scholarly journals How deep is love? The engagement with India in Joseph Needham's historiography of China

BJHS Themes ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 13-41
Author(s):  
LEON ANTONIO ROCHA
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
Melting Pot ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Disciplinary History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Indian Medicine

AbstractIn 2015 Dhruv Raina published Needham's Indian Network: The Search for a Home for the History of Science in India (1950–1970), bringing to light the long-range networks that institutionalized the disciplinary history of science in post-colonial India, and demonstrating the intellectual and infrastructural contributions of Joseph Needham (1900–1995) in this endeavour. This paper takes a different approach and turns to the way that Needham perceived Indian vis-à-vis Chinese civilization, and the role India played in Needham's historiography of science. It turns out that Needham's most sustained engagement with India could be found in his histories of medicine, bodily practices and alchemical traditions. In the first section of the paper, I outline the key concepts of ‘Grand Titration’ and ‘oecumenical science’ that animated Needham's historiography, which clarifies why Chinese medicine, especially acupuncture, occupies a privileged status. The second section elaborates on Needham's scholarship and vision of acupuncture, involving the verification of acupuncture's reality and efficacy via Western biomedicine. He thought acupuncture would be China's unique contribution to a new ‘universal medicine’ in the modern age, but by contrast Needham saw little worth refurbishing in Indian medicine, arguing via an investigation in yoga that Indian practices were generally less ‘materialist’ and less ‘proto-scientific’. In the third section, I turn my attention to Needham's preoccupation with the history of alchemy around the world, and discuss his theorization on transmission and circulation of scientific knowledge. I comment on Needham's commitment to the thesis that European alchemy was a melting pot of Chinese, Indian, Persian, Arabic, Greek, Egyptian and Roman ideas and practices. While Needham reserved his ‘deepest love’ and ‘profoundest desire’ for Chinese civilization, India on the other hand often occupied a secondary status in his historical accounts, and in the conclusion I move from a critique of Needham's preconceptions to reflect on the writing of the history of non-Western science.

A Cultural History of Objects in the Modern Age

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Global Changes ◽  
New Materials ◽  
The West ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Everyday Objects ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

A Cultural History of Objects in the Modern Age covers the period 1900 to today, a time marked by massive global changes in production, transportation, and information-sharing in a post-colonial world. New materials and inventions – from plastics to the digital to biotechnology – have created unprecedented scales of disruption, shifting and blurring the categories and meanings of the object. If the 20th Century demonstrated that humans can be treated like things whilst things can become ever more human, where will the 21st Century take us? The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Objects examines how objects have been created, used, interpreted and set loose in the world over the last 2500 years. Over this time, the West has developed particular attitudes to the material world, at the centre of which is the idea of the object. The themes covered in each volume are objecthood; technology; economic objects; everyday objects; art; architecture; bodily objects; object worlds.

scholarly journals Hagyományos időmérés a modern korban

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krisztián Horváth ◽  
Zsófia Keller
Keyword(s):  
Complex System ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Exact Time ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City ◽  
Local Noon

Az egri Líceum nem csak, mint műemlék fontos épülete a városnak, hanem tudománytörténeti jelentősége is elvitathatatlan. Alapításakor európai szinten is egyedülálló csillagászati felszereltséggel rendelkezett (Monk, 2013). Erre az eszközrendszerre alapozva egy olyan komplex rendszer megvalósítását tűztük ki célul, amely képes detektálni és jelezni a helyi dél időpontját a Líceum építésekor kijelölt meridián vonal felhasználásával a hagyományoknak megfelelően. Tudománytörténeti szempontból érdeklődésre tarthat számot egy ilyen rendszer működése, de fontosnak tartottuk, hogy későbbi feldolgozás érdekében rendelkezzen naplózási funkcióval is. ----- Traditional timing in the modern age ----- The Lyceum in Eger, while being one of the most known Monuments of the city, plays an import- ant role in the history of science. When it was founded, it became one of the best equipped observatories in Europe. Knowing this, our goal is to use its equipment to build a complex system that is able to determine the exact time of the local noon, using the meridian line that was created during the construction of the building. While our primary goal was to research and realize how a system like that could work at its core, a logging feature has also been implemented in the system for later reuse of the data.

How to Benefit from Received Ideas (2001)

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wiktor Stoczkowski
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Molecular Genetics ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Western World ◽  
Scientific Practices ◽  
History Of Archaeology ◽  
Disciplinary History ◽  
Modern Physics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Renaissance Medicine

Like Gulliver, the intrepid explorer depicted in Samuel Butler’s novella Erewhon visits an odd country whose image, inverted as its name, is evidently that of the Western world. Throughout his travels, the adventurer converses with the eccentric scholars of Erewhon who devote themselves to singular enterprises, such as the formation of the ‘Society for the Suppression of Useless Knowledge’ (Butler 1985). If somebody were to suppress useless knowledge in this day and age, there could be a substantial number of victims. Fortunately, no one finds it necessary to question the raison d’être of institutionally established knowledge, provided that sufficient funds are available to ensure its survival. The question of usefulness is only raised where marginal knowledge is concerned. The fact that we question whether the history of archaeology is useful or not testifies to its marginality. For it is marginal, despite belonging to the history of science, a domain in which all disciplines should theoretically inspire historians’ interest to the same extent. This, however, is not the case. Historians seem to prefer studying either sciences considered as the greatest conquests of Western rationality (such as modern physics, Darwinism, molecular genetics, etc.) or theories supposed to be excessively irrational (such as Renaissance medicine, Stalinist genetics, Nazi biology, astrology, etc.). It is commonly believed that archaeology does not belong to either of these categories. The history of archaeology is as marginal to archaeologists as it is to historians. This is particularly apparent in France, where most archaeologists would not hesitate to respond in the negative to the question of whether disciplinary history matters to current scientific practices. Since the nineteenth century, certain French archaeologists and prehistorians have indeed written on the history of their discipline, but this activity was a task usually reserved for emeritus scholars who took it up in a somewhat nonchalant manner, as if to crown their archaeological œuvre, and probably motivated by the same reasons which prompt certain people, at the same point in their lives, to write their memoirs. There are some notable exceptions, of which are the works of Alain Schnapp, particularly his monumental The Discovery of the Past (Schnapp 1996).

An Alternative Account of the History of Archaeology in the Nineteenth Century

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margarita Diaz-Andreu
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
History Of Archaeology ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial Studies ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Disciplinary History ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
New Directions ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

Historians of science (whether philosophers, epistemologists, historians of science, or sociologists of science) have been stubbornly reluctant to deal with archaeology in favour of other disciplines such as geology and medicine. Most histories of archaeology have, therefore, been written by archaeologists and this book is no exception. Being trained in the subtleties of stratigraphy and typology does not, however, provide archaeologists with the necessary tools to confront the history of their own discipline. Many of the histories of archaeology so far written revolve around a narrow, almost positivistic, understanding of what the writing of one’s own disciplinary history represents. This volume attempts to overcome these limitations. Questions addressed have been inspired by a wide range of authors working in the areas of history, sociology, literary studies, anthropology, and the history of science. It uses the case of nineteenth-century world archaeology to explore the potential of new directions in the study of nationalism for our understanding of the history of archaeology. Key concepts and questions from which this study has drawn include the changing nature of national history as seen by historians (Berger et al. 1999b; Hobsbawm 1990) and by scholars working in the areas of literature and political studies (Anderson 1991); transformations within nationalism (Smith 1995); new theoretical perspectives developed within colonial and post-colonial studies (Asad 1973; Said 1978); the relationship between knowledge and power (Foucault 1972 (2002); 1980b); and the consideration of social disciplines as products of history (Bourdieu 1993; 2000; 2004). Perhaps historians and sociologists of science’s lack of enthusiasm to engage with archaeology derives from its sheer lack of homogeneity. The term comes from the Greek arkhaiologia, the study of what is ancient. It most commonly encompasses the analysis of archaeological remains, but the emphasis on what body of data lies within its remit has always differed—and still does—from country to country and within a country between groups of scholars of the various academic traditions. For some it revolves around the study of artistic objects, as well as of ancient inscriptions and coins, for others it encompasses all manifestations of culture from every period of human existence.

scholarly journals Creating Religious Identities: Buddhist Monuments in Colonial and Post-Colonial India

2008 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Himanshu Prabha Ray
Keyword(s):  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Director General ◽  
Archaeological Survey ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Buddha ◽  
And Control

This paper draws on my work on the maritime history of early South and Southeast Asia and the use of sea-lanes of the Indian Ocean by pilgrims for visits to sites associated with the life of the Buddha. A second perspective is provided by the rediscovery of Buddhism in Europe coinciding with the development of new disciplines, including archaeology. These disciplines were introduced into India with the government-sponsored Archaeological Survey of India, founded in 1871. Alexander Cunningham, the first Director-General, brought Buddhism to the forefront and established its study as a separate sub-discipline. This had far-reaching implications for the demarcation and archaeological investigation of many of the monuments linked to Buddhism, especially Bodh Gaya and Sanchi. This paper addresses the issue of the manifestation of a Buddhist identity in colonial India. It is often suggested that this identity owed its origins to the formation of the Mahabodhi Society and the emergence of nationalism in Sri Lanka. This paper examines political developments in India in the context of the Navayana or the Neo-Buddhist path, forged by B.R. Ambedkar on the 2500th anniversary of Buddha’s parinirvana, or demise, in 1956. To what extent did this newly formed identity become interlinked with the identification and control of archaeological sites in India and their redefinition? How did the renegotiation of Buddhist identity affect India’s relationship with Thailand?

scholarly journals AT THE NATION-STATE’S EDGE: CENTRE–PERIPHERY RELATIONS IN POST-1947 SOUTH ASIA

2016 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 509-539 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELISABETH LEAKE
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Large Degree ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Political Autonomy ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
History Of ◽  
Autonomy Movements

ABSTRACTThis article examines centre–periphery relations in post-colonial India and Pakistan, providing a specific comparative history of autonomy movements in Nagaland (1947–63) and Baluchistan (1973–7). It highlights the key role played by the central government – particularly by Jawaharlal Nehru and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto – in quelling both insurgencies and in taking further steps to integrate these regions. It argues that a shared colonial history of political autonomy shaped local actors’ resistance to integration into the independent nation-states of India and Pakistan. This article also reveals that Indian and Pakistani officials used their shared colonial past in very different ways to mould their borderlands policies. India's central government under Nehru agreed to a modified Naga State within the Indian Union that allowed the Nagas a large degree of autonomy, continuing a colonial method of semi-integration. In contrast, Bhutto's government actively sought to abandon long-standing Baluch political and social structures to reaffirm the sovereignty of the Pakistani state. The article explains this divergence in terms of the different governing exigencies facing each country at the time of the insurgencies. It ultimately calls for an expansion in local histories and subnational comparisons to extend understanding of post-1947 South Asia, and the decolonizing world more broadly.

‘Useful’ and ‘Earning’ Citizens? Gender, state, and the market in post-colonial Delhi

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (06) ◽  
pp. 1924-1955
Author(s):  
ANJALI BHARDWAJ DATTA
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
The State ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Refugee Women ◽  
Point Of Entry ◽  
Indian State ◽  
History Of ◽  
National Disaster

AbstractThe Indian state treated the partition of Punjab as a ‘national disaster’ and training for refugee women was deemed essential to restore the social landscape; yet the kind of help it offered to refugee women rested on its clear assumptions and biases about the kind of work that was appropriate for them: women were offered training in embroidery, stitching, tailoring, and weaving, as these are associated with feminine and household-based skills. This article will reveal that the state rehabilitation enterprise was primarily masculine in focus. The state treated women refugees as secondary earners and as guardians of hearth, kith, and kin; it did not see them playing a definitive role in nation-building in post-colonial India. In the absence of state supportive policies, refugee women were compelled to take up informal jobs like petty trading, domestic service, and labouring work. This article suggests that refugee women were handicapped in the labour market at their very point of entry. It traces the history of women's informalities in Delhi. In doing so, it investigates the feminization and commercialization of urban space in twentieth-century Delhi. It urges that women made space in more than one way: identifying fragmentary livelihoods, producing small-scale capitalism, and creating informal markets.

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