Alleged ‘Cultural Obstacles’ to Knowledge Transmission and Huff’s ‘Intellectual Curiosity’ Argument

Despite the general acceptance of, for instance, Latin Europe’s intellectual debts to Arabic scholarship, claims of ‘cultural obstacles’ to knowledge transmission across different civilizations continue to be made by Eurocentric scholars. A non-essentialist understanding of scholarly tradition enables, inter alia, a clear understanding of, on the one hand, the general non-culture-specific nature of scholarly tradition, and, on the other, why there could sometimes occur, for non-cultural reasons, obstacles to knowledge transmission across different cultures. Based on this understanding, Eurocentric claims concerning ‘cultural obstacles’ are critiqued with reference to the reception of Euclid’s Elements in China over the centuries, and to the introduction of the Tycho Brahe model and the telescope to China in the late 16th to early 17th centuries. Toby Huff has advanced a neo-Eurocentric ‘intellectual curiosity’ argument with reference to the telescope episode, which is shown to be self-cancelling and simple-minded.