A comprehensive survey of how scientific disciplines have always been informed by politics and ideology on the basis of the Gramscian views in historical materialism, hegemony and civil society.

“Science” and “Religion” have been two major elements in the building of modern nation-states. While contemporary historiography of science has studied the interactions between nation building and the construction of modern scientific and technological institutions, “science-and-religion” is still largely based on a supposed universal historiography in which global notions of “science” and of “religion” are seldom challenged. This book explores the interface between science, religion and nationalism at a local level, paying attention to the roles religious institutions, specific confessional traditions, or an undefined notion of “religion” played in the construction of modern science in national contexts: the use of anti-clerical rhetoric as scapegoat for a perceived scientific and technological backwardness; the part of religious tropes in the emergence of a sense of belonging in new states; the creation of “invented traditions” that included religious and scientific myths so as to promote new identities; the struggles among different confessional traditions in their claims to pre-eminence within a specific nation-state, etc. Moreover, the chapters in this book illuminate the processes by which religious myths and institutions were largely substituted by stories of progress in science and technology which often contributed to nationalistic ideologies.

This volume offers a collection of papers which seek to provide further insights into the way scientific and technical knowledge is communicated (i.e., written, transmitted, and translated) nowadays, not only in the academic sphere but also in society as a whole. Language in science has traditionally been valued for prioritising objective, propositional content; however, interpersonal and pragmatic dimensions as well as translation perspectives are worth exploring in order to better understand the mechanisms of specialised communication. Accordingly, the contributions in this volume cover topics of special interest to scholars and researchers in the fields of linguistics and translation, such as the popularisation and transmission of scientific knowledge via ICTs; terminology and corpus-based studies in scientific discourse; genres and discourse in scientific and technical communication; the history and evolution of scientific language; and translation of scientific texts.

Aquest text docent correspon als materials docents de l'assignatura que s'imparteix a la Universitat de Barcelona dins la seva pròpia àrea d'ensenyament