The ideal of an international world of learning in which knowledge passed freely between scientists, regardless of political frontiers and language, captured imaginations during the second half of the nineteenth century. It bore fruit in unprecedentedly ambitious schemes for the ordering and retrieval of information and in a proliferation of universal exhibitions and congresses driven by the rhetoric of openness and cooperation. But in peace as in the world wars of the twentieth century national interests provided a constant counterweight at odds with the universalist vision and fed the tensions between ideal and reality that are the core theme of these lectures.
In his third of three lectures as the Horning Visiting Scholar at Oregon State University, Dr. Robert Fox (Oxford University) explored the impact of World War 1 on universalist aspirations. Specifically discussed are the Nobel Prizes, the rise of national science museums, and the 1937 Paris Exposition Internationale Arts et Techniques.
