The Imprint of the global

See the chapter by this name in my book, Reflections on the modern and the Global (Transaction Publishers, 2014). Cf. Martin Albrow’s wonderful article, “Hiroshima: The First Global Event?” Paper presented to the Workshop on “Collective Memory and Collective Knowledge in a Global Age” at the Centre for the Study of Global Governance, London School of Economics and Political Science, April 17/18, 2007.

Cf. Harvey (1990).

Finley (1993) is especially clear sighted in this regard.

I attempt to look at this transition in depth in my book Reflections on the Modern and the Global (Transaction, 2013).

A major effort to see how this is occurring around the world is Sachsenmaier (2011).

Brady (1991, 148). This is a very important book, though often overlooked.

For a luminous treatment of money see Simmel (1900).

Bacon ([1604] 1901, 136). Bacon also speaks of those who direct new experiments of a “higher light” (p. 136).

The terms “science” and “scientist” were not devised, however, until 1833 when William Whewell, the philosopher of science first coined these rubrics as genetic terms encompassing distinct fields such as physics, chemistry, and biology.

In his book, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750 (Oxford University Press, 2001), Jonathan Israel argues that the origin of the Enlightenment was in the seventeenth century, and mainly in Holland. Spinoza is the hero in this account. A very interesting effort to look at the Enlightenment as a global event can be found in Conrad’s (2012).

This whole episode in science is treated brilliantly by Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (1985) by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer.

A transit of Venus across the Sun takes place when the planet Venus passes directly between the Sun and Earth (or another planet), becoming visible against (and hence obscuring a small portion of) the solar disk. During a transit, Venus can be seen from Earth as a small black disk moving across the face of the Sun. The duration of such transits is usually measured in hours (the transit of 2012 lasted 6 hours and 40 minutes). A transit is similar to a solar eclipse by the Moon. While the diameter of Venus is more than three times that of the Moon, Venus appears smaller and travels more slowly across the face of the Sun, because it is much farther away from Earth. Transits of Venus are among the rarest of predictable astronomical phenomena. They occur in a pattern that generally repeats every 243 years, with pairs of transits eight years apart separated by long gaps of 121.5 years and 105.5 years. (Wikipedia).

For an extended discussion of these changes in historiography, see Hughes-Warrington (2005). My own contribution is Chapter 2, “Terms.” An excellent investigation of the treatment around the world of global history is Sachsenmaier (2011).

Van Der Bly, Martha. 2013. “Pananthropoi – Towards a Society for All Humanity.” Global Studies Journal 37.