Scientists of the East
Negotiations of traditional and modern
Scientists of the East has begun with a desire to probe the gaps in documentation of the lives of harbingers of Indian science to better piece together some responses to tradition modernity conflicts in a colonial era and have informed our postcolonial moments.
Development and practice of modern science in the past century in India has seen tremendous activity and led to production and prioritizing of this modern form of knowledge. Standing in corridors of postmodernism, we also witness a critique of the modern sciences on postcolonial societies. Given this backdrop, the following threads of inquiry drove us to construct a new history through images for three Indian Scientists.
Within popular science communication and popular perception, one mostly encountered as dominant (even within ourselves) the grand old narrative of science, pivoted around post-enlightenment science and people. On the other hand, particular histories, like biographies of Indian scientists were narrated within scientists' circles, those that mostly retold the technical context of these histories. The Nation State also retold these particular his-stories through passport-sized snapshots of scientists in suits, national stamps and hagiographic texts on achievements of scientists.
Historians, sociologists, cultural critics, chroniclers and modern day bloggers add differently to these particular histories. Thus evolve stories of scientists of Indian origin in their social-psychological milieu, who adopted and worked with a knowledge system that brought in the modern.
This is an inquiry into the nature of negotiations between tradition and modernity that might have happened. Why tradition and modernity? Science and progress has meant modes of modernizing in the past century of emergence of nations. In the east, ‘tradition’ came in conflict with forces pressing to modernize.
This 'beginning' focuses on three icons of early modern Indian science, Prafulla Chandra Ray, Jagadish Chandra Bose and Meghnad Saha. Contemporaries P C Ray and J C Bose's negotiations of tradition and modernity during the perigee of modern science in a colonial world are particularly interesting in their patchy yet uninterrupted absorption and meaning making of modern science knowledge. Meghnad Saha holds for us, as a significant symbol of budding modernity within India as we know it.
In our readings of briefly available documentation (brief also in our seeking we admit) of their biographies, quotes and philosophies- we found rather unique ways, whether syncretic or disparate, in how they negotiated their many 'traditionalities' or many 'modernities'. Primarily for this work, we have reinterpreted, through reconstructing fictional image histories, how these negotiations would be symbolized.
Development and practice of modern science in the past century in India has seen tremendous activity and led to production and prioritizing of this modern form of knowledge. Standing in corridors of postmodernism, we also witness a critique of the modern sciences on postcolonial societies. Given this backdrop, the following threads of inquiry drove us to construct a new history through images for three Indian Scientists.
Within popular science communication and popular perception, one mostly encountered as dominant (even within ourselves) the grand old narrative of science, pivoted around post-enlightenment science and people. On the other hand, particular histories, like biographies of Indian scientists were narrated within scientists' circles, those that mostly retold the technical context of these histories. The Nation State also retold these particular his-stories through passport-sized snapshots of scientists in suits, national stamps and hagiographic texts on achievements of scientists.
Historians, sociologists, cultural critics, chroniclers and modern day bloggers add differently to these particular histories. Thus evolve stories of scientists of Indian origin in their social-psychological milieu, who adopted and worked with a knowledge system that brought in the modern.
This is an inquiry into the nature of negotiations between tradition and modernity that might have happened. Why tradition and modernity? Science and progress has meant modes of modernizing in the past century of emergence of nations. In the east, ‘tradition’ came in conflict with forces pressing to modernize.
This 'beginning' focuses on three icons of early modern Indian science, Prafulla Chandra Ray, Jagadish Chandra Bose and Meghnad Saha. Contemporaries P C Ray and J C Bose's negotiations of tradition and modernity during the perigee of modern science in a colonial world are particularly interesting in their patchy yet uninterrupted absorption and meaning making of modern science knowledge. Meghnad Saha holds for us, as a significant symbol of budding modernity within India as we know it.
In our readings of briefly available documentation (brief also in our seeking we admit) of their biographies, quotes and philosophies- we found rather unique ways, whether syncretic or disparate, in how they negotiated their many 'traditionalities' or many 'modernities'. Primarily for this work, we have reinterpreted, through reconstructing fictional image histories, how these negotiations would be symbolized.