A major result of the scholarly probes into the scientific exploration of the ancient world, whether Chinese or Hindu, Arab, Persian or whatever, has been to bring to the consciousness of the world at large the fact that the scientific spirit has been present in every culture of humankind all through the ages. In recognizing this, however, we need to distinguish between the scientific spirit, scientific methods, and scientific results. The first of these is the spirit of inquiry. It is the intellectual response to the myriad phenomena in the world around. It is the urge to understand, to explain, and to interpret. It involves the gazing of the stars, the observing of plants and trees and animals, wonderment about lightning and thunder, and more. Without these, there can be no science. It is this spirit that has always been there among all the peoples of the world.
Scientific results include ideas and concepts, facts and figures which arise as a result of scientific inquiry. Here again, every culture and civilization arrived at interesting, and sometimes influential, results. The solar calendar of the Egyptians, the seven day week of the Babylonians, the decimal system of the Hindus, the paper technology of the Chinese, the geometry of the Greeks, the alchemy of the Arabs, all these and more are among the many results of ancient science from diverse cultures. Yet, it is also important to recognize certain fundamental differences between ancient and modern science. First, Modern science rests on a universality that transcends national, ethnic, and religious frameworks. It is not a deficiency of ancient science that it was affiliated to the culture and religious matrix of its practitioners, but its inevitable characteristic: inevitable, because of the constraints in space, time, and communication-modes under which ancient sciences evolved. Not many original thinkers in the ancient world traveled far and wide, learned alien languages, or thought in paradigms that differed radically from their own religious framework.
Spurts of Thought 