Globalisation is in vogue; it leads to an obliteration of thinking and cultures in their origins and to an obliteration of memory. Therefore, it is of consequence to reconstruct our history and to make it fertile. What is this science then, that brought us forth and that we call European science? It is a convenient denomination tailored to describe an aggregate of knowledge which origin and implementation are associated to a geographical space that, since
Antiquity, spread according to times, from the Mediterranean to Northern Europe. This aggregate of knowledge constitutes the foundation of what we call in our society today "sciences." The publishers of this volume sought to have a global grasp of the origin and the development of scientific knowledge in its original space, as well as of the influence this knowledge had on the homogenisation of the societies that occupy this space. Indeed, although the bibliography on the history of sciences is extremely rich concerning the development of European scientific knowledge, there is no general work up to now dealing with scientific Europe as an intellectual unit throughout the centuries. Thus, we sought to approach the development of scientific knowledge as such along with its relations with the space in which it developed, as well as with the dialogue or conflicts those relations aroused.
The setting of this broad historical perspective enables to better understand the specificity of this strictly European phenomenon (i.e., bound to a well delimited area of geographical Europe) consisting in the appearance of a new concept of knowledge, now called classical science, which, while breaking off its ancient sources, sprang from these in the second half of the 16th c. How this expansion materialised, what were the reasons behind it and what conflicts did it engender in countries that had a different scientific culture, coupled with different social relations with science.