History of Science in Early South Asia

 
Group Discussion: What do we mean by "science" when we study the history of science in early South Asia?
 
Co-facilitated by Eric Gurevitch (Vanderbilt University), Lisa Brooks (University of Alberta), and Dagmar Wujastyk (University of Alberta):
 
 Over the past 30 years, historians and philosophers of science have argued – over and again – that Science is too big of a category to talk of in a singular, coherent manner. Instead of focusing on “the scientific method” or on what makes a scientist, they have instead drawn attention to “the disunities of the sciences.” Talking of sciences in the plural has, perhaps inadvertently, opened up a space to think more broadly about the hierarchies of knowledge in the premodern and non-European world. So what are sciences for this group? Bring a definition of sciences (or of a particular science) from a narrative account (e.g. a tarikh, prabandha) or a scholastic source (e.g. the introduction to a particular śāstra) for group discussion, or simply come prepared to discuss how you have understood/defined this category in your work.