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On stock Western history, science originated among the Greeks, and then developed in post-renaissance Europe. This story was fabricated in three phases./First, during the Crusades, scientific knowledge from across the world, in captured Arabic books, was given a theologically-correct origin by claiming it was all transmitted from the Greeks. The key cases of Euclid (geometry) and Claudius Ptolemy (astronomy) both concocted figures are used to illustrate this process./Second, during the Inquisition, world scientific knowledge was again assigned a theologically-correct origin by claiming it was not transmitted from others, but was independently rediscovered by Europeans. The cases of Copernicus and Newton (calculus) illustrate this process of revolution by rediscovery. / Third, the appropriated knowledge was reinterpreted and aligned to post-Crusade theology. Colonial and racist historians exploited this, arguing that the (theologically) correct version of scientific knowledge (geometry, calculus, etc.) existed only in Europe./ These processes of appropriation continue to this day.
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Is Science Western in Origin? C K Raju Dissenting Knowledges Pamphlet Series (no. 8) Vinay Lal, Founding Editor Penang Multiversity & Citizens International 2009 Published by MULTIVERSITY and CITIZENS INTERNATIONAL 10 Jalan Masjid Negeri 11600 Penang Malaysia 2009 Printed by Jutaprint 2 Solok Sungai Pinang 3 Sungai Pinang 11600 Penang Malaysia ISBN 978-983-3046-07-2 Foreword to the Dissenting Knowledges Pamphlet Series Vinay Lal Founding Editor T his pamphlet series was commenced a little over five years ago as one of several initiatives of a new undertaking known as Multiversity. One of the principal buzz words of our times is ‘globalization’, and there has been much discussion, in the popular media and equally among academics, of the effects of increasingly porous borders, the massive expansion in the flow of goods, the inter-connectedness of national economies, and the opening up of hitherto closed economies to the principles of ‘free trade’. Neither the recent economic recession nor the attention lavished on (Islamic) terrorism can obscure the fact that the dominant story throughout the 1990s was the crumbling of all resistance to the onward march of the market. The mounting literature on globalization has generated numerous clichés, among them the aphorism that ‘the world is a global village’, and some —albeit few—genuine insights, among them the awareness that the slave trade, which encompassed large parts of the globe, involved numerous middlemen, vastly enriched some slave-owners and entrepreneurs, and respected few borders, can also be construed as a form of globalization. How far one can speak of a globalized world in the age of European imperialism or earlier still when the Indian Ocean trading system accounted for large chunks of the world’s trade is an interesting question. But, for the present, it suffices to say that ‘globalization’ appears to have captured and even monopolized our imagination, and thus it behooves us to probe further the politics of globalization. In the contemporary world, as globalization’s most ardent advocates are inclined to argue, the exchange of goods and services takes place at a highly accelerated, indeed unprecedented, rate. The internet appears, in some respects, to embody the principles of globalization, particularly if one is hospitable to the argument that the internet democratizes the public sphere and ensures that flows of information are not unidirectional. To many, the promise (and perhaps perils) of globalization are best comprehended by an awareness of the global iconicity of such corporate enterprises as McDonald’s and Coca Cola, rock stars such as Madonna and Michael Jackson, and eve