Globalizatio ex-nihilo? reflections on pre-modern Indian Ocean Nautical Sources, scientific globality and technical globalisation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-7976.2026.e103866Keywords:
Technoscience, Philosophy of history, GlobalizationAbstract
My central assertion is that in world history in general, and in particular in history of knowledge, the dynamic process of globalisation presupposes and relies on a fundamental static counterpart for which I use here the word globality. To support this contention, I start from an analogy between the genesis of the world, cosmogony, elaborating on philosophical and theological points to draw my analogy. Then I introduce examples from research on history of early modern science, to do with Indian Ocean navigation and the early modern Iberian expansion.
References
Acevedo, J. (2020). Alphanumeric cosmology from Greek into Arabic: The idea of stoicheia through the medieval Mediterranean. Mohr Siebeck.
Acevedo, J. (forthcoming 2026). Division and consecration of maritime space: Notes on the cosmology of early modern Indian Ocean nautical sciences. In L. Lobo-Guerrero, I. Hamati-Ataya, & N. Gäckle (Eds.), Navigation, connectivity, and the opening of global spaces. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Ames, G. J. (2009). Em nome de Deus: The journal of the first voyage of Vasco da Gama to India, 1497–1499 (European Expansion and Indigenous Response, 4). Brill.
Bartelson, J. (2010). The social construction of globality. International Political Sociology, 4(3), 219–235.
Barros, J. de. (1778). Décadas da Asia. Regia Officina.
Bartelson, J. (2009). Visions of world community. Cambridge University Press.
Bergamo, T. M. de M. (2024). Aristotelian thought and philosophy as a way of life. Revista Sistemática, 14(4), 922–931.
Bracht, F. (2019). Ao ritmo das monções: Medicina, farmácia, filosofia natural e produção de conhecimento na Índia Portuguesa do século XVIII (Teses Universitárias, 12). FLUP-CITCEM.
Cavafy, C. P. (2009). Collected poems – Bilingual edition (P. Sherrard & E. Keeley, Trans.). Princeton University Press.
Conley, V. A. (2012). Michel de Certeau: Anthropological spaces. In Spatial ecologies: Urban sites, state and world-space in French cultural theory. Liverpool University Press.
Coomaraswamy, A. K. (1939). Ornament. The Art Bulletin, 21(4), 375–382.
Coomaraswamy, A. K. (1947). Time and eternity. Artibus Asiae. Supplementum, 8, 1–140.
Cosgrove, D. (2003). Globalism and tolerance in early modern geography. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 93(4), 852–870.
Garcia de Orta. (1891). Colóquios dos simples e drogas da Índia (Vols. 1–2). Imprensa Nacional.
Giurgevich, L. (2020). Bibliotheca roteirística: Edições impressas em Portugal dos séculos XVII e XVIII (RUTTER Technical Notes, 1). ERC RUTTER Project. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12417392.v2
Giurgevich, L. (2023). Roteiros portugueses do século XVII (Manuscritos) (RUTTER Technical Notes, 12). ERC RUTTER Project. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7908597
Giurgevich, L. (2021). Roteiros portugueses dos séculos XV e XVI (Manuscritos) (RUTTER Technical Notes, 7). ERC RUTTER Project. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.14529084
King, H. (2020). ‘Treating the patient, not just the disease’: Reading ancient medicine in modern holistic medicine. In C. Thumiger (Ed.), Holism in ancient medicine and its reception (pp. 400–424). Brill.
Kragh, H. (2020). Cosmology and religion. Encyclopedia of the History of Science, 3(2). Carnegie Mellon University. https://doi.org/10.34758/pv1n-2q15
Li, P., et al. (2025). Preparation, structural analysis, antitumor mechanism and research in drug delivery systems of natural plant polysaccharides: A review. Carbohydrate Polymer Technologies and Applications, 11, 100957.
Massoumi Hamedani, H. (2008). The universality of science: Examples from history. In Science as a gateway to understanding: International workshop proceedings (pp. 57–64). National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
Menéndez Pidal, R. (2004). Flor nueva de romances viejos. Espasa Calpe.
Raj, K. (2016). Rescuing science from civilisation: On Joseph Needham’s “Asiatic Mode of (Knowledge) Production”. In A. Bala & P. Duara (Eds.), The bright dark ages: Comparative and connective perspectives (History of Science and Medicine Library, 53). Brill.
Ribeiro, L. C. (2023). Jesuit astrology: Prognostication and science in early modern culture. Brill.
Sevilla, A. L. (2017). Watsuji Tetsurô’s global ethics of emptiness: A contemporary look at a modern Japanese philosopher (Global Political Thinkers). Palgrave Macmillan.
Smith, P. H. (2009). Science on the move: Recent trends in the history of early modern science. Renaissance Quarterly, 62(2), 345–375.
Smith, R. J. (2012). How the “Book of Changes” arrived in the West. New England Review, 33(1), 25–41.
Subrahmanyam, S. (2007). Par-delà l’incommensurabilité: Pour une histoire connectée des empires aux temps modernes. Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 54–4bis(5), 34–53.
Terence. (n.d.). Heautontimorumenos: The self-tormenter (H. T. Riley, Ed.). Perseus Digital Library. http://data.perseus.org/texts/urn:cts:latinLit:phi0134.phi002
Wardy, R. (2000). Aristotle in China: Language, categories, and translation (Needham Research Institute Studies, 2). Cambridge University Press.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Juan Acevedo

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Esboços: histories in global contexts adopts an Open Access policy and it is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0). Authors will be asked to sign an open access license agreement before publication.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors grant the journal Esboços: histórias em contextos globais (ISSN 2175-7976) right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0).
- This license allows users to remix, transform, and build upon the material, on the condition of giving acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- 3.Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or a personal website, or publish it as a book chapter or a translation).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


