| Topic: |
Science > Physics |
| User: |
"Dr. Jai Maharaj" |
| Date: |
31 Aug 2005 12:55:31 PM |
| Object: |
IS VEDANT A SCIENCE? |
Is Vedant A Science?
By Shounak Bhattacharya
August 20, 2005
The generic definition of a science is the investigation
of the facts and the nature of objects and entities in
the external world. When we find that repetition of a
certain set of inputs results in the same outputs under
the same conditions, we call it a "law."
Indeed all investigation of science as such, must be in
the context of an integral view of the total existential
reality covering all fields -- material, mental, and
spiritual -- which may be experienced by humans through
their external and internal faculties. Hence, the
reductionist approach of Western science leaves apart the
infinite existential reality, especially regarding the
real nature of human being, his inner Self which is the
source of all knowledge and is the real knower and
experiencer.
Considering metaphysics, the 13th chapter of Bhagavad
Gita explains the knowledge of the external object and
the subjective knowledge of the internal field which is
considered to be true and complete knowledge.
Let us consider Verse 2:
"idam shariram kounteya kshetramitya bidhiyate
etadyo vetti tam prahuh kshertrajna iti tadvidah"
idam: this
shariram: body
kaunteya: Oh Arjun!
kshetr: kshetr (field)
iti: such
bidhiyate: known as
This body, Oh Arjun! Is termed as the sages call kshetr,
the field and he who knows it, kshetrjna.
A man regards birds, animals as different from himself
but he identifies himself with the body. The gross
physical body consists of five elements -- earth, water,
fire, air, and ether. It is made of mother's menstrual
excretion and father's semen. It is also called "annamaya
kosa," which literally means storehouse of grain because
it depends on grain. It is known as idam (this) because
it is known by senses.
As the seeds sown in a field, yield the corresponding
crop in course of time, even so the seeds of action,
which a man performs by the feelings of egoism and
attachment, yield their fruit at the appointed time and
thus he is born a god, a bird, or a beast. So it is
called "kshetr" or field of action.
etat: this
yo: who
vetti: knows
tam: he is known as knower of kshetr
In the first half of this verse the body has been
mentioned by the term "idam" while in the second half of
it has been mentioned by the term "eta" which denotes
nearness to the term "idam."
The soul is called "kshetrjna" because it assumes its
identity with the body otherwsie it is the Supreme soul
or "Paramatma."
In the 5th verse, the Lord says
"mahabhutanyamkaro buddhir avyaktameva cha
indriyani dashaikancha pancha cheindriyagochara"
The five great elements, the ego, the intellect,
Primordial Matter, the ten senses, the mind, and five
object of senses. This is kshetr which consists of 24
elements.
mahabhutani: the five elements: ether, air, fire, water,
and earth
ahankar: the comsic ego
budhhi: cosmic intelligence -- It is Prakriti as it gives
birth to ego and being the evolute of Primordial
Nature it is "vritti."
avyaktameva: Primordial Matter -- Primordial Nature being
the cause of cosmic intelligence and being the
evolute of none is Prakriti
indrayani dashaikam: There are ten senses
1. Tongue
2. Hands
3. Feet
4. The procreative organ
5. The organ of defecation
6. Hearing
7. Touch
8. Sight
9. Taste
10. Smell
pancha cheindriyagochara: sound, touch, colour, taste,
and smell -- the objects of the 5 senses of
perception being the effects not the cause are
modification
Rational enquiry is re-investigated through Brahma
Sootras -- a collection of philosophical works based on
Upanishads. Commenting on this important work, Acharya
Shankara, the eminent Vedantist says that there are 2
types of view regarding an entity:
1. purush-tantr or views based upon the opinions of
persons
2. vastu-tantr, or the view based on the nature of the
thing in itself, arrived at after investigation
Acharya says: "With regard to an existing entity
different views such as "it is not thus," "it is there,"
"it is not there," and so on cannot be true knowledge,
such differences being based on personal opinions. But
the true knowledge of an existing entity, as it is in
itself, does not depend on such differing opinions, which
are false or wrong knowledge.
Acharya further points out "...thus the valid proof
(pramana) of existing entity is "vaastu tantr." It being
so, the knowledge in regard to Brahman, which is an
existing entity (bhuta-vastu), is vastu tantr and does
not depend upon our opinions. Hence it must be
investigated and realized, as it is not merely speculated
upon. The knowledge of Brahman (brahma-jnana) culminates
in its experiental realization since brahma-jnana relates
to an existent entity.
Vedant is an open system like modern science and was ever
modifying its empirical viewpoints with progress in other
sciences as well as within its own field, to harmonize
the total knowledge.
Prof. Capra points out in his Tao of Physics:
"The basic elements of the Eastern world view are also
those of the world view emerging from modern physics.
Eastern thought and more general mystical thought provide
a consistent and relevant philosophical background to the
theories of contemporary science.
Atomic physics provided scientists with the first
glimpses of the essential nature of things. Like the
mystics, physicists were now dealing with a non-sensory
experience of reality and like the mystics; they had to
face the paradoxical aspects of this experience. From
then on, therefore, the models and images of modern
physics became akin to those of Eastern philosophy.
Thus the mystic and the physicist arrive at the same
conclusion, one starting from the inner realm, the other
from the outer world. The harmony between their views
confirms the ancient Indian wisdom that Brahman, the
ultimate reality without, is identical to Atman, the
reality within.
As science and experiments are based on hypothesis and
deduction, so is the science of Advaita Vedant.
Shankaracharya, the greatest exponent of Advaita Vedant,
stated that each "pramana" or a valid proof of knowledge
has its own sphere of operation. For example in the
sphere of sight, the eyes are the authority and in the
sphere of sound, ears are the supreme authority. There is
no contradiction between the knowledge given by the ears
and the knowledge given by the eyes. Similarly, a person
gains different experience in material and spiritual
sphere through different faculties like sense, intellect,
and mind. Hence, for knowledge in each field one has to
go through the related methodologies of that specific
field and get the valid "pramaan."
The eminent scientist Dr. Jagadish Chandra Bose,
addressing the Royal Society of London, said:
"I have shown you this evening autographic records of the
history of stress and strain in living and the non-
living. How similar are the writings; so similar that you
cannot tell one apart from another ... It was when I came
upon the mute witness of these self-made records and
perceived in them one phase of pervading unity that bears
within all these things...it was then that I understood
for the first time a little of the message proclaimed by
my ancestors on the banks of the Ganges, thirty centuries
ago: 'They who see but One, in all the changing,
manifestations of the universe -- unto them belongs
eternal peace -- unto none else!"
Accepting Vedant as a science or not depends upon the
individual perspective of looking at it. It cannot be
argued that physical sciences, or astrophysics can win
over its judgments or comments over Vedant, because, each
are valid in its own way. They both constitute the
wholesome aspect of the knowledge gained by man.
I would like to conclude, by quoting the following lines
from The Times of London:
"While we in England were still steeped in the rude
empirics of barbaric life, the subtle Easterner had swept
the universe into a synthesis and had seen the One in all
its changing manifestations."
- Shounak Bhattacharya
More at:
http://www.indiacause.com/columns/OL_050820.htm
Jai Maharaj
http://www.mantra.com/jai
Om Shanti
Hindu Holocaust Museum
http://www.mantra.com/holocaust
Hindu life, principles, spirituality and philosophy
http://www.hindu.org
http://www.hindunet.org
The truth about Islam and Muslims
http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate
The terrorist mission of Jesus stated in the Christian bible:
"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not so send
peace, but a sword.
"For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the
daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in
law.
"And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
- Matthew 10:34-36.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: IS VEDANT A SCIENCE? |
31 Aug 2005 12:25:06 PM |
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Postmodernism, Hindu nationalism and `Vedic science'
MEERA NANDA
The mixing up of the mythos of the Vedas with the logos of science
must be of great concern not just to the scientific community, but
also to the religious people, for it is a distortion of both science
and spirituality.
The first part of a two-part article
The Vedas as books of science
IN 1996, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) of the United Kingdom
(U.K.) produced a slick looking book, with many well-produced
pictures of colourfully dressed men and women performing Hindu
ceremonies, accompanied with warm, fuzzy and completely sanitised
description of the faith. The book, Explaining Hindu Dharma: A
Guide for Teachers, offers "teaching suggestions for introducing
Hindu ideas and topics in the classroom" at the middle to high
school level in the British schools system. The authors and editors
are all card-carrying members of the VHP. The book is now in its
second edition and, going by the glowing reviews on the back-cover,
it seems to have established itself as a much-used educational
resource in the British school system.
What "teaching suggestions" does this Guide offer? It advises
British teachers to introduce Hindu dharma as "just another name"
for "eternal laws of nature" first discovered by Vedic seers, and
subsequently confirmed by modern physics and biological sciences.
After giving a false but incredibly smug account of mathematics,
physics, astronomy, medicine and evolutionary theory contained in
the Vedic texts, the Guide instructs the teachers to present the
Vedic scriptures as "not just old religious books, but as books
which contain many true scientific facts... these ancient
scriptures of the Hindus can be treated as scientific texts"
(emphasis added). All that modern science teaches us about the
workings of nature can be found in the Vedas, and all that the
Vedas teach about the nature of matter, god, and human beings is
affirmed by modern science. There is no conflict, there are no
contradictions. Modern science and the Vedas are simply "different
names for the same truth".
This is the image of Hinduism that the VHP and other Hindutva
propagandists want to project around the world. The British case is
not an isolated example. Similar initiatives to portray Vedic-Aryan
India as the "cradle" of world civilisation and science have been
launched in Canada and the United States as well. Many of these
initiatives are beneficiaries of the generous and politically
correct policies of multicultural education in these countries.
Under the worthy cause of presenting the "community's" own views
about its culture, many Western governments are inadvertently
funding Hindutva's propaganda.
KAMAL NARANG
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Human Resource Development
Minister Murli Manohar Joshi at the inauguration of the Indian Science
Congress in New Delhi in 2001. The obsession for finding all kinds of
science in all kinds of obscure Hindu doctrines has been dictating the
official education policy of the BJP ever since it came to power
nearly half a decade ago.
But what concerns us in this article is not the long-distance
Hindutva (or "Yankee Hindutva", as some call it), dangerous though
it is. This essay is more about the left wing-counterpart of Yankee
Hindutva: a set of postmodernist ideas, mostly (but not entirely)
exported from the West, which unintentionally ends up supporting
Hindutva's propaganda regarding Vedic science. Over the last couple
of decades, a set of very fashionable, supposedly "radical"
critiques of modern science have dominated the Western
universities. These critical theories of science go under the label
of "postmodernism" or "social constructivism". These theories see
modern science as an essentially Western, masculine and
imperialistic way of acquiring knowledge. Intellectuals of Indian
origin, many of them living and working in the West, have played a
lead role in development of postmodernist critiques of modern
science as a source of colonial "violence" against non-Western ways
of knowing.
In this two-part essay, I will examine how this postmodernist left
has provided philosophical arguments for Hindutva's claim that
Vedas are "just another name" for modern science. As we will see,
postmodernist attacks on objective and universal knowledge have
played straight into Hindu nationalist slogan of all perspectives
being equally true - within their own context and at their own
level. The result is the loud - but false - claims of finding a
tradition of empirical science in the spiritual teachings of the
Vedas and Vedanta. Such scientisation of the Vedas does nothing to
actually promote an empirical and rational tradition in India,
while it does an incalculable harm to the spiritual message of
Hinduism's sacred books. The mixing up of the mythos of the Vedas
with the logos of science must be of great concern not just to the
scientific community, but also to the religious people, for it is a
distortion of both science and spirituality.
In order to understand how postmodern critiques of science converge
with Hindutva's celebration of Vedas-as-science, let us follow the
logic behind VHP's Guide for Teachers.
This Guide claims that the ancient Hindu scriptures contain "many
true scientific facts" and therefore "can be treated as scientific
texts". Let us see what these "true scientific facts" are. The
prime exhibit is the "scientific affirmation" of the theory of guna
(Sanskrit for qualities or attributes). Following the essential
Vedantic idea that matter and spirit are not separate and distinct
entities, but rather the spiritual principle constitutes the very
fabric of the material world, the theory of gunas teaches that
matter exhibits spiritual/moral qualities. There are three such
qualities or gunas which are shared by all matter, living or
non-living: the quality or guna of purity and calmness seeking
higher knowledge (sattvic), the quality or guna of impurity,
darkness, ignorance and inactivity (tamsic) and the quality or guna
of activity, curiosity, worldly gain (rajasic). Modern atomic
physics, the VHP's Guide claims, has confirmed the presence of
these qualities in nature. The evidence? Physics shows that there
are three atomic particles bearing positive, negative and neutral
charges, which correspond to the three gunas! From this "scientific
proof" of the existence of essentially spiritual/moral gunas in
atoms, the Guide goes on to triumphantly deduce the "scientific"
confirmation of the truths of all those Vedic sciences which use
the concept of gunas (for example, Ayurveda). Having "demonstrated"
the scientific credentials of Hinduism, the Guide boldly advises
British school teachers to instruct their students that there is
"no conflict" between the eternal laws of dharma and the laws
discovered by modern science.
PARTH SANYAL
In Kolkata, astrologers demonstrating against the West Bengal
government's decision not to introduce astrology as a subject in the
State's universities. A file picture.
One of the most ludicrous mantras of Hindutva propaganda is that
there is "no conflict" between modern science and Hinduism. In
reality, everything we know about the workings of nature through
the methods of modern science radically disconfirms the presence of
any morally significant gunas, or shakti, or any other form of
consciousness in nature, as taught by the Vedic cosmology which
treats nature as a manifestation of divine consciousness. Far from
there being "no conflict" between science and Hinduism, a
scientific understanding of nature completely and radically negates
the "eternal laws" of Hindu dharma which teach an identity between
spirit and matter. That is precisely why the Hindutva apologists
are so keen to tame modern science by reducing it to "simply
another name for the One Truth" - the "one truth" of Absolute
Consciousness contained in Hinduism's own classical texts.
If Hindu propagandists can go this far in U.K., imagine their power
in India, where they control the Central government and its
agencies for media, education and research. This obsession for
finding all kinds of science in all kinds of obscure Hindu
doctrines has been dictating the official educational policy of the
Bharatiya Janata Party ever since it came to power nearly half a
decade ago.
Indeed the BJP government can teach a thing or two to the creation
scientists in the U.S. Creationists, old and new, are trying to
smuggle in Christian dogma into secular schools in the U.S. by
redefining science in a way that allows God to be brought in as a
cause of natural phenomena. This "theistic science" is meant to
serve as the thin-edge of the wedge that will pry open the secular
establishment. Unlike the creationists who have to contend with the
courts and the legislatures in the U.S., the Indian government
itself wields the wedge of Vedic science intended to dismantle the
(admittedly half-hearted) secularist education policies. By
teaching Vedic Hinduism as "science", the Indian state and elites
can portray India as "secular" and "modern", a model of sobriety
and responsibility in contrast with those obscurantist Islamic
fundamentalists across the border who insist on keeping science out
of their madrassas. How useful is this appellation of "science",
for it dresses up so much religious indoctrination as "secular
education".
Under the kindly patronage of the state, Hindutva's wedge strategy
is working wonders. Astrology is flourishing as an academic subject
in public and private colleges and universities, and is being put
to use in predicting future earthquakes and other natural
disasters. Such "sciences" as Vastu Shastra and Vedic mathematics
are attracting governmental grants for research and education.
While the Ministry of Defence is sponsoring research and
development of weapons and devices with magical powers mentioned in
the ancient epics, the Health Ministry is investing in research,
development and sale of cow urine, sold as a cure for all ailments
from the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) to tuberculosis
(TB). Faith-healing and priest-craft are other "sciences" receiving
public and private funding. In the rest of the culture, miracles
and superstitions of all kinds have the blessings of influential
public figures, including elected Members of Parliament.
THERE are two kinds of claims that feed the notion that the "Vedas
are books of science". The first kind declared the entire Vedic
corpus as converging with modern science, while the second
concentrates on defending such esoteric practices as astrology,
vastu, Ayurveda, transcendental meditation and so on as scientific
within the Vedic paradigm. The first stream seeks to establish
likeness, connections and convergences between radically opposed
ideas (guna theory and atomic particles, for example). This stream
does not relativise science: it simply grabs whatever theory of
physics or biology may be popular with Western scientists at any
given time, and claims that Hindu ideas are "like that", or "mean
the same" and "therefore" are perfectly modern and rational. The
second stream is far more radical, as it defends this "method" of
drawing likenesses and correspondences between unlike entities as
perfectly rational and "scientific" within the non-dualistic Vedic
worldview. The second stream, in other words, relativises
scientific method to dominant religious worldviews: it holds that
the Hindu style of thinking by analogies and correspondences
"directly revealed to the mind's eye" is as scientific within the
"holistic" worldview of Vedic Hinduism, as the analytical and
experimental methodology of modern science is to the "reductionist"
worldview of Semitic religions. The relativist defence of
eclecticism as a legitimate scientific method not only provides a
cover for the first stream, it also provides a generic defence of
such emerging "alternative sciences" as "Vedic physics" and "Vedic
creationism", as well as defending such pseudo-sciences as Vedic
astrology, palmistry, TM (transcendental meditation) and new-age
Ayurveda (Deepak Chopra style).
In what follows, I will examine how postmodernist and social
constructivist critiques of science have lent support to both
streams of Vedas-as-science literature.
But first, I must clarify what I mean by postmodernism.
Postmodernism is a mood, a disposition. The chief characteristic of
the postmodernist disposition is that it is opposed to the
Enlightenment, which is taken to be the core of modernism. Of
course, there is no simple characterisation of the Enlightenment
any more than there is of postmodernism. A rough and ready
portrayal might go like this: Enlightenment is a general attitude
fostered in the 17th and 18th centuries on the heels of the
Scientific Revolution; it aims to replace superstition and
authority of traditions and established religions with critical
reason represented, above all, by the growth of modern science. The
Enlightenment project was based upon a hope that improvement in
secular scientific knowledge will lead to an improvement of the
human condition, not just materially but also ethically and
culturally. While the Enlightenment spirit flourished primarily in
Europe and North America, intellectual movements in India, China,
Japan, Latin America, Egypt and other parts of West Asia were also
influenced by it. However, the combined weight of colonialism and
cultural nationalism thwarted the Enlightenment spirit in
non-Western societies.
Postmodernists are disillusioned with this triumphalist view of
science dispelling ignorance and making the world a better place.
Their despair leads them to question the possibility of progress
toward some universal truth that everyone, everywhere must accept.
Against the Enlightenment's faith in such universal
"meta-narratives" advancing to truth, postmodernists prefer local
traditions which are not entirely led by rational and instrumental
criteria but make room for the sacred, the non-instrumental and
even the irrational. Social constructivist theories of science
nicely complement postmodernists' angst against science. There are
many schools of social constructivism, including the "strong
programme" of the Edinburgh (Scotland) school, and the "actor
network" programme associated with a school in Paris, France. The
many convoluted and abstruse arguments of these programmes do not
concern us here. Basically, these programmes assert that modern
science, which we take to be moving closer to objective truth about
nature, is actually just one culture-bound way to look at nature:
no better or worse than all other sciences of other cultures. Not
just the agenda, but the content of all knowledge is socially
constructed: the supposed "facts" of modern science are "Western"
constructions, reflecting dominant interests and cultural biases of
Western societies.
Following this logic, Indian critics of science, especially those
led by the neo-Gandhians such as Ashis Nandy and Vandana Shiva,
have argued for developing local science which is grounded in the
civilisational ethos of India. Other well-known public
intellectuals, including such stalwarts as Rajni Kothari, Veena
Das, Claude Alvares and Shiv Vishwanathan, have thrown their
considerable weight behind this civilisational view of knowledge.
This perspective also has numerous sympathisers among "patriotic
science" and the environmentalist and feminist movements. A defence
of local knowledges against rationalisation and secularisation also
underlies the fashionable theories of post-colonialism and
subaltern studies, which have found a worldwide following through
the writings of Partha Chatterjee, Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha,
Dipesh Chakrabarty and others. All these intellectuals and
movements mentioned here have their roots in movements for social
justice, environmental protection and women's rights - all
traditional left-wing causes.
Social constructivist and postmodernist attacks on science have
proven to be a blessing for all religious zealots, in all major
faiths, as they no longer feel compelled to revise their
metaphysics in the light of progress in our understanding of nature
in relevant fields. But Hinduism displays a special resonance with
the relativistic and holistic thought that finds favour among
postmodernists. In the rest of this two-part paper, I will examine
the general overlap between Hindu apologetics and postmodernist
view of hybridity (part I) and alternative sciences (part II).
Postmodern "hybridity" and Hindu eclecticism
THE contemporary Hindu propagandists are inheritors of the 19th
century neo-Hindu nationalists who started the tradition of
dressing up the spirit-centered metaphysics of orthodox Hinduism in
modern scientific clothes. The neo-Hindu intellectuals, in turn,
were (consciously or unconsciously) displaying the well-known
penchant of generations of Sanskrit pundits for drawing
resemblances and correspondences between religious rituals, forces
of nature and human destiny.
Postmodernist theories of knowledge have rehabilitated this
"method" of drawing equivalences between different and
contradictory worldviews and allowing them to "hybridise" across
traditions. The postmodernist consensus is that since truth about
the real world as-it-is cannot be known, all knowledge systems are
equivalent to each other in being social constructions. Because
they are all equally arbitrary, and none any more objective than
other, they can be mixed and matched in order to serve the needs of
human beings to live well in their own cultural universes. From the
postmodern perspective, the VHP justification of the guna theory in
terms of atomic physics is not anything to worry about: it is
merely an example of "hybridity" between two different culturally
constructed ways of seeing, a fusion between East and West,
tradition and modernity. Indeed, by postmodernist standards, it is
not this hybridity that we should worry about, but rather we should
oppose the "positivist" and "modernist" hubris that demands that
non-Western cultures should give up, or alter, elements of their
inherited cosmologies in the light of the growth of knowledge in
natural sciences. Let us see how this view of hybridity meshes in
with the Hindutva construction of Vedic science.
It is a well-known fact that Hinduism uses its eclectic mantra -
"Truth is one, the wise call it by different names" - as an
instrument for self-aggrandisement. Abrahamic religions go about
converting the Other through persuasion and through the use of
physical force. Hinduism, in contrast, absorbs the alien Other by
proclaiming its doctrines to be only "different names for the One
Truth" contained in Hinduism's own Perennial Wisdom. The teachings
of the outsider, the dissenter or the innovator are simply declared
to be merely nominally different, a minor and inferior variation of
the Absolute and Universal Truth known to Vedic Hindus from time
immemorial. Christianity and Islam at least acknowledge the radical
otherness and difference of other faiths, even as they attempt to
convert them, even at the cost of great violence and mayhem.
Hinduism refuses to grant other faiths their distinctiveness and
difference, even as it proclaims its great "tolerance". Hinduism's
"tolerance" is a mere disguise for its narcissistic obsession with
its own greatness.
Whereas classical Hinduism limited this passive-aggressive form of
conquest to matters of religious doctrine, neo-Hindu intellectuals
have extended this mode of conquest to secular knowledge of modern
science as well. The tradition of claiming modern science as "just
another name" for the spiritual truths of the Vedas started with
the Bengal Renaissance. The contemporary Hindutva follows in the
footsteps of this tradition.
The Vedic science movement began in 1893 when Swami Vivekananda
(1863-1902) addressed the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago.
In that famous address, he sought to present Hinduism not just as a
fulfilment of all other religions, but also as a fulfilment of all
of science. Vivekananda claimed that only the spiritual monism of
Advaita Vedanta could fulfil the ultimate goal of natural science,
which he saw as the search for the ultimate source of the energy
that creates and sustains the world.
Vivekananda was followed by another Bengali
nationalist-turned-spiritualist, Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950).
Aurobindo proposed a divine theory of evolution that treats
evolution as the adventures of the World-Spirit finding its own
fulfilment through progressively higher levels of consciousness,
from matter to man to the yet-to-come harmonious "supermind" of a
socialistic collective. Newer theories of Vedic creationism, which
propose to replace Darwinian evolution with "devolution" from the
original one-ness with Brahman, are now being proposed with utmost
seriousness by the Hare Krishnas who, for all their scandals and
idiosyncrasies, remain faithful to the spirit of Vaishnava
Hinduism.
Vivekananda and Aurobindo lit the spark that has continued to fire
the nationalist imagination, right to the present time. The
Neo-Hindu literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries,
especially the writings of Dayanand Saraswati, S. Radhakrishnan and
the many followers of Vivekananda, is replete with celebration of
Hinduism as a "scientific" religion. Even secularists like
Jawaharlal Nehru remained captive of this idea that the original
teachings of Vedic Hinduism were consonant with modern science, but
only corrupted later by the gradual deposits of superstition.
Countless gurus and swamis began to teach that the Vedas are simply
"another name for science" and that all of science only affirms
what the Vedas have taught. This scientistic version of Hinduism
has found its way to the West through the numerous ashrams and yoga
retreats set up, most prominently, by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his
many clones.
ALL these numerous celebrations of "Vedas as science" follow a
similar intellectual strategy of finding analogies and
equivalences. All invoke extremely speculative theories from modern
cosmology, quantum mechanics, vitalistic theories of biology and
parapsychology, and other fringe sciences. They read back these
sciences into Sanskrit texts chosen at will, and their meaning
decided by the whim of the interpreter, and claim that the entities
and processes mentioned in Sanskrit texts are "like", "the same
thing as", or "another word for" the ideas expressed in modern
cosmology, quantum physics or biology. Thus there is a bit of a
Brahman here and a bit of quantum mechanics there, the two treated
as interchangeable; there are references to "energy", a scientific
term with a definite mathematical formulation in physics, which
gets to mean "consciousness"; references to Newton's laws of action
and reaction are made to stand for the laws of karma and
reincarnation; completely discredited "evidence" from
parapsychology and "secret life of plants" are upheld as proofs of
the presence of different degrees of soul in all matter;
"evolution" is taught as the self-manifestation of Brahman and so
on. The terms are scientific, but the content is religious. There
is no regard for consistency either of scientific concepts, or of
religious ideas. Both wholes are broken apart, random connections
and correspondences are established and with great smugness, the
two modes of knowing are declared to be equivalent, and even
inter-changeable. The only driving force, the only idea that gives
this whole mish-mash any coherence, is the great anxiety to
preserve and protect Hinduism from a rational critique and
demystification. Vedic science is motivated by cultural chauvinism,
pure and simple.
What does all this have to do with postmodernism, one may
legitimately ask. Neo-Hinduism, after all, has a history dating
back at least two centuries, and the analogical logic on which
claims of Vedic science are based goes back to times immemorial.
Neo-Hinduism did not start with postmodernism, obviously. And
neither does Hindutva share the postmodernist urgency to "overcome"
and "go beyond" the modernist fascination with progress and
development. Far from it. Neo-Hinduism and Hindutva are reactionary
modernist movements, intent on harnessing a mindless and even
dangerous technological modernisation for the advancement of a
traditionalist, deeply anti-secular and illiberal social agenda.
Nevertheless, they share a postmodernist philosophy of science that
celebrates the kind of contradictory mish-mash of science,
spirituality, mysticism and pure superstition that that passes as
"Vedic science".
For those modernists who share the Enlightenment's hope for
overcoming ignorance and superstition, the value of modern science
lies in its objectivity and universality. Modernists see modern
science as having developed a critical tradition that insists upon
subjecting our hypotheses about nature to the strictest, most
demanding empirical tests and rigorously rejecting those hypotheses
whose predictions fail to be verified. For the modernist, the
success of science in explaining the workings of nature mean that
sciences in other cultures have a rational obligation to revise
their standards of what kind of evidence is admissible as science,
what kind of logic is reasonable, and how to distinguish justified
knowledge from mere beliefs. For the modernists, furthermore,
modern science has provided a way to explain the workings of nature
without any need to bring in supernatural and untestable causes
such as a creator God, or an immanent Spirit.
For a postmodernist, however, this modernist faith in science is
only a sign of Eurocentrism and cultural imperialism. For a
postmodernist, other cultures are under no rational obligation to
revise their cosmologies, or adopt new procedures for ascertaining
facts to bring them in accord with modern science. Far from
producing a uniquely objective and universally valid account of
nature, the "facts" of modern science are only one among many other
ways of constructing other "facts" about nature, which are equally
valid for other cultures. Nature-in-itself cannot be known without
imposing classifications and meaning on it which are derived from
cultural metaphors and models. All ways of seeing nature are at par
because all are equally culture-bound. Modern science has no
special claims to truth and to our convictions, for it is as much
of a cultural construct of the West as other sciences are of their
own cultures.
This view of science is derived from a variety of American and
European philosophies of science, associated mostly with such
well-known philosophers as Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, W.O Quine,
Ludwig Wittgenstein and Michel Foucault. This view of science has
been gaining popularity among Indian scholars of science since the
infamous "scientific temper" debates in early 1980s when Ashis
Nandy, Vandana Shiva and their sympathisers came out in defence of
local knowledges and traditions, including astrology, goddess
worship as cure for small-pox, taboos against menstruation and
(later on) even sati. Over the next two decades, it became a
general practice in Indian scholarly writing to treat modern
science as just one way to adjudicate belief, no different from any
other tradition of sorting out truth from mere group belief.
Rationalism became a dirty word and Enlightenment became a stand-in
for "epistemic violence" of colonialism.
According to those who subscribe to this relativist philosophy, the
cross-cultural encounter between modern science and traditional
sciences is not a confrontation between more and less objective
knowledge, respectively. Rather it is a confrontation between two
different cultural ways of seeing the world, neither of which can
claim to represent reality-in-itself. Indeed, many radical
feminists and post-colonial critics go even further: they see
modern science as having lost its way and turned into a power of
oppression and exploitation. They want non-Western people not just
to resist science but to reform it by confronting it with their
holistic traditional sciences.
What happens when traditional cultures do need to adopt at least
some elements of modern knowledge? In such cases, postmodernists
recommend exactly the kind of "hybridity" as we have seen in the
case of Vedic sciences in which, for example, sub-atomic particles
are interpreted as referring to gunas, or where quantum energy is
interpreted to be the "same as" shakti, or where karma is
interpreted to be a determinant of biology in a "similar manner" as
the genetic code and so on. On the postmodern account, there is
nothing irrational or unscientific about this "method" of drawing
equivalences and correspondences between entirely unlike entities
and ideas, even when there may be serious contradictions between
the two. On this account, all science is based upon metaphors and
analogies that reinforce dominant cultures and social power, and
all "facts" of nature are really interpretations of nature through
the lens of dominant culture. It is perfectly rational, on this
account, for Hindu nationalists to want to reinterpret the "facts"
of modern science by drawing analogies with the dominant cultural
models supplied by Hinduism. Because no system of knowledge can
claim to know reality as it really is, because our best confirmed
science is ultimately a cultural construct, all cultures are free
to pick and choose and mix various "facts", as long as they do not
disrupt their own time-honoured worldviews.
This view of reinterpretation of "Western" science to fit into the
tradition-sanctioned, local knowledges of "the people" has been
advocated by theories of "critical traditionalism" propounded by
Ashis Nandy and Bhiku Parekh in India and by the numerous admirers
of Homi Bhabha's obscure writings on "hybridity" abroad. In the
West, this view has found great favour among feminists, notably
Sandra Harding and Donna Haraway, and among anthropologists of
science including Bruno Latour, David Hess and their followers.
To conclude, one finds a convergence between the fashionable left's
position with the religious right's position on the science
question. The extreme scepticism of postmodern intellectuals toward
modern science has landed them in a position where they cannot, if
they are to remain true to their beliefs, criticise Hindutva's
eclectic take-over of modern science for the glory of the Vedic
tradition.
Meera Nanda is the author of Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodern
Critiques of Science and Hindu Nationalism (Rutgers University
Press, 2003). An Indian edition of the book will be published by
Permanent Black in early 2004.
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| User: "harmony" |
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| Title: Re: IS VEDANT A SCIENCE? |
31 Aug 2005 02:44:28 PM |
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"Dr. Jai Maharaj" <usenet@mantra.com> wrote in message
news:jueca1905oDAVO@VheOy...
Is Vedant A Science?
the fact is if hindus were untouched by mommedan and kirastani marauding
forces, ever developing science would be integrated into and taught as a
section in vedas. i guess the hindus have names like bhautik-shashtra for
physics, ganeet shahstra for math, rasaayan shashtra for chemistry etc, the
word "shashtra" indicating part of the vedas. the fact is the progress of
science was rudely interrupted by mommedan and kirastanis - and it took
renaisance in the west to push them both out to make way for science - that
hindus and the greeks built - again.
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| User: "Dr. Jai Maharaj" |
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| Title: Re: IS VEDANT A SCIENCE? |
31 Aug 2005 02:42:11 PM |
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In article <EFnRe.10001$tT.9813@okepread02>,
"harmony" <aka@hotmail.com> posted:
Dr. Jai Maharaj posted:
Is Vedant A Science?
the fact is if hindus were untouched by mommedan and kirastani marauding
forces, ever developing science would be integrated into and taught as a
section in vedas. i guess the hindus have names like bhautik-shashtra for
physics, ganeet shahstra for math, rasaayan shashtra for chemistry etc, the
word "shashtra" indicating part of the vedas. the fact is the progress of
science was rudely interrupted by mommedan and kirastanis - and it took
renaisance in the west to push them both out to make way for science - that
hindus and the greeks built - again.
The wonderful part is that we Hindus did not lose the science.
Jai Maharaj
http://www.mantra.com/jai
Om Shanti
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| User: "prakash" |
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| Title: Re: IS VEDANT A SCIENCE? |
31 Aug 2005 07:26:45 PM |
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Dr. Jai Maharaj posted:
Is Vedant A Science?
the fact is if hindus were untouched by mommedan and kirastani marauding
forces, ever developing science would be integrated into and taught as a
section in vedas. i guess the hindus have names like bhautik-shashtra for
physics, ganeet shahstra for math, rasaayan shashtra for chemistry etc, the
word "shashtra" indicating part of the vedas. the fact is the progress of >
science was rudely interrupted by mommedan and kirastanis - and it took
renaisance in the west to push them both out to make way for science - that
hindus and the greeks built - again.
The wonderful part is that we Hindus did not lose the science.
How funny you fake doctor?????
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| User: "whogasa" |
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| Title: Re: IS VEDANT A SCIENCE? |
31 Aug 2005 05:12:40 PM |
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Yes, the hindoos even invented the airplane, the atom bomb and even
space travel. Not to mention free thought and democracy, that
flourished in holy hindu heaven before they were invaded by foreign
devils and foreign beliefs. They exercised enormous restraint in not
using their superior scientific knowledge in repelling the invaders.
They even shared their superior scientific knowledge with these
foreigners who usurped them and claimed it was all their invention.
This was in fact what brought about the renaissance in Europe. Did you
know the Wright brothers traveled to holy hindoo heaven and stole the
blueprints for the airplane that they built? Did you know that the
Manhattan project was conceived because the crafty American devils
stole the plans of the atom bomb from the hindoo pujaris? Did you
know that asstrology was the foundation of modern astronomy?
The irony of the whole thing is that even Jesus traveled to holy hindoo
heaven and stole the ideas that became the foundations of Christianity.
Yes, the hindoos invented everything, even the things we don't know
about.
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| User: "mountain man" |
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| Title: Re: IS VEDANT A SCIENCE? |
01 Sep 2005 02:00:30 AM |
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"whogasa" <whogasa@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1125526359.981734.128600@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Yes, the hindoos even invented
....[trim]...
The irony of the whole thing is that even Jesus traveled to holy hindoo
heaven and stole the ideas that became the foundations of Christianity.
Apollonius of Tyana travelled to India, and returned to middle-earth
to defy a series of Roman emporers until he was 100 y/o according
to the account. His philosophy started Pythagorean but ended
with the vedanta of the brahmins of India. In Europe he would
have taught something like Krshna consciousness: no meat, no
alcohol, no fast sex, something like Buddhism, and hence the
essences of the Essene communities. Finally, he single handedly
banished sacrifice (animal and human) that was rampant at
that time. The good shepherd saved the sheep and goats literally,
and you'll find the only record of medalians in and around the
period to be of a person with a sheep around their shoulders.
In 330 AD the Roman Emporer of the time convened the "nicean
council", at which time the christian bible was assembled from the
available extant literature, a bit of this, a bit of that, the Judaic record
for a bit of history. The emporors head bishop Eusebius would have
had the time, resources and inclination to perform relevant interpolations
on all the document archive, starting with "The History of the Jews" by
Flavius Josephus.
Shortly thereafter, the library in Alexandria was burnt to the ground.
The formation of the christian religion by the Roman emporer was
all about the struggle of power over a bunch of hippies who could
not be controlled by the traditional bribery and force. Essentially
it was just another strand in the web of the emporer.
More about "The Life of Apollonius of Tyana" here:
http://www.mountainman.com.au/a_tyana0.html
Yes, the hindoos invented everything, even the things we don't know
about.
That's correct. Here is a relevant article:
http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0310001
--
Pete Brown
Falls Creek
OZ
www.mountainman.com.au
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| User: "V S Rawat" |
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| Title: Re: IS VEDANT A SCIENCE? |
01 Sep 2005 12:34:12 AM |
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On 9/1/05 3:42 AM India Time, _whogasa_ wrote:
Yes, the hindoos even invented the airplane, the atom bomb and even
space travel. Not to mention free thought and democracy, that
flourished in holy hindu heaven before they were invaded by foreign
devils and foreign beliefs. They exercised enormous restraint in not
using their superior scientific knowledge in repelling the invaders.
They even shared their superior scientific knowledge with these
foreigners who usurped them and claimed it was all their invention.
This was in fact what brought about the renaissance in Europe. Did you
know the Wright brothers traveled to holy hindoo heaven and stole the
blueprints for the airplane that they built? Did you know that the
Manhattan project was conceived because the crafty American devils
stole the plans of the atom bomb from the hindoo pujaris? Did you
know that asstrology was the foundation of modern astronomy?
The irony of the whole thing is that even Jesus traveled to holy hindoo
heaven and stole the ideas that became the foundations of Christianity.
Yes, the hindoos invented everything, even the things we don't know
about.
No whogasa!
You are being too kind to hindus.
Hindus did not invent SPAM. It is what you invented, by
sending your stupid, senseless posts which do not convey
anything any just nag a few members.
You have accepted christianity but you are not willing to
follow one of the first tenets of Christianity, i.e., LOVE
THY NEIGHBOUR. You are so full of hatred for everyone and
everything.
You are not a christian by practice.
Christians must be wondering why they accepted you in their
faith. Maybe Lucipher sent you to them.
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| User: "prakash" |
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| Title: Re: IS VEDANT A SCIENCE? |
31 Aug 2005 07:50:25 PM |
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"Vedant is a science. Dr. Jai Maharaj is not a fake."
Stop taking drugs. It will help. As you grow older, you are getting
really senile.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: IS VEDANT A SCIENCE? |
31 Aug 2005 01:13:00 PM |
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Dr. Jai Maharaj wrote:
Is Vedant A Science?
By Shounak Bhattacharya
August 20, 2005
idam: this
shariram: body
kaunteya: Oh Arjun!
kshetr: kshetr (field)
iti: such
bidhiyate: known as
This body, Oh Arjun! Is termed as the sages call kshetr,
the field and he who knows it, kshetrjna.
A man regards birds, animals as different from himself
but he identifies himself with the body. The gross
physical body consists of five elements -- earth, water,
fire, air, and ether. It is made of mother's menstrual
excretion and father's semen. It is also called "annamaya
kosa," which literally means storehouse of grain because
it depends on grain. It is known as idam (this) because
it is known by senses.
Vedant is an open system like modern science and was ever
modifying its empirical viewpoints with progress in other
sciences as well as within its own field, to harmonize
the total knowledge.
Ah, so? In what ways have the above empirical viewpoints been modified
with progress in physics, chemistry and biology? Is fire still
considered an element of the body? Has the notion of an element "ether"
been modified after scientists at large rejected JB Priestly's
assertion of the existence of ether? Is the body still considered to be
composed of five elements or is it now fewer than five elements?
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| User: "harmony" |
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| Title: Re: IS VEDANT A SCIENCE? |
01 Sep 2005 07:39:41 PM |
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<ranjit_mathews@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1125511980.842969.7480@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
Dr. Jai Maharaj wrote:
Is Vedant A Science?
By Shounak Bhattacharya
August 20, 2005
idam: this
shariram: body
kaunteya: Oh Arjun!
kshetr: kshetr (field)
iti: such
bidhiyate: known as
This body, Oh Arjun! Is termed as the sages call kshetr,
the field and he who knows it, kshetrjna.
A man regards birds, animals as different from himself
but he identifies himself with the body. The gross
physical body consists of five elements -- earth, water,
fire, air, and ether. It is made of mother's menstrual
excretion and father's semen. It is also called "annamaya
kosa," which literally means storehouse of grain because
it depends on grain. It is known as idam (this) because
it is known by senses.
Vedant is an open system like modern science and was ever
modifying its empirical viewpoints with progress in other
sciences as well as within its own field, to harmonize
the total knowledge.
Ah, so? In what ways have the above empirical viewpoints been modified
with progress in physics, chemistry and biology? Is fire still
considered an element of the body? Has the notion of an element "ether"
been modified after scientists at large rejected JB Priestly's
assertion of the existence of ether? Is the body still considered to be
composed of five elements or is it now fewer than five elements?
fire would correspond with all energy producing things in the body, like
carbohydrates and fat etc. akash is space, and the body has it.
although the 5 elements may sound like unrelatable to modern
body-biology-chemistry, they are not so outlandish as to be
incomprehensible, for they do offer an insight that provide a basis to
further improve upon. if hindus were untouched by its sad histroy, they
would have developed it further as they have done since independence. look a
t the nuber of ayurveda research institutes that have sprung up since
independence and corresponding progress.
ayurveda has vaak, kuff and pitt. as 3 variables of body's health. now as
far as i know there is no instrument to measure these 3 varibales
quantitatively. but we do know ayurvedic medicines, prescribed upon
diagnosis, do work, all said and done, in many instances where modern
medicines have failed like in chronic illnesses.
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| User: "V S Rawat" |
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| Title: Re: IS VEDANT A SCIENCE? |
31 Aug 2005 05:56:37 PM |
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On 8/31/05 11:43 PM India Time, _ranjit_mathews@yahoo.com_
wrote:
Dr. Jai Maharaj wrote:
Is Vedant A Science?
By Shounak Bhattacharya
August 20, 2005
idam: this
shariram: body
kaunteya: Oh Arjun!
kshetr: kshetr (field)
iti: such
bidhiyate: known as
This body, Oh Arjun! Is termed as the sages call kshetr,
the field and he who knows it, kshetrjna.
A man regards birds, animals as different from himself
but he identifies himself with the body. The gross
physical body consists of five elements -- earth, water,
fire, air, and ether. It is made of mother's menstrual
excretion and father's semen. It is also called "annamaya
kosa," which literally means storehouse of grain because
it depends on grain. It is known as idam (this) because
it is known by senses.
Vedant is an open system like modern science and was ever
modifying its empirical viewpoints with progress in other
sciences as well as within its own field, to harmonize
the total knowledge.
Ah, so? In what ways have the above empirical viewpoints been modified
with progress in physics, chemistry and biology? Is fire still
considered an element of the body? Has the notion of an element "ether"
been modified after scientists at large rejected JB Priestly's
assertion of the existence of ether? Is the body still considered to be
composed of five elements or is it now fewer than five elements?
"Element" as in the elements of body has nothing to do with
the meaning of element as in chemistry.
What these five body elements really signify I could never
understand. But I do understand that they are not chemistry
elements.
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| User: "mountain man" |
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| Title: Re: IS VEDANT A SCIENCE? |
01 Sep 2005 02:00:29 AM |
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"V S Rawat" <VSRawat@Invalid.none> wrote in message
news:43163544_1@x-privat.org...
On 8/31/05 11:43 PM India Time, _ranjit_mathews@yahoo.com_
wrote:
Dr. Jai Maharaj wrote:
Is Vedant A Science?
By Shounak Bhattacharya
August 20, 2005
idam: this
shariram: body
kaunteya: Oh Arjun!
kshetr: kshetr (field)
iti: such
bidhiyate: known as
This body, Oh Arjun! Is termed as the sages call kshetr,
the field and he who knows it, kshetrjna.
A man regards birds, animals as different from himself
but he identifies himself with the body. The gross
physical body consists of five elements -- earth, water,
fire, air, and ether. It is made of mother's menstrual
excretion and father's semen. It is also called "annamaya
kosa," which literally means storehouse of grain because
it depends on grain. It is known as idam (this) because
it is known by senses.
Vedant is an open system like modern science and was ever
modifying its empirical viewpoints with progress in other
sciences as well as within its own field, to harmonize
the total knowledge.
Ah, so? In what ways have the above empirical viewpoints been modified
with progress in physics, chemistry and biology? Is fire still
considered an element of the body? Has the notion of an element "ether"
been modified after scientists at large rejected JB Priestly's
assertion of the existence of ether? Is the body still considered to be
composed of five elements or is it now fewer than five elements?
"Element" as in the elements of body has nothing to do with
the meaning of element as in chemistry.
What these five body elements really signify I could never
understand. But I do understand that they are not chemistry
elements.
What I understand these ancient elements to be
in regard to the body are simply the elements of
life and of survival without which the body perishes.
Deprive a living creature of food (earth) to ingest
and the living creature will perish within 40 days.
Deprive a living creature of water to ingest and the
living creature has between say 5 to 14 days.
Deprive a living creature of air to ingest and the
living creature has between say 3 to 5 minutes.
Deprive a living creature of the fire (living flame)
of consciousness and life departs forthwith.
We will leave aether for another time: I do not
believe this can be comprehended without
proper reference to the foregoing four.
These ancient elements are the acknowledgement
of our natural and primitive survival requirements,
and will remain as such so long as life persists.
Technology distances man from these ancient
elements: the supermarket, the kitchen tap; clean
air, and the television consciousness.
Here is an FAQ on the subject:
http://www.mountainman.com.au/aeon_faq.htm
--
Pete Brown
Falls Creek
OZ
www.mountainman.com.au
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| User: "Virendra" |
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| Title: Re: IS VEDANT A SCIENCE? |
01 Sep 2005 08:50:01 PM |
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These five elements which we sense are gross elements. Vedas also talk
about tanmatras the subtle elements/bodies out of which gross elements
are formed. These tanmatras are the ones closer the elements of
chemistry.
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| User: "Jan Panteltje" |
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| Title: Re: IS VEDANT A SCIENCE? |
31 Aug 2005 02:32:09 PM |
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On a sunny day (Wed, 31 Aug 2005 17:55:31 GMT) it happened
(Dr. Jai Maharaj) wrote in <jueca1905oDAVO@VheOy>:
Is Vedant A Science?
By Shounak Bhattacharya
August 20, 2005
This body, Oh Arjun! Is termed as the sages call kshetr,
the field and he who knows it, kshetrjna.
This Arjuna, what I show you now, is the ultimate force.
It will carry you to bliss from the darkest night.
It is the light within that shines with the might of a thousand suns.
Remember me Arjuna, at all times, and bliss is yours for all your life.
Cut the religious added crap.
The force within, the name, that is the ultimate thing that needs to happen.
How it works, the processes in the human neural net, well that hopefully will
be further investigated and discovered by science.
Remember that is it easy to hang some 'religious flag' on things we do not
understand, for example 'tree gods' 'god of thunder'.
Once science understands that neural net process that NEEDS to happen,
that Krishna was showing Arjuna, we can get rid of the crap and rediscover
what every child (as Jesus referred to) already actually knows by feel.
Remember the true self, the name, at all times, and experience yourself.
It is free, it is yours, and you need it.
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