Archaic Modernities and Religious Scientisms: Rethinking Religion in Histories of Science in Asia
Lead Convenor: Charu Singh
This session engages with decolonization and Asia as method by focusing on the relationship between science and religion, and between forms of knowledge that are often described as scientific or religious. Asian religions and their epistemic communities have had longstanding traditions of scientific and medical knowledge, practice and their associated values and beliefs. To historians of premodern and modern sciences, the categories of religion and religious knowledge present distinctive challenges that are at once methodological, interpretative, and archival.
For instance, how do we distinguish between archives of science and religion, especially in the premodern period? How have secular commitments shaped the modern historian’s identification, use, and interpretation of sources that belong as much to histories of science as histories of religion? How have such histories reified or challenged scholarly characterizations of scientific knowledge based on religion? And how have several Asian nationalisms that were being simultaneously constructed claimed deep pasts and novel origins for the sciences, for very different projects of moral, social and political reform?
We will focus on three case studies from Iran, China, and India, and building on their rich analyses, we will aim to generate a discussion on methods, sources and historical interpretation.
Case studies
Doostdar, Alireza. “Empirical Spirits: Islam, Spiritism, and the Virtues of Science in Iran.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 58, no. 2 (2016): 322–49.
Kurtz, Joachim. "Disciplining the National Essence: Liu Shipei and the Reinvention of Ancient China’s Intellectual History." In Science and Technology in Modern China, 1880s-1940s. Edited by Jing Tsu and Benjamin A. Elman. 2014.
Subramaniam, Banu. Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism. 2019. Chapter 1. "Home and the World: The Modern Lives of the Vedic Sciences," 49-71.
(We've also included the Introduction and selections from the Mythopoeia in the file attached for those interested in reading more of the book.)
Optional Readings
I. Methodological Reading
Elshakry, Marwa. "When Science Became Western: Historiographical Reflections." Isis 101, no. 1 (2010): 98-109.
II. Scientism in India and China
Arnold, David. "Nehruvian Science and Postcolonial India." Isis 104, no. 2 (2013): 360-70.
Shen, Grace. "Scientism in the Twentieth Century." In Modern Chinese Religion II: 1850-2015. Edited by Jan Kiely, Vincent Goossaert and John Lagerwey. 2015.
III. Other readings of interest
Aggarwal, Neil Krishan. "The Sikh Foundations of Ayurveda", Asian Medicine 4, 2: 263-279.
Hammerstrom. Erik J. “Science and Buddhist Modernism in Early 20th Century China: The Life and Works of Wang Xiaoxu,” Journal of Chinese Religions 39, no. 1 (2011): 1-32.