Why Scientists need to accept Eastern thought

[Aupmanyav]

Who was the first person who discovered that that "meditation" tells about consciousness and reality, when and on what basis, please?

It was Mohammad. Did not he recuse himself to a cave for forty days at a stretch? What was he doing there?

 

[paarsurrey]

It was Mohammad. Did not he recuse himself to a cave for forty days at a stretch? What was he doing there?

Quran does not mention it, and Quran is the first and the foremost source of guidance about Islam/Muhammad whatever the denomination. Right, please?
Regards

 

[ajay0]

Again, math is not the same as philosophy. And *modern* mathematics is quite different than the *arithmetic* that was started in India (and greatly expanded upon by both the Arabic mathematicians and the later European ones)..

Indian mathematics - Wikipedia

Shulba Sutras - Wikipedia

You can see that the numeral system and zero, decimal number system were first developed in India and they expanded upon it to form modern mathematics. This major foundational part apart, they have also made contributions to negative numbers, algebra and arithmetic.

Aryabhata, an Indian mathematician and physicist who lived in the 5th century AD,developed the Aryabhatiya, a compendium of mathematics and astronomy, which was extensively referred to in the Indian mathematical literature and has survived to modern times. The mathematical part of the Aryabhatiya covers arithmetic, algebra, plane trigonometry, and spherical trigonometry. It also contains continued fractions, quadratic equations, sums-of-power series, and a table of sines.

The Aryabhatiya is also remarkable for its description of relativity of motion. He expressed this relativity thus: "Just as a man in a boat moving forward sees the stationary objects (on the shore) as moving backward, just so are the stationary stars seen by the people on earth as moving exactly towards the west."

Aryabhata also correctly stated that the earth rotates about its axis daily, and that the apparent movement of the stars is a relative motion caused by the rotation of the earth, contrary to the then-prevailing view, that the sky rotated. All this in direct contradiction to the prevailing views in Europe then and America now in the Bible belt.

Aryabhata - Wikipedia

In fact, I would say that *modern* mathematics didn't start until Descartes unified algebra and geometry (after the split caused by the discovery of irrationals).

I don't think Descartes could still have started modern mathematics with the roman numeral system.

Don't get me wrong. India had some great mathematicians. Their study of what we know of as Pell's equations were exemplary for the time. The development of the decimal system made basic calculations much easier. But, for example, trigonometry was actually invented by the ancient Greeks. This is why the Indian mathematicians knew about it (it was brought by the Geeks following Alexander).

Geometry is dealt with in the Shulbasutras stemming from the vedic period. It can also be said that the Greeks studied geometry from the Indians from their travels over there.

In fact Pythagoras and Plato have been considered to have travelled to India due to the similarities of their philosophies with the Indians. Pythagoras was a vegetarian and also believed in reincarnation.

 

[ajay0]

That's all very well of course, but trying to shoehorn meditation and woo about consciousness into science is quite the wrong way to go about it.

So I suppose you would want the whole world to embrace instead nihilism and existentialism and other half-baked philosophies and pave the way for disaster.

 

[ajay0]

The claim is that scientists need to "accept eastern thought", by which is apparently meant a load of metaphysical guff about consciousness and meditation.

Scientists are already interested in eastern thought. The statue of the destroyer god Shankar in front of CERN is proof of that.

Lets realize that western civilization is of recent origin and never had sages like Buddha or Lao Tzu as part of its moral dimension. Both world wars came from over there due to the influence of immatured philosophies and it is quite possible that the third will also emerge from there.

America as a nation is just two centuries old and cannot be expected to have the wisdom of an ancient civilization. It is like a child with live grenades and guns and cannot be expected to behave rationally and sanely at all times.

 

[Aupmanyav]

I think it is ahadith (tradition). For example, why does one kiss al-Ḥajaru al-Aswad? Because is it tradition. Mohammad too did it. Why do you have circumcision? Not because it is essential, but because it is tradition. Throwing pebbles at al-jamarāt? Because it is tradition. Is it mentioned in al-Qur'an. There may be so many things like that.

 

[paarsurrey]

I think it is ahadith (tradition). For example, why does one kiss al-Ḥajaru al-Aswad? Because is it tradition. Mohammad too did it. Why do you have circumcision? Not because it is essential, but because it is tradition. Throwing pebbles at al-jamarāt? Because it is tradition. Is it mentioned in al-Qur'an. There may be so many things like that.

The second source of guidance in Islam is Sunnah, the act Muhammad demonstrated for which there is a commandment in Quran. Muhammad performed/demonstrated them periodically either daily, or weakly or monthly or yearly.
In this way and in this meaning Sunnah is part of Quran. The book cannot demonstrate the acts/deeds, the Prophet/Messenger/Khalifatullah does it.
Sunnah is different from Ahadith. Ahadith are narrations of events collected 250/300 years after Muhammad while Sunnah was always with Quran. Right, please?
Sunnah and Ahadith are servants of Quran, Quran is their Imam.
Right, please?

Regards

 

[Native]

In this sense, philosophy is a meta-level: it talk about how we acquire knowledge, while science actually goes out and acquires it. Often, philosophy is pretty useless to working scientists since the question isn't the generalities of philosophy, but rather the practicalities of how to make a measurement.

So, according to this definition, Greek philosophers got their atomic knowledge and inspirations via the "meta-level"? I think your definitions themselves are very narrow and useless.

 

[Native]

Philosophy tends to ask whether or why certain types of thought are valid. It tends to ask much more general questions that are not specific to any particular branch of study.

That may go for the "philosophy of logics" but it is quite another matter when it comes to "natural philosophy" where nature is studied in order to gain knowledge.

 

[Guitar's Cry]

And I disagree here. There *are* philosophical questions that math can address and other philosophical questions *about* math (its validity, meaning, etc). But the subject of math is not a branch of philosophy. For example, mathematicians very seldom think about whether the objects they study exist in some Platonic reality. The question of what it means to be a number may arise, but only tangentially, and then we get on with the math.

Philosophy tends to ask whether or why certain types of thought are valid. It tends to ask much more general questions that are not specific to any particular branch of study.

As another example, physicists very seldom concern themselves with attempting to define the term 'physical'. Instead they just get along with studying stuff and call whatever they study 'physical'.



And I might agree a bit more here. But, just like engineering and physics are two different disciplines, so are physics and philosophy. The practical use of physics in engineering isn't the same as 'doing physics', although usually engineers are more aware of (some) physics than physicists are of philosophy.

For the most part, the issues that philosophers of science discuss are simply not issues to most working scientists. The questions of the working scientists tend to be ignored by the working philosophers (even those doing philosophy of science!). The two ways of thinking have diverged over the last few centuries to the place that saying either is a branch of the other seems rather strange.

Again, I think we are using two different definitions of "philosophy." I am working from philosophy being the study of knowledge; investigating the world around us to understand it in different ways. It goes beyond questions of validity and generalizations. In fact, philosophy does get very specific, as its various branches suggest.

 

[exchemist]

So I suppose you would want the whole world to embrace instead nihilism and existentialism and other half-baked philosophies and pave the way for disaster.

Is this another entry for non sequitur prize of the month?

 

[exchemist]

Scientists are already interested in eastern thought. The statue of the destroyer god Shankar in front of CERN is proof of that.

Lets realize that western civilization is of recent origin and never had sages like Buddha or Lao Tzu as part of its moral dimension. Both world wars came from over there due to the influence of immatured philosophies and it is quite possible that the third will also emerge from there.

America as a nation is just two centuries old and cannot be expected to have the wisdom of an ancient civilization. It is like a child with live grenades and guns and cannot be expected to behave rationally and sanely at all times.

None of this means we need to accept "eastern thought" in our scientific work, which is what the OP was suggesting.

You seem unable to focus on the subject of the thread and to persist in making irrelevant general assertions. Is this, perhaps, because you are employing "eastern thought", do you think? Could that be the source of the woolliness in your thinking that is preventing you from being able to stick to the subject?

 

[Polymath257]

Except these, historically speaking, would be effects that have already occurred. You can't repeat the events and replicate the effects.

And that is where you are wrong. We can, and do, replicate the types of physical evidence we find about historical events to see if we can reproduce the observations. So, people do test to see if it is possible to build large building using the suspected techniques of the Egyptians. We have extensive testing of the dating methods, the archeological techniques, etc.

Simply being a historical science doesn't mean testing is impossible. It is just a different sort of testing.

Not an answer to my question, but sure, it can. Who says, though, that experiment is the only justification for belief?

It isn't. In math, for example, it is proof from the axioms.

That's why one ideally uses uncontroversial, self-evident premises.

There are no such concepts. Even in math, there are different axioms systems and different logical systems.

Can you give an example?

Sure. Kant used geometry as an example of a synthetic a prior set of truths. We now know that geometry needs to be verified by observation because there is more than one possible geometry.

Most philosophical discussions of the concept of 'substance' are nonsense. They tend to be rearrangements of our biases and have little to do with what has actually been discovered about the substances in the real world.

When Chalmers proposed his idea of a philosophical zombie, he assumed that his ability to imagine a possible world where consciousness and the physical are separated means that supervenience was disproven.

I can go on and on: from Aristotle's ideas about physics, to Plato's ideas about his cave, to Berkeley's ideas about mind. Philosophy is rife with ideas the proponents consider to be 'obvious' that are either meaningless or simply false.

Sure, if you presuppose that the only knowledge is empirical knowledge.

I also accept mathematical knowledge, limited though it is.

 

[Polymath257]

So, according to this definition, Greek philosophers got their atomic knowledge and inspirations via the "meta-level"? I think your definitions themselves are very narrow and useless.

Yes, clearly they did. They had no actual evidence for atoms (although Lucretius used an argument for them very similar to the one for Brownian motion).

The majority of Greek philosophers rejected the atomic theory, by the way.

 

[Polymath257]

Again, I think we are using two different definitions of "philosophy." I am working from philosophy being the study of knowledge; investigating the world around us to understand it in different ways. It goes beyond questions of validity and generalizations. In fact, philosophy does get very specific, as its various branches suggest.

OK, I see philosophy as a separate way of looking at our fundamental beliefs. But, unless you want to consider *all* thinking to be doing philosophy, doing physic is NOT the same as doing philosophy.

 

[paarsurrey]

That may go for the "philosophy of logics" but it is quite another matter when it comes to "natural philosophy" where nature is studied in order to gain knowledge.

"natural philosophy" or natural science

What is "nature" and how did it come to exist, please? Is it a synonym of Universe or it is different from it? Is it exterior beauty of the matter/mass or its interior qualities , characteristics and properties?
Anybody could answer the questions but one's own understanding not from a lexicon, please.

Regards

 

[paarsurrey]

That may go for the "philosophy of logics" but it is quite another matter when it comes to "natural philosophy" where nature is studied in order to gain knowledge.

"natural philosophy" or natural science

What is "nature" and how did it come to exist, please? Is it a synonym of Universe or it is different from it? Is it exterior beauty of the matter/mass or its interior qualities , characteristics and properties?
Anybody could answer the questions but one's own understanding not from a lexicon, please.

Regards

 

[Native]

What is "nature" and how did it come to exist, please? Is it a synonym of Universe or it is different from it? Is it exterior beauty of the matter/mass or its interior qualities , characteristics and properties?
Anybody could answer the questions but one's own understanding not from a lexicon, please.

I meant "nature" in all levels of creation, included the cosmological one.

 

[Audie]

Is this another entry for non sequitur prize of the month?

Nah. Its worse than that. Way worse.

 

[Native]

Most philosophical discussions of the concept of 'substance' are nonsense. They tend to be rearrangements of our biases and have little to do with what has actually been discovered about the substances in the real world.

I´m very pleased to read your "OUR BIASES". One of you own biases consists clearly of the lack of connecting philosophical discussions with "substances in the real world", which otherwise is the essence of natural/philosophical thinking.