“Apart from the features that have been mentioned above one has also to take into consideration the fact that the Jews or those of Jewish origin up to now have been the most successful in the sphere of Theoretical Physics and other theoretical sciences. There is a high percentage of them among the Nobel Prize winners and are likely to dominate these sciences at least for few more decades until the rest of the world are forced to catch up with their culture in the western civilisation.”_________________________________
by Nalin de Silva
(February 19, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Why did western Science not originate in China even after the Chinese had contributed immensely to what could be known as Chinese Science? Dr. Joseph Needham who did work on Chinese Science and who published a large number of volumes detailing the contributions of the Chinese to knowledge answered this question with a characteristically western bias. According to Dr. Needham there was no Capitalism in China to develop a western Science. This implied that Capitalism is a necessary condition for the development of western Science or Science as it is known today. It has to be emphasised that there are many Sciences and not one Science, though due to cultural colonialism we have been brainwashed to think that there is only one Science and that western Science is The Science. The Chinese had developed their Science and were not interested in creating knowledge that has come to be recognised as Science meaning western Science.
It is also said that the Europeans "discovered" the compass, printing machine and gun powder and that these discoveries in turn led to the creation and development of western Science. Now what is not well known is that the compass, printing machine and gun powder were known to the Chinese many centuries before the westerners "discovered" them but this knowledge did not lead to the creation of western Science in China. The answer given by Dr. Needham as well as the "theory" that the compass, printing machine and gun powder led to the development of western Science in Europe are based on the so-called economic and material base theories. Marxism is one such system of knowledge that claims that the cultural superstructure that includes Sciences is based on the economic base. Though there may be some Marxists such as those belonging to the Frankfurt school who have slightly different views on this subject in essence it is generally assumed that the economic and the material base determines the superstructure.
These economic and material base theories are widely spread in the western academic world and hence in the so called third world academia, especially among the left leaning (they lean either left or right because they cannot stand on their own!) academics and very often one finds spread of Buddhism is also being explained in terms of an economic and material base. It is generally said that a rising mercantile class in the form of guilds was instrumental in maintaining Buddhism in India. Buddhism is identified not with agriculture but with the "situ" (mercantile) clans in the towns. The so called left leaning academics are part and parcel of the western hegemony, being the complement of the more conservative type in the academia. The same goes for the so called radical intellectuals and artists especially in the "third world" from Arundathi Roy to Salman Rushdie. In the final analysis they present a western criticism, with a pinkish tinge that is not a threat to western knowledge or the western hegemony, of the societies they were born into and/or brought up, bringing recognition within the western hegemonic world.
How Buddhism was maintained in agricultural societies is not explained by these economic and material base theories, thus establishing that the Asian villagers (better to avoid the term peasants with its European connotations) had much more wisdom than the present day left leaning "intellectuals". In Sri Lanka we never had a mercantile class and even today our so called capitalists are not in the same league as those in Europe or even India, not only with respect to the money or capital they have amassed. The basic entrepreneurship is lacking among the Sri Lankans. However, Sri Lanka managed to keep Buddhism alive even after it was displaced by Hinduism and Islam in India. Anathapindika Tissa had been a "situ" (merchant) before he became a Buddhist or a "shravaka" and it is not known of many who became "situs" after becoming "shravakas" of Buddha. Thus the left leaning academics should rethink, if they could, on these matters before jumping into conclusions "inspired" by economic and material base theories. It could well be that one of the reasons, not the sole reason as in the case of reductionist economic and material base theories, why Buddhism survived in Sri Lanka was this lack of entrepreneurship and hence of a mercantile class.
Coming back to Dr. Needham and western Science we could have very well questioned as to why capitalism was not established in China, in the first place. Dr. Needham begs the question when he says western Science was not developed in China as there was no capitalism in that country. Secondly he assumes that western Science was created and developed in a capitalist west. He should have known that there was no capitalism even in England during the time of Isaac Newton. Trinity College, Cambridge like the rest of the European universities was a feudal institute in the seventeenth century and though Newton became the master of Royal mint later in his life, England at that time was more concerned with merchants of Venice as exemplified by the Shakespearean play. Capitalists were to follow Newton to London in time though not in space. Before Newton and England, Galileo and Copernicus in Italy and Poland respectively knew nothing about Capitalism though they were the pioneers of western Astronomy and Physics that laid the ground for Newton to develop his laws of motion and theory of gravitation. In fact one could reverse the argument and say that western Science and especially western technology helped the would be capitalists, especially in England.
The above does not deny the fact that after some time Capitalism financed western science, probably having realised that western technology had helped capitalist development in Europe. Today western science and technology and capitalism go hand in hand, one developing the other in the process. It is western technology more than western Science, though one is dependent on the other, that has helped capitalism and what post-modernist Marxists such as Jameson recognise as the third stage of capitalism could be identified with the electronic revolution of western technology. In one sense western post-modernism could be understood as a response to the electronic revolution, though in another sense it reflects the bankruptcy of the western ideologies.
There are number of salient features that have to be taken into consideration, in a discussion on the origin and evolution of western Science. Firstly, before the advent of western Science, there were Sciences such as Bharat Science, Chinese Science and Islamic Science. We must also remember that there were Sciences practised in the African continent supposed to be the cradle of human civilisation according to the western Anthropologists. (Apparently with the recent discovery of a skull dating back to approximately 160,000 years the majority of western Anthropologists claim that they have now firmly established the so called out of Africa theory on the evolution of the homo sapiens.) Secondly western Science originated not in western Europe but in Eastern and Southern Europe. Copernicus was in Poland while Galileo was born in Italy. Thirdly, contrary to the belief that the Catholic church was against western Science, the discipline flourished originally in the Catholic countries. Not only that Italy and Poland were Catholic countries, Copernicus was trained to be a Catholic priest. Galileo’s problems with the Catholic church were due to his refusal not to teach that the earth went round the sun without sufficient data to establish the case at that time, as demanded by the church. Fourthly, we have to take into account that western Science is more abstract than the other sciences mentioned above. Fifthly, western Mathematics that has developed hand in hand with western Science and that has been the language in which more abstract western sciences such as Theoretical Physics has been expressed is even more abstract than the western sciences themselves. It should be noted that western Mathematics is certainly more abstract than Bharat Mathematics.
Apart from the features that have been mentioned above one has also to take into consideration the fact that the Jews or those of Jewish origin up to now have been the most successful in the sphere of Theoretical Physics and other theoretical sciences. There is a high percentage of them among the Nobel Prize winners and are likely to dominate these sciences at least for few more decades until the rest of the world are forced to catch up with their culture in the western civilisation. I say forced to because those who have migrated to the west from Asian and other countries have to bring up their children in this particular culture irrespective of their religions and one could expect a future galaxy of western scientists emerging from the second and third generations of those who migrated to the western countries especially from Asia. The offspring of those who remain in these countries would not come up to the same standards in creating knowledge in spite of the forced western education, they could become Professors in their chosen or forced disciplines either in their countries or in the west but not creative scientists of very high calibre, not because these countries do not have the same facilities as the western countries, but due to the fact that they are not exposed to the same culture as those who are brought up in the western societies. Even with the imitative education we have in our part of the world the westerners have failed to immerse us completely in their culture. The facilities is not a problem in Theoretical sciences, especially these days with the personal computer and the internet but it is the "correct orientation" for creation in western science that is lacking in our part of the world. We should either absorb their culture or we should try to create knowledge in our own sciences based in our cultures.
There is another important observation that has to be stated in connection with the western sciences and western knowledge in general. Though England and the other Anglo Saxon countries have become the most "successful" countries with respect to capitalism and domination of the world, the best thinkers and scientists in the west have come from the other cultures within the western civilisation. Eastern European countries and Germany and Austria (the former Prussia) have produced the best intellectuals not only in western Mathematics and western Theoretical Physics but in western Philosophy, western Music and even in the western abstract novel and other forms of literature.
(Professor Nalin de Silva is a Sri Lankan theoretical physicist, philosopher and a political analyst. He is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka.)
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