History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization: Vol. XV. Science, Technology and Philosophy (CONSSAVY): Part III : Science, Literature and Aesthetics

Contents: Foreword/D.P. Chattopadhyaya. Preface. General introduction/D.P. Chattopadhyaya. In Lieu of an introduction/Amiya Dev. I. Issues in focus: 1. Crisis in science/Satyendranath Bose. 2. A miracle of rare device: the genius of scientific discovery/V. Balakrishnan. 3. Mathematics and the pursuit of beauty/M.S. Raghunathan. 4. Story of a discovery/Somenath Biswas. 5. Cognition in science and art: the case for virtual reality/Mihir Chakraborty. 6. Science and the aesthetics of language/Sundar Sarukkai. 7. Science and literature/Syed A. Sayeed. 8. From world to word: truth in science and in literature/Mohini Mullick. 9. The concept of order in science and poetry/Mario J. Valdes. 10. Transformation of science into poetry: apropos Rabindranath Tagore/Pabitrakumar Roy. 11. Characterizations in linguistic science/Probal Dasgupta. 12. The biology of music: \'Sobhillu Saptaswara\'/D. Balasubramanian. 13. The aesthetics of music/Mukund Lath. 14. Play, pleasure, pain: ownerless emotions in Rasa-aesthetics/Arindam Chakrabarti. 15. Freedom and the body/Parthasarathi Banerjee. 16. Disarticulating the senses: a speculation on a scientific discovery and cinema/Aniket Jaaware. 17. The diagram of Vastu Purusa Mandala: from meaning to measurement/Sanil V. 18. \'All that is solid melts into air\' or, is perceiving sensuously a science or an art?/Ipshita Chanda. 19. Science, literature and aesthetics: epistemic transgressions, homologies, antinomies/TRS Sharma. II. World thought systems: some instances: 20. \'From Cowrie shells to the pearl\': Indian grammar and Panini\'s Astadhyayi/Kapil Kapoor. 21. The world outside on the world inside: a study of the Laukika-Nyaya-s in grammar/Rama Nath Sharma. 22. Interacting with hydraulic resources: early Indian experience/Ranabir Chakravarti. 23. Navya-Nyaya language as a medium of sciences/Amita Chatterjee. 24. Chindian realm of freedom/Tan Chung. 25. Mythos, logos, and the good beyond being in Plato\'s aesthetic theory/Steven Shankman. 26. Persian poetic wisdom and the epistemology of \'knowledge by presence\'/Hossein Ziai. 27. The interplay of science, art and literature in Islamic societies before 1700/Sonja Brentjes. 28. Renaissance science and the science of art/Sukanta Chaudhuri. 29. Truth and intelligibility/Nirmalangshu Mukherji. 30. Organic evolution and social progress: Darwin revisited/Abhijit Guha. 31. The incomplete Marx/Asok Sen. 32. Defining terror: a \'Freudian\' exercise/Sibaji Bandyopadhyay. 33. The unity of knowledge: Foucault\'s archaeology between science and literature/Pravu Mazumdar. 34. Literature and the \'Scientific\' in Meiji Japan centring around Emerson\'s influence/Mizuno Tatsuro. 35. Rationality, reality and Utopia: an African interface/Ansu Datta. III. Indian modernity : some instances: 36. The nineteenth century Bengali mind/Alok Ray. 37. The transition in Maharashtra/Sadananda More. 38. Modernity and knowledge production: Malayalam thought process in the modern period/P.P. Raveendran. 39. The Aham and Puram of Tamil Culture: perspectives on Tamil modernity/Sridhar K. 40. Sacred time, secular space: the printed Oriya Almanac/Jatindra Kumar Nayak. 41. Modern Assamese thought/Ranjit Kumar Dev Goswami. 42. Between experiment and Sadhana: towards an understanding of Gandhiji\'s observances/Tridip Suhrud. 43. Rabindranath Tagore and the two cultures/Ashish Lahiri. Index.

"The volumes of the Project on the History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization aim at discovering the main aspects of India\'s heritage and present them in an interrelated way. In spite of their unitary look, these volumes recognize the difference between the areas of material civilization and those of ideational culture. The project is not being executed by a single group of thinkers and writers who are methodologically uniform or ideologically identical in their commitments. The project is marked by what may be called \' methodological pluralism\'. Inspite of its primarily historical character, this project, both in its conceptualization and execution, has been shaped by scholars drawn from different disciplines. It is the first time that an endeavour of such unique and comprehensive character has been undertaken to study critically a major world civilization.

This PHISPC volume deals with science, literature and aesthetics as interrelated and/or complementary categories. Its forty-three chapters, including the reprint of an old essay by S.N. Bose on the early twentieth century challenges to science, are laid out in three sections comprising the issues in focus--issues of where these interrelations and/or complementarities may lie, select thought systems of the world as probable instances of them, and samples of Indian modernity that might have been propelled by them. The contributors are from various disciplines, the physical, life and mathematical sciences, philosophy and the philosophy of science, the science of language, literary and cultural studies, social sciences including history and economics, art history and musicology--but none bound by their four walls, instead negotiating with a broader epistemology. Besides they are identified by their subjects, not their subjects by them, which is why some of them are from overseas. This book will attract general readers and scholars alike from all the interrelated disciplines." (jacket)