The Science Park ( Parque de las Ciencias ) in Granada, Spain, has been host to various exhibitions of differing sizes—ranging from small exhibits to an entire pavilion—about the history of Arab–Islamic science, with a particular focus on the scientific thought and its development in Al-Andalus (or medieval ‘Muslim Spain’). This transnational scientific legacy is not often featured in science museum content around the world, despite its foundational role in the development of European sciences. For example, the Pavilion of Al-Andalus and Science, which was open from 2008 to 2016, allowed for a clear analysis of not only the universalist discourse of the sciences but also the transnational, supranational, regional and localized representations of scientific knowledge, paradigms and processes. To explore the distinctions between these framings, I review the organizational objectives of the pavilion's creator, the Fundación El Legado Andalusí , and the content of the Museum of Al-Andalus and the Sciences located on the second floor of the pavilion. The analysis focuses on several key aspects: the balance between the number of Andalusi scholars and the other Arab thinkers mentioned; the references to multiple geopolitical frames; the ways in which Andalusi scientific knowledge and contributions are interwoven into the wider Arab–Islamic history of science; and the centring of local and regional knowledge, practices, styles and techniques. The conclusions of the study are two-fold: (1) a transnational history of science can (a) reinforce a universalist discourse of science, while simultaneously (b) engaging a framework in which this scientific content and legacy can be localized; and (2) scientific knowledge and practice, like science communication, are invariably affected by other dominant forces when social, cultural and political factors beyond the realm of science are involved in the production and representation of science.
Elaine McIlwraith (Fri,) studied this question.