SCIENCE ACROSS CULTURES
WORKSHOP IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE
OCTOBER 24, 2003
Workshop papers are available for download by clicking on the highlighted title
“Competing
Cosmologies and the Problem of Contradiction in
CHRISTOPHER MINKOWSKI (CORNELL UNIVERSITY)
My talk will be about comparative cosmologies and the problem of contradiction in the Sanskrit knowledge systems. The two main cosmologies that are in competition, beginning from ca. 200 C.E., are those of the astronomical treatises or Siddhantas, on the one hand, and those of the mythological compendia or Puranas on the other. The Siddhantas present a cosmological model comparable to the Ptolemaic one, while the Puranas propose a huge, flat, earth with a massive axial mountain at its center surrounded by ranks of annular oceans and mountain ranges. These two traditions, especially that of the astronomers, reflect on each other, and undergo a series of revisions, rejections, accommodations.
If there is time, the talk will have four parts, arranged chronologically, 1) the description of the basic problem and early reflections on it, including those of the Muslim astronomer Al-Biruni (ca. 1000); 2) the standard accommodation reached by astronomers, (Lalla and Bhaskara), accepting certain features of the mythological cosmos that do not interfere with the astronomy, while rejecting other features; 3) a period of new consideration and new attempts at accommodation of the Puranas, motivated by their growing religious importance; of particular interest here are two figures, Suryadasa (ca. 1550), and the astronomer-king Sawai Jaisingh (r. 1700-43). 4) Then finally the way in which this instability in the "indigenous tradition" was put to use by the British Orientalist, Lancelot Wilkinson (ca. 1830) in his attempts to promulgate Copernican astronomy in India via dissemination of education in the Siddhantas, and the ways that Sanskrit intellectuals in this period sought to reject Wilkinson's proposal.
Allied to this historical study is the question: in what does contradiction consist? and where does it reside? The contemporaneous Sanskrit philosophical traditions had developed a set of definitions and uses of contradiction, some of which would seem to inform the arguments among the cosmologists, and their aim of "removing contradiction" (virodha-parihara); among these, the use by the neo-logicians (Navya-Nyaya) of a particular form of opposition as an aid to informal or suppositional reasoning appears to be especially apt.
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“Plurality and Transition: Knowledge Systems in Nineteenth Century India”
DAVID ARNOLD (SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES [SOAS], UNIVERSITY OF
LONDON)
The British-Indian encounter was a sustained and multifaceted one. In this
encounter scientific ideas and practices, emanating from a variety of
different 'indigenous' and Western cultural traditions, played a
significant part. Both sets of traditions evolved markedly and to some
extent interdependently over the course of the 19th century. Given the 'exotic'
nature of its physical environment, the strength and antiquity of its literate
culture (as well as a powerful 'folk' tradition), and the size and political
significance of its indigenous population, India was a critical testing ground
for the intellectual and practical articulation of Western science in a clearly
non-European and yet extensively colonized locale. Equally, having universalist
aspirations of its own, Indian science was not content to be seen as
simply a source of redundant or empirical 'local' knowledge. To what extent,
then, was the century characterized by the effective dominance of one system
over the other, by ongoing rivalry or partial collaboration between them, or by
the creation of separate spheres of knowledge?
These ideas will be considered in relation to three main areas of discussion:
the environment (the natural world), medicine and the body, and science and
technology as a form of spectacle
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“The Role of French Colonialism in Current Vietnamese Attitudes towards Pharmaceuticals”
LAURENCE MONNAIS-ROUSSELOT (UNIVERSITÉ DE MONTRÉAL)
Some research has been done on the Vietnamese consumption of “pharmaceuticals” in the context of the privatization of the Vietnamese health system since 1989, and more particularly on self-medication and on the over-consumption of certain products such as antibiotics. However, such changes in the political line only begin to suggest the complexity of Vietnamese behaviors in this regard, these behaviors being the product of the introduction of Western medicine and the imposition of a “civilizing” health policy, constructed on the French model in the region from the beginning of the twentieth century (L’Assistance médicale indigène, 1905).
In Vietnam, colonial domination occurred simultaneously with the arrival of scientific medicine and the development of the pharmaceutical industry. Such events inevitably produced a complex confrontation between traditional medical practices and those imposed by the French colonizers. In the specific context of the decision to use medication, drug-based therapy being the basis of Sino-Vietnamese medicine, this confrontation was shaped by such new realities as: the construction of a regulatory framework for pharmaceutical practice; the renewal of a commerce in drugs and the entry of this commerce into expanding international markets, both licit and illicit; and the growth in popularity of new forms of medical pluralism and self-medication. One should point out in fact that throughout the colonial period, the Vietnamese continued to make use of traditional medicines for political reasons (the idea that the natives had a right to “their” medicine), for economic reasons (pharmaceuticals were costly both to the colonizers and to the patient), and for practical reasons (pharmaceuticals remained often difficult to deliver and did not always “work” on the Vietnamese or on certain tropical diseases still unknown).
I use a variety of sources (the medical and popular press, colonial archives which address the questions of the organization and the management of the health system in Vietnam, particularly drug-related aspects such as legislation directed at pharmacies, etc.), in order to illustrate the most pertinent aspects of this encounter between two medical systems and the impact of this encounter on current Vietnamese therapeutic practices.
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“Language, science and the organization of knowledge in Republican China”
BRIDIE ANDREWS (HARVARD UNIVERSITY)
Looking back at the early twentieth century, we see a world-wide preoccupation with evaluating everything in terms of 'science'. As is well documented, 'science' and 'democracy' were the twin clarion calls of China's May Fourth Movement, which aimed to recreate China as a strong and prosperous nation and culture. To achieve this, a national spoken language was deemed necessary; to preserve Chinese written culture, intellectuals decided to catalog and codify it in ways that would facilitate comparison with other cultures. This paper traces how Chinese cultural reforms invented and deployed 'scientific' methods of classifying and organizing the units of Chinese culture, from the sounds of speech through characters, books, and the natural world. In the process, I argue, the meaning of being learned in China was fundamentally changed.
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