1. The Appearance of Universities

Universities were a distinctive product of the European middle ages. There were schools in classical antiquity (most famously, Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum), and there were a few pre-modern institutions of learning such as the library at Alexandria and the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, but these were rare.

During the early middle ages, monasteries served as repositories of knowledge, and monasteries possessed libraries at a time in European history when no other institution possessed books in any number. But books were rare and expensive, often chained to the shelf so they would not be stolen. Moreover, access to the library was closely monitored by the religious order whose monastery it was, and scholarly activity involving the library was tightly-coupled with the aims of the monastic order.

Though early European universities were dominated by theological and philosophical studies, they represented a much greater degree of independence from the institutional church and its religious orders than did the monasteries with their libraries and scriptoria. Scholarly research within a university setting could be much more loosely-coupled with the institutional church and its many monastic orders.

Over time, and after industrialization, universities evolved into the multi-faceted research institutions that they are today. Particular departments of particular universities come to be known for their work in particular areas of knowledge, and the distinctive approach that they take. In other words, university departments often implicitly embody a scientific research program, and prospective students may take this into account in making a decision as to which university to attend. This results in a de facto selection process in which those most interested in a particular scientific research program are likely to attend the university that best exemplifies that scientific research program.

2. The Introduction and Rapid Dissemination of Movable Type Printing

The availability of relatively inexpensive books made an enormous difference in the dissemination of knowledge. The rapid printing of cheap pamphlets is often cited as one of the chief reasons the Protestant Reformation spread as rapidly as it did; in an earlier age, without the printing press, it is likely that only a few scholars would have known of Martin Luther and his 95 theses. As it was, Luther became an early modern celebrity.

Gutenberg’s printing press was introduced during the lifetime of Prince Henry the Navigator, and about 50 years before the first voyage of Columbus. The Age of Discovery that followed not only carried crews and cargoes around the world, it also resulted in early printing presses (and the books printed by them) being carried on the same ships — a lesser known aspect of the Columbian exchange. Printing presses, brought to the far corners of the world, were operating in Mexico City in 1544, in Goa in 1556, Lima in 1581, and Manila and Nagasaki in 1590.

3. The Foundation of Scientific Societies

Scientific societies represented the most direct form of social networking among scientists, hence the most direct form of idea diffusion. Many scientific societies were founded in the early modern period, though most of the them did not endure. Some, however, have endured to the present day. The Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina was founded in 1652 and claims to be the oldest scientific society continuously in existence. The Royal Society was founded in 1660 and remains an important institution in English academic life.

4. The Establishment of Scientific Journals

Five years after the Royal Society was founded, it began publishing Philosophical Transactions in 1665. The journal has been publishing continuously for more than 350 years. Today there are tens of thousands of scientific journals, disseminating specialized knowledge to communities of scientists engaged in broadly defined scientific research programs that constitute the state of the art in each discipline.

That the first scientific journal was established by one of the earliest independent scientific societies demonstrates an awareness of the importance of idea diffusion in the growth of scientific knowledge, and a willingness to create an infrastructure of knowledge that could serve the growing scientific community.

Prior to the scientific revolution, scholars had to be co-located in order to engage in collaboration. With books and journals, this was no longer the case. A scholar could be current with the most recent research in a given field by reviewing scientific journals, and could in turn collaborate at a distance by submitting papers to be published in them.

With the introduction of the internet, the process of the dissemination of knowledge that began in earnest with the easy availability of books due to printing with movable type has been accelerated significantly. Scholars routinely collaborate over international distances, with immediate access to enormous data sets shared over computers. In the case of astronomy, to take a particular instance, telescopes on distant mountain tops, aimed by precision machinery, send their images to astronomers anywhere in the world, who need not travel to distant outposts in order to have access to the data produced there.