The Dialogue of Civilizations in the Birth of Modern Science [Hardcover]

Arun Bala challenges Eurocentric conceptions of history by showing how Chinese, Indian, Arabic, and ancient Egyptian ideas in philosophy, mathematics, cosmology and physics played an indispensable role in making possible the birth of modern science.Preface Introduction Why Did Modern Science Not Develop in Civilization X? The Eurocentric History of Science Multicultural Histories of Science Towards a Thematic Approach to Multicultural History What Made the Renaissance in Europe? The Narrow Copernican Revolution The Alhazen Optical Revolution The Modern Atomic Revolution Integrating Hellenic and Indian Traditions Universal Mathematical Laws in a Mechanical Universe Fusing Solar and Stellar Cosmologies The Wider Copernican Revolution Contrasting Competitive Plausibility Bibliography Name Index Subject Index

Readers interested in multicultural scientific contributions before Galileo will enjoy this book immensely . . . Highly recommended. - Choice What Bala and others are offering is a view of history very different from the one Westerners are taught . . . Love it or hate it, our world is neither the exclusive heritage of the West nor is it something the West has imposed on the rest of the world, as reactionary fundamentalists insist. Rather, it is the result of a dialogue of civilizations - the efforts of very different people, in different places, coming together to share their curiosity about the world and their common interest in understanding and improving it. - The Toronto Star Erudite . . . What Bala has conclusively demonstrated is that the Scientific Revolution could not have been accomplished in early modern Europe on the basis of ancient Greek ideas alone. - Literary Review of Canada Bala's book is a marvelous combination of high speculation and deep rigor. From astronomy to mathematics, no one, after the work of Needham and others, could doubt the significant contributions of non-Western cultures (Arab, Chinese, Egyptian, Indian) to the making ol3