Greek history for idiots: Greediots and Pythagoras. 1: No axiomatic proofs in Greek math Recently, I presented my talk on “Pre-colonial appropriations of Indian ganita: epistemic issues”. This was at a round table at IIAS Shimla which replaced the now-postponed conference on Indology. The key point of my talk was…
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One Aloke Kumar wrote this on twitter about me: https://twitter.com/aalokelab/status/1088870635684556800?lang=en, He pretends to be a scientist on the strength of his job, but seems more of a twit unable to read or understand my two books on the matter, Time:Towards a Consistent Theory (Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht, 1994, chp. 3a Michelson-Morley…
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Colonial education was church education, which changed our traditional math teaching by bringing in myths and superstitions, directly related to the post-Crusade church theology of reason. Most people fail to understand this, since colonial education ensured they know nothing about (a) mathematics or its philosophy, or (b) the church theology…
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It was with a sense of shock that I heard of the passing away of Uncle Idris, which was untimely even at 93. When I last met him in March he was unwell, and in hospital, but looked well enough to carry on for another five years, or at least…
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The NCERT class IX textbook on mathematics has its chapter 5 entitled “Euclid’s geometry”. A public grievance was lodged with the government pointing out numerous other falsehoods in the book. The grievance in the 4000 character text format specified for grievances is posted at http://ckraju.net/geometry/NCERT-grievance-note.txt. There is also a detailed…
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Someone brought to my attention this article in the Wire on “poor” Albert Einstein. The author, a facebook expert, is unable to separate the myth of Einstein from the theory of (special) relativity (this intellectual sloppiness is critical to his argument). I had made this distinction (between the person Einstein…
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Education - History and Philosophy of Mathematics - History and Philosophy of Science - Science and Society - Uncategorized
George Gheverghese Joseph serial plagiarist and mathematical ignoramus, invited for conference on math education by Hyderabad University. Part III The false claim of social justice
This is part 3 of a three part series of posts. It is better if you first read part 1, which pointed out the long-term plagiarism by Joseph violating all academic and editorial norms, and part 2 which explained its ill effects on math education. I know the defence that…
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Education - History and Philosophy of Mathematics - History and Philosophy of Science - Science and Society - Uncategorized
George Gheverghese Joseph serial plagiarist and mathematical ignoramus, invited for conference on math education by Hyderabad University. Part II: the ill effects of cheater-teachers on mathematics education
Please read part 1 of this blog post first. Plagiarism, or the theft of knowledge, whether of the calculus, or of the calculus transmission thesis, has ill effects on mathematics education. This is not just about cheating in exams. When cheaters turn teachers it will naturally create a problem for…
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Education - History and Philosophy of Mathematics - History and Philosophy of Science - Science and Society - Uncategorized
George Gheverghese Joseph serial plagiarist and mathematical ignoramus, invited for conference on math education by Hyderabad University. Gopal Guru and Rochelle Gutierrez concur
After my book Cultural Foundations of Mathematics: the nature of mathematical proof and the transmission of calculus from India to Europe in the 16th c. CE (Pearson Longman, 2007) it is well known today that calculus developed in India a thousand years before Newton and Leibniz. Cochin based Jesuits stole…
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At my IIT (BHU) lecture (see also previous post), I emphasized Bertrand Russell’s remark that there is neither meaning nor truth in (formal) mathematics. Hence, any nonsense proposition one desires (such as “All rabbits have two horns”) can be proved as a formal mathematical theorem from appropriate postulates: Russell’s sole…