The Science of Early Buddhism
Science and Philosophy in the Indian Buddhist Classics, Volume 1
Conceived and introduced by His Holiness the Dalai Lama; edited by Thupten Jinpa
Wisdom Publications, 2017 552 pages; $29.95
Western historical sources posit only one origin of science: classical Greece, beginning around the fifth century BCE. According to the prevailing narrative, this initial spark was interrupted by a long pause and incubation through the Middle Ages and wouldn’t be rekindled until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, during the European Renaissance. Aside from acknowledging some antecedents to the Greeks in ancient Babylon and Egypt, such ethnocentric accounts fail to recognize the many and varied origins of science, spanning eras and geographical regions. India and China, in particular, were home to numerous scientific achievements in mathematics, astronomy, technology, logic, linguistics, and medicine.
From that standpoint, the first volume of , a new series by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Thupten Jinpa, is both a revelation and a precious resource on these civilizations that coinvented the scientific spirit. The editors define science as a form of knowledge
