John,
I felt I had been somewhat rude in response to your piece from your book,
The Myth of
Irrationality, but I really am not trying to get wrapped up in East/West
debates. Still, I think it would be useful to make a few substantive
comments. You wrote that:
> I may paint with a broad brush, but in science as in art,
> that can be a good thing sometimes.
Yet there was no science in what you sent me and many different religious
traditions lumped together as if they are comparable. You also lumped
several tradtions and an incredibly large geographical area into one lump
sum. For example, you wrote
>
> For most of its history, European civilisation has had too little contact
> with the East to be influenced by the somewhat different model of the mind
> contained in Indian, Chinese and Far Eastern culture. It was not until
the
> 15th Century, when European explorers set sail across the world, that the
> West had any exposure to Asian systems of thought. Even then, the
European
> travellers were more interested in imposing their own Christian views than
> understanding local Buddhist, Hindu,Tao or Zen beliefs. Gradually though,
> as Europeans established their colonial empires, Eastern ideas about the
min
> d started to filter back into Western culture.
This forum is definitely not the place to explore the complexity of any one
of the systems you mention and/or the European influence. Princeton has
been publishing a series of books on religious traditions and you can find
the list at http://pup.princeton.edu/catalogs/series/prr.html You will also
find links to the following books, reading through the short synopses given
will give you a general sense of how complex the practices in these areas
are. To date there are separate volumes on Asia in general, Buddhism,
China, India, Japan, Late Antiquity (this is a Western source book), Tibet,
and Tantra. I understand volumes on Africa and Latin America are in the
works. I own both the Indian and China volumes and each is over 600 pages,
so they examine the traditions in great detail.
Personally, I think sticking to a religious traditions model of the mind is
very much a continuation of the 19th century model people like Schopenhauer
found so fascinating (and alternative!). I would urge you to enhance your
broad brush view by looking at how the culture as a whole operates.
Personally I think practices like science and art show the kinds of
questions people are asking and the ways in which new information changes
the culture over time. Moreover, I think if you are to avoid cultural
relativism you need to look at tangible evidence related to cultural
changes, and science is useful here because it generally puts very
convincing information into the pile. I'm not talking about philosophy, I'm
talking about hands-on scientific practices.
Here is a quite limited list of the kind of scientific references your work
seems to ignore when speaking about the East. I've included some specific
to the time you believe European influences arrived and also included a book
on European reactions to Indian art since it says a bit about the 19th
century. Of course, this is a short list and only reflects what I quickly
grabbed from my database.
-----------------------------------
Cullen, Christopher (1996). Astronomy and mathematics in ancient China: the
Zhou bi suan jing. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Elman, Benjamin A. (1984). From philosophy to philology. (Cambridge
(Massachusetts) and London: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard
University).
China from about 14-17th century, as I recall
Henderson, John B. (1984). The development and decline of Chinese cosmology.
(New York: Columbia University Press).
Tlks about how the scientific revolution of the 17th century
was evident in China, as in the West, but harder to see
due to the Chinese framework. An excellent book!
Huff, Toby E. (1995). The rise of early modern science. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press).
Looks at cross-fertilization in terms of the West, East,
and Islamic traditions
Mitter, Partha (1992). Much Maligned Monsters: A History of European
Reactions to Indian Art. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago
Press).
Munro, Donald J. (1969). The concept of man in early China. (Stanford:
Stanford University Press).
Needham, Joseph (1954-). Science and civilisation in China. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press).
Ropp, Paul S. (Ed.). (1990). Heritage of China: contemporary perspectives on
Chinese civilization. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press).
I discussed this in my earlier message
Selin, Helaine (1992). Science across cultures: an annotated Bibliography of
Books on non-Western sceince, technology, and medicine. (New York and
London: Garland Publishing).
Selin, Helaine (1997). Encyclopaedia of the history of science, technology,
and medicine in non-Western cultures. (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer
Academic Publishers).
Sivin, Nathn (1982). Why the scientific revolution did not take place in
China - or didn't it? Chinese Science, 5, 45-66.
[This article might be hard to find. It is excellent
and I can mail you a copy if you want to read it.]
Smith, Richard J., & Kwok, D. W. Y (Eds.). (1993). Cosmology, ontology, and
human efficacy. (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press).
How ontological and epistemological ideas changed in
China as new scientific information about the natural
world had to be factored into their worldview. As I
recall the articles go from around the 12th century
to about the 15th.
--------------------------
Amy
_____________________________
Amy Ione
PO Box 12748
Berkeley, CA 94712-3748 USA
Tel: 1 510 548 2052
Fax: 1 510 548 2054
Email: ione@Lmi.net
URL: http://users.Lmi.net/ione
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