70 SOCIAL SCIENTIST Chapter one of the book puts forward a new philosophy of technology and culture which counters the common myth of western man as the most advanced and the most rational. As the author puts it, "the basis for this belief is the specious assumption that there is but one form of technological development, the most advanced and the best, that which came to fruition in the history of the western world. The implication of such an assumption is worse: the discounting of any capacity in the southern nations to solve their own technical problems" (page 18). The author discusses non-western technological systems with a rich resource of references to stress the point that non-western cultures have been technologically productive and rationally active to the present day. Indian Technology and Culture Chapter two takes on a discussion of Indian technology and culture from 1498 to 1757. It deals with specific illustrations of Indians rejecting foreign scientific and technological inputs on the grounds of rational decision making, and not, as Gupta would have us believe, because of the stranglehold of traditions. Chapter three deals similarly with China during 1368-1842. The fourth chapter lays the groundwork for the remainder of the book by looking into English technology and culture from 1500 to 1830* The next chapter deals with the colonial impact of these developments. Chapter six covers the period beginning 1850, and focus-ses attention on the indigenous Chinese and Indian attempts at technological and cultural independence vis-a-vis the west. Finally, in the last chapter, Alvares lays out a logic of "appropriate technology", which brings together implications of what has been earlier developed through critical historical investigation, and provides the philosophical preconditions for an alternative model of development. Alvares here succeeds in making an argument for the rationality of non-western cultures. Even more, he indicates that this rationality is superior in meaningful ways to the rationality of the west. Glimpses of western irrationality are -provided in the following extracts: "It is necessary to ask how nations with more than forty per cent of their best scientists and engineers engaged in the production of weapons to destroy human lives all round the world can advise the southern nations to use 'appropriate technology' " (page 240). "The number of westerners who have ^come to regret that their societies ever placed their economics higher than man himself is not to be underestimated," (page 242).7