claim that, just as
texts, it has led to a somewhat distorted, highly there is only one history of life on this planet, there
fragmented picture of science. is also only one history of knowledge.
This picture does little justice to the overwhelm-
ing societal, economic and cultural significance of
science in a globalized world. Rather than repre- A Theoretical Framework
senting one of the major and still unexplained
economic and societal forces in the modern world, Is there a theoretical perspective from which
science dissolves into a plethora of highly localized such a claim may be substantiated, and possibly
and contextualized activities, which are scarcely even extended to other aspects of human culture
connected to each other. It has become a mark of such as legal thinking? This question leads to the
political correctness to provincialize European sci- second part of this essay, dealing with fundamental
ence as representing just one among many, equally concepts such as knowledge and institutions and
justified points of view within a global culture. their normative dimensions. In the history of
Such well-meaning political correctness does science it is not common to explicitly define such
not enable historians and philosophers to compen- notions but, I believe, important in order to con-
sate for the destruction of indigenous cultures, for nect historical studies to current discussions in the
the genocides, for the lack of gender equality, in social and behavioral sciences. I will first define
short, for the immense damage and crimes com- knowledge and then institutions, in both cases
mitted in world history in the name of Western making reference, in an essential way, to the
rationality and science. The golem of science can- fundamental human capacity of symbolic think-
not be tamed by underestimating it, let alone by ing. I will also emphasize the crucial role of
overestimating our own influence as its witnesses. external representations, that is, of the material
But what can we do when we do not want to culture serving as the external medium of human
ascribe the powerful role of science, for better or thinking and social behavior, such as language,
worse, in the modern world to its intrinsic ration- artifacts, art, writing or other symbolic systems.
ality, to the superiority of a universal scientific Written law may thus be considered as one type of
method, or to some kind of capitalist, technocratic external representation of normativity. But let me
conspiracy responsible for its triumphal procession first define knowledge before I return to norma-
as a driving force of modernization? Neither piling tivity.
up ever more local studies, nor offering softened Knowledge is conceived here as the capacity of
versions of the original universalist point of view an individual or a group to solve problems and to
will do. What is needed is a truly global perspective mentally anticipate the corresponding actions.
accounting for the universalizing role of science in Knowledge arises from the reflection on material,
today’s world as well as for its ever shaky claims to socially constrained actions. Given the fundamen-
rationality on historical grounds. Such a global tal human capacity for symbolic thinking, the
perspective must begin with the insight that the dissemination and transmission of knowledge re-
place of local knowledge in the global community lies crucially on external representations such as,
is not just a residual niche, but rather a matrix. for instance, symbols for counting objects. The

Jürgen Renn 53
Rg 22 2014

reflection on actions involving such external rep- edge, knowledge has to rely on institutions. Insti-
resentations may then in turn create higher-order tutions form the basis for knowledge systems,
forms of knowledge, such as an abstract concept of which in turn become the condition for the stabil-
number. These higher-order forms of knowledge ity and further development of institutions. Insti-
are removed from the primary actions, but in ways tutions, however, do not think. Since institutions
that are dependent on the contingent material and mediate collective actions, they have to rely on
social nature of the external representations, for shared knowledge and engender distributive think-
instance, on the specifics of the symbol system ing processes.
employed. The dissemination and transmission of As in the case of knowledge systems, external
knowledge takes place in the context of knowledge representations also play a key role in the function-
systems that rely on societal institutions. ing and development of institutions. All kinds of
Institutions, such as the family, the state, a material aspects – persons, animals, places, arti-
school or an enterprise, are a means of reproducing facts, symbols or rituals – may become part of the
the social relations existing within a given society, external, material representations of an institution.
and in particular, the societal distribution of labor. They now represent a normative social order,
The coordination of individual actions mediated defining a field of actions compatible with the
by institutions presupposes behavioral norms and regulations of an institution.
belief systems such as habits, religion, law, mor- Institutions regulate human interactions in or-
ality or ideology. A behavioral norm is the capa- der to cope with certain regularly occurring prob-
bility of an individual or a group to act in accord- lems such as those related to cooperation, the
ance with institutionalized cooperation. The inter- distribution of labor, the redistribution of resour-
actions of an individual with others mediated by ces or the resolution of societal conflicts. Such
an institution and their representation by a collec- regulations externalize problem-solving capacities;
tive belief system are constitutive of both an they contribute to solving societal problems be-
individual’s identity and of its relation to a com- cause the coordination of individual interactions
munal identity. Belief systems result from the can be partly discharged to the handling of external
reflection of institutionalized actions and imple- representations of an institution, such as following
ment the regulative framework of institutions in a command chain, dealing with paperwork in an
the minds of individuals. They allow individuals to administration, exchanging goods for money on
interpret and control their own behavior and that the market, or applying written law to a violation
of others in the framework of the societal group to of norms. The external representations thus reduce
which they belong, forming the basis of normative the knowledge required to solve problems of col-
judgements and their legitimization. lective interaction.
What is the relation between knowledge and As in the case of knowledge, external represen-
institutions? There are some striking similarities tations of institutions also engender processes of
and differences. Institutions represent the potential abstraction enabling higher-order forms of societal
of a society or a group to coordinate the actions organization in which coordinative functions are
of individuals and to thus interact with their en- partly taken over by new forms of external repre-
vironment. As an “action potential” they bear close sentation. For example, in modern society, certain
relations to knowledge, but there are important aspects of the coordination of societal interactions
differences. There is no knowledge without the are governed by an abstract time represented by
mental anticipation of actions, while institutions clocks. This process of cultural abstraction contrib-
must regulate collective behavior without such utes to the opacity of institutions from the per-
direct mental anticipation of the collective actions spective of individuals because it decouples actions
and their consequences. with the representations from the concrete inter-
Institutions involve knowledge on various lev- actions at lower levels of societal reflexivity. Regu-
els. They must embody and transmit knowledge in lating one’s actions with the help of a clock thus
the sense of the capacity of individuals to anticipate becomes an efficient substitute for the direct co-
actions that are compatible with the coordination ordination of actions among the members of a
regulated by institutions, as well as knowledge on complex society.
social control and knowledge on how to resolve Both in the case of knowledge and in that of
conflicts. Just as institutions have to rely on knowl- social order, external representations may them-

54 The Globalization of Knowledge in History and its Normative Challenges


Fokus focus

selves become the objects and means of actions, encounter normativity in scientific thinking even
giving rise to rich symbolic worlds of social and in basic principles such as in the moral value of
epistemic meaning with feedback on the under- truth or in demands for good scientific practice.
lying social and material practices. And we encounter fact-dependence in ethical
A specific concept of abstraction is crucial for norms, as when new insights into the nature of
the approach presented here. It goes back to the human reproduction or new medical practices
psychological investigations of Jean Piaget who make it necessary to rethink ethical principles
introduced the concept of »reflective abstraction,« about the protection of life. The theoretical frame-
but is used here in the sense of Peter Damerow work presented here suggests that ultimately moral
who transformed it into a thoroughly historical and epistemic norms have the same origin, that
notion by emphasizing the role of material, so- they both result from a reflection on collective and
cially contextualized actions as the origin of cog- individual human actions and experiences.
nitive structures. In this sense, reflective abstrac- The possibilities for reflection on human ac-
tions in science, such as those giving rise to the tions and experiences evidently depend on the
abstract mathematical concept of number, ulti- knowledge economy of a society. This knowledge
mately depend on the material actions from which economy comprises societal institutions in which
they originate, such as the concrete actions of knowledge is transmitted and generated. Similarly
counting material objects with the help of number to the knowledge economy, there is also a moral
words or number signs. This will be illustrated economy of a society. The functions of the episte-
later with a historical example. Reflective abstrac- mic and the moral economies are different. The
tion is a constructive process in which novel knowledge economy serves to maintain, transmit
cognitive structures are built up by reflecting on and develop the cooperative action potential of a
operations with specific external representations society by means of epistemic practices. The moral
such as language, tallies or mathematical symbols. economy, on the other hand, serves to maintain,
These external representations may in turn em- transmit and develop social cohesion and the
body previously constructed mental structures so possibilities for cooperation within a given set of
that a potentially infinite chain of abstractions is institutions and by means of normative practices.
created. Clearly, these functions are closely intertwined:
Here I must warn against a common misunder- maintaining social cohesion requires problem solv-
standing associated with the original use of the ing and hence knowledge, while collective prob-
concept of reflective abstraction in the tradition lem solving presupposes cooperation and hence
of Piaget: It may appear as if this chain of abstrac- moral norms and practices. The knowledge-de-
tions gives rise to a teleologically predetermined pendence of norms and the normative dimensions
hierarchy of steps leading from actions with con- of knowledge are both mediated by the historical
crete objects to ever higher-order mental opera- evolution of cultural abstractions. These cultural
tions. This is simply not the case for the concept of abstractions are neither universal nor merely con-
reflective abstraction as reformulated by Damerow. ventions, but are ultimately based on human
The historical development of reflective abstrac- experience and its concrete historical representa-
tions is in fact highly path-dependent, contingent tions.
as it is on a series of concrete historical experiences. At least in the history of science it has turned
The same holds more generally for cultural abstrac- out to be extremely useful to analyze the precise
tions, including legal principles and moral norms. way in which experience enters fundamental ab-
But societal reflexivity is somewhat different from stractions such as space and time. It has also
epistemic reflexivity in that it is even more difficult turned out useful to analyze contradictions in
to debunk its abstractions and identify the actual systems of knowledge as a driving force of this
historical experiences that shaped them. development. For example, in 1905 Albert Ein-
Normative thinking is actually often considered stein confronted seemingly insurmountable con-
to be fundamentally different from scientific think- tradictions within classical physics. But then he
ing, just as norms and facts are taken to belong realized that the classical concepts of space and
to different categories. Science is assumed, at least time were neither given a priori, that is, prior to
at its core, to be value-free, while ethical norms experience, as had been claimed by Kant, nor
supposedly cannot be grounded on facts. Yet, we merely conventions, as had been claimed by Poin-

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caré. Einstein recognized instead that these abstract state organization, but for a level of socioeconomic
concepts were actually conceptual constructs based development depending on these novel cultural
on a limited domain of experience, as had been abstractions, from literature and law to science.The
suggested by Hume. The realization that the much example of the invention of writing thus nicely
larger experimental horizon of the new physics of illustrates how more or less contingent consequen-
his time transcended this domain eventually ces of historical processes may turn into the neces-
helped him to create relativity theory with its sary precondition for the stability of the current
fundamentally new concepts of space and time. situation as well as for its further development.
From such instances, an epistemic history of It has often been claimed that, since its incep-
science has inspired a reconstruction of the expe- tion, writing has been used as a means of repre-
riences underlying the fundamental concepts and senting language. But in fact it emerged to some
practices of science. Similarly, one might conceive degree independently of spoken language – as a
of an epistemic history of normativity studying the technology for the administration of centralized
experiences that have shaped the fundamental politico-economic systems of the ancient Mesopo-
precepts of normative thinking and practices. tamian city-states where its communicative func-
tion was restricted to the administrative context.
Thus, the first writing did not represent the mean-
The Emergence of Modern Science against the ing of sentences of spoken language, nor did it
Background of a Global History of Knowledge reflect grammatical structures of language, but
rather meanings related to specific mental models
This leads to the third part of this essay, dealing of societal practices such as accounting. Since it
with the globalization of knowledge in history and was not used as a universal means of communica-
its consequences. Some of the basic mechanisms of tion, it could only transport a very precise meaning
the global exchange of knowledge and its interde- in a very precise context. It was on this basis that
pendence with other processes of transfer and a long-term and stable Babylonian administrative
transformation may be recognizable even in the economy developed, which in turn served as a
earliest phases of human development: First of all, precondition for further development, in particu-
it becomes evident that all of these processes are lar, for the second invention of writing, this time
layered, in the sense that the introduction of a new as a universal means of codifying language. This
process such as the exchange of knowledge by second invention of writing would have been
written texts does not lead to the eclipse of earlier impossible without the spread and the manifold
processes such as the exchange of knowledge by the use of the earlier proto-writing. This leads to a
diffusion of material culture or interpersonal con- third general observation on the mechanisms of
tacts. This historical superposition of experiences knowledge evolution: The exploration of the limits
in itself necessitates a global perspective. A second of a given system of knowledge typically consti-
observation is that the outcome of a knowledge tutes a presupposition for its transformation into
production process typically becomes the precon- a new system of knowledge, in this case for the
dition for the stability of the level of development transformation of the context-bound proto-writing
attained. This may be illustrated with a historical into a universal system of writing.
example: In the fourth millennium BCE, we see As the historian of science Peter Damerow has
the beginning of large-scale settlements in Meso- pointed out, there is a similar development pre-
potamia. At this time we also see, not coinciden- ceding the emergence of mathematics: this too
tally, the development of writing. The invention of emerged from context-dependent Babylonian ad-
writing was originally a consequence of state ad- ministrative proto-writing.This illustrates the proc-
ministration. Not only did it change the conditions ess of reflective abstraction I introduced earlier. For
of the geographical transfer and historical trans- a long time, not even historians of mathematics
mission of knowledge, but also extended the hu- would have imagined that there were numbers
man cognitive facilities by stimulating reflection whose meaning depended entirely on the context
processes and the creation and articulation of prev- of what they were supposed to count. In other
iously unknown cultural abstractions. Eventually, words, the meaning of the respective symbols
writing was converted from a consequence into a depended on whether they were counting people,
precondition, not only for a particular model of length, field measurements or pints of beer, the

56 The Globalization of Knowledge in History and its Normative Challenges


Fokus focus

latter being an important application of Babylo- appropriated such knowledge, especially when that
nian mathematics. And yet, our present day math- culture, as is the case for Greek culture, was geared
ematics, which claims universal validity, emerged to a public discussion of political decisions and
from a system of symbols that were originally their justification. While the justification of Bab-
invented exclusively to solve specific administrative ylonian or Egyptian scientific knowledge was
problems and characterized by this very context largely inherent in the institutional and represen-
dependency. tational structures in which it was generated, it
Contrary to what philosophers have long be- became the subject of explicit normative reasoning
lieved, the universality of mathematical knowledge in the Greek context.
is thus not the characteristic feature of a specific The process just described was a process of cul-
type of knowledge. It was rather the outcome of tural interaction in which knowledge accumulated
a specific historical trajectory of globalization. over thousands of years in the cultures of the
Since the third millennium BCE, writing possibly Middle East eventually changed its form as a con-
spread from Mesopotamia throughout the world, sequence of being transferred to a new context.
although it cannot be excluded that there may This is a striking example of the important role of
have been independent inventions of writing as cultural breaks and intercultural appropriation for
well. But it does appear that the idea of writing innovations due to the recontextualization they
may have spread almost immediately to Iran and engender. In contrast to the transition from Bab-
Syria, then a thousand years later to the Indus ylonian to Greek science, in China there was, at
civilization, and another thousand years later to that time, no comparable transmission across a
China. This spread led to an enormous increase in cultural break connected with a complete recon-
the possibilities for transmitting knowledge, but textualization of knowledge. In Chinese as well as
also for the emergence of science. in Babylonian traditions, the structures of scientific
The initial emergence of science in a form reasoning therefore remained, at least from our
familiar to us took place in different parts of the perspective, largely implicit. Thus ancient Chinese
ancient world: Greek and Chinese science devel- mathematics has also seemed to some of its West-
oped independently of each other around the ern interpreters to represent a mere collection of
middle of the first millennium BCE. The onset of instructions, devoid of explicit scientific reasoning.
Greek science is to be found in the Middle East, not And just as in the Babylonian case, this view has
far from the cultural centers of Mesopotamia. The turned out to be highly misleading, disregarding
point that I want to emphasize here is the emer- the intrinsic logic of Chinese science.
gence of cultural abstractions by cultural transfer, Processes of cultural abstraction by recontextu-
a fourth general feature of the evolution of knowl- alization are not just characteristic of science, but
edge. As a consequence of the transfer of Babylo- have also shaped the traditions of normative think-
nian knowledge on medicine, astronomy and ing as can be inferred from the history of religion.
mathematics to a different cultural area, that For instance, the Babylonian exile of the Jews in
knowledge itself took on another form. In partic- the sixth century BCE and their later encounters
ular, the justification for the validity of a claim was with Persian and Hellenistic traditions not only led
made explicit in the Greek context, while in the to an integration of new cultural resources into the
Babylonian context it remained part of implicit Jewish tradition, but also to a transformation of
knowledge. Babylonian science does in general not this tradition towards greater inclusiveness and
comprise explicit scientific proofs in the sense universality. This can be illustrated by the biblical
familiar to us so that its knowledge appears to us account of the prophet Jonah charged by God to
as an unfounded collection of instructions. preach in the Assyrian city Niniveh, announcing its
In fact, however, this knowledge was not as imminent destruction. Jonah tries to escape the
unfounded as it may appear. It was just that the divine mission but is ultimately confronted with
normative control of knowledge operated in a the fact that the God of Israel encloses its ignorant
different way. Since knowledge was embedded in enemies in His grace. Jonah ends the Book
the age-old institutional and practical contexts of abruptly with God’s rhetorical question:
Babylonian culture, there was simply no motiva-
tion to make the reasoning behind certain claims And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city,
explicit. This changed as soon as another culture wherein are more than six-score thousand per-

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sons that cannot discern between their right by the Church as well as by universities across
hand and their left hand; and also much cattle? Europe.
In the late Middle Ages and the early modern
Similarly, the emergence of Buddhism at about period, the knowledge system based on the Chris-
the same time in India occurred in the context of tian doctrines and Aristotelian scholasticism
a reaction to the contemporary Brahmanical re- underwent a fundamental transformation. In the
ligion and led to a highly reflective textual tradi- context of the development of extensive com-
tion. Buddhism carried with it packages of knowl- mercial networks, of new military technologies,
edge comprising texts, artisanal and artistic practi- of large-scale engineering endeavors such as the
ces, but also forms of social organization such as Arsenal of Venice, and of large building projects
monastic communities that travelled across Eura- like the cathedral of Florence, a new class of
sia. scientist-engineers such as Brunelleschi, Leonardo
Religions such as Judaism, Buddhism and later and Galileo faced important technological chal-
Christianity and Islam provided efficient networks lenges. Addressing these challenges, they relied on
for spreading both knowledge and normative theoretical knowledge from antiquity, the Islam-
thinking. These world religions embodied much icate world and from medieval scholastics, which
of the structures of authority and of the mecha- they combined with contemporary practical
nisms for knowledge production and dissemina- knowledge, thus transforming the established sys-
tion of the state. But whereas knowledge in the tem of knowledge and creating a new form of
state was limited by its geographic boundaries, the science in which theoretical knowledge was sys-
packages of knowledge associated with world reli- tematically related to experience.
gions traveled more or less freely across state In response to the encompassing religious
boundaries. Religion offered a new social order worldview, the new knowledge accumulated by
greater than that of the state, but modeled on the these scientist-engineers began to assume the char-
state; thus, for instance, the concept of the Umma acter of an equally all-embracing interpretation of
in Islam and the City of God in Christianity. the world, as can be found in the great philosoph-
While authority was merely asserted by the ical concepts of the early-modern period, for in-
state (and grounded in physical force), the world stance, in the works of Giordano Bruno or René
religions needed to justify their authority. Thus Descartes. Science eventually became a kind of
they developed sophisticated schemes of justifica- counter ideology by which the emerging bourgeoi-
tion and produced extensive bodies of knowledge sie could defend its claims to power, not according
through complex processes of dialectics. Some of to a transcendent, religious order, but according to
these schemes and processes had their origins in immanent laws of nature and society. The new
earlier systems of thought that had arisen under knowledge thus also assumed a normative dimen-
specific local conditions, such as Hellenistic phi- sion.
losophy. But whereas such schemes and processes This situation helps to explain why, in the six-
had been local, the world religions embedded teenth century, the reform of astronomy by Co-
them in institutions of potentially global extent. pernicus, placing the Sun rather than the Earth at
It is against the background of these complex the center of the universe, could have had such far-
schemes of argument, processes of justification reaching ideological consequences: it occurred
and elaborate bodies of knowledge – and in dia- within a context of a socially dominant system of
logue with them – that modern science was born, knowledge that claimed to be universal and exclu-
as will now be discussed. sive. The geocentric worldview, placing the Earth
The capacity of religion to challenge the author- at the center of the universe, was deeply anchored
ity of the state in terms of its own internal logic within this system of knowledge. Questioning
ultimately increased the potential of science to this claim, even with good scientific reasons and
challenge religious authority. This is especially true without any intent of heretic provocation, still
for a religious tradition like medieval and early amounted to unhinging the whole system and
modern Christianity that systematically commit- thus causing an ideological revolution by means
ted itself to the augmentation of knowledge, of an astronomical, and at the outset purely scien-
positioning itself within a comprehensive world- tific innovation. In contrast, there was no com-
view that eventually was institutionally supported parable revolution in seventeenth-century China

58 The Globalization of Knowledge in History and its Normative Challenges


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when Jesuit missionaries introduced Copernican economic knowledge and its normative reflection.
theory, or even Galileo’s telescope, which made the Such socio-epistemic complexes may even endan-
new view of the heavens so intuitively plausible. In ger their ecological and social substrata – unless
Ming China, there was simply no combined reli- new scientific knowledge continually becomes
gious and philosophical worldview that this new available. In consequence, they sharpen the dilem-
discovery could potentially provoke. ma of human freedom, enhancing humanity’s
In the early modern period, all the patterns of potential to act but making the world increasingly
the globalization of science had essentially already dependent on the appropriate use of this potential.
formed within the European network of scientific It thus becomes clear that the much-discussed
knowledge. It was crucially shaped by Europe’s globalization processes of the present involve
dense but culturally diverse urban landscape. The knowledge not just as a mere presupposition or
successful expansion of science within Europe consequence of economic or political processes.
could therefore create a model essentially followed It is in fact the globalization of knowledge as a
by all later globalization processes of science, in- historical process with its own dynamics that
cluding the replication of institutional settings and orchestrates the interaction of all the underlying
canons of knowledge. The thus emerging network layers of globalization. The globalization of knowl-
of scientific knowledge exhibited self-organizing edge and its normative reflection profoundly in-
behavior, as is evident in the fact that there was no fluence all other globalization processes – includ-
central control of scientific practice, and yet scien- ing the formation of markets – by shaping the
tific knowledge accumulated at an astonishing rate identity of its actors as well as of its critics.
and traveled quickly across the emerging scientific It is important, however, not only to investigate
community. Positive network externalities fostered the globalization of knowledge and of normative
the inherent dynamics of spreading science so that thinking, but also to pay due attention to its
the more people engaged in it, the more useful it counterpart, the localization of knowledge and
became. Science developed into a self-organizing norms in local processes of appropriation. Refer-
network that inherently scales globally. ring such an analysis to the present we may perhaps
The globalization of knowledge today is a con- regain autonomy with regard to the economic
sequence of two processes: the intrinsic global- dimension dominating our current perception of
ization of science just described and the fundamen- these processes. An investigation of this kind may
tal role that knowledge, particularly scientific explain the sense in which the globalization of
knowledge, has assumed in other, economic, polit- knowledge and its encounters with local knowl-
ical and cultural globalization processes. One im- edge has become a critical dimension of today’s
portant result of the interaction between intrinsic globalization processes on which their future de-
and extrinsic processes of the globalization of velopment depends. From this perspective, they
knowledge is the emergence of global objects of may turn either in the direction of further subject-
science, in particular global human challenges ing the economy of knowledge to the control of
such as climate change, scarcity of water, global other globalization processes, or in the direction of
food provision, reliable energy supply, sustainable strengthening the autonomy of knowledge and its
demographic development and nuclear prolifera- normative reflection, and thus also our potential
tion. for steering such processes.
The production of scientific knowledge in large-
scale technological ventures, in global infrastruc-
tures and regulations, or in worldwide operating Knowledge and Normativity
enterprises has given rise to socio-epistemic com-
plexes involving new epistemic communities. To conclude, let me briefly come back to the
These socio-epistemic complexes such as the global relation between knowledge and normativity.
energy or traffic systems cause changes on a global The historical contingency of moral and epistemic
scale that cannot be easily undone. Governance of judgments seems to make them utterly relative,
such socio-epistemic complexes requires the pro- leaving no room for universal standards. Yet, the
duction of more and more scientific knowledge global perspective that we have suggested makes it
which becomes ever more inseparable from the nevertheless possible to conceive of epistemic and
development of policies relying on social and normative developments within history as poten-

Jürgen Renn 59
Rg 22 2014

tially representing collective learning processes. In cene, the totality of these experiences will decide
ontogenetic development normative concepts such on the fate of the human species. Pursuing certain
as justice emerge from children’s experiences with norms for social behavior and developing certain
cooperation and the possibility of interchanging knowledge for dealing with our natural and soci-
perspectives. The challenge is to scale up such etal environment may eventually lead to our ex-
experiences of reciprocity under global conditions tinction as a species; these were then evidently the
for cultural learning. wrong moral and epistemic norms.
From this perspective, the possibility of univer- This hindsight perspective suggests that a justi-
salizing norms can only be the ever-partial result of fication of universal aspects of norms does not need
historical processes that encompass the emergence to involve any form of transcendence but quite the
and the vanishing of cultural experiments, a sed- contrary, that they could rather be founded on a
imentation of these experiences in collective mem- lack of transcendence, with the realization that
ory, as well as a growing and ultimately global human life is ultimately nothing but a purpose
connectivity of human cultures. As a society, we unto itself.
may locally and temporarily establish whatever
norms we like. Ultimately, however, with the
growing global connectivity and the planetary
impact of our collective actions in the Anthropo- 

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60 The Globalization of Knowledge in History and its Normative Challenges

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