Eastern Science and Western Science

Question

I saw that some people trying to differentiate science into western and eastern. What are the criteria for parting them?

Answer 1

1. Science is a universal enterprise. If somebody tries to differentiate science into western and eastern, I suspect that he/she follows some non-scientific interests.

2. Science defines itself by its method and its domain of investigation.

   Concerning the method:

• Precise language, often using technical terms.

• Striving for intersubjectively accepted and testable results.

• Open-ended, correcting errors.

  Typical domains of scientific investigations:

• Natural science, mathematics, philology, historical studies, sociology, psychology.

3. On the other hand, a deplorable obstacle against scientific historical and philological investigation in academia is nationalism. E.g., in the field of indology controversial results are often assessed whether they are obtained by scholars from western universities or from academic institutions in the subcontinent.

Answer 2

Ah, me... Sorry, that's a reproving eye-roll at the intellectual world in general, not at the question itself.

This Eastern/Western science split traces back to a particularly devoted segment of the Karl Popper fan-base, who wanted to use Popper's notion of pseudoscience to attack and discredit traditional forms of medical treatment, particularly 'Chinese' or 'Eastern' medicine (due to the growing prominence of such in the '80s and '90s). Set aside the fact that Popper's theories were largely consigned to the historical dust bin by the time this medical dispute arose: their basic argument was that 'Western' medicine is based on structured empirical research paradigms ('falsifiable', in Popper's nomenclature) while 'Eastern' (traditional) medicines are steeped in religion, metaphysics, or other, uhhh... — to their mind, airy-faerie nonsensical crap — and thus little more than snake-oil peddled by unscrupulous bad actors to an ignorant public. They were quite aggressive in their pursuits, and hammered this distinction between Western science and Eastern malarky mercilessly.

Those who used or practiced these forms of traditional medicine were (predictably) a bit annoyed. They argued that traditional (particularly Chinese or Eastern) medicine worked on a different and complementary paradigm — the idea of wholistic balanced health ('wellness'), as opposed to the Western focus on the containment or elimination of disease and dysfunction — and that Eastern practices have a long history of empirical investigation. Nothing as rigorous as modern scientific medical investigation, obviously (since that only came to the fore at the turn of the 19th century), but still scientific enough in its own way. And note that the use of the term 'paradigm' here invokes Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions", the book which drove a stake through the otherwise undying heart of Popper's falsificationism. It is, thus, not something Popper's devotees were or are likely to embrace.

And so an overt attack on traditional medicine by advocates of a mostly defunct philosophy of science de-evolved into a dispute about the nature of scientific investigation itself, with the terms 'Eastern' and 'Western' senselessly held over from the earlier dispute. While I can't object to disputes in the philosophy of science about the nature of the scientific method, what we have here isn't that. It's a tempest in a sociopolitical teakettle that serves no fruitful intellectual purpose. I'd argue it serves no purpose whatsoever, except that it offers the opportunity (like any good teakettle) to make loud, shrill whining noises. But I suspect I'm jaded on the issue...