“Why venture so far when it's so dangerous?”

Knowing everything about the world… It was a new curiosity for plants or animals, combined with advances in navigation, that drove many scientists in the eighteenth century to the seas, as the historian Christian Gratalup tells us. But also the desire to clarify the map of the globe, for less noble motives.

This article is taken from Les Dossiers de Sciences et Avenir, issue 218, July/September 2024.

Christian Grataloup is a geohistorian and professor emeritus at the University of Paris Diderot. He specializes in globalization, and works on the history of human societies, analyzing it through the prism of geography, economy or even climate. He directs the collection Historical Atlases Published by Arin.

The Dossiers of Science and Avenir: The first scientific explorer in history will be Marseille… Is this a joke?

In the 4th century BC, the astronomer Pytheas, a Greek from Marseille, set out to explore the far north with a specific scientific goal: he was the first to measure the length of the day at several latitudes in order to confirm experimentally the roundness of the day from the ground. He may also have been looking for raw materials, but his journey seems to have been driven primarily by curiosity. Curiosity for what is not immediately useful, beyond the horizon, outside… We can also see a definition of science in the broadest sense: knowing things about what we cannot see, and communicating this knowledge.

But scientific exploration really began in the 18th century. Didn't something happen in the meantime?

This is part of what we no longer call the “great discoveries” – a term coined by Alexander Humboldt at the beginning of the 19th century, which expresses a uniquely European perspective and neglects earlier connections. In the 16th century, something fundamental happened. This is the first major moment in the weaving of globalization. Great connections are being made between places that were previously unconnected. These voyages were not scientific, but they were not without a curiosity that also interested scientists, starting with cartographers.

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