Since I have been blogging (the past ~3 years) , I have toyed with the idea that the vitality and success of the Western intellectual tradition, with natural philosophy (science) as its centerpiece, over the past 5 centuries has been influenced by equal integration and contribution of three primary tendecies: rationalism, skepticism and empiricism, the “three jewels” [1]. These features of the human psyche are universal, though one can find formalizations of them in philosophical movements throughout the world to various degrees (the Athenian Academy was under the domination of Skeptics for many centuries before the rise of Neoplatonism).
In any case, one idea that I have formed about the lack of genuine scientific progress in the ancient civilizations of India and China is that they emphasized only one element of the three jewels. Perhaps Chinese “common sense” empiricism prevented the rise of systematic rational models that could make novel predictions in a broad sweeping manner (my impression is shaped by the book The Geography of Thought and my readings on the period of The Hundred Schools). In contrast, South Asian rationalism, in the service of mysticism, was entirely decoupled from ends oriented utilitarianism. I would offer that ancient Greek science & engineering was not nearly as seamless in its intellectual culture as modern science, with exceptions like Archimedes proving the rule, and the rationalistic fixation on paradoxes and philosophical discursion serves as a commonality between India and Greece [2].
But this is all retrospective. And yet there are products of ancient Chinese and Indian natural philosophy in the modern world: Chinese and Indian “traditional “medicine! I don’t know enough about these topics to really falsify or validate my hypothesis, so I am wondering what readers have to say. Is Chinese traditional medicine too short-sighted in its empiricism? Is Ayurvedic decoupled from the real world out there? I will explore this topic when I have more time, but if my hunch is obviously falsified in this case, I would like to know since it would save me the trouble.
[1] I would offer that modern “Post Modernism” is a variant of Skepticism taken to the extreme. People who have been influenced by Post Modern thinking have told me point blank that they believe in neither logic nor evidence.
[2] Unlike China, India and the Hellenistic cultures were directly aware of each other, the Greeks referring to Indian mystic/philosophers as “gymnosophists,” that is, the “naked thinkers” (perhaps a reference to the “sky clad” school of Jains and other ascetics). Plotinus himself embarked on a trek to India, though he never made it that far, while Pythagoreanism seemed to have a South Asian tincture. On the other hand, I have read less about the influence that Bactrian Greeks might have had on Indian culture except for the coinage and the craft of sculpting. India’s main scripts derive from Aramaic, so we know the importance of Western influences, so I would not be surprised if the various philosophical streams of Hinduism received an ancient injection of Hellenic thought that is not possible to tease out at this juncture.
Posted by razib at 01:41 PM