Dialogue and Comparison Compared

Among cross-cultural historians of science an argument is going round that it is about time to get rid of an approach based on cross-cultural comparison, so as to replace it with an approach in terms of ‘dialogue between civilizations’. In this chapter the author compares the respective merits of these two approaches. He does so in three ways: methodologically (under what specific conditions may both the one and the other be applied in a fruitful manner?), historiographically (how did Joseph Needham employ comparison and handle dialogue?), and from a practical point of view (how has the author of this chapter sought to bring the two approaches together in one comprehensive frame?). The overall appeal of the chapter is for cross-cultural historians of science to cease calling each other names like ‘dialogue believers’ and ‘dialogue sceptics’ and rather learn to combine the strong points of both.