A post-European century in science

The coming century will bring globalization, a shift to new biotechnologies and information technologies, and a shift of the centers of gravity of the world away from its Eurocentric moorings to Asia. The shift in technologies will result in the three realms of information in culture, genes and computers coming together as a composite whole. Ecologies of information—the genetic, the cultural and the artefactual—will now jostle with each other. With automation, the 17th century Scientific Revolution's agenda will be left partly to machines. Further, the demise of modernism and the emergence of postmodernism are a reflection of the exhaustion of the Enlightenment project. A variety of cultural, epistemological and even ontological positions co-exist in today's sciences. As replacement macro agendas are sought in ontology, epistemology, logic and culture, Asia provides a readily available civilizational source.