Society and Culture

In Defense of Indian Science & Reason

In what field has India, historically, made the most contributions? Chances are, your answer will be philosophy or religion; perhaps mathematics or astronomy. But would you ever say science, as a field of inquiry? Chances are no.

I had a discussion, over at Atanu Dey’s blog on Indian contributions to the ‘scientific method’. I was pleased that he reserved an entire post to my concerns, but they remain nevertheless. In his original post, he makes the assertion:

The point, I think, is that the scientific method is uniquely western European.

What bothers me is not so much the statement itself, but rather the unequivocal confidence with which it is made. Could it be that individual Indian contributions in mathematics and science were not the result of a process – explicit or implicit – but simply coincidence?

For me, this statement underrates a large body of ancient Indian science. It leaves India, instead, as just a source of other-worldly knowledge.

The two issues are not unrelated. Indeed, in Occidental recognition of Indian contributions there is a dialectical relationship between our philosophical and rational traditions. Where the latter is reinforced, the former is systematically deemphasized. The belief, then, that the scientific method is Western, can be a direct result of the bias against recognizing Eastern contributions in that sphere. (Note to Atanu: the dichotomy as identified by Sen is not in the actual traditions, but in the recognition of their value in the West, and subsequently in India.)

My job here is to sufficiently undermine the confidence with which this statement is made and return some objectivity to the study of India.

The Scientific Method

First, we must recognize that ‘scientific method’ is a heavily normative term. That is, it is not just ‘uniquely western’ but also something good – a desirable way to conduct science.

This may itself be questioned (see this online discussion). Progress in science has moved along different paths in different civilizations. For instance, in comparing the Greek and Indian astronomy of Ptolemy and Aryabhata, Narasimha [1] mentions ‘At least two different scientific cultures can be identified.’ He then goes on to say (see Bronkhorst[2], pg 56, to understand why such differences arise):

The recognition that there are two cultures in a subject that, in popular perception, is as universal as mathematics, is something that helps to understand at once how different civilisations have approached this problem in different ways, and how there might be multiple routes to generating what may be seen as scientific knowledge.

The Scientific Method and India

Returning to the current scientific method, were there elements of it in ancient and medieval Indian thought? The short answer to that can only be yes.

Clearly, doubt and logic are as old as India itself. Nor is this doubt limited to religion. For instance, Akbar’s doctor argues against the use of tobacco by saying [3]: ‘It is not necessary for us to follow the Europeans, and adopt a custom, which is not sanctioned by our own wise men, without experiment or trial.’ Every time my mother taught me what spices to eat or not, she was teaching me something of Ayurveda and taking part in a clinical trial of natural therapies.

Second, to what extent did such traditions impact the development of science in the West? Obviously, that is beyond the scope of this discussion, but the following from Narasihma regarding the Greek and Indian models of astronomy is instructive:

Three hundred years ago in Europe these two cultures seem to have come together, in particular in the work of Descartes who married algebra and geometry and of Newton, who wrote his great epoch making book using a mix of Euclidean and algoristic approaches.

As another example, consider the essay From Witchcraft to Allopathy[5] in the Economic & Political Weekly. In discussing witchcraft, Varma says:

In its own way this is a complete system linking theory with practice. There is a cause and there is a cure. The approach is scientific even if its foundation is faulty.

Later, in discussing Ayurveda and Chinese medicine, he says:

As time passed and human knowledge increased, the ‘curse of the devil spirit’ as the cause of disease came under scrutiny. It did not make sense when it was realised that disease is physical so the cause must be physical. This was the second and most important phase in the evolution of medicine…Ayurveda presented a physical as opposed to a mythical basis of disease.

This example shows that in this specific instance, Indian and Chinese medical thought and enquiry was important to the subsequent development of Greek and Egyptian medicine. Can we say where Greek medicine, and by extension ‘modern medicine’ would be, without this leap of enquiry contributed by the Indian scientific establishment?

It also highlights a disadvantage that all eastern scientific schools of thought must face – the lack of a direct link with ‘modernity’ and ‘rational’ schools of thought. As Varma points out:

Since Greek and Egyptian medicine became a continuum of modern medicine, it did not germinate into a separate discipline like Ayurveda.

The West, Indian Identity and the Origins of Science and Rationality

Edward Said explains why this separation is a disadvantage in his classic critique, Orientalism. In his view, western writing of the pre-colonial and colonial era constructed a view of eastern cultures that prevented their accurate understanding for five major reasons [6].

First, colonization gave the ‘west’ reason to view the Orient as inferior. Second, it stereotyped these cultures, reducing their variety to generalizations and caricatures. Third, even where western writing made an effort to find the Orient’s civilizational glories, its attitude was of wondrous awe, reducing the power and living reality of these civilizations to the exotic rather than the inferior. Fourth, such features were related to the proximity of such writing to metropolitan sites of political and economic power. And finally, and most important, these attitudes pervaded not just the works on the fringe but those of the mainstream tradition.

The result is explained by Amartya Sen in The Argumentative Indian. On the one hand, while ignoring Indian rational thought, European scholars emphasized Indian traditions that they found different – most notably in philosophy and religion. In this exoticist school of study, India became a source of wonder.

On the other hand, ideas of colonial superiority prevented a full recognition of Eastern contributions in areas where Europe considered itself advanced. Therefore, Lord Macaulay could exclaim of the colonized people:

I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.

Finally, Indians themselves also perpetuated these beliefs. Indian nationalists looking to establish our civilization’s superiority and self-confidence focused on contributions in religion and philosophy, ignoring much else. As Sen says:

Western perceptions and characterizations of India have had considerable influence on the self-perception of Indians themselves. This is clearly connected to India’s colonial past and continued deference to what is valued in the West. However, the relationship need not take the form of simple acceptance – it sometimes includes strategic responses to the variety of Western perceptions of India that suit the interests of internal imaging.

Atanu calls this irrelevant in the context of the codification of the scientific method. Indeed, it is, but it is critical here, because we are discussing not the actual codification, but the history of the scientific method, or put another way the history of the codification. The inability of Indians to question this belief then, prevents a balanced and objective evaluation of that history, and hence our present day understanding of it.

Conclusions on Indian Science

I started this article to question the belief that India has had little impact on the scientific method. While this belief is taken as a holy grail, it is based not on evidence but the lack thereof. Unequivocal confidence in it, then, is essentially unscientific. We should at the very least, approach it with a healthy dose of scepticism.

Second, this lack of evidence exists partly because both Western and Eastern scholars that developed the history of science, ignored or dismissed Eastern literature, or were simply incapable of understanding it [4].

Finally, and most damagingly, this belief ignores the fact that scientific knowledge and progress do not occur in a vacuum, but rather draw upon contributions from multiple civilizations over long periods of time. Indians credit themselves with having ‘discovered’ the zero. Yet, that and other ‘discoveries’ drew upon earlier work by the Greeks and Arabs, and a vigorous exchange of ideas between the great civilizations of the time.

The same, then, can be applied to ‘Western science’ (Sen):

Second, irrespective of where the discoveries and inventions took place, the methods of reasoning used in science and mathematics gave them some independence of local geography and cultural history. There are, of course, important issues of local knowledge and of varying perspectives regarding what is or is not important, but much of substance is still shared in methods of argument, demonstration, and the scrutiny of evidence. The term ‘Western science’ is misleading in this respect also.

Note that I speak here, not of science, but of the method of conducting science. The former clearly drew on Indian contributions. Here, I have attempted to establish that the same is true of the latter. At the very least, the same biases that see us viewing rationality, democracy, or freedom as quintessentially and uniquely western values, cloud our understanding of the origins of science. We do not know enough to take the contrary as established fact.

Related Reading & References

1. Axiomatism and Computational Positivism: Two Mathematical Cultures in Pursuit of Exact Sciences, Rodham Narasimha. Economic & Political Weekly, Aug 30-Sept 5, 2003.
2. Panini and Euclid: Reflections on Indian Geometry, Johannes Bronkhorst. Journal of Indian Philosophy, 29: 43-80, 2001.
3. The Argumentative Indian, Amartya K. Sen. 2006.
4. Evolution of the Scientific Method, Travis W. Binion Jr. Scientific Symposium I, 1988.
5. From Witchcraft to Allopathy: Uninterrupted Journey of Medical Science, Daya R. Varma. Economic & Political Weekly, Aug 19-25, 2006.
6. Occidentalism, the Very Idea: An Essay on the Enlightenment and Enchantment, Akeel Bilgrami. Economic & Political Weekly, Aug 19-25, 2006.

Note: This post was updated on 12 Sept, 2006 with the last two references.