This book explores the various historical and cultural aspects of scientific medical and
technical exchanges that occurred between central Europe and Asia. A number of papers
investigate the printing gunpowder guncasting shipbuilding metallurgical and drilling
technologies while others deal with mapping techniques the adoption of written calculation and
mechanical clocks as well as the use of medical techniques such as pulse taking and
electrotherapy. While human mobility played a significant role in the exchange of knowledge
translating European books into local languages helped the introduction of new knowledge in
mathematical physical and natural sciences from central Europe to its periphery and to the
Middle East and Asian cultures. The book argues that the process of transmission of knowledge
whether theoretical or practical was not a simple and one-way process from the donor to the
receiver as it is often admitted but a multi-dimensional and complex cultural process of
selection and transformation where ancient scientific and local traditions and elements. The
book explores the issue from a different geopolitical perspective namely not focusing on a
singular recipient and several points of distribution namely the metropolitan centres of
science medicine and technology but on regions that are both recipients and distributors and
provides new perspectives based on newly investigated material for historical studies on the
cross scientific exchanges between different parts of the world.
