C. K. Raju’s Blog

Jay Jolly asked:

“Could you expand more on the the concept of “Zeroism”as applied in Mathematics?What changes do you foresee in pedagogy of Mathematics if the philosophy is changed from formalism to zeroism?”

First I have a whole chapter on zeroism in my book Cultural Foundations of Mathematics (chp. 8 with the subtitle: sunyavada vs formalism). (The editor of a Cambridge journal solicited the book for review, and the reviewer then lied that the book did not contain any philosophy beyond chp. 2 to justify the extraordinary procedure of reviewing only 2 chapters of the book. This is in the long Western tradition of suppressing and defaming opposing viewpoints when unable to counter them. Even today, Western universities don’t teach non-Western philosophy presumably just because they are afraid this would damage their own philosophy built on the weak foundations of theology.)

What is zeroism?

There are three aspects of zeroism which are relevant. First, zeroism regards the empirical (though fallible) as an appropriate means of proof, superior to any metaphysics. (This is contrary to formalism which is wholly metaphysical, and regards its particular metaphysics as superior to both physics and all other systems of metaphysics.)  Zeroism accepts fallibility, as in the fallibility of science.

Second zeroism accepts the impossibility of “perfect” or precise represenation of anything. (more…)

Here is my new book (ISBN: 978-983-3046-15-7).

Academic imperialism begins with Western education, which has not been seriously challenged in hard sciences. Colonialism changed the system of education to stabilise Western rule through indoctrination. The change was possible (e.g. by Macaulay in India) just because a large section of the colonised elite had already swallowed the 18^th c. racist history, that only the West had innovated in science. That bad history was bolstered by a bad philosophy of science, both fundamentally warped by the religious fanaticism which overwhelmed Europe from the Crusades in the 11^th c. until the 17^th c. Therefore, to end academic imperialism it is necessary to take the following steps.

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As modified and posted on H-ASIA, June 25, 2011. 

Witzel will be remembered for the amusing botch he has made. This sort of thing is an extremely common occurrence among Western scholars whose scholarship is hence unreliable, for they are so often so eager to demonstrate their own superiority by trying to score a point. (Remember that editor of a  Cambridge journal who solicited my book for review, and passed it on to an “expert” so  illiterate in philosophy that he did not even understand that the philosophy was in chp. 8!)

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The debate seems to have generated wide interest, so I thought I would record it here. Here is my original post on H-Asia. The comment from Michael Witzel, of Harvard University, is given in the comments section under that.

Probability in Ancient India
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The history of Asia is somehow understood in the West in such a way as to *exclude* the history of science, and, by extension, the possibility that the Asian philosophies can ever contribute significantly to present-day science.

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