RELOCATING MODERN SCIENCE
By Kapil Raj
Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, 285 pages
The subscript to the title reads: Circulation and the Construction of Knowledge in South Asia and Europe, 1650-1900. The author offers historical examples to support essentially two hypotheses. The first is that when two cultures interact, the science of both hybridize with each other, they co-construct. Each then evolves differently before and after the interaction. Traditionally western businesses look to expand into additional markets, or to gain new trading partners. In the historical period in question, each European country had some version of an East India Company that sought to exploit India and surrounding states. The belief was that the 'contact zone' such as the Indian Ocean region was a source for information. The science was happening back at the European society, then diffused or disseminated back out to the contact zone. These western countries inevitably expanded trade into some form of colonization.
This idea of science diffusing from west to east also spurred the other major argument Raj has. Western countries had an inherent mistrust of data gathered by 'locals' rather than data gathered by European scientists. He shows that even when western, essentially white, scientists are present, the real information still comes from local scholars, often in writings that already existed before the 'explorers' even arrived.
Two-Way Flow of Scientific Knowledge Between Europe and South Asia
In the reading, Kapil Raj gives examples of how Indian knowledge and expertise contributed to scientific accomplishments. These accomplishments were then brought back to Europe as a form of hybrid science. This assertion is in contrast to the tradition argument of the diffusion model where contact zones are areas where data is extracted to inform science that happens in the west, then diffused back to contact zones. Raj shows how knowledge from the west mixed with Indian knowledge to form a new sort of knowledge that was further adopted differently in both Britain and India. Each knowledge base was different from each other, and from what existed before the cultural interaction. This is because people are mutable, and they make process and knowledge likewise mutable. Science, then, is a function of situated values, norms, sociabilities, divisions of labor, regimes of proof, etc. (228) Contact zones implement co-constructive processes of negotiation.
One example, the interaction between French and Dutch botanists with locals in Orissa and Malabar which brought about two studies, the Jardin de Lorixa and the Hortus Malabaricus. French and Dutch actors learned local botanical and medical knowledge from Fakirs through pre-existing indigenous books. Both resulting works were largely ignored for various political reasons such as Antoine de Jussieu’s personal issues with Nicolas L’Empereur. Eventually additional actors looked at the information in more market-oriented terms and the value of the two works were revisited.
Mapping efforts in India by James Rennell in the 1780s, and Thomas Montgomerie throughout the 1860s to 1880s are further examples. Both used western approaches to train locals in surveying efforts, but worked with the locals (Pundits) to adopt approaches based on local needs. In the case of the Pundits working for Montgomerie, use of traditional western instruments caused negative repercussions by mountain peoples who saw the work as spying. To adjust, Montgomerie adopted Pundit bodies as instruments using pace counting in place of survey chains. In one case when Nain Singh was pushed to ride on an animal, he adjusted the stride count from his own body to that of the animal. When western cartographers questioned the process it was later shown this approach to be more accurate than some other western attempts using scientific instruments alone (215-216). This approach also often kept the human 'instrument' from being killed.
Mapping efforts started with economic goals in mind (defining farm lands or trade routes). Eventually these goals gave way to political goals, such as when the British government took advantage of French and Russian wars, coupled with fear of a potential Russia-China pact, to militarily secure Himalayan trade routes. Despite the success of the mapping effort, the exploitation attempt went poorly in 1904 when British forces killed 5000 Tibetans, then left without any real gain. In this sort of example Raj calls cartography ‘politics by other means.’ (185)
Credible Witnesses
Given skepticism by British scholars who never left the comfort of the Royal Geographic Society, Raj points to efforts by East India Company (EIC) officials to inspire trust in efforts at knowledge generation by a blend of British and Indian scholars. One way they did this was to create colleges in India where EIC officials were sent to learn local information such as language and geography. Locals were simultaneously taught western science, sometimes separate from their British counterparts, sometimes in the same classes. The more the EIC western students learned from and interacted with locals, the more they came to trust them and convey back to England the trustworthiness of generated information. In fact it worked so well there came a time when Indian scholars were brought to England to teach similar topics in British schools.
Indian scholars were able to share their own theoretical/mathematical ideas which seem to work better than the experimental learning encouraged by instruments shared from the west. (179) Western math books were quickly consumed by Indian scholars, and then updated with additional new Indian mathematical discoveries.
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