Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Alok Kumar, Professor of Physics, State University of New York at Oswego, says in a new book that Europe’s scientific revolution depended profoundly on ideas and innovations passed down from ancient cultures, including India, although the point has been missed or dismissed by western cultures.
“A History of Science in World Cultures: Voices of Knowledge,” published by Routledge, traces the origins of European scientific “discoveries,” demonstrating that many derived, at least in part, from much earlier work in China, India, Persia, Babylonia and others. The book, coauthored by geoscientist Scott L. Montgomery, a prolific author and affiliate member of the University of Washington’s Jackson School of International Studies, has a significant chapter on India.
Kumar, who follows up his 2014 book “Sciences of the Ancient Hindus: Unlocking Nature in the Pursuit of Salvation,” and Montgomery, consulted a vast number of primary documents to support their thesis.
“In a bold inversion of how general histories of science are normally written, Montgomery and Kumar show how eight world cultures—each with its own knowledge-producing traditions—fed into what we now recognize as the ‘scientific revolution’ of 17th-century Europe,” wrote Steve Fuller of Warwick University in the United Kingdom, in a review.
“I realized as a young teacher that the history of science that we teach was incomplete and, if I use a stronger word, wrong,” Kumar said. Eurocentrism in the teaching of science history “warps our understanding of the past and thus the present,” the authors wrote in the preface. “Scientific work and thought have never belonged to one race, one gender, and one social class. Nor have they been confined to one time period or one culture or one part of the globe,” they said.
That is why, the authors argue, students need to know that Islamic cultures gave the world such words as guitar, nadir, zenith, elixir and magazine; that the sine function and decimal-place notation came from ancient India; that the Sumerians observed a seven-day week; that Babylonians developed the 60-minute hour and that Mesoamericans predicted solar eclipses and used vulcanized rubber.
The new book cites hundreds more examples—from the chemistry of mummification in Egypt to hydraulic engineering in China, from urban planning in the Indus Valley to dental surgery among the Mayans—to show that “cutting away these pre-modern roots leaves a damaged view, one that risks the provincial satisfaction of a colonialist eye.”
The two authors’ collaboration began five years ago, but for Kumar, the project has been about 25 years in development. He said he’s been gratified by the reception among scholars for a book written to attract a general audience and serve as a textbook.
“All of these cultures used science and technology as tools to enhance their knowledge of the creation and the Creator,” Kumar said.
One important way Kumar thinks the book resonates with scholars and with average readers is the consistent notion that scientific thought and learning for thousands of years and in cultures the world over have sought to bring people closer to their religions’ supreme being.
“In a bold inversion of how general histories of science are normally written, Montgomery and Kumar show how eight world cultures—each with its own knowledge-producing traditions — fed into what we now recognize as the ‘Scientific Revolution’ of 17th-century Europe,” wrote Steve Fuller of Warwick University in the United Kingdom, about the book. “Readers will be impressed by just how much of that history can be told simply by following the movement of people and ideas across lands and languages. The result is an account of ‘science as civilization’ that is a worthy successor to the project first laid down a century ago by the founder of the history of science field, George Sarton.”
The post SUNY Professor Says Ancient Cultures Contributed To Europe’s Scientific Revolution appeared first on News India Times.