India - 5000 Years of Science

“India has a long and dynamic tradition of scientific thinking and technological innovation.” – A tradition that stretches back 5000 years, in fact, from today’s scientific space exploration missions to Mars to the first known use of the numeral zero. Illuminating India: 5000 Years of Science and Innovation, at the Science Museum in London (until 31 March 2018, free entrance), is an ambitious little exhibition which neatly distils a flavour of the great breadth and depth of an amazing human story. Divided into three themed sections: observation, calculation, and innovation, it takes us from the early city-building civilisation of the Indus Valley (c.3300-1300 BC), through the classical and medieval eras (c.1500 BC-c.1500 AD), the Mughal (1526-1857) and British (1757-1947) Empires, to the modern day Republic of India. Showing how over millennia the cultures and peoples of the Indian subcontinent have traded goods and knowledge – commodities, artworks, technology, ideas – with other civilisations, the ripples of which have spread across the globe and continue to reverberate today. In many ways, India has always been at the very forefront of science.

The roots of Indian cosmology begin in its many religious traditions, as symbolised by the ‘earth witness’ pose of the Buddha statue at the start of the exhibition. Modern science is so often divorced from its origins in people’s minds these days that it is interesting to see here the linking of modern science to systems of knowledge which were first developed in the traditions of folk culture as they became embodied and codified in religious and philosophical thinking. Restoring this link is probably no bad thing and is perhaps something which should be given far greater prominence and focus, particularly given the remarkable resurgence of creationist thinking and ‘flat-earthers’ in only the last few years. 

19th century photographs of solar flares and sunspots on the surface of the Sun

To my mind the early modern “Age of Enlightenment” in the 18^th century as a pivotal period of transition in the West, along with the richly deep traditions of cosmology underpinning scientific concepts first found in the East, are more than simply bridges from the eminent thinkers of the past to those of the present – they are a means towards a more holistic understanding of our worldview and more importantly the continuity of the enquiring mind which is endemic to all cultures. That drive to understand the world around us, from microcosm to macrocosm, is something shared by all peoples. Examining and thinking about the environment in which we live (indeed with which we are interdependent, despite the exponential impact which we are currently effecting upon it), and contemplating the vast wonders of the wider universe itself in all its enormity and our infinitesimally small existence within it, is the common thread running through all human cultures across time.

Jambūdvīpa, or ‘Jain Map of the World’, c.1817

Two very different but not dissimilar maps at the start of this exhibition put me in mind of two books which I bought while I was in Delhi last year: A History of Science in World Cultures: Voices of Knowledge by Scott L. Montgomery and Alok Kumar (Routledge, 2016), and Cosmology to Cartography: A Cultural Journey of Indian Maps by Dr Vivek Nanda and Dr Alexander Johnson (National Museum, 2015). The first of the two maps, the ‘Jambūdvīpa’, or ‘Jain Map of the World’ (c.1817), which shows the Jain concept of the universe – with the notional continent of Jambūdvīpa at its centre – but which also explains how to calculate vast numbers, including different types of infinity, is neatly contrasted by the ‘Index Chart to the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India’ (1860) on the opposite wall. The GTS chart illustrates the prodigious efforts of British colonial officials to physically survey the subcontinent. Each triangle on the chart represents the sum of hundreds of distance and angle measurements made using heavy theodolites, cumbersome 100-feet measuring chains, and compensation bars – like those displayed alongside – which produced a map that at the time was unrivalled in both scale and accuracy. 

Index Chart to the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India, 1860

Cary-Lambton Theodolite, c.1802

Ramsden's 100-feet chain, c.1793

George Everest's compensation bar, c.1830 & Surveying 10-feet standard, c.1830

Having read Matthew Edney’s excellent Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765-1843 (University of Chicago Press, 1997) I was particularly interested to see these items, as well as the colonial-era botanical sketches made by unnamed Indian artists for Nathaniel Wallich (a Danish surgeon and botanist employed by the British East India Company) shown nearby, which are contrasted nicely by similar Mughal-era artworks commissioned by the Emperor Janhangir (1569-1627).

Linking these artistic as well as scientific exhibits is a fascinating machine – an oscillating plate phytograph (early 1900s). Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858-1937), often referred to as the father of modern science in India, was fascinated by how plants respond to stimuli. He developed this machine in order to measure the influence of light, temperature and gravity on plant growth, thereby inventing a device which, through enhanced magnification, speeded up the time it usually took to conduct such studies. Arguably it’s only by marrying these supposedly opposites – of art and ideas, faith and facts – that we can properly comprehend the natural evolution of our current understanding of a scientific cosmology as it was first seeded and how it has since grown in the collective human mind.

Nathaniel Wallich's botanical wattercolours, early 1800s

Oscillating plate phytograph, early 1900s

Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858-1937)

Painting of a Himalayan goat, 1807 & Painting of Akbar crossing the Ganges by elephant, c.1586-1589

As a centrpiece to the exhibition, there is an example of the cleanest and most pristine auto-rickshaw, or tuk-tuk, which you are ever likely to see! – But this iconic mode of transportation (both amusing and scary by equal measures to outsiders visiting India) makes a serious point about the practical applications of science and engineering to the day-to-day lives of ordinary Indians. India has always been a site of technological innovation – as is illustrated by a fascinating set of objects and images relating to the Tata steelworks.

Advanced metalworking has always been a key industry in India, exported to other countries long before the developments of mechanised mass-production in the colonial and modern eras. From the ‘lost wax’ technique used to cast bronze statues of religious deities to the advanced chemistry which refined India’s steelworks, producing personal arms and armour to tanks, battleships, and steam engines, such innovations in engineering have helped to advance globalisation in the modern era through industrialisation. 

Photograph of steelworkers in Jamshedpur by Sunil Janah, 1940s-1950s - opened in 1907 Jamshedpur was the first modern steelworks to open in India

Tata Steel advert from the Times of India, 1934-1935

Commemorative stamps for the 50th anniversary of India's steel industry, 1958

The railways – one of the characteristic modes of transportation for which India is best known – were key to developing networks of trade, communication, and control; regulating the routines of life and work for millions of Indians from the 19^th into the 21^st centuries. But these prodigious, practical applications of science to the everyday first originated in the innovations of the theoretical. To return to the Jain Jambūdvīpa map of the world, we see it juxtaposed again by perhaps the most remarkable pairing of theoretical works of pure mathematics – the ancient Bakhshali manuscript (c. 300-800), found in 1881, which contains the earliest example of the use of the numeral and the concept of zero, sits alongside the modern handwritten calculations of Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920), and a handwritten letter from Satyendra Nath Bose sent to Albert Einstein in 1924. The digital revolution – based on a system of zeros and ones – has facilitated the development of computer technologies which have enabled India to advance and perfect its remarkable space exploration programme, reaching Mars on its first attempt – amazingly the only country in the world (so far) to do so.

The Bakhshali manuscript, c. 300-800

Selected papers from Ramanujan's work, 1914-1920

A second exhibition, Illuminating India: Photography 1857-2017, very ably charts the history of photography in India from the so-called Mutiny or Uprising of 1857, which resulted in the full colonisation of the subcontinent by the British, to the seventieth anniversary of India’s independence this year (visitors are not allowed to take photos in this exhibition, but you can click here to view a wide selection of the images on display). Here again the exhibition is grouped into three themes: performance and power, art and independence, and, modern and contemporary. The first two sections contain a wealth of historical treasures which I found truly fascinating – there are almost too many images presented here, such that I could very easily have spent several hours taking it all in had I had more time. The first section neatly contrasts the power of photography in terms of commemoration and demonstration through colonial propaganda images (from souvenir postcards to the early photojournalism of Felice Beato), and the contrived courtly projections of princely power by Indian royal families who embraced this new medium to show themselves off in all their regal finery. 

There are some remarkable examples of the pseudo-scientific anthropological studies of colonial photographers, such as Maurice Vidal Portman (1860-1935) who made a set of images of ethnographic “types” for the British Museum in 1890 of Andaman Islanders, expressly documenting the disappearing “primitive cultures” of such “noble savages,” noting their supposedly significant anthropometric distinctions. Another example is William Johnson, who set up a photographic studio in Mumbai around 1852, and later, working between 1868-1875, he compiled and published an ethnographic study entitled, The Oriental Races and Tribes and the People of India. A neat juxtaposition to these images are those of the Indian photographer, the Maharaja Sawai Rum II (1834-1880), who made a number of self-portraits of himself dressed up in the different garbs of various Indian castes and classes. It is interesting to contrast these indigenous “types” with those presented in the images of James Waterhouse (1842-1922), which were published in his study, The People of India, in which it seems clearly apparent that one of his subjects, the Begum of Bhopal, was directing the proceedings – ensuring she was photographed in a number of guises which variously showed her as a royal personage, a stateswoman, as well as a proud mother and grandmother. These sets of images thereby invite us to rethink the agency at work behind such photographic forms of representation and classification as commonly practiced during this particular period of time.

Miniature charkha, or spinning wheel, 2017

There are also equally fascinating and arguably more moving and emotive images from the end of the colonial era on display in the second section of the exhibition – particularly those of Margaret Bourke-White and Henri Cartier-Bresson – which document the last days in the life of Mahatma Gandhi, his funeral and the immediate aftermath of his assassination in January 1948. These images made me think back to a small charkha, a hand-operated spinning wheel, representing the kind of technology of personal empowerment and of resistance through national self-sufficiency, the use of which Gandhi promoted in the cause for Indian independence, which is included in the 5000 Years of Science and Innovation exhibition next door. This was also a nice parallel for me, linking these two exhibitions to the India and the World: A History in Nine Stories exhibition which I worked on last month at the CSMVS in Mumbai – which also includes a much larger charkha, one which Gandhi himself may even have used.

Six Defining Moments from India and Photography

The charkha spinning wheel which was key to Gandhi’s anti-colonial struggle is more than simply a piece of technology to be utilised; its functionality has a deeper conceptualisation if we think of it as a physical representation of the Ashoka chakra, the ‘eternal wheel of the law.’ That conceptual link and the continuity of such systems of thought and knowledge, of knowledge and power, of self-determination and justice, of balance and harmony, lives on in perpetuity – symbolised by the wheel at the centre of the national flag of India. Like the cosmological wheel at the heart of the Indian religious world view, the Ashoka chakra, the infinite mandala, or the wheel of the dharma, sacred to Jains, Buddhists and Hindus alike, is perhaps also a representation of the scientific soul of India and all its peoples.

National flag of the Republic of India, with the Ashoka chakra at its centre, 2017

If, like me, you are interested in the history of science, colonialism, and photography, then these are certainly two very excellent exhibitions not to be missed.

Illuminating India: 5000 Years of Science and Innovation & Photography, 1857-2017

at

The Science Museum, London – until 31 March 2018

The Seven Ages of Science - Lisa Jardine

The best telly is often found on the radio – by which I mean you often get much better quality pictures on the radio than on television.

Anyone who follows this blog on Twitter will know that I am a big fan of BBC Radio. I regularly post links there to radio programmes which have caught my interest and which I hope connect with the themes I explore here in these blog posts. In my opinion, BBC radio really is second to none for factual documentaries and discussion programmes. For instance, programmes such as Night Waves on Radio 3 or In Our Time on Radio 4 really are satisfyingly thought provoking and enlightening fare. The spoken word, the same as the written word, engages the mind in a wholly different manner to the visual stimulus of moving pictures seen on a TV screen. Don’t get me wrong though, I’m not denigrating television as a media format – you only have to pick any of David Attenborough’s series on the natural world as but merely one example of how TV can open the world up within our home in equally mind expanding ways. But I think it helps to supplement these visual feasts with other imaginative modes and means of presenting new and interesting information – and such radio programmes really are food for the mind.

Last night the first of what I think may well prove to be a landmark series began on BBC Radio 4 titled: The Seven Ages of Science. Presented by the distinguished historian, Lisa Jardine, the series intends to explore the history of science from the 17^th century onwards by placing it into the context of scientific endeavour in the world rather than simply exploring the world within science itself. Previous approaches to the history of science have very much focussed on the scientific enlightenment as a series of discoveries rather than looking at these achievements within the context of the world at the time in which they were first made. These days I think we are very much becoming increasingly aware that disciplines overlap and interact in ways which aren’t always as readily apparent as they might be. If we look at different methods and means of enquiry less as distinctly compartmentalised zones we can see that things often interact, sometimes in unusual or even unexpected ways. How often have you had a thought which was inspired by something completely unexpected or seemingly entirely unrelated? Such “eureka!” moments are often the product of unseen cumulative results coalescing together. Take Sir Isaac Newton’s famous phrase that his achievements were modestly made by his “standing on the shoulders of giants.” Professor Jardine makes the point that those giants – rather than solely being the formidable intellects of other great minds – were actually the host of humble unnamed individuals, contemporary artisans and instrument makers, who were hard at work in London perfecting clocks, microscopes, telescopes, and other instruments designed for the purposes of practical experimentation.

These scientific instruments enabled people such as Isaac Newton, Edmond Halley, Christopher Wren, and, (Lisa Jardine’s own personal hero) Robert Hooke, et al – the learned gentlemen of the Royal Society, to conduct experiments which helped them to formulate many of the scientific laws and principles which we take today as given and tested truths. As she and a host of other historians and scientists interviewed in the course of the programme testify these curious and curious-minded individuals were real people, interacting in mutually beneficial or subtly vindictive ways, cooperating or vying with one another for prestige and prominence – each driving the other ever onwards in a quest for practical and provable knowledge of the world around us. Without them science would not be what we know it as today – but, in many ways, these people weren’t so different from us, and this is perhaps why the history of science is just as important as the science itself.

A good story well told often illuminates itself without the need for fancy gimmickry or whizzy visuals. I was particularly struck by the sudden joy rising in Lisa Jardine’s voice as an original copy of Hooke’s Micrographia (1665) is produced from a shelf in the book stacks of the Royal Society. This moment encapsulates for me the joy of historical enquiry and practical research, it shows how books and things can fascinate us in ways which link us directly to the past. Much the same as her passing revelation to some visiting tourists at the start of the programme that the Monument in London, which marks the site of the little bakery where the Great Fire of London originated one fateful night in 1666, is in fact more than just a monument – it is also a giant scientific instrument. Hooke designed it such that its purpose also doubled as a tube to house a huge telescope. 

Radio programmes such as The Seven Ages of Science show us how we can relate to, as much as learn from, the past. Which is certainly no bad thing. And there are six more programmes yet to come! – I’ll certainly stay tuned as I’m fascinated to hear/see how this series progresses. I wonder what other inspiring insights it will spark?

Find out more:

BBC Radio 4 – The Seven Ages of Science

Professor Lisa Jardine

CELL – The Centre for Editing Lives and Letters

The Return of the Hooke Folio

The Hooke Folio On-line

Hooke's "Micrographia" (full scan of an original copy)

Robert Hooke’s London

The Newton Project

Newton Papers

Ether Wave Propaganda – The Historyand Historiography of Science

Connected Histories

Museo Galileo - Florence

One of the many hidden gems in Florence is definitely the Museo Galileo. Overlooking the River Arno, just a short distance from the Uffizi Gallery, and recently renamed from the rather more descriptive title: Istituto di Storia della Scienza, this immaculately presented collection illustrates the transformation of speculative experimental philosophy into the rigorous discipline of scientific enquiry.

The Museum’s collections, founded upon those begun by the princes and dukes of the Medici and Lorraine dynasties which ruled over Tuscany from the 14^th to the 19^th centuries, are displayed over two floors and comprise a bewilderingly wonderful range of early scientific instruments – from enormous armillary spheres, intricate astrolabes, noturnals, beautiful globes, telescopes, and delicate glass thermometers, to detailed and accurate wax models of the human body and huge electrical conducting apparatus. The displays are all neatly laid out with beautifully clear graphics and explanations in both Italian and English. The centrepiece of the Museum though is the famous lens through which Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) first observed the satellites of Jupiter, naming them the Medicea Sidera, or the Medicean Stars, in honour of his patrons, along with one of his telescopes – a beautiful object, covered in red leather and decorated with elaborate gold tooling.

The first floor is devoted to the Medicean collections and begins with an impressive array of armillary spheres. These instruments represent models of the universe based on the Ptolemaic system (first described in the 2^nd century AD), and show the orbits of the planets around the terrestrial globe, the various rings representing the main celestial spheres, showing the equator, the tropics, and the polar circles, as well as the relative positions of the constellations of the zodiac. Such devices were used in the study and instruction of astronomy. In this era, before proper observational astronomy had really begun, astronomy itself was a study aimed primarily at accurately determining the measurement of time. The motions of the heavenly bodies were studied mainly for the purposes of predicting the dates of certain religious festivities by means of accurate calculations – establishing a reliable calendar, and also enabling the refinement of astrological predictions. Other instruments were similarly devised or improved for calculating time, such as astrolabes, nocturnals, sundials, quadrants, and later on clocks too. These devices enabled the user to carry out complicated algebraic calculations simply by manipulating a few mobile parts and thereby negating the need for pen, paper, and time-consuming complex mathematical formulae. These instruments had distinct practical applications too which were quickly seen and taken up by cartographers and navigators intent on pursuing potential mercantile interests in the New World, as well as by military strategists and surveyors, who – for example – quickly saw the potential for enhanced accuracy in ballistics, calculating the parabolas of projectiles, etc., and thereby beginning the transformation of warfare from what was essentially seen as a chivalric art into an applied science, sowing the seeds for the deadly advances of modern technology as implemented in warfare, which we sadly know all too well today.

The Medici collections also comprise a number of maps and globes which demonstrate the evolution of cartography and in particular the famous Mercator projection. Again many of the advances here were to the benefit of navigators who were intent on exploring the realms of the New World in pursuit of trade and empire. And these charts were closely allied to the scientific instruments used for calculating time and position – in particular the quest to determine longitude. Many of Galileo’s experiments and observations, even in the subject of astronomy, were actually made in the pursuit of determining longitude or for enhancing military aims. In Galileo’s view all of these pursuits were unified in one over-arching discipline: mathematics. He summed up his world view thus: “Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it.” (Galileo Galilei, 1623). 

Galileo helped move science on from the long established notions of Ptolemy and Aristotle at great cost to himself and yet entirely to our debt even to this day in our modern era. To my mind, the simple fascination with the mechanics of the universe, and the unfathomable depths of all that we do not know, is still embodied in the simplest of observations, the nightly changes in position of the Galilean satellites around the bright dot of Jupiter through a pair of binoculars is enough to inspire awe and wonder in any observer – and it is impossible to do so without thinking of Galileo.

The first floor also contains an impressive array of early thermometers, many of which represent elegant masterpieces of the glassmakers’ skill. These astonishingly tall and frighteningly gracile devices, marked with a series of colour-coded gradations for accurately measuring changes in atmospheric temperature using alcohol rather than mercury, must be a real challenge to safely curate and preserve!

The second floor is devoted to the instruments collected or commissioned under the auspices of the Dukes of Lorraine. Here there are many wax models of human anatomy, as well as larger and more advanced telescopes and microscopes, and eventually various examples of dauntingly elaborate pneumatic and electrical equipment. These objects in particular demonstrate how the somewhat arcane procedures and texts of the early alchemists coalesced into the actual sciences of chemistry, physics, and medicine; and how such experimentation eventually moved into the popular realm of parlour room education and entertainment.

For those interested in the history of science, as well as the overlap between artistic interpretation and empirical evaluation, the Museo Galileo is well worth a few leisurely spent hours of thought-provoking perusal – a little known but highly commendable cabinet of curiosities in one of the most beautiful and venerable old cities of Europe.