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Teaching ‘French science’ at the court: Gerbillon and Bouvet's tutoring

Catherine Jami

in The Emperor's New Mathematics: Western Learning and Imperial Authority During the Kangxi Reign (1662-1722)

In 1690, just a few months after returning from his Southern inspection tour, the Kangxi Emperor set up regular sessions for the study of Western science, with four Jesuits as his tutors: Pereira, ... More

In 1690, just a few months after returning from his Southern inspection tour, the Kangxi Emperor set up regular sessions for the study of Western science, with four Jesuits as his tutors: Pereira, Thomas, Gerbillon, and Bouvet. These sessions were modeled on the Daily Tutoring on the classics that Kangxi had started twenty years earlier, especially as regarded their ultimate outcome: in both cases the lecture notes drafted by tutors were revised and eventually published as products of imperial scholarship. This chapter reconstructs the study plan worked out by the French Jesuits, and the course of the daily lessons, in which mathematical instruments and their use played an important role.Less

Conflicting Goals, Ideologies, and Beliefs in the Field*

Lenore A. Grenoble and Simone S. Whitecloud

in Endangered Languages: Beliefs and Ideologies in Language Documentation and Revitalization

The last two decades have seen a remarkable surge in work in description and documentation of endangered languages, which has required researchers to rethink how they work with indigenous ... More

The last two decades have seen a remarkable surge in work in description and documentation of endangered languages, which has required researchers to rethink how they work with indigenous communities. A wealth of literature has sprung up to address the problems and issues of ethical research and how to create true collaborations between the parties involved. Despite this focused attention, and at times genuine efforts to engage community members in research, this chapter argues that there continue to be fundamental differences between many external researchers and community members in terms of the beliefs each holds about the kind of research that should be conducted, and core differences in ideologies about what constitutes valid research methods and findings. The documentation of traditional knowledge of plant use among Inuit communities in Greenland is explored as a case study.Less

Conclusion

Cyrus Schayegh

in Who Is Knowledgeable Is Strong: Science, Class, and the Formation of Modern Iranian Society, 1900-1950

The acceptance of modern science in general and biomedical sciences in particular played a momentous role in the formation of modern Iran in the first half of the twentieth century. Western science ... More

The acceptance of modern science in general and biomedical sciences in particular played a momentous role in the formation of modern Iran in the first half of the twentieth century. Western science was the only legitimate global language of social reform; it was modified but never transformed beyond recognition, by the local dialect of the Iranian modernists. Semi-colonial modernist reformers found ways to focus on specific aspects of a particular science and adapt such aspects to their own concerns about modern life. But the political and sociocultural dominance of colonizing Western countries strained them to accept that science constituted the only basic requirement—in terms of its underlying logic and practical applications—for progress. Indeed, the Iranian modernists were eager to reform Iran as rapidly as possible. But they were not, as some historians have suggested, blindly smitten with “Westernization” or captive by technology or science in many ways alien to Western countries.Less

The emperor and his astronomer (1668–1688)

Catherine Jami

in The Emperor's New Mathematics: Western Learning and Imperial Authority During the Kangxi Reign (1662-1722)

This chapter opens with Kangxi's acts on the assumption of power, including the reversal of the verdict against the Jesuits and their astronomy. Ferdinand Verbiest then became an official astronomer, ... More

This chapter opens with Kangxi's acts on the assumption of power, including the reversal of the verdict against the Jesuits and their astronomy. Ferdinand Verbiest then became an official astronomer, but also an imperial tutor as Kangxi began the study of Western science. This study was integrated in the traditional pattern of imperial study of the classics, and adjusted to the emperor's special needs.Less

Ontological Politics and Latin American Local Knowledges

Ivan da Costa Marques

in Beyond Imported Magic: Essays on Science, Technology, and Society in Latin America

It is a widely held Western belief that the West has knowledge, while other people have mere beliefs about reality. This kind of Western common sense is established as a result of a specific ... More

It is a widely held Western belief that the West has knowledge, while other people have mere beliefs about reality. This kind of Western common sense is established as a result of a specific ontological political perspective adopted in the production of modern scientific knowledges. This chapter looks closely at two cases of relations between Brazilian realities and the West. The first case involves a very popular fictional figure whom Brazilian intellectuals have transformed from a literary object into an object of sociological research. The second case shows three different worlds or realities (not just three different interpretations of reality) of multimistura, a food additive made from native ingredients in response to the serious problem of malnutrition in Brazilian children. A local practice dating from the 1970s, multimistura has resisted the hegemonic ontological political perspective of Western science. The combined analysis of the two cases demonstrates a line of flight from the Western global frame of reference and provides Brazilian local practices and organizations with greater respectability in their agreements and disputes with Western sciences and technologies.Less

The Politics of Knowledge

Rajshree Chandra

in Knowledge as Property: Issues in the Moral Grounding of Intellectual Property Rights

This chapter considers the cognitive hierarchies which are implied and structured by the intellectual property regime. It looks at the sociology of knowledge creation and the implications that it has ... More

This chapter considers the cognitive hierarchies which are implied and structured by the intellectual property regime. It looks at the sociology of knowledge creation and the implications that it has for opening up epistemes. It takes the argument of social construction of knowledge and extends it to question the claimed scientificity and objectivity of Western Modern Sciences (WMS) in an endeavour to engage with the possibility of multiple constructions and representations of reality and question the claimed universality and hegemony of WMS. It regards the conception and the institution of intellectual property rights (IPRs) as an enterprise which reinstates the particularistic perspectives of science and the universalistic notions of development. It regards this conceptualization of IPRs as a productive and a stratifying force and therefore as an exercise of power. Finally, the chapter engages with the issues of science citizenship, and the limits of existing measures for enlisting the participation of the marginalized citizens in the creation of knowledge.Less

Introduction

John Dupré

in Darwin’s Legacy: What Evolution Means Today

This book examines questions about evolution as proposed by Charles Darwin. It is confusing whether natural selection acts on genes or individual organisms and in what manner evolution develops. ... More

This book examines questions about evolution as proposed by Charles Darwin. It is confusing whether natural selection acts on genes or individual organisms and in what manner evolution develops. These are among the questions which this book attempts to answer with general views on what evolution tells us about the world and who its inhabitants are. The study of evolution can be applied to various aspects of knowledge and this is what causes well-known figures such as E. O. Wilson, Steven Pinker, or Richard Dawkins to argue with biologists Richard Lewontin, Steven Rose, and Stephen Jay Gould on matters about intellectual life. Many of the debates and opinions on the biology of evolution, as well as philosophical arguments, are examined in this book.Less

The Real Culture Wars

Riane Eisler

in Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future

We humans live, and all too often die, by stories, as one of the authors almost died as a child in the Holocaust. This chapter shows that the real culture wars are not between religion and ... More

We humans live, and all too often die, by stories, as one of the authors almost died as a child in the Holocaust. This chapter shows that the real culture wars are not between religion and secularism, East and West, or capitalism and socialism, but are within all societies, between orientation to either the partnership or domination side of the social scale. Starting with the two different biblical stories about the creation of humanity—the famous tale where Eve is an afterthought responsible for all our ills, and the earlier story where both men and women are created equal—is a contrast in normative narratives that support domination or partnership. Covering a wide swath of prehistory and history, this contrast offers fascinating new insights: for example, how Western science came out of a hierarchical, conformist, misogynist, all-male medieval clerical culture (a world without women and children) and how it took more than 700 years for women’s, men’s, and gender studies to emerge in universities; how Freud’s secular theories replicated the earlier religious ideology of original sin and male supremacy; and how in all spheres (from the family, politics, and the academy to mainstream and popular culture worldwide), the underlying tension between movement toward partnership and the resistance/regressions to domination is playing out.Less

Taste in Numbers: Science and the Chinese Food Problem

in Gourmets in the Land of Famine: The Culture and Politics of Rice in Modern Canton

This chapter outlines the provinice of Guomindang's blind trust in Western science and technology and how these interests resulted in the technocratic and instrumental misunderstanding of the nature ... More

This chapter outlines the provinice of Guomindang's blind trust in Western science and technology and how these interests resulted in the technocratic and instrumental misunderstanding of the nature of rice supply and consumption. It shows that the food problem legitimized the province's political application of scientific knowledge. Science gave the provinice's planning impeccable recognition. The food problem became a primary concern for all sorts of Chinese people. The first step toward the fundamental solution for all problems was to restore the balance between the urban and rural sectors. The urgency of the food problem compelled the mutual cooperation between state power and science. China had to both achieve scientific knowledge and practice it to make a breakthrough.Less

Sticky History

in The Cuban Cure: Reason and Resistance in Global Science

This chapter discusses the challenges and problem faced by Cuba's biotechnology sector in the early 1990s. These include the fall of the Soviet bloc and national economic crisis brought about by the ... More

This chapter discusses the challenges and problem faced by Cuba's biotechnology sector in the early 1990s. These include the fall of the Soviet bloc and national economic crisis brought about by the U.S. embargo. These problems forced Cuba's formerly secluded biotechnology to come into contact with all the heavily capitalized features of Western science. The result was a multifaceted struggle between Cuba's locally nurtured epistemic milieu and the machinery of the global pharmaceutical economy mediated through the circumstances of a localized political crisis.Less

Conclusion

in Gourmets in the Land of Famine: The Culture and Politics of Rice in Modern Canton

Canton had long been well-known for its food culture. However, for its rice supplies, Canton relied on transnational, high-volume trade with Southeast Asia via Hong Kong. In the early twentieth ... More

Canton had long been well-known for its food culture. However, for its rice supplies, Canton relied on transnational, high-volume trade with Southeast Asia via Hong Kong. In the early twentieth century Canton's trade with Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, though highly lucrative, was a risky transnational business. The city was the standard for a series of innovative food control programs that a number of experts developed. The Hunan Rice Sales in the Canton Project was a significant feature of the government-developed National Rice Promotion Program. In developing the Program, the Guomindang people took the recalcitrant stance of viewing Western science and technology as the source of a single and fundamental solution. It is noted that the failure of the Nationalists' food policy can more convincingly be explicated by their progressive stance and their audacious embrace of Western science and technology.Less

Overcoming Extinction: Collectors, Stewardship, and the Palila

Daniel Lewis

in Belonging on an Island: Birds, Extinction, and Evolution in Hawai'i

This chapter focuses on the Palila, Loxioides bailleui—a critically endangered honeycreeper on the Big Island whose survival is entangled with law, politics, culture, and biology. The bird ... More

This chapter focuses on the Palila, Loxioides bailleui—a critically endangered honeycreeper on the Big Island whose survival is entangled with law, politics, culture, and biology. The bird historically inhabited Kauaʻi, Oʻahu, and the Big Island, but now is found only on the latter. A nexus of collectors and publications swirled around the first descriptions of the Palila's life history and, simultaneously, around the discovery of other new Hawaiian birds in the last decade of the nineteenth century. The Palila was first named as such in an 1890 publication, but it did not live in a vacuum—rather, it was part of an ecosystem of discoveries, birds, plants, and naturalists, whose work in the last decade of the nineteenth century created a constant buzz of interest and discovery for Western science.Less

Cooperation between Species

Raymond Pierotti and Brandy R. Fogg

in The First Domestication: How Wolves and Humans Coevolved

This chapter reviews the study of cooperative behavior between species, with emphasis on examples of cooperative hunting found in a wide range of species. Seen in this context, the idea of ... More

This chapter reviews the study of cooperative behavior between species, with emphasis on examples of cooperative hunting found in a wide range of species. Seen in this context, the idea of cooperative hunting between humans and wolves that evolved into present relationships with dogs does not seem unusual or surprising. The chapter then critiques the proposal that competition between species is more important than cooperation in structuring ecological communities, discussing how this notion leads to a suite of ideas philosophically separating humans from the rest of the natural world. In many ways Western science is unintentionally complicit in such thinking. The chapter concludes by discussing complex cooperation, including long-term relationships between members of different species.Less

Believing the Best Explanation

J.D. Trout

in Wondrous Truths: The Improbable Triumph of Modern Science

Philosophers often refer to a magical-sounding form of inference, called Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE). But in truth, nearly all explanations are IBE. It is the chosen form of explanation ... More

Philosophers often refer to a magical-sounding form of inference, called Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE). But in truth, nearly all explanations are IBE. It is the chosen form of explanation in science and in everyday life. What is IBE? In barest outline, it is an explanation arrived at because it makes the best sense of the available evidence. If we are going to explain the unique success of Western science, the great leap forward, we will have to start not with the drab inductive accounting of Francis Bacon, but with the fanciful guesses of hybrid moderns like Boyle and Newton. They made grand guesses about the particles that roiled invisibly in those glass containers, and about why compressing the gases increased the temperature and why increasing the temperature increased the pressure.Less