This article examines discourse on science citations and information between 1950 and 1980. Drawing upon the works of Eugene Garfield, John Desmond Bernal, and Derek de Solla Price, it explores how the scientific publication became a locus for shaping temporalities. Narratives and visual representations were “time-binding techniques,” which captured, arranged, and displayed temporalities. Past, present, and future were not merely sequential but intricately interwoven. It gave rise to ambivalent notions of both progress and potential hazards of unchecked scientific growth. Furthermore, the article underscores how time-binding techniques had both ontological and policy effects. They defined a place of contemporary society within a chronological flow of time. These accounts also generated calls for rational science policies and stewardship of science amidst what was perceived as an ongoing information explosion. By synthesizing research on historical time and history of postwar science policies, the article contributes to an understanding of temporalities emerging from the sciences in the postwar era.

Under utgrävningen av Çatalhöyük i Turkiet hittades några väggmålningar som visar staden rakt ovanifrån. De är över åtta tusen år gamla och utgör startpunkten för vad idéhistorikern Staffan Bergwik kallar överblickens historia. I den ryms också Columbus och de tidiga sjöfararna som ritade upp världen på sina seglatser, kartografen Gerardus Mercator som skapade den första atlasen och de så kallade gradmätningsexpeditionerna under 1700-talet, då frågan om jorden var rund eller spetsig vid polerna skulle avgöras.

Viljan att kunna överblicka världen ledde den västerländska människan upp på de högsta bergstopparna och så småningom upp i luften, i ballonger, flygplan och rymdfarkoster. Men berättelsen om hur jorden upptäcktes och kartlades har också mörkare stråk. Kolonialism och imperialism följde när människan med överblick skaffade sig makt.

A distinctive and widely recognized feature of the modern history of knowledge in the last 250 years is the growing epistemological split between the study of nature and the study of human history. This divide emerged from the late eighteenth century and onwards, encompassing a variety of knowledge practices and emerging forms of historical thinking. It was further shaped by disciplinary formations and institutional arrangements in the nineteenth andearly twentieth centuries, especially in what became known through this process as the humanities.

Denna bok handlar om historievetenskaperna sätt att producera kunskap genom att kontextualisera. Den vänder sig primärt till studenter och forskare inom de humanistiska discipliner som arbetar med historiska perspektiv. Bokens ambition är ta med läsaren in i själva görandet och visa hur kontextualisering är ett viktigt moment i historiska studier på alla nivåer. Boken hoppas därmed stimulera till ökad reflektion och diskussion om hur vi går till väga när vi tolkar, skapar eller omtolkar historiska, kulturella och samhälleliga sammanhang.

Recontextualization: The creative construction of contextsThis chapter deals with ”recontextualization”. It argues that a core analytical function of any history writing is reflecting upon which context a source, actor, or other historical phenomenon is placed within. The chapter draws on the example of the early twentieth-century Swedish geographer Sven Hedin to indicate various contexts that his travels, publications and images can be placed in. Depending upon which context we as historians construct, different narratives about Hedin’s endeavors emerge. More importantly, the choice of context has repercussions on the object of study beyond Hedin as a concrete actor. Accordingly, the chapter indicates how it is possible to reread and recontextualize the work of the geographer as part of a much broader history of planetary scales, produced through travel narratives and imagery going back to the seventeenth century. While Hedin himself did not explicitly claim to be part of such a history, the historian is at liberty to construct such a broader context. Thus, Hedin is recontextualized, and important steps in historical analytical work can be produced.

As climate change becomes an increasingly important part of public discourse, the relationship between nature and time is changing. Nature can no longer considered to be a slow and immobile background to human history, and the future can no longer be viewed as open and detached from the past. Times of History, Times of Nature engages with this historical shift in temporal sensibilities through a combination of detailed case studies and synthesizing efforts. Focusing on the history of knowledge, media theory, and environmental humanities, this volume explores the rich and nuanced notions of time and temporality that have emerged in response to climate change