Rarely in recent memory have information, ideas and scholarly acumen of such a high calibre been presented as in these two volumes. Professor Chattopadhyaya deserves ad¬ditional credit for having brought together papers that were published as early as the eighteenth century and there¬fore likely to be missed by most contemporary scholars. The editor confesses in his Introduction, that the papers included in the volumes give no ready answer to many con¬temporary problems that have arisen with reference to the interface between science and society, but they can be used as source material for a variety of explorations. Nobody, after putting down Studies in the History of Science in India can any longer argue that in the ancient world, Western or Hellenic, science was superior to Eastern, or Indian science. This should meet the conten¬tions of many modern Weberians who trace the concept of Western rationality to as far back as the Hellenic period. Obversely, these volumes pro¬vide no comfort to those who argue that any lasting contri¬bution in terms of method or detail that Indian science, astronomy, algebra, arith¬metic, or philosophy achieved was the consequence of diffu¬sion from the epicentres of either Greece or Rome.
July-August 1983, volume 8, No 1