Paul,
To push a little bit. If we say experimental science is not only "western"
because of its history with islamic culture that does not say anything about
its function does it? While Socrates and others are no doubt considered
"western" interestingly this was also an Afro-Islamic cultural sharing. The
story goes that the Greeks history, literature etc. were all but lost to
"western civilization" and it was through trading and the like this aspect
of "western culture" become part of our western psych (appropriation). It
poses interesting questions such as what if those artifacts were never
shared with the west - it plays such a central role in the western psych.
But to the point, as your summary expressed the experimental science served
drastically different cultural purposes. For example Bruner points out the
wheel emerged with the Mayans prior to anywhere else, although it had
possible advantages for production, it remained a religous artifact. My
point being its not enough to say that science was here and there without
explicating its relationship. In western culture there is a long history of
a ceasar - god or objective - subjective dicotomy. This is obvious in the
mentality of schools in that if it can't be measured it doesn't count. Or
in your own work you shared about earlier in which the quantatative aspect
will be the only thing that matters. I don't see the funders saying, wow
this Ilyenkov guy is right on track send the check. My point is in our
culture, if not western, science has a particular relationship to culture
that may or may not have been present in the Islamic context.
Nate
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Dillon [mailto:dillonph@northcoast.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2000 2:10 PM
To: XMCA
Subject: Non-western science
Esteemed xmcafolk,
I just listened to an interesting program on BBC radio that described how
the fundamental roots and directions of our modern science are in fact
Islamic in origin. Among the elements present in medieval Islamic science,
that I managed to jot down once I realized what I was listening to, (1) the
elimination of the Greek idea of "pure science" that allowed not only the
application of sciences to each other (e.g., mathematics to geometry) but
also the application of sciences to arts - a move the greeks held
anathematic; and (2) the experimental method. Among the Islamic
achievements were a theory of optics that allowed them to grind lenses and a
mathematical model of the solar system similar to Copernicus'.
The BBC program also raised the question as to the ascendancy of science in
Europe over its Arabic origins. The persons interviewed about this
attributed it to a fundamental difference in religious orientation. In the
Christian west a fundamental realism prevailed that was absent in the
Islamic world; ie, western Christian philosophy held that the rationality
inherent in humans was in fact the same rationality inherent in God whereas
in Islamic philosophy occasionalism prevailed; ie the designs of Allah were
forever beyond anything that humans were capable of divining. Presumably
Allah could change all the rules of the universe at any time. As a result,
christian europeans put the knowledge gained through science to different
uses than did the islamic peoples.This of course raises interesting issues
about the relationship between artefacts and motives within the framework of
activity theory.
I found this reminder of islamic science interesting in light of recent
posts, my own included, to xmca that so strongly associate science
(experimental science in particular) with the western tradition. This is
not uncommon though, even Isaac Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of
Science and Technology, includes only 5 Islamic scientists (primarily
mathematicians) in his list of more than 1500 entries. I also had forgotten
about this bridge and of course why our numbers are called arabic as opposed
to roman.
Paul H. Dillon
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