Webs, Trees and Knowledge: Bunzo Hayata’s Eastern Perspectival Model of Nature

Dominant centre-periphery models of knowledge encounter and distribution require stories of ‘origins’, ‘disseminations’ and unilinear paths. Therein lies ‘Needham’s Question’. However, in the early twentieth century an alternative model, arising out of a deep encounter between Eastern and Western science, presented itself. Born in a robust dialogue between Western versions of ‘genetics’ and Eastern ways in which the relationships between living beings can be conceived multi-dimensionally, a new ‘perspectival’ model arose among biologists in the East in dialogue with geneticists of the West. For a brief period, a new ‘Dynamic System’ offered a way out of the interminable disputes over a true unilinear ‘natural system’, while reworking the very meaning of ‘origins’, ‘genealogies’, ‘nature’ and ‘inheritance’. This chapter will explore the rise of the ‘dynamic system’ in the trading zones between east and west, its spread across the West, and how it might offer up a new model of dialogue and exchange between knowledge systems.