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Modern Science and the Coexistence of Rationalities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Claire Salomon-Bayet
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Extract

History is familiar with great scientific traditions which have been substantial, effective, cumulative and progressive.* At the level of great eras of civilization, extensive and not episodic phenomena, very ancient Chinese science, Greek science and Arab science are objects of investigation for historical erudition, but also for the scientific historian and the philosopher of sciences. Many of the elements of these systems were the source of “modern science”, as it is called, or are integral parts ol’ this system of knowledge and practice which has been constructed over a little more than three centuries. Diachronically, the “scientific revolution” of the classical age in Europe does not signify a total break with what preceded it: Chinese astronomy, Arab algebra and the hospital organization of the Islamic world were used, even if the ideology of scientists when they wrote their own history, particularly from the 19th century onward, tends to make of modern science a purely European phenomenon.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 32 , Issue 126 , January 1984 , pp. 1 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

1 R. Rashed, "Science as a Western Phenomenon", Fundamenta Scientiae, vol. 1, No. 1, 1980, p. 7-21.

2 C. Lévi-Strauss, Race et Histoire, Unesco, 1952, p. 31.

3 See C. Salomon-Bayet, L'Institution de la science et l'expérience du vivant, Méthode et expérience à l'Académie Royale des Sciences, 1666-1793, Paris, Flam marion, 1978; and "Bacteriology and Nobel Prize Selections, 1901-1920", Science, Technology and Society in the Time of Alfred Nobel, London, Pergamon Press, 1982, p. 377-401.

4 A. Koyré, Études d'histoire de la pensée scientifique, Paris, P. U. F., 1966, p. 3-4 and 55.

5 F. Braudel, Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme, Vol. 1, Paris, Armand Colin, 1979, p. 291.

6 J.-J. Salomon, "What Is Technology? The Issue of its Origins and Definitions", History and Technology, 1983, vol. I, No. 2, p. 113-153.

7 A. Koyré, "Les philosophes et la machine", Études d'histoire de la pensée philosophique, Paris, Armand Colin, 1961, p. 308.

8 M. Mauss, Sociologie et anthropologie, Paris, P. U. F., 1973.

9 B. Latour, "Le Centre et la périphérie: à propos du transfert des technologies", Prospective et Santé, No. 24, winter 1982.

10 C. Lévi-Strauss, op. cit., p. 13.

11 We are using Bertrand Gille's concept of technical system, Histoire des techni ques, Paris, Pléiade, Gallimard, 1978, p. 19-20. "All techniques are, to varying de grees, dependent on one another, and a certain consistency is required between them. This ensemble of consistency at different levels of all structures and all combinations and all components makes up what can be called a technical system".

12 C. Lévi Strauss, op. cit., p. 30.

13 J. Needham, "La Loi humaine et les lois de la nature", La Science chinoise et l'Occident, Paris, Seuil, Point Sciences, 1969, p. 243.

14 Etiemble, Les Jésuites en China—La querelle des rites, 1552-1773, Julli ard, Collection Archives, 1966, p. 41. And Lettres édifiantes et curieuses de Chine par des missionnaires jésuites, 1702-1775, Garnier-Flammarion, 1979.

15 See D'Alembeit and Diderot, Encyclopédie, under Innoculation, Pékin, Porce laine.

16 B. Latour, article cited.

17 S. Nagayama, "The Transplantation of Modern Science to Japan", Unesco, comparative philosophical studies on the development of relations between science and society, Kingston Conference, 1983.