NEW SCHOLARSHIP

XXII INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE BEIJING 24-30 JULY, 2005

Michael Paton

Fitting ideal landscape to geometric models: the landscape painter Juran's reference to geomantic principles. From Yu Kongjian, The Ideal Landscapes: The Meaning of Fengshui, Chinese language edition, Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 2000.

The Twenty-second International Congress of the History of Science in Beijing was a success in many regards, but no more so than its focus on the importance of the scientific heritage of China.

From the outset, the smooth interchange of ideas at the sessions was facilitated by the efficient programming of the Congress. The local organising committee, led by Liu Dun, Director of the Institute for the History of Natural Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, left no stone unturned to ensure that the program, which involved over eight hundred papers, ran like organic clock-work. This could only be expected from a conference with one of its major threads being the hundred year anniversary of the publication of Einstein's first paper on the theory of relativity.

However, it was the fact that this congress was held in the capital city of a non-Western country that has its own long tradition of science that made this conference particularly significant. The divide between Western science and the scientific traditions from other cultures was blurred by one of the underlying threads of the conference: the integration and globalisation of science through different cultures over time. The titles of some of the scientific symposia held at the conference give some indication of this important shift: 'Multicultural Transmission of Mathematical Knowledge', 'Diversity in the Global Reconstruction and Representation of Weather and Climate: East, South, West, North', and 'Trans-cultural Diffusion of Science'.

In reporting on the Congress, however, the Chinese popular press tended to focus on papers relating to traditional Chinese medicine, and its conception as science. Given the recent rise in the prestige in China of traditional Chinese cultural practices, specifically medicine, however, this is hardly surprising. But it was the comparison of traditional medical knowledge systems that shed most light on the advancement of knowledge. To give an example of the juxtaposition of such ideas, one session entitled 'Early Modern medicine, Chinese Medicine and Biology', featured papers on such disparate topics as the use of aphrodisiacs in Song-dynasty China, the effect of the Chinese use of variolation in the European development of inoculation techniques, ethics in traditional Arabic medical practices and Ancient Iranian hospitals. However, more specifically on the relationship between knowledge systems in the modern world, it should be pointed out that there were nine papers given in a session entitled 'Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda outside their Home Religions: a Comparison', with topics including the use of acupuncture in Tanzania.

What the popular Chinese press could have reported was that not just medicine, but research into the whole gamut of science in China, was very well represented throughout the Congress. In the session 'Ancient Astronomy', more than half the papers given were on science in China. There were seventeen papers presented in the symposium entitled, 'Ten Classics of Ancient Chinese Mathematics', five of the seven papers in the session 'Ancient Cosmology' were on Chinese topics, and the strength of the research worldwide into ancient Chinese technology was evident in the eight papers given in the session 'History of Technology—China and the West'. And, even more pointedly, two of the five plenary papers at the conference were on the topic of the history of science in China.

Although there was, as mentioned earlier, a distinct globalised 'feel' to the Congress, there was still some evidence of the previous chauvinism that privileges Western science. This was much more subtle, however, than that shown by nineteenth century racist ideologies. The session entitled, 'Commentaries and Other Deuteronomic Sources from Ancient China, Greece, India and the Latin World' proved very stimulating but continued with the worrying practice of attempting to tie ancient European religious concepts to ideas in other traditional cultures that do not carry the same religious connotations. Thus, although it seems to be a fait accompli that the Chinese word, jing as in the Yijing (Classic of Changes) is now referred to as a Canon, is it logical to describe what we once called commentaries as Deuteronomies? It is as though the upsurge in born again Christian movements in the West is being insidiously mirrored from within Chinese studies.

The final two plenary papers given at the close of the Congress were indicative of such pitfalls but also, more importantly, of the rich possibilities for the future of the history of science. The first by Evelyn Fox Keller pointed to the difficulty posed by language in the globalisation of science, with the static nature of languages at odds with what we now perceive to be a world in flux, a world of 'continuous coming into being' rather than 'is-ness', or what a linguist might dub the 'problem with nominalisation'. Keller also discussed the research of Richard Nisbett, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, into cultural differences in perception between East Asian and American students, indicating more contextual perception for the former and a more analytical perception amongst the latter group. Keller pointed to the challenges that this creates for the concept of objectivity. (See http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/08/0822_050822_chinese.html )

The final plenary speech was given by Christopher Cullen, Director of the Needham Institute at Cambridge University. Entitled 'Shifting Tectonic Plates in the History of Science: Reflections on the Life and Work of Joseph Needham', this paper placed Needham's life and work within the context of the development of our view of the history of science and technology, the view of the relations between a growing China and the rest of the world and 'the future of the human race in an age of fiercely competing world views and politico-religious agendas'. The speech, like Needham's life, stirred the audience to contemplate the universality of science and Cullen convincingly argued that any specific world view needs to take into account and incorporate the 'other' to survive.

Michael Paton is a graduate of the Chinese language and Teaching Quality Fellow in the Faculty of Economic and Business at the University of Sydney. He is a researcher in the field of the history and philosophy of science in China, especially in the areas of geology, geography and fengshui. His most recent publication is "Dragon Veins, Cultural Chauvinism and the Energy of the Land" in Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on the History of Science in China, Harbin, 2004.