Transcript What is Medialogy? - Aalborg Universitet

Asian Appropriations
of Science and Technology
China: Nationalist Hubris
Japan: Pragmatic Hybrids
India: Hubris and Hybrids
Hubris and Hybrids
hubris: ”impious disregard of the
limits governing human action in an
orderly universe”
hybrids: ”offspring of parents that
differ in genetically determined
traits”
Hubris in History
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The myths of Icarus and Prometheus
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The scientific revolution: ”New Atlantis”
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Industrialization: ”Prometheus Unbound”
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Atomic energy: ”Science - The Endless Frontier”
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The arms race and the Apollo Mission
Hybrids in History

Medieval monks: artificial people
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The ”renaissance men”: artists-engineers
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Experimental philosophers: scholar-craftsmen
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Professional engineers: theoretical technicians

Environmentalists: activist academics
A Brief History of Science

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Ancient, or Traditional science, up to about 1600

spiritual knowledge, distinctive regional modes

gap between theory (episteme) and practice (techne)
Modern, or Western science, from about 1600 to 1970
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instrumental, rational, universal knowledge

functional interdependence of science and technology
Global, or Technoscience, from about 1970
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multiple forms of knowledge, commercial networks of innovation
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combinations of science and technology
Science and Technology
in ”Traditional” Asia

On the discursive, or macro level
• ideas of order, authority and control - Confucianism
• an underlying philosophy of life – Taoism, Buddhism

On the institutional, or meso level
• systems of infrastructural maintenance and management
• hierarchical forms of education and knowledge making –
mandarins in China, brahmans in India, samurais in Japan
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On the practical, or micro level
• advanced forms of artisanal practical knowledge (techne)
• spriritual and naturalist theories (episteme)
Encountering the West

India: the crown of the empire
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China: the middle kingdom
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colonization, occupation, national liberation
commercialization, resistance, revolution
Japan: keeping distance

isolation, confrontation, competition
The Indian Case
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A long struggle for independence
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British and Soviet influences
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Pluralist civilization, multiple cultures
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Scientism and spiritualism: a dual society
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The invention of tradition
The Chinese Case

A sequence of revolutions
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American and Soviet influences
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hydraulic civilization, bureaucratic culture
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The four modernizations
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The destruction of tradition
The Japanese Case
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A series of military confrontations
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Chinese and American influences
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island civilization, Samurai culture
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A national system of innovation
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The mobilization of tradition
Indian Minds
 Rabindranath
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poet, philosopher, artist, Nobel Prize, 1913
 M.K.
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(Mahatma) Gandhi (1869-1948)
independence leader: ”experiments with truth”
 Jawaharlal
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Tagore (1861-1941)
Nehru (1889-1964)
India’s first prime minister: ”scientific temper”
Tagore
What I object to is the
artificial arrangement by
which the foreign education
tends to occupy all the space
of our national mind and thus
kills, or hampers, the great
opportunity for the creation
of new thought by a new
combination of truths..
Just as matter
displaced becomes
dirt, Reason misplaced
becomes lunacy.
Mahatma Gandhi
I do not see any way out of
our vicious circle of poverty
except by utilizing the new
sources of power which
science has placed at our
disposal
Jawaharlal Nehru
Chinese Minds
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Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925)
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Mao Tse-tung (1893-1976)
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Founder of China’s nationalist party
Chairman of communist party
Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997)
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Party leader from 1978 to 1997
I saw the outside world and I began to wonder how it was
that foreigners, that Englishmen could do such things as
they had done, for example, with the barren rock of Hong
Kong, within 70 or 80 years, while China, in 4,000 years,
had no places like Hong Kong.
Sun Yat-sen
The key to achieving modenization is the
development of science and technology.
Deng Xiaoping
Japanese Minds

Kitaro Nishida (1870-1945)
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Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972)
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philosopher, cultural theorist
novelist, Nobel Prize for literature, 1968
Akio Morita (1921-1999)
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physicist, co-founder of Sony, writer
To become global
Oriental culture
must not stop at its
own specificity but
rather it must shed
a new light on
Western culture
amd a new world
culture must be
created.
Kitaro Nishida
The Master was plagued...
by modern rationalism, to
which fussy rules were
everything, from which all
the grace and elegance of
Go as art had disappeared,
which quite dispensed with
respect for elders and
attached no importance to
mutual respect as human
beings. From the way of Go
the Beauty of Japan and the
Orient had fled.
Yasanuri Kawabata
(The Master of Go)
Only with these three
kinds of creativity technology, product
planning, and
marketing - can the
public receive the
benefit of a new
technology.
Akio Morita