Science and the Indian Tradition When Einstein Met Tagore

This new text is a detailed study of an important process in modern Indian history. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, India experienced an intellectual renaissance, which owed as much to the influx of new ideas from the West as to traditional religious and cultural insights. Gosling examines the effects of the introduction of Western science into India, and the relationship between Indian traditions of thought and secular Western scientific doctrine. He charts the early development of science in India, its role in the secularization of Indian society, and the subsequent reassertion, adaptation and rejection of traditional modes of thought. The beliefs of key Indian scientists, including Jagadish Chandra Bose, P.C. Roy and S.N. Bose are explored and the book goes on to reflect upon how individual scientists could still accept particular religious beliefs such as reincarnation, cosmology, miracles and prayer. Science and the Indian Tradition gives an in-depth assessment of results of the introduction of Western science into India, and will be of interest to scholars of Indian history and those interested in the interaction between Western and Indian traditions of intellectual thought.

1. Introduction 2. Science in India’s Intellectual Renaissance 3. Tradition Redefined 4. Worldviews in Encounter 5. Relativity and Beyond 6. Indian Science Comes of Age 7. An Investigation into the Beliefs of Indian Scientists 8. How Clear Reason’s Stream? 9. Looking to the Future. Appendix A: The Nature of Reality. Appendix B: Investigation Questionnaire

Dr David L. Gosling is the principal of Edwardes College, Peshawar University, Pakistan, and also teaches ecology in the University of Cambridge, where he was the first Spalding Fellow at Clare Hall. He has been the Director of Church and Society of the World Council of Churches, and is the author of Religion and Ecology in India and Southeast Asia.