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Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures
Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and
Medicine in Non-Western Cultures
Advisory Board
HO PENG YOKE, Needham Research Institute, Cambridge University, U.K.
DAVID TURNBULL, Deakin University, Geelong, Australia
JAN P. HOG END UK, Mathematics Institute, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands
GLORIA T. EMEAGWALI, Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, CT, U.SA.
SEYYED HOSSEIN NASR, George Washington University, Washington, D.C., U.S.A.
SUSANTHA GOONATILAKE, United Nations, New York, NY, U.S.A.
Encyclopaedia of
the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
• Ill
Non-Western Cultures
Editor
HELAINE SELIN Science Librarian, Hampshire College,
Amherst, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Springer-Science+ Business Media, B. V.
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 978-94-017-1418-1 ISBN 978-94-017-1416-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-1416-7
Printed on acid-free paper
02-0698-500 ts
AII rights reserved © 1997 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1997 Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1997
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
A remarkable world-map centred on Mecca with a highly sophisticated mathematical grid for finding the direction and distance to Mecca from any location in the Islamic Commonwealth. The map is engraved on brass and was made in Iran ca. 1700. However, the geographical data on the map was compiled some 250 years previously, and the mathematics underlying the cartographical grid were known to Muslim scientists such as Habash in the 9th century and al-Biruni in the 11th century. (See: "Maps and Mapmaking: Islamic World Maps Centered on Mecca". Private collection, courtesy of the owner and D.A. King, contributor. Photo by Christies of London.)
In Memoriam
Madilyn J. Engvall 1936-1994
The process
Is old light truth passing through new glass
-Tim Davis
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface ..................................................... x1
Personal Note from the Editor ................................. xm
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x1v
Introduction ................................................. xv
List of Entries A-Z with page numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxi
Text of the Entries A-Z . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
List of Authors ............................................ 1063
Index .................................................... 1079
IX
PREFACE
The Encyclopaedia fills a gap in both the history of science and in cultural studies. Reference works on other cultures tend either to omit science completely or pay little attention to it, and those on the history of science almost always start with the Greeks, with perhaps a mention of the Islamic world as a translator of Greek scientific works. The purpose of the Encyclopaedia is to bring together knowledge of many disparate fields in one place and to legitimize the study of other cultures' science. Our aim is not to claim the superiority of other cultures, but to engage in a mutual exchange of ideas. The Western academic divisions of science, technology, and medicine have been united in the Encyclopaedia because in ancient cultures these disciplines were connected. This work contributes to redressing the balance in the number of reference works devoted to the study of Western science, and encourages awareness of cultural diversity. The Encyclopaedia is the first compilation of this sort, and it is testimony both to the earlier Eurocentric view of academia as well as to the widened vision of today. There is nothing that crosses disciplinary and geographic boundaries, dealing with both scientific and philosophical issues, to the extent that this work does.
xi
PERSONAL NOTE FROM THE EDITOR
Many years ago I taught African history at a secondary school in Central Africa. A few years before, some of the teachers in the country had designed a syllabus that included pre-European history, since the curriculum, left over from colonial days, did not include any mention of Africa before the Portuguese. After a year of teaching from this revised version, I asked my students what they thought was the most significant moment in African history, and virtually all of them said it was the arrival of David Livingstone.
It may well be that that was the most important moment for Africa, but it shocked me at the time that no one considered any African achievements worth mentioning. Over the years I have come to see, with the help of scholars like Michael Adas, that the dominance of the West means not only that Westerners disparage the rest of the world but also that the rest of the world sees itself as inferior to the West. This book is meant to take one step towards rectifying that, by describing the scientific achievements of those who have been overlooked or undervalued by scholars in both the West and the East.
The book is more than just a compilation of 600 disparate articles; it is a glimpse into how people describe and perceive and order the world. I hope the reader will do some exploring. In addition to reading about Maya astronomy, one can read about Mesoamerican mathematics and medicine, as well as a general article on Magic and Science, because all the fields are interrelated and entwined. It might be useful to read about astronomy in Africa and in Australia, to see how similar and different these cultures are. One can travel across disciplines, following the achievements of one culture, and across cultures, comparing the same discipline. And then it would be useful to read an essay on Transmission of Knowledge, or Rationality and Method, to put the articles and their contents in a broader philosophical and social context.
My hope, and that of the advisors and contributors to the project, is that the Encyclopaedia will expand the horizons of scholars, teachers, and students by illustrating how extensive the accomplishments of non-Western scientists are. May our future students never believe that science is limited to a fraction of the world.
A note about the authors' names, especially Asian ones: I made many embarrassing errors confusing peoples' surnames and given names, but I was reluctant to change authors' names to conform to the Western style, as it went against the spirit of the Encyclopaedia. Therefore, I have left the names as the authors wrote them.
X Ill
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My greatest thanks go to the scholars who participated in the project. They very generously gave me their work, their advice, their suggestions, and their time. Some members of the advisory board were more than just advisors; they helped to shape the work and give it clarity. Among the contributors and advisors, I must especially thank: Ho Peng Yoke, David Turnbull, Jan Hogendijk, H T. Huang, David King, Gloria Emeagwali, Ruben Mendoza, Cai Jingfeng, K.V. Sarma, Paul Kunitzsch, Boris Rosenfeld, Tzvi Langermann, Ruth Hendricks Willard, and Gregg de Young.
I must of course thank my editor, Annie Kuipers, and her wonderful assistant Evelien Bakker, for taking on such a big project with enthusiasm and affection. I have never encountered two people who work so carefully and so hard. Annie believed in the project, and in me, from the very beginning of our association, and it is certainly true that credit for the quality of the work goes largely to her. I would also like to thank Kennie Lyman, my first editor, who offered support, ideas and advice, and the feeling that we were doing something very important together.
At Hampshire College, I wish to thank my friends and colleagues Bonnie Vigeland, Serena Smith and Ann McNeil. They listened to my endless stories and complaints, and laughed and commiserated with me through all the ups and downs of this very complex undertaking. Tom Hart ably assisted with computer graphics, and Ken Hoffman helped with some of the mathematics. Amanda Seigel, a first year undergraduate student, was terrific both with the routine tasks and with fact and spelling checks. She became quite adept with Arabic and Sanskrit and did all the printing and reprinting with endless good cheer.
Joseph Needham, editor of Science and Civilisation in China, died in Cambridge in March 1995, just as I was finishing compiling the encyclopedia. All of us in the field of non-Western science owe him an enormous debt for bringing the intellectual worlds of the East and West together. In a sense all of our work follows from his.
Finally, I wish to thank my family for putting up with me. A project of this magnitude takes over your consciousness and your time. I'm sure I've been a horrible bore for six years but my lovely family has been very kind about it. I have kept Tim's poem ("I swallowed two pills that claim to heal unspecificity") on the wall in front of the computer, and Lisa's delicate flower drawings on the desk for inspiration. My deepest gratitude goes to my husband, Bob Rakoff; I would never have had the confidence to undertake this or the fortitude to complete it without him.
H. S ELIN
XIV
INTRODUCTION
In order to study the history of the science of non-Western cultures we must define both non-Western and science. The term non-Western is not a geographical designation; it is a cultural one. We use it to describe people outside of the Euro-American sphere, including the native cultures of the Americas. The fact that the majority of the world's population is defined by not being something (in this case non-Western) is testimony to the power of European and American colonialism and to the cultural domination of the Western world today.
In fact, for most of our recorded history the flow of knowledge, art, and power went the other way. Edwin Van Kley talks about this in his essay on East and West.
By 500 Be the globe supported four major centers of civilization: the Chinese, the Indian, the Near Eastern, and the West, considering Greek culture as antecedent to what eventually became the West. Of the four the West was probably the least impressive in terms of territory, military power, wealth, and perhaps even traditional culture. Certainly this was the case after the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century AD. From that time until about AD 1500 the West probably should be regarded as a frontier region compared to the other centers of civilization. No visitor from Mars would likely have predicted that the West would eventually dominate the globe.
The gap between the rich and poor nations has widened over the years, as has the notion of Western science as the only science. In this view, Western science is science; everything else is anthropology. Although Eurocentrism has been challenged in many fields, especially in the arts and humanities, the challenge has not extended into science. If we wish to study science in non-Western cultures, we need to take several intellectual steps. First, we must accept that every culture has a science, a way of defining, controlling, and predicting events in the natural world. Then we must accept that every science is legitimate in terms of the culture from which it grew. We must extend this view to our own science, recognizing that it too is a reflection of its culture, and that culture plays a role in every step of doing science: in what we choose to study, how we collect the data, and how we interpret them. We say that Western science is superior because we consider it rational, objective, and value-free, and we look disparagingly at others' science and call it magic. The transformation of the word science as a distinct rationality valued above magic is uniquely European. It is not common to most non-Western societies, where magic and science and religion can easily coexist, even today. For example, the practice of feng shui, or geomancy, the art of finding the spiritually correct location for a building, is practiced in China and in Chinese communities all over the world. If we are to study this subject open-mindedly, we must see that even the concept of rationality is problematic, as it stems from Western ideas about what it is to be a knowing, moral, sane individual. David
XV
XVI INTRODUCTION
Turnbull discusses this in his essay on Rationality, Objectivity, and Method. Certainly we accept that concepts of morality and sanity vary enormously in different cultures; we have to extend the same acceptance to the concept of knowing. Even naming this book the Encyclopaedia of the Hist01y of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures makes a value judgment about how knowledge is organized. There is no reason to assume that most cultures recognize the distinctions in those fields the way contemporary academics do.
We must even be careful about the words we use to describe cultures other than our own. Historians of science looked disparagingly upon Chinese science because in traditional China knowledge did not come under the same groupings as in the West. The Chinese had a more holistic world view, so that material on natural history might be included in a pharmacopoeia, or the works of a great poet might contain information on astronomy and alchemy. Works on military science might mention meteorology, firearms, magic, and divination at the same time. In fact, divination and mathematics, as well as astronomy and music, were the same word. The same is true with astrology and astronomy. In both Arabic and Chinese, there is one word for both sciences. What is noteworthy is that astronomy (naming the stars), the mere observing and recording of celestial phenomena, was considered inferior to astrology (studying the stars), the art of interpreting the data. Another example of this occurs among the Aztecs. The involved system of calendrics was largely based on astronomical observations, but the calendars themselves were applied both to ritual and practical ends. Medicine combined pragmatic remedies with shamanism and divination. Writing, architecture, and stone-, feather-, and metalworking all relied on sophisticated technologies; the resulting works served secular goals and/or displayed a complex religious symbolism. The empirical, scientific realm of understanding and inquiry was not readily separable from a more abstract, religious realm. Karen Jolly talks more about this in her essay on Magic and Science.
Even when we use the same conceptualizations, the meanings may not be identical, and our understanding may be limited by our ethnocentric conception. Jens H0yrup, in an essay on Near Eastern Geometry, discusses the mathematical concept 7r (pi). If we assume that the Babylonians or the Egyptians looked for the ratio between the circumference and the diameter of a circle, then we misunderstand a basic element of their own mathematics. "To the Babylonians, the fundamental ratio was the ratio between the area of the circle and the area of the square on the circumference, and the terminology they used demonstrates that they really thought of this as a constructed geometrical square. The Egyptians, for their part, were interested in the ratio between the sides of the squared circle and the circumscribed square. Both conceptualizations are fully legitimate, but they are certainly different from ours."
INTRODUCTION xvii
We know that in academia a process of questioning the literary and historical canon has begun. We must extend this to the study of science, especially in the cases where the science practiced was not a precursor to our own. This is a particularly important contribution that the Encyclopaedia makes; it brings together the mathematics of the Aztecs and the Australian aboriginal people in the same space as that of the Indians and Muslims. We have always paid tribute to Hindu-Arabic mathematics, as some of it formed the basis for Western mathematics. But we certainly have not recognized the equally important numeric systems of cultures with very different structures from ours. This is the result of seeing the world as a continuous progression to higher levels. Most other cultures created science and technology in response to their needs, so had no use for constant improvements. It is only in our time that this has worked the other way: that we create needs to meet the advancing technology. We have used this to disparage the lack of "achievement" of many of the world's peoples.
It is interesting that in some areas people have become more receptive to other ways of knowing. In medicine, patients, especially those in pain, have begun to question the exclusive superiority of Western medicines, and to incorporate other medical traditions into their treatment. Medical schools have recently added courses in complementary medicine to their curricula. We know that laboratory medicine has not been completely successful in curing many contemporary diseases, and we are aware of the contributions that other cultures' medicine might make. In agriculture, we are beginning to admit that techniques presumed to be inferior may have superior results, if not for yield, then at least for the land, and maybe, incidentally, for the health of the people who work the land. We are less impressed with big science, and no longer see it as a force only for good and progress. This provides an opening for the study of the science of other cultures.
In this project we are not trying to claim the superiority of other cultures; we wish to engage in a mutual exchange of ideas. In editing the Encyclopaedia, I tried to avoid ethnic cheerleading, and to edit out as many phrases as possible that fell into the "we were the first", "we were the best", "we were the only" categories. In the end, what does it matter who discovered gunpowder first? In fact, for many years, Western academics used the fact that the Chinese discovered gunpowder and did not "do" anything with it as proof of the Chinese people's essential lack of scientific acumen. For years scholars debated the question of why there was no scientific revolution in China. If we see that the Chinese used gunpowder, or paper or clocks or astronomical observatories, for the needs that they had at the time, we can marvel at their ability to respond to their needs without questioning why they didn't make new ones.
The Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non- Western Cultures includes a range of essays from short biographical and descriptive ones to long philosophical ones. These more general articles
xviii INTRODUCTION
cover topics such as Colonialism and Science, Magic and Science, East and West, Technology and Culture, Science as a Western Phenomenon, Values and Science, and Rationality, Objectivity, and Method. Since the study of non-Western science is not just a study of facts, but a study of culture and philosophy, we included these articles in order to make the entries on Indian trigonometry or Pacific Island medicine more meaningful.
This project arose originally from a course on Comparative Scientific Traditions taught at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, USA. The Ford Foundation financed the course, and provided some extra money for library acquisitions to support it. As I am the Science Librarian, I bought the books for the library, and then produced an annotated bibliography of about 800 books called Science Across Cultures, published by Garland Publishing of New York in 1992. The encyclopaedia project grew from that.
We had several goals for the encyclopaedia. The first was the simplest: to bring together knowledge of many disparate fields in one place. We united the Western academic divisions of science, technology, and medicine, because in ancient cultures these were connected; the study of the stars was interrelated to the study of the soil, navigation, mathematics, and healing. We also wanted to redress the balance in the number of reference works devoted to the study of Western science, and to encourage awareness of cultural diversity. We wanted to recognize the true value of the intellectual property of indigenous people. It is very important that the study of the science of non-Western people be added to the curriculum as a legitimate study in its own right and not just as a curiosity. Twenty years ago you could not study jazz in a major American conservatory, not to mention studying African or Brazilian music. Eventually, courses on ethnomusicology were introduced, as rather quaint but not quite serious additions. And today we know that there are complex patterns of drumming that Beethoven could not have conceived of, and you probably can not study music in an American conservatory without studying jazz. The same process happened with literature, from having a professor read a haiku poem in a class, to courses on Literature of the Other, to Nobel prizes for Chilean poets. We hope the same process will occur with science. Some people now incorporate bits and pieces of information about other cultures' science into their courses; we hope that in ten years minds and curricula will have expanded to include much more of this material.
The field of the history of non-Western science is not one without controversy. History is not fact objectively related; it is open to interpretation, and the interpretations change. When I began working on the book, I was quite innocent of these controversies, but I now know that many scholars disagree quite strongly with others in the field. In Islamic science, for instance, there seemed to be enough dissension in the scholarly community to include an article on the current debate in Islamic science.
We believe this is the first compilation of this sort, and it is testimony
INTRODUCTION XIX
both to the Eurocentricity of academia before, and to the growing widening of its vision that we can produce it now. The history of the science of non
Western cultures is a relatively new field to Western academics, and it is a rich
and fascinating one. The Encyclopaedia can be used to provide both factual
infonnation about the practices and practitioners of the sciences as well as
insights into the world views and philosophies of the cultures that produced them. There are also many articles that in a sense provide the background to
studying these sciences. Given the disparity in the number of articles on some cultures, such as the Chinese and Islamic, it might appear that they had more to contribute to world knowledge. The cultures that had writing and were less
exploited by warfare and colonialism have left more behind for us to study. Surely there were mathematicians in the Pacific Island countries and in the
Americas with skill equal to Zhu Shijie or Ibn al-Haytham. But no records survive. We hope that this apparent lack of balance will not be seen as a failing of the Encyclopaedia, but as an impetus for further research.
We hope that readers will achieve a deeper understanding of the relationship between science and culture and a new respect for the accomplishments of these ancient civilizations. If we continue to think of science as a purely Western phenomenon, we eliminate a world of possibilities and preserve a narrow view of life. As the Bantu proverb says, "He who never goes visiting
thinks mother is the only cook".
HELAINE SELIN
Amherst, Massachusetts Spring, 1997
LIST OF ENTRIES
Abacus . .... .. ... . ............. . ........... .
Abortion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Abu Ja'far al-Khazin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Abu Kamil....... .. .......... .. .. . ...... . ... 4
Abii Ma'shar' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Abu'l-Barakat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Abu'l-Fida' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Abu'l-$alt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Abu'l-Wara' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Acoustics in Chinese Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I 0
Acupuncture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Acyuta Pi~ara!i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Agriculture in Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Agriculture in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Agriculture in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Agriculture in the Islamic World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Agriculture in Japan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Agriculture of the Maya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Agriculture in the Pacific . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Agriculture in South and Central America . . . . . . . . . 30
Agroforestry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Agroforestry in Africa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Agroforestry in the Pacific . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Aida Yasuaki . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Ajima Naonobu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Alchemy in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Alchemy in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Alfonso X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Algebra in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Algebra in India: Bijaganita . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Algebra in Islamic Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Algebra, Surveyors' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Almagest: Its Reception and Transmission in the Islamic
World.. . . .... ... ... . ...... . . . ......... . . 55
Alphabet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Americas: Native American Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Animal Domestication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Approximation Formulae in Chinese Mathematics . . 65
Ari thmetic in India: Patfga1Jita . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Arithmetic in Islamic Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
xxi
Armillary Spheres in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Armillary Spheres in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Aryabhata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Asada Goryu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Astrolabe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Astrology in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Astrology in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Astrology in Islam. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Astronomical Instruments in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Astronomical Instruments in the Islamic World . . . . . 86
Astronomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Astronomy in Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Astronomy in Native North America . . . . . . . . . . . . . I 00
Astronomy of the Australian Aboriginal People . . . . I 05
Astronomy in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I 08
Astronomy in Egypt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I I I
Astronomy of the Hebrew People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I 12
Astronomy in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Astronomy in the Indo-Malay Archipelago . . . . . . . . I 17
Astronomy in the Islamic World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Astronomy in Mesoamerica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Astronomy in Tibet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Atomism in Islamic Thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Atreya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Aztec Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Bakhshali Manuscript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 7
The Balkhl School of Arab Geographers . . . . . . . . . . 149
Bamboo ..... . . .. .. .. . ... .. . ..... .. ... . .. . .. 150
Banu Musa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
Bar l:fiyya- Abraham (Savasorda) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 1
al-Battanl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Baudhayana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Ben Cao Gang Mu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . !54
Bhaskara II . .. .. . . . .... . . .. ....... , . . . . . . . . . 155
Sian Que . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
al-Birunl(Part I ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . !57
al-Birunl (Part 2: Geographical Contributions) . . . . . 158
al-Bi!rujl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Bitumen in Premodern China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Brahmagupta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
xxii LIST OF ENTRIES
Calculus . ..... . .. . . . .. . •• ••• • • • 0 •• • •• • •••• • • 164
Calendars in East Asia .. .... . . . ....... . . .. . . . . 164
Calendars in Egypt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 7
Calendars in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Calendars in Islam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Calendars in Mesoamerica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Calendars in South America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
Candrasekhara Samanta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Caraka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Celestial Vault and Sphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
Chao Yuanfang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Chemistry in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Chen Yan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Childbirth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
China • •• •••••• • • • •• • • 0 •• • ••• • •• • • • •••• • •• • •
Chinese Minorities . . .. . . . . . . . . . . ... . . . . . . .. ..
City Planning: Aztec City Planning . . .. ... . . . .. . .
City Planning: Inca City Planning . ........ . . ... .
City Planning in India ... . . . ... ... .. . . . . . .. . .. .
191
197
200
202
204
City Planning: Maya City Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Clocks and Watches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Clocks: Astronomical Clocks in China . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Colonialism and Medicine in Malaysia . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Colonialism and Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Colonialism and Science in Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
Colonialism and Science in the Americas . . . . . . . . . 221
Colonialism and Science in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Colonialism and Science in the Malay World . . . . . . . 226
Combinatorics in Indian Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
Combinatorics in Islamic Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . 230
Compass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
Computation: Chinese Counting Rods . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Conics ... .. ... . ... . .... . . . ... . ... . . ..... . .. 235
Construction Techniques in Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
Crescas - l:fasdai . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
Crops in Pre-Columbian Agriculture . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Cuneiform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Al-Damlrl .... . ... . .. ... ..... . . . . .. . .. . .. . . . 247
Decimal Notation .. ..
Ddantara
Devacarya
Divination in China . . .
.. . .. ... ... .. . . .. . . .... .
. . .... . . . . .. . .. .. . .... Dyes . . .. .. ... .. . . . . . . .. . • • • • • 0 ••••• ••• • 0 ••
East and West
247
248
248
249
251
253
East and West: Africa in the Transmission of Knowledge from East to West . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
East and West: China in the Transmission of Knowledge from East to West . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
East and West: India in the Transmission of Knowledge from East to West . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
East and West: Islam in the Transmission of Knowledge from East to West . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
Eclipses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Elements - Reception of Euclid's Elements in the Arabic World .... ........ . . ... ... .... .... ... ... . 277
Engineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
Environment and Nature: Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
Environment and Nature: the Australian Aboriginal People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
Environment and Nature: Buddhism . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
Environment and Nature: China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
Environment and Nature: the Hebrew people. . . . . . . 293
Environment and Nature: India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
Environment and Nature: Islam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
Environment and Nature: Japan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
Environment and Nature: Native North America . . . . 302
Environment and Nature: South America - The Amazon ... . .. .. . . . . .. .... .... . ... . .. .. .. 305
Environment and Nature: South America - The Andes . ... .. .... ..... . .. . .. . .... . .. . .... 307
Epilepsy in Chinese Medicine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
Epilepsy in Indian Medicine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
Ethnobotany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 I 1
Ethnobotany in China 312
Ethnobotany in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
Ethnobotany in Mesoamerica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
Ethnobotany in Native North America . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
Ethnobotany in the Pacific . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
Ethnomathematics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326
ai-Farghanl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
al-Fazarl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
Five Phases (Wuxing) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
Food Technology in Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Food Technology in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336
Food Technology in Latin America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338
Forestry in India
Gaitian
Gan De
340
342
342
LIST OF ENTRIES XXIII
Gas: Exploitation and Use of Natural Gas in Premodern China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342
Ge Hong . .... .. ...... . .. . . . . . ... . . .. .. .... . 344
Gender and Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346
Geodesy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346
Geographical Knowledge .... . . . ... . ......... . . 347
Geography in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
Geography in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352
Geography in the Islamic World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
Geography in Mesoamerica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
Geography of Native North Americans . . . . . . . . . . . 358
Geomancy in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
Geomancy in the Islamic World .. ...... .. . ..... . 361
Geometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
Geometry in Africa: Sona Geometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367
Geometry in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368
Geometry in India ... . .... . .. . ..... . . ........ . 372
Geometry in the Islamic World . . . .. . . . ........ . . 375
Geometry in Japan . . . .. .. . . . .. . . . ..... .. . .. . . 378
Geometry in the Near and Middle East. . . . . . . . . . . . 380
Globes . .. .... . .. . . .... . . .. ... . . . .... . ...... 383
Gnomon in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
Gou-Gu Theorem, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
Gunpowder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389
Guo Shoujing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390
f:labash al-f:lasib . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
al-f:lajjaj . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
ai-Hamdani . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
Haridatta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394
al-Hash imi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394
Hay'a . . . . . . .. ..... . .. .... . . ...... ... . .. .. . . 395
Huangdi Jiuding Shendan Jing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
Huangdi Neijing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
Huangfu Mi . . .. . . . . ... . .. .... .. . ... .. .... . . . 398
f:lunaynibn I s~aq . . .. . . ... . .. . . .... . ... . . . . . . 399
Huntian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
Ibn 'Abbad . . . . . . .. ... ... . . . .. ..... . . . . .. .. . 401
Ibn ai-A' lam . . . . . . . . . . .. .... .. . . . . . . . .. .. · .. . 40 1
Ibn al-'Arabi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
Ibn ai-Banna' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
Ibn al-Bayrar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
Ibn al-Ha' im . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
Ibn ai-Haytham (Alhazen) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
Ibn al-Kammad . .... . . .. .. .. .......... . . . . ... 408
Ibn al-Majusi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
Ibn ai-Nafis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
Ibn al-Quff(al-Karaki) . .. .. . .. . .. .. ..... . . . . .. 411
Ibn al-Raqqam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412
Ibn al-Sha!ir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412
Ibn a!-Yasamin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414
Ibn ai-Zarqallu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
Ibn Bagura . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416
Ibn Burian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417
Ibn Ezra - Abraham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418
Ibn f:lawqal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419
Ibn Hubal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419
Ibn Is~aq a!-Tunis! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420
Ibn Juljul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421
Ibn Jumay' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421
Ibn Khaldun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422
Ibn Khurdadhbih . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
Ibn Majid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424
Ibn Masawayh, Yu~anna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424
Ibn Mu'adh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
Ibn Mun' im . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427
Ibn Qunfudh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
Ibn Qutayba . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429
Ibn Ri<,lwan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429
Ibn Rushd (Averroes) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 1
Ibn Sahl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432
Ibn Sarabi (Serapion) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433
Ibn Sina (Avicenna) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434
Ibn Tawus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436
Ibn Tibbon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 7
Ibn Tufayl . . .. . .. . . . ........ . ............ . .. 437
Ibn Wafid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438
Ibn Yunus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438
Ibn ~uhr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440
Ibrahim ibn Sinan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 1
ai-Idrisi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442
Ikhwan al-$ara' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443
India: Medieval Science and Technology . . . . . . . . . . 444
Ino Tadataka . .. .. . .. . . . . . ... . . . . .. . . . ....... 447
Irrigation in India and Sri Lanka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 7
Irrigation in the Islamic World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
Irrigation in South America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452
!sa Tarjaman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454
Is~aq ibn f:lunayn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454
XXI\. LIST OF ENTRIES
Islamic Science: The Contemporary Debate . . . . . . . . 455
Jabir ibn Aftai:J . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459
Jabir ibn J:Iayyan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459
Jagannatha Samra! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460
Jai Singh ............. . .... .. .... .. .. . , . .. .. 461
Jamu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
Japanese Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464
AI-Jawharl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 470
Jayadeva . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 72
al-Jazarl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 72
Jia Xian .... . ..... . ... . . .. . .. ... .... .. .. .... 473
al-Jurjanl ... .. ... .. ... ... .. .. .. .. ... . ..... .. 474
Kamalakara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 75
AI-Karajl ... . . . . ....... . . .. .. . . .. ... .... . ... 475
Al-Kashl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 76
AI-Khalm .. .. . . .... . . ... .. .. . . . ... . ..... ... 477
AI-Kharaql . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478
al-Khayyam- 'Umar ..... . .... . . . .. . .. .. ... . .. 479
Al-Khazinl. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480
AI-Khujandl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
AI-Khwarizml . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482
Al-Kindl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483
Knowledge Systems: Local Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . 485
Knowledge Systems of the Australian Aboriginal People .. ....... ......................... 490
Knowledge Systems in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494
Knowledge Systems of the Incas ... .. . . ... .. . . .. 495
Knowledge Systems in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500
Korean Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 502
Kushyaribn Labban .... . . ... . ... ..... . .... ... 506
Lalla . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 508
Leo the African . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 508
Levi Ben Gerson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509
Li Bing ......... .. . . . .. .... .. ... ... ..... .. . 509
Li Chunfeng . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 510
Li Gao . ... .... . ... . ... ... ... .. ... .. .. ..... . 511
Li Shanlan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 511
LiShizhen ............. ......... . ... . . ... . .. 512
Li Zhi ... . ... ... . .. .. .... ... .. . . ...... ..... 513
Liu Hong . . ................... . ............. 514
Liu Hui and the Jiu:::hang Suanshu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514
Long Count . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515
Lunar Mansions in Chinese Astronomy . . . . . . . . . . . 516
Lunar Mansions in Indian Astronomy . . . . . . . . . . . . 519
Lunar Mansions in Islamic Astronomy . . . . . . . . . . . . 520
Luoxia Hong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 520
Madhava of Sm'lgamagrama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522
Magic and Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 523
Magic Squares in Chinese Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . 528
Magic Squares in Indian Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . . 529
Magic Squares in Islamic Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . 536
Magic Squares in Japanese Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . 538
Magnetism in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 540
Magnetism in Mesoamerica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543
Mahadeva . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544
al-MahanT ....... .. . , . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544
Mahavlra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 545
Mahendra Suri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546
al-Majrm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547
Makaranda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 7
al-Ma'mun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548
Maps and Mapmaking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549
Maps and Mapmaking in Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 554
Maps and Mapmaking in Asia (Prehistoric) . . . . . . . . 558
Maps and Mapmaking of the Australian Aboriginal People ..... .. .. .. ... . .... ........ ... . . .. 560
Maps and Mapmaking: Celestial East Asian Maps . . 562
Maps and Mapmaking: Celestial Islamic Maps . . . . . 565
Maps and Mapmaking in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567
Maps and Mapmaking: Chinese Geomantic Maps . . . 570
Maps and Mapmaking in India ... .......... .... . 571
Maps and Mapmaking: Islamic Terrestrial Maps 573
Maps and Mapmaking: Islamic World Maps Centered on Mecca . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577
Maps and Mapmaking in Japan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 578
Maps and Mapmaking in Korea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 580
Maps and Mapmaking: Marshall Island Stick Charts . 587
Maps and Mapmaking in Mesoamerica . . . . . . . . . . . 590
Maps and Mapmaking in Native North America . . . . 592
Maps and Mapmaking in Southeast Asia . . . . . . . . . . 594
Maps and Mapmaking in Tibet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 596
Maps and Mapmaking in Vietnam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 597
Maragha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 599
al-Marid!n!, Jamal ai-Din and Badr ai-Din . . . . . . . . . 60 I
Masha'allah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 602
ai-Mas'udf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 604
Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 604
Mathematics in Africa South of The Sahara . . . . . . . . 611
LIST OF ENTRIES XXV
Mathematics of Africa: the Maghreb . . . . . . . . . . . . . 613
Mathematics in West Africa: Traditional Mathematical
Games .................................. 616
Mathematics of the Australian Aboriginal People . . . 619
Mathematics of the Aztec People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 622
Mathematics in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 626
Mathematics in Egypt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 629
Mathematics of the Hebrew People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 632
Mathematics in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 634
Mathematics in Islam 637
Mathematics in Japan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 640
Mathematics in Korea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 643
Mathematics of the Maya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 646
Mathematics in Native North America . . . . . . . . . . . . 651
Mathematics in the Pacific . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 657
Mathematics, Practical and Recreational . . . . . . . . . . 660
Medical Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 663
Medical Ethics in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 667
Medical Ethics in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 669
Medical Ethics in Islam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 672
Medical Texts in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 673
Medicinal Food Plants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 676
Medicine in Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 679
Medicine in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 683
Medicine in China: Forensic Medicine . . . . . . . . . . . . 688
Medicine in Egypt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 689
Medicine in India: Ayurveda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 693
Medicine in Islam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 695
Medicine in Japan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 698
Medicine in Meso and South America . . . . . . . . . . . . 702
Medicine in Native North and South America . . . . . . 706
Medicine in the Pacific Islands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 709
Medicine: Talmudic Medicine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 14
Medicine in Thailand: Traditional Medicine . . . . . . . 7 17
Medicine Wheels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 719
Metallurgy in Africa
Metallurgy in China
Metallurgy in Egypt
720
725
726
Metallurgy in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 728
Metallurgy in Meso and North America . . . . . . . . . . . 730
Metallurgy in South America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 733
Meteorology in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 735
Meteorology in India. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 737
Meteorology in the Islamic World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 739
Military Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 741
Moses Maimonides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 744
Mound Cultures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 746
Moxibustion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 748
Mummies in Egypt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 749
Mummies in South America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 750
Munlsvara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 752
al-Muqaddasl. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 753
al-Mu'taman ibn Hud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 753
Namoratunga . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 755
Nanjing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 756
Narayal)a Pal)<;iita . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 756
Na~lr al-Dln ai-Tilsl . .. . . ............ . ........ 757
Nasir-i Khusraw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 759
Navigation in Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 759
Navigation in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 762
Navigation in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea . . . . . . . 765
Navigation in the Pacific . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 769
Navigation in Polynesia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 773
al-Nayrlzl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 776
Nazca Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 777
Nllakal)~ha Somayaji . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 780
Number Theory in Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 781
Number Theory in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 784
Number Theory in Islamic Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . 786
Observatories in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 788
Observatories in the Islamic World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 792
Optics in Chinese Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 793
Optics in the Islamic World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 795
Ottoman Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 799
Pak~a .... ..... .. . . . ...... . . . ... .. .. ... . .... 806
Paper and Papermaking. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 806
Paramesvara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 807
Paulisa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 808
Physics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 809
Physics in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 14
Physics in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 817
Physics in the Islamic World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 19
Pi in Chinese Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 822
Pi in Indian Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 823
Pirl Reis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 824
Potato . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 825
Precession of the Equinoxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 827
Putumana Somayaji . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 827
XXVI LIST OF ENTRIES
Pyramids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 828
Qadi Zadeh al-Ruml . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 830
al-Qala~adl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 830
Qanat . . . . ... . . . . . . .. ... . . . . . . ...... . . ...... 832
Qi... . .... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 832
Qianjin Yao(ang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 833
Qibla and Islamic Prayer Times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 834
Qin Jiushao . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 836
Quadrant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 7
al-Qiihl (or al-Kuhl) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 7
Quipu ............. .. ......... . ......... . . . . 839
Qus!a ibn Liiqa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 841
Rainwater Harvesting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 843
Ramanujan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 843
Rationale in Indian Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 845
Rationality, Objectivity, and Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . 845
al-Razl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 850
Religion and Science in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 852
Religion and Science in Islam 1: Technical and
Practical Aspects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 857
Religion and Science in Islam II : What Scientists Said
About Religion and What Islam Said About Science 861
Religion and Science in the Native Americas . . . . . . . 865
Road Networks in Ancient Native America . . . . . . . . 868
Rockets and Rocketry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 872
Sadr ai-Sharl<ah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 874
al-$aghanl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 874
Sa<id al-Andalusl. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 875
Salt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 876
Salt in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 877
Salt in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 880
al-Samarqandl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 881
Samii'll ibn ' Abbas al-Maghribl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 882
Sankara Variyar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 882
Satananda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 883
Science as a Western Phenomenon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 884
Seki Kowa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 890
Sexagesimal System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 892
Shanghan Lun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 893
Sharaf al-Oin al-Tlisl. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 894
Shen Gua . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 894
Shibukawa Harumi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 895
al-Shlrazl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 896
Shizuki Tadao . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 897
Shushu Jiuzhang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 897
al-Sijzl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 898
Silk and the Loom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 900
Sinan ibn Thabit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 902
Siyuan Yujian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 903
Song Chi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 904
Song Yingxing and the Tiangong Kaiwu . . . . . . . . . . 904
Sphujidhvaja . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 906
Srldhara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 906
Srlpati . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 908
Stars in Chinese Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 908
Stars in Arabic-Islamic Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 910
Stonemasonry - Inca . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 912
Suanxue Qimeng ... . .. . . . . ... . . . . ........ . . . . 914
al-Siifi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 915
Sugar in Latin America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 915
Sulbasutras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 917
Sun Simo . . .. . ... . .......... . .. .. ....... . ... 918
Sun Zi . .. . . . . .. .. . . . .... . . . . . .. .. . . ...... .. 919
Sundials in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 920
Sundials in Islam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 921
Surveying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 922
Su1yasiddltiinta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 926
Susruta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 927
al-Suyutl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 928
Swidden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 928
al-Tabarl . . .... .. .. .. . ... . . . .. . ....... . ..... 930
Takebe Katahiro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 931
Tang Shenwei . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 933
Tao Hongjing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 933
Taqi al-Oin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 934
Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 935
Technology and Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 940
Technology in the Islamic World . .. . . ... ... . . . . . 947
Technology in the New World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 951
Telescope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 953
Textiles in Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 955
Textiles in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 957
Textiles in Egypt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 959
Textiles in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 960
Textiles in Mesoamerica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 963
Textiles in South America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 967
Thabit ibn Qurra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 969
Time . . . ... . . . .... . ... .. ........... . .. . . . .. 970
LIST OF ENTRIES xxvii
Time in Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 972
Time in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 974
Time in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 977
Time in the Islamic World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 979
Time in Maya Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 981
Time and Native Americans: Time in the Pueblo World ..................... , . . . . . . 983
Tangren Zhenjiu Shuxue Tujing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 984
Trephination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 985
Tribology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 987
Trigonometry in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 987
Trigonometry in Islamic Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . . 990
Ulugh Beg ................... . .............. 993
al-Uqlldisi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 993
al-'Ur4i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 994
Vii!..yakarana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 995
Values and Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 995
Varahamihira . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 999
Va~esvara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I 000
Wang Chong .... . ... . ... . . .... ..... ... .. . .. . I 002
Wang Xiaotong . . .. ... .. ... .. .. .. . .... . .. ... . I 002
Wang Xi chan . . ............. . ........... .. ... I 003
Wei Boyang . . . . .... . .. . .... . ....... ... ... .. . I 004
Weights and Measures in Africa: Akan Gold Weights 1005
Weights and Measures in Burma: The Royal Animal-shaped Weights of the Burmese Empires I 007
Weights and Measures in China . . .... ... ..... .. . I 010
Weights and Measures in Egypt ................ . I 012
Weights and Measures of the Hebrews .... . ...... . I 0 14
Weights and Measures in the Indus Valley ........ . I 01 7
Weights and Measures in Islam .. . . . . . . . . .. .. .. . 1019
Weights and Measures in Japan ..... . ........... I 0 19
Weights and Measures in Mexico .......... . ... .. I 023
Weights and Measures in Peru ...... .. .... .. . ... I 026
Western Dominance: Western Science and Technology in the Construction of Ideologies of Colonial Dominance . .... . .. . .. . . . . . . . . . . I 028
Windpower . ....... . . . . .. ... . ... . . .. . . .. ... . I 032
Writing of the Mayas . ............. . . ... . ... . . I 034
Xiahou Yang ...... . . . .. ... ........ . . . .. ..... I 041
Xu Yue . . . . . . .... ... .... . ...... . ..... . . . . . . 1041
Ya~ya ibn Abi Man~ur . ... . ........... . . . . .. .. I 043
Yang Hui . . ........... . . ....... . ....... . . . . . I 043
Ya'qub ibn Tariq ... . .. . ......... . .. . . .. . . . . . . I 044
Yavanesvara .. . . . . ... ...... . .. . . ... . . .. . . ... I 044
Yinyang .. . ... . . . . . . .. ... . .. . ...... . . . .... . . I 045
Yoga . .. ....... .. . . . .... . .... . . ... . .... . . . . 1046
Yuktibhii.~ii of Jye~!hadeva . ....... . .. . . . .. . ... . I 048
Zacut, Abraham .. ......... .... .. . . . ..... . .... I 050
Zero . . .... . . . ............ . . . . . . . .... . ... . . . 1050
Zhang Heng .. . . . ... .. ...... .. . . .. . . . . . ... . . . I 052
Zhang Qiujian Suanjing ... . .. .... . . . . . .. . . ... . I 053
Zhang Zhongjing ........ ... .... . ..... .. ...... I 053
Zhenjiu Dacheng ....... . .. . .............. . . . . I 054
Zhenjiu Jiayijing . ..... .. ... . . . . . . ...... . ..... I 055
Zhoubi Suanjing . . ..... . . . . . . . . .. ............ I 056
Zhu Shij ie . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . .. . ... . ........ . I 056
Zfj . . . .... . .. . .. . ... .. . . . . .... . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1057
Zodiac in India ..... .. . . ............... . . . . .. I 058
Zodiac in Islamic Astronomy . ......... . .... . ... I 059
Zou Yan . . .. ... ....... . .... . .. . . ............ I 060
Zu Chongzhi . .. ...... ... .. . .... . . . .......... I 060
