On Tue, 4 Jan 2000, Paul Dillon wrote:
> I have been making about science in general as well as my motivation for
> posting about the BBC program.
I haven't seen that program, but
1)
I just wanted to point out that in general people who have got some kind
of 'scientific education' have very limited knowledge of non-western
origins of many of our scientific concepts. For example, how many of
normal engineers or phd's of science know that in fact the number system,
and the concept of zero, which we call 'arabic' is in fact 'indian'?
(Every student of sanskrit language however knows that.) Basically most of
the origins of 'algebra', which many mathematicians believe to come from
'arabs' came in fact from Indians, who transmitted that science to
'arabs'.
2)
It is an 'amusing' fact that the mechanical devives (of which the most
famous being the compass) which made possible for Europeans to make almost
the rest of the world as their colonies, were invented in China. The one
single most important book (serie) in this respect is in my opinion Joseph
Needham's 'Science and civilization in ancient China'.
In short:
Europeans and Americans are in general just becoming aware of the fact
that our general viewpoint to think about the world is quite limited and
heavily influenced by the fact that Europeans managed to conquer so big
areas of the world just because of their violence and veapons not because
of their knowledge.
One of my favourite books is:
John G. Plott: 'The Global History of Philosohy' (I-IV). It contains a lot
of material concerning Chinese, Indian, Islamic, ... thought.
Hannu Virtanen
developer, internet-based teaching
The Open University of Jyväskylä
Finland
P.S.
I've studied some years in Japan and in India and so my viewpoint is a bit
'Asian', I do have quite little knowledge about Africa, Oceania, South
America... and...
the same
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