Article ID: CBB864511502

The uses of useful knowledge and the languages of vernacular science: Perspectives from southwest India (2021)

unapi

In the first half of the eleventh century, a group of scholars in southwest India did something new. They began composing systematic texts about everyday life in a register of language sometimes called New Kannada. While looking back toward earlier texts composed in Sanskrit – and even translating portions of them – these scholars centered their poetic ability and their personal experiences as opposed to prior authoritative texts. They described themselves as authoring “worldly sciences” that were “useful to the people of the world,” and they provided extensive reflections on the systematics of knowledge. Epistemic, linguistic, and political concerns were significantly renegotiated in this moment as local context was turned into a virtue for the production of technical treatises. This article uses this moment to interrogate recent discussions of useful knowledge and vernacular science. Usefulness can mean different things at different times and vernacular sciences change according to their language. This article argues for a usage of both terms that is more attuned to historical particulars. A history of useful knowledge from a place that now appears under the double effacement of the non-modern and non-West offers an opportunity to think through central concepts of the history of science without relying on economic or utilitarian discourses. This paper presents one possible example of what a more global history of useful knowledge might look like.

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Authors & Contributors
Michiel Leezenberg
Singh, Charu
Meade, Ruselle
Gobbo, Federico
Huizhong, Lu (Gloria)
Walker, Katherine
Concepts
Science and culture
Vernacular literature
Science and society
Language and languages
Epistemology
Terminology and nomenclature
Time Periods
21st century
20th century, late
19th century
18th century
17th century
16th century
Places
India
China
Romania
Pakistan
Japan
Europe
Institutions
Habsburg, House of
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