This special issue of The Korean Journal for the History of Science focuses, as the title indicates, on the circulation of scientific knowledge in East Asia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This focus represents an important advance over the previous framework within which much of the world history of science has been written, namely the “science and civilization” approach predominant during the twentieth century. My comments here will be divided into three sections. The first section presents a brief critical overview of the assumptions underlying the “science and civilization” framework, and, in particular, important ramifications for the study of the history of science in East Asia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The second section provides an outline of the approach to the circulation of scientific knowledge proposed here, along with comments on related trends in recent research.
The third section offers summaries of the four articles in this special issue, focusing on the ways in which they each contribute to the reconceptualization of world history of science.