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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Interdisciplinary studies > Cultural studies
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The Japanese and Western Science (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R2,485
Discovery Miles 24 850
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The Japanese and Western Science (Hardcover)
Series: Anniversary Collection
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
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The Japanese first encountered Western scientific technology around
1543, when the Portuguese drifted ashore and left them firearms.
For the next few centuries Japan's policy of national isolation
severely limited contact with the West. In the middle of the
nineteenth century, when Commodore Perry introduced the Japanese to
a few of the West's technological achievements, they realized how
vulnerable their technological ignorance made them and felt great
pressure to master Western science as quickly as possible. In The
Japanese and Western Science, Masao Watanabe succinctly examines
the intersection of Western science and Japanese culture since
Japan's opening to the West. Using case studies, including a
Japanese scientist trained in the West and foreign teachers brought
to Japan, he describes how the Japanese quickly and effectively
accepted Western science and technology. Yet Japan, eager to catch
up, sought for the fruits of science rather than its cultural and
religious roots or the processes that allowed it to flourish. The
author contends that this resulted in a lack of integration of the
new science into Japanese culture with the resulting strains in
people's lives, their education, in research, in international
affairs, and in environmental pollution. The central three chapters
focus on Darwin, how his views were introduced, what aspects were
of most interest-survival of the fittest rather than the common
origins of animals and humans-and how one Japanese biologist sought
to blend social Darwinism and Buddhist ideas. In one of the
summarizing chapters, Watanabe contrasts the Western and Japanese
conceptions of nature, and points out that the latter has tended to
make the Japanese rely on mother nature to cope with the effects of
human actions, no matter what these might be. The book is the
product of painstaking research and penetrating insight by a
Japanese scholar who has firsthand knowledge of Western science and
culture.
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