Cross-National Odyssey of a Chemist: Edward Divers at London, Galway and Tokyo:

How can historians make sense of the career of a scientist like Edward Divers (1837-1912)? He attended the Royal College of Chemistry (RCC) in London, England, worked as a chemistry assistant and medical student at Queen's College Galway (QCG), Ireland, and taught chemistry in Tokyo at a couple of Japanese colleges for more than two decades. The easiest way would be to focus on the one site of science most known to them, in this case unquestionably London and the RCC, and treat the rest as a projection of his experience there. This paper problematizes such an approach by examining what impact his experience in each place had on his career and pedagogical ideas. I argue that, while retaining ties with the London chemical community, especially the RCC old boy network, Divers's career and his pedagogical ideas were powerfully influenced by his Galway and Tokyo years, which makes him a revealing case study of cross-national history of science education rather than simply as part of British history.The field upon which this type of research most naturally falls is the global circulation of knowledge, which has been gaining a central place in the history of science signalled by the historiographical proposal by James Secord's "Knowledge in transit".1 Responding to this call, scholars have identified various kinds of human agents, in addition to publications and artefacts, as an important medium of knowledge circulation, communication, and appropriation. The brokered world, for example, focused on the role of what its authors call "go-betweens", such as brokers, spies, messengers, and translators, in mediating between different countries and regions in the domains of sciences. These agents are marked by their highly mobile life, and are defined as "the arbitrators . . . who as the third party draws advantage from the antagonism between the two sides".2It is questionable whether one can regard a large number of foreign teachers such as Divers hired by the Japanese government in the Meiji period (1868-1912) as "go-betweens". In most cases, they did not have to speak Japanese, their lives were not particularly mobile once settled in their teaching environments, and very few actually functioned as arbitrators between two parties. For example, Graeme Gooday and Morris Low asserted that "[hired] foreigners were, in many ways, budding imperialists sponsored by their nations and were linked with the unequal treaties and trade agreements".3 Divers was not among their main targets of analysis, and, as I discuss in my conclusion, the term 'imperialist' is not an appropriate attribute for him. However, I agree with Gooday and Low's general point that the positioning of foreign teachers in Meiji Japan was far from neutral as the third party.Why, then, were foreign teachers in Japan like Divers not neutral? The importance of Divers's Galway and Tokyo years partly comes from the fact that teachers are affected by students and institutions just as students are by teachers. The crucial role of students in the formation and development of science education and research has been highlighted in Pedagogy and the practice of science.4 In this paper, I argue that, by applying this insight to different national contexts of pedagogical practice, classrooms and laboratories become the site of cross-national negotiation between teachers and students. By definition, teachers cannot be the third party.Another important topic in the history of science education is its relationship with knowledge production. Divers was a champion of student research as a pedagogical tool throughout his teaching activities in Japan, so his case seems to corroborate the central theme of Pedagogy and the practice of science, that the reproduction of scientists by teaching shapes scientific practice, and that distinguishing between teaching and research is at best artificial.5 However, Divers's reasoning of the pedagogical use of research was combined or embedded with other purposes than the reproduction of scientists: turning out technologists or schoolteachers. …