Bengal Renaissance And Scientific Temper

This book focuses on one of the significant endeavors of the nineteenth and early twentieth century Bengali intelligentsia: science writing in the vernacular with the target audience being the so-called ‘common’ people. This involves both the recognition of the fact that developments in science and technology are at the centre of European modernity and an underlying motif to realize those developments on the native soil. But, this generates a complex process of understanding that not only transplants ‘modern’ science from the centre of the empire to the Bengali settings and linguistic forms, but also, in the same process, challenges the well-established notions of Reason and logic. To show the nuances of texts and contexts, works of the first modern scientist of India, Jagadish Chandra Bose, and major literary artist, Sukumar Ray, are discussed in detail.