Multicivilizational Exchanges In The Making Of Modern Science
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Multicivilizational Exchanges in the Making of Modern Science
This book explores how and why exchanges across civilizations have come to enrich science today. The dialogical dimension of the history of science has long been marginalized by an excessive concern on why modern science emerged in Europe, but not in any of the advanced civilizations of the East. This focus upon what has been called Joseph Needham's "Grand Comparative Question" ignores his other project, focused on showing how dialogues between civilizations have nurtured science. Needham's "Grand Dialogical Question" – if we may call it that by parity – has directly or indirectly inspired a vast body of literature showing how interconnections of civilizations over the last three thousand years, and exchanges of cosmological, mathematical, geographical, physical, biological and medical technologies, techniques, practices and knowledge, have been woven together to produce current science. Bringing together scholars whose research range across multiple civilizations and disciplines, this book investigates the scope and limits of Needham's dialogical vision for science.
Rethinking the Needham Question
This book offers a new investigation of the Needham Question. Why did modern science emerge in Europe, but not in any of the advanced non-European civilizations? Eurocentric accounts attribute it to certain ‘qualities’ said to be ‘unique’ to Europe. Opposed to the Eurocentric view is a position known as the ‘dialogical perspective’. Dialogism argues that Europe borrowed heavily from non-European scientific knowledges, and that scientific exchanges were key to the development of modern science. Neo-Eurocentric arguments have emerged in response to the challenge of dialogism, and the debate between Eurocentrism/neo-Eurocentrism and dialogism currently stands at a stalemate. In this book, Raymond Lau brings a new theoretical-methodological framework to finally settle this debate. The historical analysis developed here shows that to secure the non-Eurocentric case, and decisively rebut Eurocentrism and neo-Eurocentrism, it is necessary to go beyond dialogism both theoretically and methodologically.
Multicivilizational Exchanges in the Making of Modern Science
Chapter 1. Introduction -- Part 1:Historical Sociology in Dialogue -- Chapter 2. An Oceanic Paradigm of Historical Flows -- Chapter 3. The Needham Question: A Non-Eurocentric Approach Transcending Dialogism -- Chapter 4. The Need to Extend Needham's Vision of Science: A Decolonial Perspective -- Part 2: Cosmologies in Dialogue -- Chapter 5.The Circulation of Babylonian Astral Science -- Chapter 6. Scientific Exchanges with Qing China and the Formation of a Local Science in Eighteenth-Century Korea -- Chapter 7. Practical and “Precise” World Geographical Knowledge Developed in Premodern Chinese and Islamic Worlds through Multi-Civilizational Connections and Contact -- Part 3: Natural Sciences in Dialogue -- Chapter 8. Liberating Mathematics from Civilizations -- Chapter 9. Ancient Chinese Origins of Modern Western Science; or, The Early History of Linear Algebra -- Chapter 10. Ibn al-Haytham's Optics and European Perspectiva Legacies in Science and Art -- Chapter 11. The Survival of Old Book Forms on the Periphery: Chinese Book Forms in Dunhuang and Beyond -- Part 4: Medical Traditions in Dialogue -- Chapter 12. Healing Traditions and Medicinal Products in the Market of Health, Healing, Beauty, and Vigor in the Dutch East Indies -- Chapter 13. Needham's Legacy in Clinical Research Revisited: Refashioning Acupuncture with Biomedicine -- Chapter 14. Classical Chinese Medicine and The Needham Question -- Part 5: Modes of Inquiry in Dialogue -- Chapter 15. Mathematics in India: Pluralism and the Possibility of Dialogue -- Chapter 16. Explaining the Rise of Modern Science: A Dialogical Perspective -- Chapter 17. Webs, Trees and Knowledge: Bunzo Hayata's Eastern Perspectival Model of Nature -- Chapter 18. Dialogue and Comparison Compared.