Science and History in Asia

In 2008 the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) granted IIAS and the Needham Research Institute (NRI), Cambridge funding for five comparative workshops on the complex links between science and history in Asian civilisations.


‘Science’ is often described or imagined as ‘Western’, having originated in ancient Greece with the Arabs acting as translators. It is a prejudice of long standing and derives from an outdated picture of the history of science. The history of pre-modern – ancient and medieval – science can only be adequately understood if the Eurasian continent is treated as an undivided unit.


This project will address questions including, how have Asians used disciplines such as astronomy, now categorised as sciences, for a better understanding of their own past? How did these disciplines gain cultural legitimacy? And how can the sciences be incorporated into the historical narratives of Asian civilisations? These questions will play a role during the workshops, which are organised around topics, such as logic, chronology, genealogies of science, and the role of the state in the historical dynamics of science.


The complex links between science and history in Asian civlisations will be studied on at least two levels.


First, one can focus on the ways in which the actors have perceived those links; how on the one hand they have used disciplines that we now categorise as sciences, such as astronomy, for a better understanding of their own past; how on the other hand they have constructed the historicity of these disciplines, thus giving them cultural legitimacy.


Secondly, one can reflect on historiographical issues related to the sciences. How can the sciences be incorporated into historical narratives of Asian civilisations? This question is crucial, given that the dominant view in the nineteenth and twentieth century has been that science is a European invention, and that it has somehow failed to develop endogenously in Asia, where "traditional science" is usually taken as opposed to "Western" or "modern science".


One possible approach to the issue is to look at how various states have contributed to creation, circulation and change in knowledge and practice pertaining to the sciences. Another issue worth exploring is comparing the ways in which the transmission of scientific knowledge and practice across time (tradition) and that across space (from other civilisations of Asia or from Europe) are studied, and how one can progress towards a greater symmetry in the approach of these two types of transmission.


The main academic activity of this project will consist of a series of four workshops under the following titles:



  1. History of chronology (2009)

  2. Constructing genealogies of science (2009)

  3. The role of the state in the historical dynamics of science (2010)

  4. History of logic in China (2010)