A Geohistorical Study of “The Rise of Modern Science”: Mapping Scientific Practice Through Urban Networks, 1500–1900

Abstract

According to Wallerstein (1974, 2004b), the modern world-system emerged in the “long sixteenth century” (c. 1450–1650) as a European-based world-economy straddling the Atlantic. Its basic structure encompassed a division of labor that defined core and periphery zones of economic activity. During the long period of its establishment, the core zone moved from Mediterranean Europe to northwest Europe, reflecting the reorientation of Europe to the rest of the world. It is the processes that create and recreate the core zone that have generated the social changes that have ultimately led to the elimination of all alternative world-systems; by about 1900 the modern world-system was effectively global in scope. One of these core processes has been what is conventionally known as the “rise of modern science.”