Research Seminar - First Session - Fall 2024

Research Seminar

In-Person Event

For a copy of the paper, please write two weeks in advance of a research seminar to Adriana Leviston <adriana.leviston@utoronto.ca>

Professor Arun Bala (Joseph Needham Foundation for Science and Civilization/IHPST Visiting Scholar) will present:  "Early Modern Science: Exploring Global Connections" 

Recent studies have attempted to relocate the history of early modern science within the wider context of global history involving circulations of knowledge across the Afro-Eurasian region. In this paper I argue that four influences that entered medieval Europe from the 12th to the 15th centuries had a major impact on the rise of modern science. These are the translation of Euclidean geometry into Latin, the translation of the Arabic optics of Ibn al-Haytham, the introduction of Indian decimal place-value numerals with zero and its associated computing techniques, and the flow of numerous Chinese technologies through the corridors of communication opened by the Mongol Empire. These transplantations of knowledge carried modes of thinking, which became transformed and then integrated within Europe to crucially shape early modern science. The paper concludes by tracing how these are exemplified in Newton’s studies in his Principia Mathematica and Opticks.  

Biography

Arun Bala graduated with B.Sc. (Hons) and M.Sc. in physics from the National University of Singapore, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Western Ontario, Canada. He has held teaching and visiting appointments in National University of Singapore, the University of Toronto, and Western University in Canada. He is the author of The Dialogue of Civilizations in the Birth of Modern Science and Complementarity Beyond Physics: Niels Bohr’s Parallels. He is the editor of Asia, Europe and the Emergence of Modern Science: Knowledge Crossing Boundaries, and The Bright Dark Ages: Comparative and Connective Perspectives. His co-edited volume Multicultural Exchanges in the Making of Modern Science: Needham’s Dialogical Vision is due for release later this year, and he is now completing a book-length study tentatively titled Globalizing Science Studies: Three Grand Questions. He is currently Research Director of Joseph Needham Foundation for Science and Civilization, and Visiting Scholar in Institute for History and Philosophy of Science (IHPST), University of Toronto.

September 25, 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.

No registration is required

Save the date for the next session: October 16, 2024

The Fall 2024 Research Seminars are organized by Professor Lucia Dacome