The 25th International Congress of History of Science andTechnology (IUPHS/DHST): A Report

Gulfishan Khan*

* Associate Professor, Centre of Advance Study, Department of History, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, Residence: 30B:Silver Oak Avenue, Street No. 4 Dhorra Mafi, Aligarh, Email id.: gulfishankhan@gmail.com

The 25th International Congress of Historyof Science and Technology was held from 23 to29 July 2017 under the aegis of the InternationalUnion of History and Philosophy of Science andTechnology/ Division of History of Science andTechnology, in Rio de Janeiro, the historic portcity of majestic beaches in Brazil. IUHPST, oneof the members of International Council ofScience, and Division of History of Science andTechnology is an international non-governmentalorganisation devoted to international cooperationin the field of history and philosophy of science.It was the largest international gathering ofhistorians of science, technology and medicine inSouth America and the Southern hemispherewhere scholars and researchers of more than 60countries gathered from every continent for thefirst time, enjoying the rich natural landscape andscenic beauty of the host country.

The event was hosted by the FederalUniversity of Rio de Janeiro, or University ofBrazil (Portuguese: Universidade Federal do Riode Janeiro, UFRJ or Universidade do Brasil), apublic university in the state of Rio de Janeiro. Itis a fairly large university in the country and oneof the Brazilian centres of excellencein teaching and research. The historical PraiaVermelha (Red Beach) campus, one of the mostbeautiful locations of the city happened to be thevenue of the conference. The city of Rio de Janeirois also home to a number of important teachingand research institutions concerned with theHistory of Science, Technology and Medicine, a

field of study which has developed significantlyin Brazil in the last 30 years, and of which theBrazilian Society for the History of Science(Sociedade Brasileira de Historia da CienciaSBHC) is the main representative. The Museumof Astronomy and Related Sciences (Museu deAstronomia e Ciências Afins - MAST), in Rio DeJaneiro is the other such important institutionfounded in 1985. It is the former base of theNational Observatory (Observatório Nacional -ON), at present a research unit linked to theMinistry of Science, Technology, and Innovation(Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação -MCTI) which has the mission of expanding theaccess of society to scientific and technologicalknowledge through research, the preservation ofarchives, and the dissemination of the history ofscience and technology in Brazil.

The Congress opened with the keynoteaddress on the theme “Trajectories and Challengesof History of Science in Latin America,” deliveredby the Peruvian historian Marcos Cueto, withRonald L. Numbers, the Hilldale Professor of theHistory of Science and Medicine at the Universityof Wisconsin-Madison, USA, seated in chair.Marcos Cueto, the scientific editor of reputedjournal História, Ciências, Saúde-Manguinhos, isProfessor of the Postgraduate Program in Historyof Sciences and Health at the Casa de OswaldoCruz (COC/Fiocruz Brazil). Founded in 1986, thisis the largest institution in the history of sciencein Brazil, devoted to the study of Brazilianmedicine and related subjects. Prof. Cueto, along

Indian Journal of History of Science, 52.4 (2017) 502-507 DOI: 10.16943/ijhs/2017/v52i4/49273

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with the Canadian historian Steven Palmer, is thewinner of the award of best book (Medicine andPublic Health in Latin America, CambridgeUniversity Press, 2014) on health, science andtechnology from the Latin American StudiesAssociation.

The Congress consisted of scientificsessions in the form of proposed thematicsymposia organised by various DHSTCommissions, individual papers presented in theregular sessions categorised as stand-alonesessions, and joint symposia organized byIUHPST Inter-division Commissions and Inter-union Commissions. The general theme of theCongress, “Science, Technology, and Medicinebetween the global and the local,” reflected thebroad nature of the Congress which drew scholarsfrom diverse disciplines in the domain of scienceand technology from across the world. Moreover,as the history of science in Europe and NorthAmerica, in particular, remains dominated by thestudy of science from 1800 onward, the Congressprovided an important chronological andgeographic balance.

The symposium “Local, regional, andtrans-regional perspectives on ancient andmedieval astronomy,” organized by AlexanderJones, (Institute for the Study of the AncientWorld, New York University, USA) and JosepCasulleras, (University of Barcelona, Spain),under the auspices of the Commission on theHistory of Ancient and Medieval Astronomy(CHAMA), sought to highlight how pre-modernastronomy as an entity was constantly in flux fromcontrary tendencies towards uniformity and localdiversity. Another symposium on “Science andOrthodox Christianity around the World: TheHistory of Science and Religion,” highlighted thecomplex relations between orthodox Christianityand science which is a developing field of thegeneral history of science-religion relations.Another symposium entitled “Science andLiterature: Global and Local Perspectives”,

organized by the Commission for Science andLiterature examined the role of science in poetryand fiction as well as in other forms of literaturein different periods.

Another important symposium on“Science in Islamic Societies, globally andlocally”, as part of Islamic CivilizationCommission, was jointly organized by RobertMorrison (Bowdoin College, USA), J. LennartBerggren (Simon Fraser University, Canada) andMiquel Forcada, (University of Barcelona, Spain).It had papers on astronomy, mathematics andmedicine, both theoretical and mathematical. Thesymposium aimed to situate science in theircultural context in Islamic societies with specialattention to the local specifics and the globalconnections of that science. In the samesymposium, Gulfishan Khan (Department ofHistory, Aligarh Muslim University, India)presented an academic profile of Maulānā Faridal-Dīn ibn Hāfiz Ibrāhīm Dehlawī, the royalastronomer of the Mughal Emperor Shāh Jahānand his scientist brother and astrolabe maker MullāShaikh ayyab. She argued that though havinglittle concern for planetary theory, Indianastronomers continued to make advances inobservational astronomy culminating in thebuilding of what today is popularly known as theJantar Mantar (New Delhi). Moreover, the Mughalscientist Mu‘tamad Khān Rustam bin DiyānatKhān Qubād Harīsī Badakhshī’s (d.1705) visit toEurope/Portugal, where he learnt Latin andtranslated Jesuit astronomer Clavius’s Eight Booksof Gnomics into Arabic was a continuation ofsimilar imperial endeavours. An analysis of Sirājal-Istikhraj, “The Lamp of AstronomicalObservations” (Bodleian Library, Oxford, PersianManuscript, Fraser, 180) a hand-book for theprofessional astronomers compiled by Mullā Farīdshows that with his diverse functions, theastronomer-astrologer remained extremelyinfluential in Mughal court-culture and aristocraticsociety. She concluded that the Mughal court

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continued to promote multiple astronomicaltraditions for time-keeping as well as for devisingcalendars and almanacs for what waspredominantly an agrarian society.

Perhaps here it is highly imperative todiscuss the significance of Mullā Farīd’s anotherwork known as Zīj-i-Shāhjahānī, the AstronomicalTables of the Reign of Shāh Jahān which wasbased upon the Zīj of Ulugh Beg, the ruler ofSamarqand. It was rendered into Sanskrit with thetitle Siddhāntasindhu by yet another courtastronomer Nityānandā who was residing in Delhi.The same Nityānandā, the court astronomer ofShāh Jahān, was subject of two other papers: Onepaper was presented by Anuj Misra (of TAMAS,PSL-Observatoire de Paris) titled “Thecomputational challenges in reconstructing theastronomical tables of Amtalaharī ofNityānandā”. The Amtalaharī (or perhaps, theKhemakti) of Nityānandā is an undated Sanskritmanuscript found in the collection of theUniversity of Tokyo discovered by the lateProfessor Pingree. This work, along with theSiddhāntasindhu and the Sarvasiddhāntarāja, asiddhāntic text, represents the three works knownto have been authored by Nityānandā. Anotherscholar, Prof. K. Ramasubramanian, from theIndian Institute of Technology, Bombay presenteda paper on “Computation of Sines by Nityānandāin his Sarvasiddhāntarāja”. He argued that theSarvasiddhāntarāja (1639 CE) of Nityānandā isa monumental treatise that provides acomprehensive treatment of various aspects ofastronomy. As is the case with much of theSarvasiddhāntarāja, Nityānandā introducescertain novel features which are not found in priortreatments, of this topic in the Indian tradition.Some of these features are his own insights,whereas others seem to have been inspired byArabic [and Persian] sources. In the view ofPingree, Nityānandā rephrased Islamic astronomyin a language which the adherents of Hinduastronomy could understand. He also points out

that some of the new vocabulary in theSarvasiddhāntarāja was nevertheless used in othertranslations made at Delhi a few years later, duringthe reign of emperor Muammad Shah. Forexample in the Sanskrit prose version of theTabulae Astronomical of Phillippe de la Hire(1640-1718). Perhaps unintentionally, these paperstogether shed light on a neglected aspect of theinterface between Islamic astronomy as developedduring the seventeenth century and Sidhhānticastronomy.

The presentation by Ramasubramanianwas followed by another paper dealing with Indianastronomy, in particular, bringing to fore thecontribution made by the Kerala School. A youngPh.D. scholar from IIT Bombay presented a paperon “Determination of the Ascendant in the KeralaSchool of Indian Astronomy”, that highlighted theinteresting and novel contributions made byMādhava in his hitherto unpublished workLagnāprākarāna. The other paper by MiquelForcada, (University of Barcelona) in the samesymposium sought to trace the development ofdidactic poetry about science in late al-Andalusand the Maghrib. He explored its diffusion in thelearned circles of Western Islam. The authorhighlighted the role the didactical poetry in thetransmission of scientific knowledge from the 13th

century onwards and the intellectual locales inwhich this genre flourished. The didactic poetrybecame a widespread tool for scientific educationas the genre begins to flourish from the 12th centuryonwards. One of the factors that explains thisphenomenon, or what seems to have stirred thescholar’s interest is the reception of Ibn Sīnā’sUrjūzafī l-ibb in the mid-12th century. In muchthe same way as in other Islamic regions of theDār al-Islam, the flourishing of the urjūza andother forms of didactical poetry in al-Andalus andthe Maghrib coincided with the establishment ofthe madrasa.

Yet another presentation discussed Al-Bīrūnī’s Methods of Mappings of the Earth and

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the Heavens. Alberuni’s treatment of these topicswas based on his treatises Projections of theConstellations and Making Spheres Plane and hisIstī’āb al-wujūh al-mumkinafīan’at al-asurlāb.J. Lennart Berggren’s talk was devoted to anexposition of some of his remarkable discoveriesin this area, their context among hiscontemporaries and earlier writers, and somethingof the subsequent history of these mappings.Kaveh Niazi’s paper on “Knowledge of theCosmos,” explored Qaān al-Marwazī’s (1072/1073 – 1153 CE) Persian text Kayhān Shinākht(“Knowledge of the Cosmos”) on astronomy, andits significance with respect to the tradition ofastronomical writing in the Persianate lands of theeastern Islam. Al-Marwazī was a prominentscholar of the Islamic world who is known to havewritten prolifically on literature, medicine,engineering, and astronomy. The authorhighlighted his configurations of the heavens, andthe layout and dimensions of the various climesof the Earth. Marwazī also included other materialsuch as a list of religious festivals, and atmosphericphenomena as well. The work is divided into threesections: On the Heavens (in nine chapters), Onthe Earth (in three chapters), and On the Calendarand the Passage of Time (in three chapters). Inthe same symposium in her paper “GeographicalCoordinates in the western Indian Ocean:Transmission of Knowledge from Antiquity to theLate Middle Ages” Marina Tolmacheva, ofWashington State University analyzed a selectionof coordinates pertaining to the East African coastof the Indian Ocean as transmitted from the Greekto the early Arabic astronomic geographical workssuch as al-Idrisī’s maps to Ibn Sa`id and Abu’l-Fida’, comparing their narrative andcartographical data. Nathan Sidoli’s paper entitledThābit ibn Qurra’s Restoration of Euclid’s Data(KitābUqlīdisfī al-Mu`ayāt) the first treatise inmost of manuscript sources for the collection ofworks that circulated in the medieval period underthe title of The Middle Books (al- Mutawassiāt).Despite the fact that this work had originally been

composed as a treatise in pure geometry forfacilitating geometrical analysis, it had beenrepurposed by scholars like Heron and Ptolemyas a foundation for numerical computation. Hence,by the time it was translated into Arabic in 9thcentury Baghdad, it was being read as a foundationfor these two, sometimes conflicting,mathematical practices. He pointed out thedifferences between the Greek text and Thābit’sRestoration, with particular attention to translationchoices and how they reflected the ways that theBaghdadi scholars were appropriating andmodifying Greek mathematical concepts andpractices.

Robert G. Morrison in his paper “ScientificExchange at the Early Ottoman Court in Istanbuland Connections with the Veneto” presented thecareer and oeuvre of Moses Galeano/Mūsā Jālīnūs(d. after 1542) as a window on to the fascinatingintellectual world of the Ottoman elite. TheOttoman court following the conquest ofConstantinople saw the confluence of a numberof scientific traditions. The author showed thatMoses Galeano might have been affectedintellectually by his time in the Veneto and by hisacquaintance with texts written in Latin. Two ofhis writings, a medical text in Ottoman Turkishand a Hebrew text entitled Puzzles of Wisdom(Ta‘alumot okma), indicated some familiaritywith European texts that were not available inHebrew and/or in Islamic languages. PerhapsGaleano was operating in a Renaissance context.It is worth mentioning here that there was aseparate Symposium on “Non-Muslim Physiciansand Scholars and Their Contributions to OttomanScience” which highlighted the role of Christiansand Jews in the multi-ethnic and multi-religiousOttoman Empire (1299-1923) organized by thewell-known Turkish scholar EkmeleddinIhsanoglu, of Turkish Society for History ofScience.

A paper on “Medical Concerns underNational and International Pressures: India during

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the Inter-War Years,” was presented by thehistorian of science Deepak Kumar, (JawaharlalNehru University) in the Symposium on “Science,Technology, and Medicine in Local, Regional,Transnational, and Global Context”. He arguedthat during the first half of the twentieth century,in the context of British India, medical knowledgeand practices underwent remarkable changes, sodid the ways of governance in different colonies.These changes gathered pace during the inter-waryears and the author showed the dynamics of whyand how this change occurred and with whatconsequences. It was the period when nationalmovement was on the upswing and demands weremade for the Indianisation of the medical servicesand for more space to the indigenous medicalpractices. Despite certain advances in modernmedicine, epidemics had become virtuallyendemic. Concerns were raised on national andinternational forums; quarantine alone was notenough. Even private philanthropy like theRockefeller Foundation tried to intervene. Theauthor sought to capture the contours and qualityof the debates and examine its reflections andconsequences in terms of public health, medicalinstitutions, and setting the agenda for the future.

Sir Syed Amad Khān (1817-1898), thenineteenth century Indo-Muslim intellectual andpolitical leader, in the bicentenary year, also founda place among the luminaries who contributed inthe spread of new scientific ideas and knowledge.Sarah Qidwai from the University of Toronto in apaper entitled “Islam’s Complexity: Sir SyedAhmad Khan on the Relationship BetweenScience and Religion in 19th Century India”presented in a noteworthy symposium on “Scienceand Religion: Exploring the Complexity Thesis”said that the great reformer, saw no contradictionbetween science and religion. Rather the greatthinker proposed a compatible, but complexrelationship of science and Islam in the latenineteenth century. She cited a pamphlet of theauthor written in 1892 in which he outlined his

principles of Qur’anic exegesis, wherein he arguedthat the work of God and the word of God couldnot be inconsistent with each other. However, theprogenitors of all such works remains ChristianW. Troll’s study Sayyid Amad Khān, AReinterpretation of Muslim Theology, Delhi, 1978.

Kapil Raj an India-born historian ofscience, teaching at the École des Hautes Étudesen Sciences Sociales (EHESS, Paris)in hisinteresting paper on “How Locality Affects theContents of Knowledge: The Asiatic Society ofBengal, 1784-1794”, presented under thesymposium on “Circulation of Knowledge andScientific Institutions: the Americas, WesternEurope, South Asia (1750s-1914)” highlighted therole of the Asiatic Society of Bengal which aimedto study all the knowledge of Asia, from its ancienthistory, geography and religions to itsethnography, metrology, astronomy, mathematicsand other sciences. Through an analysis of theannual discourses of Sir William Jones (1746-1794), he sought to bring out the central role thatthe periphery played in the making of knowledgewithin this institution of Asia and the world. Heargued that Jones’s theories differed from thoseof his predecessors, being the unique result of theencounter between European and Asian linguistic,theological, political and imperial traditions in thelearned and imperial-administrative institutions ofCalcutta. He also brought out the role ofknowledge institutions in controlling thecirculation of heterogeneous knowledge practicesand rendering possible their sustained encounter.

A number of scholars from India alsoparticipated in the congress and contributed in thesignificant academic event. Nishat Manzar,(Department of History & Culture, Jamia MilliaIslamia), contributed a paper on “Indian Sciencesand Colonial Concerns: Sir William Jones’ (1746-1794) and James Forbes’ (1749-1819) Impressionsof Brahmanical Knowledge”, Kamlesh Mohan(Punjab University, Chandiagarh) read a paper,“On Modernising Maternities and Motherhood:

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The Missionary Intervention”, in the symposiumon “Science and Empire: New localities - NewCirculations” and Padmaja Venugopal fromBangalore presented a paper on “Eclipses -Inscriptional and Literary References”.

Also, Achintya Kumar Dutta (Universityof Burdwan) presented a paper on “CombatingKala-azar: Indian Experience and Experiments”in the symposium on the “History of Tropical andNeglected Diseases from the 19th to the 21st

Centuries”. Two more scholars from theUniversity of Burdwan, Binata Sarkar, read a paperon “Relocating Popular Response: Burdwan Feverin Lower Bengal (1860–1943)” and AparajitaDhar, read on the “New ReproductiveTechnologies and Women’s Health in post-colonial India”. John Mathew (Indian Institute ofScience Education and Research, IISER, Pune)read a paper on “Epidemics and Natural Historyin the Colonial Encounters of South and South-East Asia”, Roland Wittje (Indian Institute ofTechnology, Madras) contributed a paper on“Instruments of Development: German TeachingApparatus and Practices at IIT Madras”, and KMahesh (Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay)presented a paper on “Two elegant derivations ofthe Surface Area of a Sphere by Bhāskarācārya”.

A few Panels such as “The ICHST and theFuture of HSTM Studies in the Global South: AConversation” and a Plenary talk on “ScientificExchanges Between the US and Brazil in theTwentieth Century: Cultural Diplomacy andTransnational Movements,” delivered by OlivalFreire Junior of Ferderal University of Bahia,Brazil, also focused on the host nation’s state ofscientific knowledge and technical know-how.There were panels, plenary talks and individualsessions on the theme of science and technologyand attitude and role of colonial governments: such

as the “Science and Medicine in Colonial India”,“Science and Technology in Colonial LatinAmerica”. Specific panels focussing on China’scontribution such as “Science and Technology inChina from Ancient to Early Modern Period” andanother on the broad theme of “Chinese, Indianand Islamic Classical Medical Traditions,” andfurther on a wide-ranging topic, “Ancient andIndigenous Astronomy: India China and America”were also organised.

There were other symposia which focusedon issues related to diseases, medicine, medicalpractices and knowledge. There were sessionswhich sought to explore the well-known themessuch as the Scientific Revolution, History ofCartography, Catholicism and Science, and finallyScience, Religion and Ideology. Other subjectslike Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry andPharmacy had separate panels and sessions whichhighlighted the history of the gradual developmentof these subjects as distinct disciplines. TheJesuits, who played a vital role in bringing science,and Catholic vision of Christianity to the LatinAmerica had separate symposium devoted to theirextraordinary contribution. The historicalmonuments secular as well as sacred such as theUniversity buildings, royal palaces, magnificentcathedrals and splendid Churches which dottedthe beautiful historic landscape of a fine countrybear undeniable imprints of European civilisationand culture especially that of the Portugueseventure and mission across the Atlantic. Overall,it was a splendid experience, and Luiz CarlosSOARES, (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro,Chair) the event’s dedicated organizer and his teamshould be congratulated for successfullyorganizing an international event at the local andglobal scale.