Can We Speak of East/West Ways of Knowing?

C an we speak of distinct Eastern andWestern ways of knowing? Or of more or less undifferentiated East/West ways of knowing? Or of East/West ways of knowing of which we can speak, as opposed to North/South ways of knowing, of which we cannot really speak? All three propositions exist in the real world. As the essentialization of East andWest implied in thefirst proposition leads to a predictable faith-based outcome that is not really attractive, and as I have never worked on North-South transcultural interaction say, between Eurasia and Africa, allow me to deal with the second. There can be no question that since time immemorial, knowledge has traveled as something consciously adopted across Eurasia, whether this refers to domesticated plants and animals and the techniques of their handling, to leisure pursuits, to the idea of writing, to features of governance, or to ways to secure the functionality of the body, the mind, or the surrounding life-world. Below this conscious level of interaction, the hidden forces of nature do their own interaction, which one might call trans-natural, be it in the domain of genes, of diseases