1 2 3 ARTICLE IN PRESS 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 910 11 12 13 14 15 20 27 30 31 32 33 Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. XX (2002) XXX–XXX 36 www.elsevier.com/locate/shpsc 37 41 42 Asian traditions of knowledge: the disputed 43 questions of science, nature and ecology 44 A. Brennan a,b 45 a City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong 46 b The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, Perth, WA 6009, Australia 47 Received 2 May 2001;received in revised form 8 January 2002 48 49 Abstract 50 The search for ‘ecological insights’ in venerable Asian traditions of thought prompts ques- 51 tions about how such traditions understood humans in relation to nature. Answers which focus 52 on philosophical and religious ideas may overlook culturally important understandings of 53 people and places articulated within scientific and medical thinking. The paper tentatively 54 explores the prospects for gleaning a form of ethics of place from the study of traditional 55 Hindu and Chinese medical sources. Although there are serious problems with the idea that any 56 unadulterated assimilation from other traditions can take place, these sources can be thought of 57 as incorporating a place-centred (topocentric) ethic. By looking closely at Francis Zimmerm- 58 an’s study of Hindu medicine, it is argued that a poetics of place can be ascribed to Ayurvedic 59 discourses on health and disease. It may be possible to associate a similar poetics with classical 60 Chinese medical worldviews, these being reconcilable with—though not the same as—contem- 61 porary ecological understandings of humans in relation to the world. Although no pristine 62 reconstruction of Asian traditions of medical thought can be made, the conclusion of the 63 present paper is that it would be wrong to dismiss these traditions as ‘antienvironmental’, 64 based purely on the study of philosophical and religious texts. 65  2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. 66 Keywords: Chinese medicine; Ayurvedic medicine; Zimmerman; Needham; Ethics; Place 67 68 1 28 29 E-mail address: andrew.brennan@sum.uio.no (A. Brennan). 1 DTD v4.3.1 / SHPSC156 2 3 1369-8486/02/$ - see front matter  2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. 4 PII:S1369-8486(02)00027-4 5 1 SHPSC: studs in hist. phil. biol. & biomed. sci. - MODEL 1 - ELSEVIER 2 23-09-02 15:17:30 Rev 16.04x SHPSC$156P