Is Science Western in Origin? by C.K. Raju (PDF)
EXCERPT: In his densely argued essay, Raju makes mincemeat of the received view of the Greek origins of science. The story of the Greek origins of science, Raju argues, can nowhere be found ‘from the beginning of the Christian Dark Age to the beginning of the Crusades’.
The Greeks had a primitive system of numeration; similarly, since much has been made of the great library of Alexandria, it is imperative to recognize that people other than Greeks produced its books. He surprises us with the observation that the sum total of any credible knowledge about someone called ‘Euclid’ is zero. This is the same ‘Euclid’ who had become such a globalized and universal figure that even someone like Mohandas Gandhi could effortlessly allude to him in his own quest for truth and precision: as he was to explain to the passengers on board a ship on 25 December 1931, “It is a self evident axiom, like the axioms of Euclid, that one cannot have peace unless there is in one an intense longing for peace all round.”
Gratitude to faculty, Angela Kirby for sharing her art at NEU for this free Library resource.
