Janet Gyatso, Being Human in a Buddhist World

Janet Gyatso is well known among Tibetanists for her writings on visionary lamas and on gender issues in Tibetan Buddhism and culture. Her new book develops a more recent interest in Tibetan medical literature, first signalled through a widely-cited article from 2004. 1 That article introduced two Tibetan medical scholars central to this new book, Zurkharwa Lodrö Gyelpo (1509–1579) and Desi Sangyé Gyatso (1653–1705), the regent ( desi ) for the ‘Great Fifth’ Dalai Lama. It also laid out the central problematic of the new book: What was the role of empirical thought in Tibetan society? Why, given the strong empiricist orientation notable in the work of scholars such as Zurkharwa and the Desi, did Tibet not achieve a scientific revolution comparable to that which was taking place in Europe at much the same time? Being Human takes these questions considerably further, engaging with significant Western scholarship on the history of science and the development of scientific modes of thought, including the work of Gyatso’s colleague at Harvard, Stephen Shapin, and with scholars such as Marta Hanson who have studied similar questions in the context of Chinese medicine

Buddhism · Context (archaeology · Empiricism · Epistemology · Political science · Regent · Scholarship · Scientific revolution · Sociology · Theology · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History of Medicine Studies · History of Science and Medicine · Classics · History · Law · Philosophy