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Science between Europe and Asia pp 165–176Cite as

Travelling Both Ways: The Adaptation of Disciplines, Scientific Textbooks and Institutions

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Part of the book series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science ((BSPS,volume 275))

Abstract

The historiography of sciences, we have been informed, has been parasitic upon the sciences, and as a genre has been the most conservative of the genres of historical writing. 1 However, the externalities and internalities that the history of sciences is bent on identifying, shape the historiography of science itself; and the so called parasitic determinants may well belong to the domain of internalities. Returning to the theme of the present paper, I look at the system of colonial education in British India as a site for the ‘expansion of European science’ in non-Western contexts. Thus while post-colonial theory has since dispensed with and extensively critiqued the notion of ‘European science’, 2 the question of the localization of so-called Western science has been addressed from the perspective of the practitioners of scientific disciplines in research environments.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    S. Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth Century England, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1994; S. Shapin and S. Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.

  2. 2.

    D. Chakrabarty, “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for “Indian” Pasts”, in R. Guha, ed., The Subaltern Studies Reader: 1986–1995. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 261–293; S. Harding, Is Science Multicultural? Postcolonialisms, Feminisms, and Epistemologies, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1998; G. Prakash, Another Reason: Science and the Imagination in Modern India, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999; D. Raina, “Multicultural and Postcolonial Theories of Science and Society”, Sandhan, 5, (2005):1–32; D. J. Hess, Science & Technology in a Multicultural World: The Cultural Politics of Facts & Artifacts, New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.

  3. 3.

    S. L. Montgomery, Science in Translation - Movements of Knowledge through Cultures and Time, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000; B. Metcalf, “Hakim Ajmal Khan: Rais of Delhi and Muslim leader”, in R. E. Frykenberg, ed., Delhi through the Ages, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.

  4. 4.

    T. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.

  5. 5.

    S. Fuller, Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History of our Times, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, p. 2.

  6. 6.

    M. van Bruinssen, “The production of Islamic knowledge in Western Europe”, ISIM Newsletter, 8 September 2001, p. 3.

  7. 7.

    D. Raina and S.I. Habib, Domesticating Modern Science: A Social History of Science and Culture in Colonial India, Delhi: Tulika Books, 2004.

  8. 8.

    S.N. Sen, “The Character of the Introduction of Western Science in India during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Indian Journal of History of Science, 1 and 2 (1988): 112–122; D. Kumar, Science and the Raj, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995; D. Raina and S.I. Habib, Domesticating Modern Science: A Social History of Science and Culture in Colonial India, Delhi: Tulika Books, 2004.

  9. 9.

    D. Raina, Images and Contexts: Studies in the Historiography of Science in India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003.

  10. 10.

    D. Raina, “Multicultural and Postcolonial Theories of Science and Society”, Sandhan, 5, 1(2005):1–32.

  11. 11.

    W. R. Pinch, “Same Difference in India and Europe,” History and Theory, 38, 3 (1999): 389–407 (pp. 390–393).

  12. 12.

    C.A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

  13. 13.

    Pinch, “Same Difference in India and Europe,” p. 395.

  14. 14.

    R. Inden, Imagining India. Oxford, Cambridge: Blackwell, 1990.

  15. 15.

    B.S. Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 16.

  16. 16.

    C. Hartnack, “British Psychoanalysis in Colonial India” in M. G. Ash and W. Woodward, eds., Psychology in Twentieth Century Thought and Society, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987; A. Nandy, “The Savage Freud: The First Non-Western Psychoanalyst and the Politics of Secret Selves in Colonial India”, in The Savage Freud and Other Essays on Possible and Retrievable Selves, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995.

  17. 17.

    See paper entitled “The Moral Legitimation of Science” in D. Raina and S.I. Habib, Domesticating Modern Science: A Social History of Science and Culture in Colonial India, Delhi: Tulika Books, 2004; P. Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: a Derivative Discourse. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993.

  18. 18.

    Hartnack, op. cit.

  19. 19.

    P. Kharbanda, The Cultural Reception of Psychoanalysis in India: A Study of the Institutionalization of a discipline (1900–1950), M.Phil. dissertation, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2004.

  20. 20.

    Ibid.

  21. 21.

    Sudhir Kakkar, The Indian Psyche, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996.

  22. 22.

    H. Fischer-Tiné and M. Mann, eds., Colonialism as Civilizing Mission: Cultural ideology in British India, London: Wimbledon Publishing Company, 2004, p. 4.

  23. 23.

    M. Adas, “Contested Hegemony: The Great War and the Afro-Asian Assault on the Civilizing Mission Ideology,” Journal of World History, 15 (2004): 31–64 (p. 32).

  24. 24.

    D. Raina and S.I. Habib, Domesticating Modern Science: A Social History of Science and Culture in Colonial India, Delhi: Tulika Books, 2004.

  25. 25.

    Bayly, Empire and Information, p. 247.

  26. 26.

    D. Gosling, Science and Religion in India. Madras: The Christian Literary Society, 1976; see chapter 1 of Raina and Habib, Domesticating Modern Science: A Social History of Science and Culture in Colonial India, Delhi: Tulika Books, 2004; T.V. Venkateswaran, “The Topography of a Changing World: Geological Knowledge during the Late Nineteenth Century Colonial Madras Presidency,” Indian Journal of History of Science, 37, 1 (2002): 57–83.

  27. 27.

    Bayly, Empire and Information, p. 253.

  28. 28.

    K. Raj, “Colonial Encounters and the Forging of New Knowledge and National Identities: Great Britain and India, 1760–1850,” Osiris, 15 (2001): 119–134.

  29. 29.

    S. J. Gould, Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.

  30. 30.

    Venkateswaran, “The Topography of a Changing World,” pp. 57–83.

  31. 31.

    Ibid, pp. 76–7.

  32. 32.

    G. Viswanathan, Masks of Conquest. Literary Study and British Rule in India. London: Faber and Faber, 1989, p. 23.

  33. 33.

    Ibid., p. 23.

  34. 34.

    Ibid., p. 23.

  35. 35.

    S. Ambirajan, “Science and Technology Education in South India, in R. Macleod and D. Kumar, eds., Technology and the Raj. Western Technology and Technical Transfers to India.1700–1947. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1995, p. 112.

  36. 36.

    K. Kumar, Political Agenda of Education: A Study of Colonialist and Nationalist Ideas. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1991, p. 23.

  37. 37.

    S. Bangaru, Debates in Technical Education; A Prelude to the Foundation of the Indian Institutes of Technology (1930–1950), M.Phil. dissertation, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2002.

  38. 38.

    B. Chandra, Nationalism and Colonialism in Modern India. New Delhi: Orient Longman Ltd., 1979, p. 183.

  39. 39.

    Bangaru, op. cit.

  40. 40.

    Z. Baber, The Science of Empire: Scientific Knowledge, Civilization and Colonial Rule in India, New York: State University Press, 1996, p. 207.

  41. 41.

    K.V. Mital, History of the Thomason College of Engineering (1847–1949), Roorkee: The University of Roorkee, 1986, p. 17.

  42. 42.

    Ibid., p. 98.

  43. 43.

    R. Macleod and R. Dionne, “Science and Policy in British India, 1858–1914: Perspectives on a Persisting Belief ”, Proceedings of the Sixth European Conference of Modern South Asian Studies, Colloques Internationaux du CNRS, Asie du Sud: Traditions et Changements. Paris: CNRS, 1979, pp. 55–68.

  44. 44.

    A. Kumar, ‘Colonial Requirements and Engineering Education: The Public Works Department, 1847–1947’ in R. Macleod and D. Kumar, eds., Technology and the Raj. Western Technology and Technical Transfers to India, 1700–1947. New Delhi: Sage, 1995, pp. 216–234.

  45. 45.

    Mital, op. cit., pp. 18–19; For a more detailed discussion on the subject see the second chapter in S. Bangaru, op. cit.

  46. 46.

    Dharampal, The Beautiful Tree. Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century, Mudra: Biblio Impex, 1983; R. Macleod, “On Visiting the Moving Metropolis: Reflections on the Architecture of Imperial Science,” Historical Records of Australian Science (Australian Academy of Science), 5, 3(1982): 1–16; J. Tschurenev, “Diffusing Useful Knowledge: The Monitorial System of Education in Madras, London and Bengal, 1789 – 1840,” Paedagogica Historica, XLIV, 3 (2008): 245–264.

  47. 47.

    A. Nandy, Alternative Sciences, Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1980; K. Raj, “Colonial Encounters and the Forging of New Knowledge and National Identities: Great Britain and India, 1760–1850,” Osiris, 15 (2001): 119–134; D. Raina, Images and Contexts: Studies in the Historiography of Science in India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003; D. Raina and S.I. Habib, Domesticating Modern Science: A Social History of Science and Culture in Colonial India, Delhi: Tulika Books, 2004; G. Prakash, Another Reason: Science and the Imagination in Modern India, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.

  48. 48.

    Fuller, Thomas Kuhn, p. 2.

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  1. School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

    Dhruv Raina

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  1. Dept. History of Science, Istanbul University, Eminönü, Istanbul, 34134, Turkey

    Feza Günergun

  2. School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 110067, India

    Dhruv Raina

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Raina, D. (2011). Travelling Both Ways: The Adaptation of Disciplines, Scientific Textbooks and Institutions. In: Günergun, F., Raina, D. (eds) Science between Europe and Asia. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 275. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9968-6_11

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