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Modernization in East Asia: Alternate theories ofscienceDhruv Raina aa National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies , New Delhi, 110012,India E-mail:Published online: 23 Sep 2009.
To cite this article: Dhruv Raina (1999) Modernization in East Asia: Alternate theories of science, Science as Culture, 8:2,239-249, DOI: 10.1080/09505439909526544
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Science as Culture, Volume 8, Number 2, 1999 239
MODERNIZATION IN EAST ASIA:Alternate Theories of Science
DHRUV RAINA
East Asian Science: Tradition and Beyond, Papers from the SeventhInternational Conference on the History of Science in East Asia,edited by Hashimoto Keizô, Catherine Jami, and Lowell Skar,Osaka, Japan: Kansai University Press, 1995, pp. xii + 568.
The socio-cultural distinctiveness of the East-Asian region has longbegged for new approaches for studying its knowledge systems,practices and economy. Rather than being led by Western frame-works that structure research on non-Western societies. East Asiaasserts its own interpretative traditions, albeit in dialogue withWestern modernist ones.
In the historiography of East Asian science, there are multiplepoints of dis-identification from the mainstream discourse of thehistory of science, as well as efforts at a positive characterization ofthe region. This involves two key moves. One reproblematizes the'modernization' of East Asian science, now addressed within thescope of the longue duree of East Asian history. The second move,related to the first, asserts the continuities characterizing the ex-changes of knowledge and practices in the East Asian region, fromantiquity to the modern era. Consequently, the dichotomies thatcharacterize Western historiography—such as 'the ancient and themoderns', or 'tradition and modernity'—prove to be inadequate tothe history. Alternate theories of science and modernization providean important theme running through the conference proceedings,East Asian Science, from which this essay will select the most relevantpoints.
• HISTORIOGRAPHIC ISSUESThe culturally and politically dominant role played by China in theEast Asian region is reflected in the central intellectual influenceexerted by Chinese paradigms there during the pre-modern period.
Address correspondence to: Dhruv Raina, National Institute of Science, Technology and DevelopmentStudies, New Delhi 110012, India, E-mail: [email protected]
0950-5431/99/020239-11 © 1999 Process Press
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Nakayama Shigeru suggests that since the nineteenth century Japanhas illuminated the path of Westernization and modernization inEast Asia. Methodologically the relationship between these twoparadigms hasn't been explored, and thus the interim historicalperiod has been neglected. However, Nakayama's point indicatesthat these are two axes along which debates on East Asian scienceare thus far located: that of tradition and modernity. In other words,the tradition-modernity dichotomy is inadequate for understandingthe history of East-Asian science.
According to Ho Peng Yoke, who briefly reviews the history ofEast Asian science, five thematic frames may be discerned. Thecommencement of Needham's Science and Civilization in China isprojected as the reference point against which subsequent develop-ments in the history of East Asian science are to be situated. Duringthe early years of the discipline, most historians of science, as theworld over, were trained scientists researching science in antiquity.Nakayama labelled this trend in the historiography of East Asianscience Kabukiza. This was contrasted with a new trend he calledAkhibara Denkya, which didn't see modern science as the victoriousoutcome of the battle between the ancient and the moderns, as wascustomary in the scientist's history of science (Brush, 1995). Rather,it adopted a Japanese vantage-point wherein the ancient and modernwere seen as co-existing. In terms of disciplinary specialization, Hopoints out that most contributions are from China, and of these anumber are addressed to correcting the errors in the Needhamiancorpus. Furthermore, the Needham question, which marked a turn-ing point in the history of science in the West and was certainly amilestone in the pre-history of the discipline in East Asia, stillcontinues to occupy the endeavour of historians and thus to perpetu-ate the Needham legacy.
But historians of East Asian science have graduated beyond thehorizon of the Needham project. For one, scholars have becomeinterested in the contributions of minority communities in East Asia.In a more positive engagement with historical knowledge, scientistsconduct laboratory experiments to evaluate the claims of Chinesealchemy. Nationalist historiography continues to provide an import-ant frame for the history of science, archaeological studies seek toresolve important priority disputes, such as those relating to theChinese origins of the 28 lunar mansions. In the history of sciences
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this is a dispute that dates, back to the early half of the nineteenthcentury; the French physicist-mathematician Jean-Baptiste Biot(1862) wrote extensively on the issue in favour of the Chinese, e.g.in the Journal des Savants.
Nakayama proposed four phases in the evolution of this discourseof science in East Asia: the Orientalist period, the historicalperiod, the comparative period, and what he calls the modern period.Nathan Sivin on the other hand proposes a partitioning in disci-plinary terms: of history and science, the history and philosophy ofscience, and finally anthropology and sociology. Ho suggests that thehistory of East Asian science has moved towards the border ofthe humanities and the social sciences since the 1970s. In disci-plinary terms, this move reflects the concerns of the modern periodreferred to by Nakayama.
• SOURCE OF INNOVATION IN ANTIQUITYThe papers in this volume honour the historian of East Asianastronomy Yabuuti Kiyosi on his 88th birthday. His paper also setsthe tone for the volume, addressing the diverse issues of the historyof sciences and technology covering the geographical expanse ofChina, Japan and Korea—those regions of East Asia that wereembraced by the 'greater Chinese cultural sphere'. As a geopoliticaland civilizational entity, China has existed for over two thousandyears, having been unified under the Han dynasty in 200 BC, andthe gradually established model of Chinese civilization has sinceevolved and exercised enormous influence in the region. Culturallymetamorphosed incarnations of it reappeared in Korea and Japan.Much as civilizations exchange goods and languages, the signature ofcultural transactions between civilizations is- to be found in diedomain of the sciences diemselves.
Yabuuti Kiyosi's work has long been concerned widi suchexchanges and his books on calendraic astronomy suggest thatIndian astronomy reached China during the Tang period. Theevidence of mis transmission is preserved in a text, the Jiuzhilioutlining the Navagraha calendar was compiled in the 718 AD. Theimportant question for Yabuuti was how this astronomy was receivedand integrated into Chinese astronomy; as he points out, 'a
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traditional culture can make great progress when it encountersforeign elements'. The results of this study of Yabuuti and hiscolleagues first appeared almost at the time that Needham (1977)and his collaborators commenced their studies on Science and Civi-lization in China.
It is thus interesting that two comparative historiographies ofscience were more or less proposed at about the same time. How-ever, while Needham's ecumenical vision was oriented to reapprais-ing our understanding of contemporary science, Yabuuti'secumenical ideal serves as a heuristic to chronicle innovations withinthe context of civilizational exchange. The enrichment of Chineseastronomy by Indian astronomy (Pingree, 1992) is thus as importanta question as the introduction of European science in Japan throughDutch merchants in the seventeenth century; the latter processextended into the Edo period, 1603-1867. (Incidentally, DavidPingree writes that the astral sciences most strikingly bear out thetransmission of scientific ideas from culture to culture and theirsubsequent transformation and renewal within the recipient culture.)
The agenda for comparativists working on East Asian history ofscience is set by three major civilizational encounters: the firstrelating to the transmission of Chinese knowledge to Japan andKorea; followed in time by the transmission of Indian astronomy toChina; and finally by the transmission of modern European scienceto China through the Jesuits and to Japan through Dutch merchants.Hence, while Yabuuti's own concerns relate to the history of sciencein antiquity, the historiography is equally focussed upon the onset ofmodernization with the transmission of Western science to Chinathrough the Jesuits, who were the vectors of this knowledge.
The dominant role of China and Japan, of the former fromantiquity into the medieval period and of the latter in the modernera, has downplayed the significance of Korea as an actor in theregion. Jeon Sang-woon discusses how traditional Korean sciencecould serve as an exemplar for the study of the East Asian experiencewith science and technology. A shift in perspective of this nature maythrow new light on old problems.
Torn by the tension characterizing two competing accounts, Jeonstrikes an appropriate balance between the idea that Korean scienceemerged out of Chinese traditional science, and the local adaptationof this knowledge within Korean history. For example, Jeon sees
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the emergence of a distinctive bronze technology as indicative of theexistence of an innovative tradition that reshaped the Chinese ironculture that arrived in Korea between the 5th and 4th centuries BC.The author remarks that the Korean technological traditions mayhave thrived and progressed despite the strong presence andinfluence of China's scientific civilization. This is possibly readinga very contemporary axiom of the relationship between scienceand technology into the Korean past. However, by seeking to loosenthe stranglehold of Chinese influence on Korea, he opens up Koreanhistory of science to other cultural influences as well, e.g. thatof Islamic science and civilization. Evidently, a study of theencounter between the West and China has to be prefaced chrono-logically by studies on the encounter between what each of thesenations considered 'the West' to be at different points in theirhistories.
Challenging the standard historiography requires engaging withdifferent criteria of scientific accomplishment. Traditionally, thepractice of comparative history of science in the non-West waspremised on unearthing anticipations of the ideas of modern West-ern science. In the introductory paper to the session on 'Comparisonand Exchanges between China and the West', Catherine Jami pointsout that the facticity of the transmission of ideas and artefactsinduces historical comparisons, as well as the recognition of theadaptation of these ideas and artefacts by a recipient culture thattransforms them.
Furthermore, from the East-Asian perspective, the notion of 'theWest' has changed historically over time. During the Tang period ofChinese history, Buddhist teaching and scientific knowledge fromIndia reached China, and India was considered the West. During theYuan period, the Islamic culture area was also included in thisnotion of the West. In the twentieth century, the West shifted furtherWest. From the perspective of East Asian history, the West is ahighly culturally determined notion; when used to qualify science, itextends far beyond the received connotation of Western science(read 'European science'). Thus from the East Asian perspective,East Asian science has different senses—referring to ancient Greece,India, the Arabic speaking world, and late Renaissance Europe. Inwhich case the study of exchanges between China and the West ismuch broader than that of exchanges initiated by the French Jesuits
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in China towards the end of the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies.
Although an East Asian reconceptualization of 'the West' is anurgent task for comparative history, a more directed critique comesfrom Nathan Sivin, who claims that the approach has produced littleconcerning the study of science as a general human phenomenon.Moreover, while comparative studies have drawn attention to paral-lels and contacts between civilizations, they haven't uncovered newpossibilities of human thought and practice. Sivin's scepticismregarding this limitation of comparative studies arises from thehistorical practice of selecting singular episodes and events fromdiverse civilizational contexts, without situating these events withintheir own historical context. For him science designates the philo-sophical attempts to describe nature and knowledge relating tomathematics, natural science and medicine. In order to supersedethe comparative approach to history as practised today, Sivinproposes an alternative approach to comparative history, asexemplified in a study of Greek and Chinese science. 'Greece' refersto a Greek-speaking domain which extended over Northern India,Egypt and parts of North Africa during the Hellenistic period. Thepreliminary conclusions of this study are summarized in the tablebelow.
Chinese science Greek science
Discursive practices relatingto natural philosophy andscience
Political ideals reflected intheories of macro- andmicro-cosmos
Symbolic cosmos of rulersand elite
Modalities of debate
Seeking consensus Encourage disputation ariddisagreement
Unifying and central ideal No shared ideal
Common symbols andrituals accepted by rulersand their civil servants
Scholars presented dieirideas and thesis topatrons: consensus valued
Cosmic metaphors of stateautonomous of interests ofGreek rulers
Oral disagreement amongstscholars promotedcompetition: disputationvalued
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m MODERNIZATION OF EAST ASIAThis string of historiographic interrogations generates a plea forgreater reflexivity into East Asian studies. In this vein, ChristopherCullen discusses the accounts of Chinese medicine produced by twoYale missionaries, Peter Parker and Edward Hume, one of whomarrived in China in 1834 and the other in 1905. Cullen is lessconcerned with 'the first-order task' of eliciting what these accountstell us, than with the second-order task of analyzing how this medicaldiscourse was informed and conditioned by the overall discourse onChina.
The accounts are important for two reasons. Firstly, as foreigntravellers' accounts, they describe in detail what the Chinese ac-counts may have taken for granted; secondly, specialists who createdthe classical medical literature would have ignored these accounts.His reading finds that the Chinese medical environment was pluralistin allowing the patient to draw upon resources he or she feltappropriate. However, both these texts so presented their encounteras to persuade the public back home of their humanitarian endeav-our. This was articulated through two different rhetorical strategies:homophilly, i.e. that the Chinese were like themselves; and thedecadence of Chinese medicine—a fact recognized even by theChinese, according to the interlocutor!
The distinction between the 'traditional' and the 'modern' comesup for interrogation in a variety of contexts. The underlying histori-ographic agenda is to refocus research on what received scholarshipon the sciences considers the Asian periphery. In order to supersedethe dichotomous framework of the traditional-modern, we have tofind answers to a new set of questions: namely, how should modern-ization be characterized in East Asia, and was Western science acrucial element in this process?
This question also requires the re-examination of the impact ofmodern science on East Asian modernization. This re-examinationwould in turn prompt questions concerning the importance of theseventeenth-century Scientific Revolution. As Nakayama argues, fornon-Western peoples the explosive military and technological devel-opments in Europe from the early nineteenth century were moreimpressive achievements than Newton's calculus. In his attempt todeconstruct self-congratulatory Eurocentric history, Nakayamarhetorically poses the query whether Newton's system is no more.
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than a cherished symbol of Western chauvinists. While one can besensitive to what moves Nakayama to this rhetorical flourish, even hewouldn't take his question too seriously.
As a more important point that emerges from these papers, theterm 'modernization' alludes to facets of social transformationemerging with the onset of industrialization and formation of thenation-state. In this discourse Yoshida suggests that it is the tra-dition-modernity dichotomy that generates the idea of progress froma traditional to a modern society. Rather than setting an analyticalframework within a historiography of departure or rupture, Yoshidaclosely examines Japan's modernization from the closing years ofthe Edo period to the early years of the Meiji era, searching forcontinuities within this transformative process.
A major departure is evident in the discussions on the introduc-tion and transfer of modern science and technology to China andJapan and their response. Commencing from conventional premises,Yamada Keiji introduces the concepts of intellectual isolation andintellectual opening to denote periods when positive and negativeattitudes to the introduction of modern science and technologyprevailed, which in turn patterned the history of the region, on twocounts. Firstly, the last 300 years could be described in terms ofcycles of intellectual isolation and opening; and secondly, the re-sponse of one nation was almost the opposite of the other until theend of the nineteenth century. This account gives cause to ask ifthe response of one was in some sense influenced by the response ofthe other. In any case, regional factors certainly played an importantrole in determining the response.
However, the different routes of modernization in China andJapan are traceable to the reversal of intellectual isolation andopening in the two countries. While in China the process of integrat-ing Western science into traditional science dates back to the endeav-our of Mei Wending in the early eighteenth century, the consequenthybrid science enabled the assimilation of an alien science andtechnology. By contrast Japan, through Dutch influence, intellectu-ally and politically addressed the process of modernization since themid-eighteenth century, and by the mid-nineteenth century hadcaught up with the West.
By that period the gap between China and Japan had increased.By the mid-nineteenth century, China was still in the Galileo-Kepler
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paradigm of science, but Japan was moving on to industrial andcommercial pursuits. As opposed to India, which was under colonialrule at the time, Japan and China saw the West as a 'menacingmilitary powerhouse', and initiated measures to economically andmilitarily strengthen their nations. These pressures stimulated anintellectual opening. Political sovereignty helped in negotiating thetransfer of technology and created a culture of hybridizing Westerntechnologies. The selective adoption of Western institutions wasprompted not merely by the desire to reform the ancien regime,but also regulated the assimilation of technology into Japaneseculture.
As is evident from the work of Yamada, Nakayama and evenSivin, an East Asian terrain of interpretation has managed to insinu-ate itself into the history of science studies; this volume stands upsplendidly as witness to that development. This is categoricallymanifest in the interesting paper of Pierre-Etienne Will, 'Modernis-ation Less Science', alluding to the possibility wherein both Japanand China could have embarked on a process of modernizationbefore they encountered modern or Western science. If one outcomeof 40 years of engagement with science in the non-West has pro-duced a broadening of the category of science, and a revision of thescript of science as a cultural universal, we are now likely to witnessa revision of the concept of modernization. As happened withscience, Will is careful to avoid juxtaposing the revised notion ofmodernity with those elements of East Asian culture that resemblethe Western notion of modernity. Such retrospective colonization ofthe past tends to suggest that China was heading towards industrialcapitalism, even if Western intervention had not occurred.
Will offers a revised notion of modernity, while keeping thehard core of the Western definition of modernity. This hard coreis premised on the notion of the irreversibility of time, and therelated idea that discounts the past, from which the idea of pro-gress and infinite improvement derives credence and legitimacy.The revised notion of modernity, refers to the onset of irrever-sible structural change in society, resulting in qualitatively differentrelations 'between people, institutions, and in the different com-ponents of material life'. These changes generate a greater degreeof integration, organization and distribution of initiative, and over-all social formations are rendered more efficient, productive and
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predictable, accompanied by a greater openness 'to what isexterior and different', and socially by a greater distribution ofprosperity.
As mentioned earlier, rethinking about modernization theory isprompted by the attempt to foreground the Asian periphery inhistorical studies. Another way of bridging the gap alluded to earlierby Nakayama, proposed by Morris Low, is through examining therelationship between science and language, science and empire,innovation, technology transfer, multi-institutional collaboration andgender. Low examines the various dimensions of this in his study ofEast Asian science.
The objective is to create a space for what have been called the'dissenting sciences' or the sciences that do not fit the norm ofWestern science. By departing from modernization theory, Japan'srecent economic and technological success is understandable in amore comprehensive framework. Contrary to the modernist pre-sumption that Japan had pursued a Western model of development,Japanese scholars emphasized the continuities between pre-War,wartime and post-war Japan.
In the light of this rejection of the premises of modernizationtheory, it is rather difficult to appreciate Low's remark that theBasalla model offers approaches to understand how other cultureshave come to terms with Western science. It has been extensivelyargued that Basalla's model is itself a product of the modernizationand developmental theories that Low forsakes for greater clarity andunderstanding. In conclusion. Low comes up with (what might betermed) a Utopian post-modernist agenda for histories of East-Asianscience. This agenda rejects the ideas of progress and modernization,a move which is tantamount to demolishing dichotomies such asscience-social, descriptive sciences-exact sciences, high technology-domestic technology, Western centres-Asian peripheries. This wouldenable graduation from the modernizing models of science, towards'mapping ecologies of knowledge'.
The contents of the volume are far more extensive than havebeen discussed here. Nevertheless this essay review expresses themood of the volume, inasmuch as it is not constrained by the termsof the debate of an overdeterminationist theory of history. Thediversity of scholarship, questions, and approaches indicates thatstudies of science in East Asia may bring new insights, not only on
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the comparative method in history, but more importantly about keyconceptions of modernization and progress.
• REFERENCESBiot, J.-B. (1862) Études sur l'astronomie indienne et sur l'astronomie chinoise. Paris.Brush, S. G. (1995) 'Scientists as Historians', Osiris, 10: 215-231.Needham, J. (1977) Science and Civilization in China, 7 volumes. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.Pingree, D. (1992) 'Hellenophilia versus the history of science', Isis, 83: 554-563.
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