Page 54 - The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand Vol.XIII-2021

The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand
Volume XIII – 2021

In Science, Steve Fuller argues that the fact that Japan has risen very rapidly
from a remote island nation to a world power capable of defeating a major European

power such as Russia in the Russo-Japanese war in 1905 shows that science and
technology could be transplanted rather rapidly in a foreign culture without having
to “relearn” all the steps taken by the European countries during their scientific

revolution (Steve Fuller, 1997: pp. 121-134). His point is that science does not have
to be an integral part of a belief system or a particular culture, and when a foreign
culture, such as the Japanese one, wants to include science into its fold, it can do
so without having to ingest all of the cultural baggage and belief systems of the
European culture where modern science first developed in the seventeenth century.

This is in contrast to much traditional thinking, which looks at science more as a
historical product of the West, requiring decades if not centuries of the same kind
of development in order for it to become integral to the culture of which it is to

become a part. According to Fuller,

when Japan first took to the world stage in 1869, Western intellectuals argued
that the Japanese Western intellectuals argued that the Japanese would not
be able to match the West’s scientific achievement unless they also reproduced

the cultural background against which that achievement had occurred. In
philosophy of science terms, they held that the Japanese would need to
retrace the West’s ‘discovery’ process in order for its scientific knowledge to be
fully ‘justified’. However, the Japanese constructed alternative means to
their desired scientific ends; in some cases capitalizing on their metaphysical

and religious differences with the West, while in other cases hybridizing Western
institutions and practices. Once Japan defeated Russia without the supposed
epistemic prerequisites, Westerners reworked the essence of science so

that it no longer required a knowledge of philosophy and the other arts
subjects. If this historical tendency continues, then it is safe to assume that
there is no essence to science, no transcendental core to knowledge, without
which contact with reality would be impossible (Steve Fuller, 1997: 132-133).

What the Japanese did was that they took only the part of science and

technology that worked, the knowledge and skills required in building a ship and a
cannon, for example, and left philosophy behind. The interest was not in totally

A Reflection on Nalanda Monastery as an Inspiration for Promoting Scientific and Technological Capabilities in
44 Thailand