There has emerged over recent years a significant corpus of literature that has demonstrated the profoundly spatial nature of the scientific enterprise. Opposed to the general perception that science is placeless (a sentiment summarized by Porter, above), this work has sought to expose science as something utterly grounded in its social and spatial, not to mention temporal, political and economic contexts. In doing so, it has also engaged with the elevated epistemological position science has fashioned for itself, by suggesting that it should be treated like any other form of knowledge: that is, as ‘a cultural formation, embedded in wider networks of social relations and political power, and shaped by the local environments in which its practitioners carry out their tasks’. Developing this argument further, Livingstone notes that scientific knowledge is made in many different places and asks:

Livingstone's viewpoint is shared by others. Commentators have pointed out a host of geographies that run through science, including those of site, place, space and region; network, trace, travel and movement; and survey, map, cartography, nation, territory and border.

There have admittedly been some reservations expressed about this approach to the study of science. For instance, Shapin takes issue with the tendency as he sees it to treat geography as a ‘factor’ – in similar manner to cultural values, gender or national identity say – that can come into play to influence the development of science. Rather than something that might influence the progress of scientific knowledge, Shapin asserts that space must always be a ‘necessary condition for there to be such a thing as science’. In other words, geography, ‘like temporality or embodiment’ is a necessary prerequisite for science to even take place at all.