The exchange of ideas was more balanced in the time before the European Scientific Revolution, after which the lipid growth of knowledge in the West dwarfed the interregional traffic that had taken place earlier. The Western tradition of the last few centuries has become the only system studied in universities and practiced in centers of science and technology worldwide. Quite often there is no interaction between this new tradition and the earlier knowledge from regions such as South Asia, even though there are many areas of learning that could enrich the Western tradition.
A study of the growth of the European and the South Asian scientific traditions shows considerable areas of overlap and mutual influence from very early times. When Europeans in the Renaissance looked back to Greek sources for new inspiration, they were in fact looking to Greek sources partly influenced by the South Asians.
Generally speaking, India was outside the world of shared ideas and values of preclassical...
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Goonatilake, S. (2008). East and West: India in the Transmission of Knowledge from East to West. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4425-0_8552
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