Indic thought and contemporary science

C. K. Raju


Indian Institute of Education

Table of Contents

Introduction

  • Find a starting joke often tough!
  • No problem in this case.😃
  • Many determined attempts to reduce Indian traditions to a joke.

Some recent blunders

Space travel, Bharadwaj rishi

Vedic math

Pythagorean theorem

  • Dr Harsh Vardhan's speech in 2015 Science Congress
  • Reports in The Hindu, Navbharat Times, Times of India etc.
  • What's wrong? Issue NOT who did it first,
  • School text (Class IX) says Greeks did it better.

Why so many blunders?

  • Repeat blunders means no learning from past mistakes
  • AND there is a systematic cause
  • Cause: Ignorant politicians trying to manage knowledge and the knowledgeable.

Difference

  • For the ज्ञानी loyalty is to proof.
  • नेता demands (and gives) proof of loyalty.
  • Hence, supports sycophants (and punishes the competent)
  • i.e, puts ignorant loyal monkeys in charge who repeatedly cut off the nose (of Indian tradition)

Interim summary 1

  • Many attempts to glorify Indian tradition end up making a joke of out of it and damaging its credibility,
  • since loyalty is valued not knowledge.

To remind you: in Indian tradition

  • ज्ञानी tells king what to do, not other way around.
  • So, what is needed is (a) respect for knowledge, (b) loyalty to proof.
  • So let us see the means of proof in Indian thought.

प्रत्यक्ष (empirical) in science and Indic thought

Proof in science

  • science begins with observation
  • and experiment
  • Similar method used in Indian thought.

Proof in Indic thought

Disagreements, but all accepted प्रत्यक्ष

  • Nastiks (Buddhists, Lokayata) rejected उपमान, and शब्द प्रमाण as unreliable.
  • BUT ALL ACCEPTED प्रत्यक्ष = empirically manifest.
  • Hence, Indic thought prima facie scientific.

Use of experimental method in India

  • World's FIRST recorded use of the experimental method is from India.
  • Payasi (पायासी सुत्त, दीघ निकाय) performed numerous experiments with dying persons
  • to try and refute belief in life after death.

Ultra-chauvinist Western history

  • attributes experimental methods to Francis Bacon from 2000 years later

  • Corrupt Bacon was superstitious, and said:

    "the word of God [Bible] …[is] the surest medicine against superstition"

  • Some more details on Payasi vs Bacon in this article on scientific temper in ancient India.

अनुमान (reasoning)

  • 2nd means of proof in Nyaya sutra 2 is अनुमान (accepted by all except Lokayata),
  • Refutes foolish Western caricature that use of empirical excludes use of reasoning
  • Did not so exclude in Indian thought any more than in science.

Inferring earth is round (गोल)

Contrary to ultra-chauvinistic Western myths

  • early Greeks and Romans could NOT make that deduction
  • Hence, Latin Bible (Vulgate [and King James or NIV])asserts earth is flat
  • (5th c. Vulgate contemporaneous with 5th c. Āryabhaṭa).

उपमान (Analogy)

Āryabhaṭa's use of analogy

  • is purely expository,
  • and NOT used to draw any conclusions.
  • Imp. since analogy rejected as invalid by Buddhists.

BUT in contemporary science

  • general relativistic cosmology makes ESSENTIAL use of analogy.
  • In obtaining the basic Friedmann models
  • by solving the Hilbert-Einstein equations \(G_{\mu\nu} = \kappa T_{\mu\nu}\)
  • the stress energy tensor \(T_{\mu\nu}\) is
  • assumed BY ANALOGY to be that of a "perfect fluid".

"Perfect fluid" (by analogy)

  • \(T_{\mu\nu} = (\rho + P)u_\mu u_\nu + P g_{\mu\nu}\)
  • where \(u\) = velocity, \(\rho\) = density, and \(P\) = pressure
  • In Newtonian physics, density and pressure are defined as statistical averages due to random molecular motion.
  • In GRT, no molecules, no relativistically invariant probability measure to describe randomness.

Hence, in contemporary science (cosmology)

  • pure (inapplicable) analogy used in an essential way.
  • Reason: Hilbert first gave correct equations for GRT
  • Einstein quickly copied

Hilbert vs Einstein

  • Hilbert, a mathematician, concerned with geometry,
  • NOT physical characterization of matter.
  • (Used Poincaré's idea that force in Newtonian physics can be eliminated
  • by appropriately modified geometry.)

शब्द प्रमाण (Śabda pramāṇa, testimony)

  • Used e.g. in Mānava śulba sūtra 10.10 ("Pythagorean theorem")
  • तद विदो विदु: ("so say the knowledgeable")
  • just because the author is an artisan (not himself a knowledgeable गणितज्ञ)
  • HENCE invokes "proof by authority".

Proof by authority has no place in real science

  • but permeates contemporary science.

RePutability vs refutability

  • Contemporary science validated through publications, not experiment.
  • Publications must be SECRETIVELY peer-reviewed.
  • Value measured through citation index (a measure of popularity: like saying popular films are the best ones.)
  • That is, truth in science decided today by rePutability, not refutability.
  • And through impact parameter
    • a racist measure which assumes that Western peer-reviewers are superior
  • As in club membership in which
    • "Indians and dogs not allowed".

This method of validation

  • through Western socially approved publications
  • makes "scientific truth" subordinate to Western authority.
  • Further discussion in Ending Academic Imperialism

Interim summary 2

  • Indian method of proof prima facie scientific.
  • Contemporary science relies on methods of proof rejected as weak in Indic thought.

Formal math: how it enables "fool and rule"

Math and authority

Differential equations,calculus, reals

  • Even at the most elementary level, most science uses differential equations
  • e.g. Euler-Lagrange equations, Maxwell's equations, …
  • This need calculus,
  • and our texts teach that calculus needs (unreal) real numbers
  • defined only in formal math.

Formal math prohibits the empirical

  • Unlike gaṇita (normal math) which uses "reasoning PLUS empirical (प्रत्यक्ष)"
  • formal math uses "reasoning MINUS empirical".
  • Prohibition of empirical in formal math bodes ill for science.

Post-colonial mathematical illiteracy

"It works" superstition

  • Instead GULLIBLE and SUPERSTITIOUS people defend formal math (and contemporary science)
  • by claiming "it works"
  • "they have sent a rocket to the moon".
  • ("It works" superstition also used by astrologers to defend astrology.)

The problem with "it works"

  • what EXACTLY works?
  • The superstitious don't know. They never calculated a rocket trajectory.
  • That calculation uses NORMAL math NOT formal math. What works is normal math.
  • Easiest proof: trajectories calculated today on computers which use FLOATING POINT NUMBERS not formal real numbers.

Most present-day school math from India

  • arithmetic (e.g. "Arabic" numerals, algorithms, zero
  • algebra (अव्यक्त गणित), probability, and statistics
  • trigonometry and especially calculus.
  • Went as NORMAL math returned as FORMAL math.

Interim summary 3

  • Formal math PROHIBITS the empirical but is used in contemporary science.
  • "It works" because in practice normal math is used.
  • Much math went from India to Europe as normal math, but returned as formal math.

Calculus

Especially West STOLE calculus from India

Because calculus STOLEN from India

  • hence Europeans (Descartes,Newton, Leibniz) FAILED to understand it
  • On my epistemic test, those who steal knowledge fail to FULLY understand it
  • like students who cheat and copy in an exam.

Practical value without full understanding

  • Europeans COULD derive practical value from calculus
  • (as the numerical solution of differential equations)
  • to obtain precise trigonometric values needed for navigation.
  • But they did not understand how to sum infinite series

Indian way to sum infinite series

Western failure to understand calculus led to real numbers

  • Europeans acknowledged their lack of understanding of calculus
  • Hence invented real numbers (1880's) and axiomatic set theory needed for that (1930's).
  • Real numbers more harmful than Payasi's objections which can be resolved.

We teach calculus today in that inferior way

  • which DESTROYS the core of Indic thought.
  • Core of Indic thought is about आत्मन and मोक्ष,
  • which needs quasi-cyclic time, like ethics (धर्म)
  • but real numbers FORCE superlinear time) in physics (through METAphysics of formal math).

Westerners understand that conflict between real numbers and CORE Indic thought

  • between quasi-cyclic time needed for Indic thought
  • and superlinear time of physics forced by real numbers
  • video of my Berlin talk on decolonising time.

But Indians don't get it.

  • See my talk at 25th Vedanta Congress
  • presentation online, but video not made public by Dr Balaram
  • nor a recording given to me as promised.
  • Because no understanding of its importance.

Interim summary 4

  • Calculus was stolen from India,
  • hence poorly understood by Europeans,
  • hence real numbers invented.
  • Their use damages core of Indic thought.

What should we do today?

  • West fooled us once by stealing calculus
  • Fooled us again with false history that "Newton and Leibniz discovered it"
  • which false history we TEACH in our school texts!

Fooled us yet again by claiming formal math and real numbers "rigorous", "superior"

  • though it prohibits प्रत्यक्ष, hence is
  • anti-science, AND
  • goes against core beliefs in Indic thought.

I tried to correct things

  • by pointing that calculus is stolen from India
  • and using original Indian philosophy of गणित
  • makes it easy (taught in 5 days)
  • and enables students to solve harder problems.
  • Not even willing to discuss this teaching, since it involves confrontation with the West.

Thesis that calculus stolen from India was itself stolen

  • My Hawai'i talk of 2000 etc, plagiarised.
  • Kak was the first to celebrate it by saying
  • "Three Britishers claim calculus originated in India"
  • Comic!🤣 were three Christians (two with Indian passports, one my post-doc, one Russian, none knew Sanskrit or math or Indian history.)

This plagiarism was exposed

Hence plagiarism repeated by George Joseph and Almeida in 2007

But gullible Indians can be fooled again, again, and AGAIN

  • पाञ्चजन्य interviewed me
  • Believed that fake news from 2007
  • and ended by praising the serial plagiarist (and ignoramus) George Gheverghese Joseph!
  • Seems West will keep fooling Indians for ever.

Clearly there are SYSTEMIC problems

  • Promotion of ignorant loyalists which damages credibility of Indian-origin sources
  • Blind belief in reliability of Western/Christian sources (as taught by colonialism)
  • Clamour to claim "we did it first"
  • but failure to understand that often "we also did it different, and BETTER".
  • and refusal to teach that difference,
  • because of blind desire to imitate the West taught by colonial/church education.
  • No hope of correction in near future.
  • Post-independence betrayal of the freedom struggle.

Interim summary 5

  • Calculus was stolen, hence poorly understood, - hence real numbers invented. Not needed for science.
  • They damage core of Indic thought, though this is little understood.
  • Many practical advantages of (Indian) calculus without limits.

Conclusions

  • Indic thought was scientific and accepted प्रत्यक्ष (empirical),
  • but rejected analogy and authority as weak.
  • Contemporary science accepts analogy. Based heavily on Western social approval and authority.
  • Contemporary science uses FORMAL math, which prohibits the empirical, forcing reliance on Western authority.
  • Normal math works, formal math just grabs credit!
  • Church superstitions (about infinity and eternity) creep in through formal math
  • and are fatal to the core of Indic thought.

Created: 2022-06-25 Sat 13:24

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