Asia, Europe, and the Emergence of Modern Science : Knowledge Crossing Boundaries

This volume brings together essays from leading thinkers to examine what role Asian traditions of knowledge played in the rise of modern science in Europe, the implications this has for the epistemology of science, and whether pre-modern Asian traditions can provide resources for advancing scientific knowledge in future. This volume brings together essays from leading thinkers, including natural and social scientists, historians, philosophers and educationists to examine what role Asian traditions of knowledge played in the rise of modern science in Europe, the implications this has for the epistemology of science, and whether pre-modern Asian traditions can provide resources for advancing scientific knowledge in future. Although studies in the past have attempted to address these issues they have generally been motivated by area studies concerns so that the approach has been dominated by binary perspectives which look at how dialogue with a particular Asian tradition - such as Chinese, Indian or Arabic-Islamic - impacted or can impact modern science. By contrast this study draws writers from a plurality of Asian cultures so as to not only better situate the contributions of the different Asian scientific traditions into a more balanced perspective, but also promote deeper insights into the ways in which influences from a diversity of civilizations get transmitted and modified as they cross boundaries of culture and become contextualized in new intellectual milieus Front Matter....Pages i-ix Introduction....Pages 1-9 Front Matter....Pages 11-11 Global Dialogical History and the Challenge of Neo-Eurocentrism....Pages 13-33 A Passage to Infinity: The Contribution of Kerala to Modern Mathematics....Pages 35-54 Copernicus, Arabic Science, and the Scientific (R)evolution....Pages 55-72 Time Atomism and Ash‘Arite Origins for Cartesian Occasionalism Revisited....Pages 73-92 Pramanas, Proofs, and the Yukti of Classical Indic Science....Pages 93-109 Front Matter....Pages 111-111 Traditional Knowledge and the Smallpox Eradication Campaign....Pages 113-126 The Dialogical Copernican Revolution: Implications for Scientific Method....Pages 127-146 How Indigenous are “Indigenous Sciences?” The Case of “Islamic Sciences”....Pages 147-165 The Role of Intercultural Dialogue in the Rise of Modern Science....Pages 167-186 Science, Technology, and Civilization Reconsidered....Pages 187-201 Front Matter....Pages 203-203 Toward Constructing Post-Postmodern Twenty-First Century Sciences: The Relevance of Classical Chinese Medicine....Pages 205-219 Diverse Cultural Contributions to a “Science of Religion”: An Emerging Asia-Europe Dialogue on the Scientific Study of Religion....Pages 221-237 Reclaiming Tradition: Implications of a Knowledge Indigenization Perspective for Asian Education....Pages 239-252 Southeast Asia’s Indigenous Knowledge: The Conquest of the Mental Terra Incognitae....Pages 253-270 Back Matter....Pages 271-282 This volume brings together essays from leading thinkers, including natural and social scientists, historians, philosophers and educationists to examine what role Asian traditions of knowledge played in the rise of modern science in Europe, the implications this has for the epistemology of science, and whether pre-modern Asian traditions can provide resources for advancing scientific knowledge in future. Although studies in the past have attempted to address these issues they have generally been motivated by area studies concerns so that the approach has been dominated by binary perspectives which look at how dialogue with a particular Asian tradition 6 such as Chinese, Indian or Arabic-Islamic 6 impacted or can impact modern science. By contrast this study draws writers from a plurality of Asian cultures so as to not only better situate the contributions of the different Asian scientific traditions into a more balanced perspective, but also promote deeper insights into the ways in which influences from a diversity of civilizations get transmitted and modified as they cross boundaries of culture and become contextualized in new intellectual milieus