SOCIAL SCIENTIST for us but also for the Indians and the Chinese.'10 However, in recent years there has been an almost universal realisation to view STM within 'the wider spheres of thought, culture and society.'11 Men of sciences are no longer the sole 'creators and consumers' of this new discipline.12 It now has a wider appeal. And in this sense history of science belongs to the mainstream of social and cultural debates in history. It is universally agreed that techniques are part of, rather they form the basis of, what Braudel calls material civilization.13 Technology was earlier defined as technical artifact and science as knowledge. Is technology science's Other?14 Probably not. Both are historical variables.15 Science in part is knowledge about technology and technology can be embodied knowledge. So why distinguish the two? They are two sides of the same coin, enmeshed in a 'symbiotic relationship.'16 Techno-scientific developments can be presented as a non-determined, multidirectional flux that involves constant negotiation and renegotiation among the groups and between the forces shaping history.17 This approach is flexible and eclectic, and wards off the fears of technological determinism.18 Ours is an age of biology. The range and 'quantum' of its applications are truly breath-taking. Recently an entire human chromosome has been decoded for the first time.19 During the last 125 years so much work has been done on diseases, its vectors, vaccines, etc. New paradigms have been laid; germ theory, for example.20 Several works have appeared on medicine in politics and the politics of medicine.21 At a micro level anthropologists and sociologists have contributed a great deal. Comparative or prosopographical studies of medical men can be equally instructive.22 Social history of medicine is no less significant a field than social history of science or technology. And it should be possible to add to them a cultural dimension. All these go together, side by side, hand in hand. SCIENCE AND COLONIZATION Emergence of modern science along with its industrial and commercial applications coincided with colonial explorations and understandings. This was no coincidence. Both had an intimate, though complex, cause and effect relationship. Science, modernization and domination all marched together. This lay in the logic of history and was to change human knowledge and relationship in every conceivable way. In recent years a good deal of attention has been