The Geographical De-Centering Of The Scientific Revolution By Harold John Cook

The second paper, by Harold John Cook (Cook 2004), states that the scientific revolution was built not by a few geniuses thinking in their rooms, but from the collective efforts of countless people, and argues for a geographical de-centering of the concept of scientific revolution. To argue for his theses, Cook documents the case of Willem ten Rhijne. Willem van Rhijne went to Japan, by the means of the East India Company, because the government of Japan wanted to enrich their knowledge about western traditions of medicine and philosophy in order to move away from their traditional Chinese roots. What unfolded in the story, was that not only knowledge was distributed from Europe to Japan, but a bidirectional process of knowledge exchange that took place. Meaning that in the case of Willem ten Rhijne it was not only the japanese that became enriched with the best western knowledge of that time, but they also contributed their knowledge of moxibustion and shared much about their use of acupuncture, and even shared four drawing of acupuncture points, which Willem ten Rhijne brought back with him to Europe (Cook 2004). The notes Willem ten Rhijne created, and the works from the Japanese he took back to Europe were published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. Cook showed that the Japanese had an outstanding role in the activities of translation and production of knowledge. …show more content…
This provides strength to the argument that Japan had contributed to the scientific revolution, and proving Cook’s point that the scientific revolution did not only take place in Europe, proving his thesis of a geographically decentered scientific