The Natural History Society of Siam and the Formation of Western Science

Abstract

This article aims to explore the practice of Western science in Thai Society, especially in the field of Natural History, through the activities of The Natural History Society of Siam, that was founded in 1913. The question that this paper want to respond is how the activities of the Society had brought the scientific expedition and the knowledge of natural world, according to the western scientific epistemology, to Siam? In addition, what was the role of the Society in the network of knowledge construction and its role as the mediation between the local (Siam) and the centre of the Western science? The Journal of the Natural History Society of Siam (1913-1923) was the evidence of the Society's activities and its study of the natural world of Siam by the process of exploring, nomenclaturing, classifying, and bringing them to the taxonomic place. Moreover, it helped explain the role of the Society as part of a unified natural historical enterprise during the period in which the natural world in every territory was being observed, categorized, and posited in the scientific knowledge repertoire that was expanding as never seen before.