Content area
Full text
The relationship between science and empire, especially in the context of colonialism, is an important subject and one which has received increasing scholarly attention in recent years. Some of that attention has been directed to aspects of science in India, but until this timely study appeared no scholar had provided an integrated overview of science and technology in the subcontinent from ancient times to the present. Zaheer Baber, whose degrees were in botany and in sociology, has done a highly commendable job in mastering a very extensive body of published literature on the ancient origins, medieval growth and modern adaptations of science in India and provided an insightful and readable overview of major themes in this long and interesting evolutionary development.
The author provides in a concise Introduction the theoretical context for his study. He is appropriately critical of the influential school of "ontological relativism, which denies any role whatsoever to the natural world" (p. 5) in the construction of scientific knowledge. Among recent sociologists of science he finds most resonance with Roy Bhaskar's "critical realism" and Steven Yearley's efforts to combine "social construction" and "political economy" (p. 6). However, he is even more influenced by "the comparative historical and civilizational perspective" (p. 2) which was pioneered by Joseph Needham in his definitive study of science and technology in China. Baber's principal interest is in investigating both the "historical dimension" and the "complex social processes involved in the introduction and institutionalization of Western science in colonial India" (p. 7). His central thesis is that, while the introduction was neither "smooth" nor "uncontested," the resulting colonial encounter in the area of science had "significant consequences" not just for science and technology in India but also for their development in the West (p. 7). This was because nineteenth century India was the "site for one of the largest, state-sponsored scientific and technological enterprises undertaken anywhere in modern times" (p. 8).
The author sets the background context for the colonial era by providing highly informative and discerning accounts of major developments in science, technology and social structure in ancient India and in the ensuing post-700 period of Muslim dominance. Themes covered in the chapter on ancient India include the sophisticated technologies, metrology and proto astronomy of the Indus...