Reflections on the Batesian Synthesis1

Abstract

The argument in "Medicine and the Soul of Science" can be strengthened by understanding that what used to be called "the Western intellectual tradition" is a hodgepodge of Middle Eastern, Greek, Indian, Chinese, and other approaches and methods that converged in the Islamic world before ca. 1000 CE when Europeans began to borrow and adapt it, and by integrating the results of recent research on all of these scientific, technological, and medical traditions.