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C. K. Raju
77 quotes
“In writing about physics, as distinct from mathematics or astronomy, in early Indian traditions, one is immediately struck by the apparent paucity of material—the available commentaries in English suggest that there is little beyond the Purusa Sukta, the pancabhutis and atomism.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Time in Indian and Western Traditions and Time in Physics, 1995
“It seems part of human nature that if one desires something strongly one pretends that it is true. If the pretence is carried out long enough, it becomes difficult to distinguish between pretence and reality.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 1994, Time: Towards a Consistent Theory
“Moving to pragmatic and people-oriented standards rather than the Westerm-oriented standards of the elite will hopefully also restore the idea of science as relating to our immediate surroundings, both social and natural.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The trigonometric values published by Clavius ... provide further circumstantial evidence that the Jesuits had obtained the latest Indian texts on mathematics and astronomy.’”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: C. K. Raju, 2007. in : Bhaskar Kamble, The Imperishable Seed: How Hindu Mathematics Changed the World and why this History was Erased, Garuda Prakashan Private Limited, 2022 ISBN 9798885750189
“the term “sine” derives from sinus meaning fold, from the Arabic jaib, meaning fold for a pocket. This was written as “jb” omitting the vowels, but was intended to be read as jı̄bā, from the Indian term jı̄vā corresponding to the earlier Sanskrit jyā used for the chord. Possibly, the name “Euclid” was inspired by a similar translation error made at Toledo regarding the term uclides which has been rendered by some Arabic authors as ucli (key) + des (direction, space). So, uclides, meaning “the key to geometry”, was possibly misinterpreted as a Greek name Euclides.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 2007, Towards Equity in Mathematics Education 1. Good-Bye Euclid! C. K. Raju
“The rope (or string) is flexible in more ways than one and can be used to do everything that can be done with a compass-box. It can further be used to measure the length of a curved line, impossible with the instruments in a compass- box. This is helpful for the measurement of angles, and the subsequent transition to trigonometry and calculus.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 2009, Towards Equity in Mathematics Education 2. The Indian Rope Trick: Rope vs Compass-Box
“The Elements not only acquired a theologically-correct origin, it also acquired a theologically-correct interpretation. Plato and Neoplatonists had linked geometry and mathematics to the soul. The revised interpretation rejected this linkage as heretical. Mathematics was reinterpreted as “a universal means of compelling argument”.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Is Science Western in Origin? 2009
“We have seen a number of difficulties raised by sceptics about the belief in life after death; these difficulties evaporate in the context of cosmic recurrence.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 2003. The Eleven Pictures of Time The Physics, Philosophy, and Politics of Time Beliefs
“No Western historian, to my knowledge, has commented on the curious fact that the theory of planetary motion in the West developed without the availability of appropriate planetary data. To begin with, every purported observation in “Ptolemy’s” Almagest is fabricated, and obtained by back-calculation. There is not a single known exception to this.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If one excludes the philosophy of science from the ambit of a study of its history, then one is obliged to do history with the default philosophy of science. In our case this means that one must then accept the present-day Western philosophy of mathematics, not only as a privileged philosophy, but as the only possible philosophy of mathematics.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“From the historiographic angle, the confounding of Euclid of Megara with Euclid the supposed author of the Elements is interesting. While the occurrence of such a mistake is understandable, its persistence for five centuries is not. The persistence of this error for centuries shows that that stories about "Euclid" were propagated, by historians in Europe, exactly in the uncritical manner of myth.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Of course, it is well known from the philosophy of science that any evidence whatsoever can be made consistent with any theory whatsoever by introducing enough auxiliary hypotheses.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is not the slightest doubt that every piece of empirical evidence can be explained away by one who wants to hang on to the myth of Euclid, just as every piece of evidence against astrology can be explained away by those who make a living from it.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Such forgeries were common enough... So unenviable was the reputation that priests had acquired in this matter that Isaac Newton spent 50 years of his life trying to undo the forgeries that he thought various priests had incorporated into the Bible, to serve their temporal ends. And the only answer to his scholarly and voluminous accusations was to hide them for some 250 years—in fact they still remain secret.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“note here that the long-standing claims of Euclid's existence, and the surprisingly flimsy evidence on which they are based, also provide an example of the de facto standards of evidence in historiography—standards to decide origin and transmission that should either be uniformly applied elsewhere or rejected here as well.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The khichdi geometry in the NCERT text for Class 9 is indigestible because it has mixed up the Elements by mixing up elements that ought not to be taken together—like diazepam and alcohol—unless the object is to induce a comatose state.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It would be rather pointless and confusing to retain in these books information that was incorrect or defective or inaccurate. That is to say, books on science and mathematics would naturally be propagated accretively, with the addition of numerous anonymous updates, though no one maintained a revision history. Certainly Arab authors in Baghdad, for example, were actively disinterested in verbatim translations, but were interested rather more in useful paraphrases and creative reworking.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ptolemy’s” Almagest begins (as natural for an 11th c. text) with what look like paraphrases of controversies from the history of Indian astronomy, “Aristotle’s” syllogisms are remarkably similar to the Nyàya theory of syllogisms, "Aristotle" uses theories like those of "action by contact" and the same words like "aether" (= sky = dkdsa) long used in India, and his physics is as similar to Arabic physics as "Archimedes" is to 11th c. Arabic mathematics.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Therefore, it is hardly a matter of surprise that there is much similarity between Indian knowledge, and knowledge that has been attributed to the early Greeks based on late Arabic texts: for example, the astronomical model attributed to “Ptolemy” is remarkably similar to Indian astronomical models, "Aristotle's" theory of action by contact, using aether (sky —àkàsa) is as similar to the Nyaya theory as his syllogisms are to Nyàya syllogisms, etc.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So, similarity and precedence do not always establish transmission. Whether or not they establish transmission depends upon the direction of transfer. Thus, in practice, there are two standards of evidence for transmission: an ultra-lax standard for transmission from Greeks, and an ultra-strict standard for transmission to the West.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The issue of transmission does not end with the receipt of the calculus in Europe. Because of the epistemological differences between Indian and European mathematics, actual assimilation of the calculus took a long time. It is worthwhile trying to understand this assimilation process, since this sheds light on the historical as well as the contemporary mathematical situation, and since such a task seems never before to have been attempted by historians of mathematics, who have not acknowledged or understood the historical existence of epistemological differences within mathematics.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“... formal mathematics is no more than a culturally-dependent system of aesthetics, ... it may continue to be taught like Western music...”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The linkage of time perceptions to ethics applies also to Buddhism. The relevant notion of time here is the notion of paticca samuppada , an understanding of which was equated by the Buddha with an understanding of the dhamma. This is a deep and tricky point about Buddhist ethics”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Harmony Principle 2013
“Unfortunately, there are double standards in the matter: one standard for Greek history, another for Indian.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Probability in Ancient India: Response to Witzel, 2011
“Witzel’s way of arguing, by concocting a false position for the opponent and attacking it, is unethical, whether it was done deliberately or because of lack of understanding.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Probability in Ancient India: Response to Witzel, 2011
“We have no truthful account of what happened next, for the written accounts that have come down to us are all from the viewpoint of the Christian priests. This is rather like describing a rape and murder from the viewpoint of the rapist and the murderer on the grounds that there is no other reliable source of evidence.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in Euclid and Jesus, How and why the church changed mathematics and Christianity across two religious wars C. K. Raju, 2012
“Students need to be taught that belief in Einstein or Stephen Hawking is not less superstitious than the belief in Sai Baba, just because those figures are endowed with high scientific authority in the West. They should be taught to use right means of validating knowledge, without relying on authority. (This applies also to decision makers who should not rely on the privately expressed opinions of “experts”, since this may involve a conflict of interests, but should use public discussions.)”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People have been indoctrinated to believe that any attempt to correct Western history is necessarily chauvinistic. This latter belief has been greatly helped along by the more extreme elements in the non-West who have often made wild claims.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ending Academic Imperialism: A Beginning C. K. Raju , 2011
“In sharp contrast, all Indian systems of philosophy, without any exception, accept the empirical (pratyaksa) as the first means of proof (pramana) while the Lokayata reject inference/deduction as unreliable. So, Indian philosophy considered empirical proof as more reliable than logical inference.Thus, the contrary idea of metaphysical proof as “stronger” than empirical proof would lead at one stroke to the rejection of all Indian systems of philosophy. This illustrates how the metaphysics of formal math is not universal but is biased against other systems of philosophy.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To summarise, there were different ways to measure angles very accurately in Indian tradition. An angle was defined in the sophisticated way as the length of a curved line, not in the naïve way as something (what thing?) made by two straight lines meeting at a point. The reference to 360 and 720 as a way to measure revolutions is indeed found in the Rgveda, and relates to astronomy and the calendar. Texts like Vedanga Jyotisa (– 1500 CE) use more accurate measures of angles in fractions of degrees. Similar accuracy in angle measurement was part of navigational and astronomical practice.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Pythagorean Controversy Frontier Vol. 47, No. 34, Mar 1 - 7, 2015
“Clearly, Macaulay saw education as the most powerful (and cheapest) counter-revolutionary tool. ...Regrettably, few have bothered to study or theorise about Western education as a counter-revolutionary tool.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Decolonising Hard Sciences Frontier Vol. 46, No. 7, Aug 25-31, 2013
“This then is the real meaning of those claims of "discovery" by Vasco, Columbus and Cook: people are asked to glorify and celebrate the genocide of non-Christians on three continents. That sets the attitudes of a large mass of people today. Thus, deliberately false historical claims of "discovery" continue to assist the genocidal church politics of world power.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Meaning of Christian ‘Discovery’ Frontier Vol. 47, No. 29, Jan 25 - 31, 2015
“Adopting this unscientific Christian Gregorian calendar ruins India's economic interests.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: ‘‘The Calander System’’ Frontier Vol. 50, No.1, Jul 9 - 15, 2017
“The mathematical theory of probability begins with the theory of permutations and combinations, needed to calculate probabilities in games of chance, such as dice or cards. The earliest account of this theory is found in India. This theory is tied to the theory of the Vedic metre (and the theory of Indian music, in general).”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Probablity 2016
“We should change the teaching of math, and teach normal math solely for its practical value.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Mathematics, Decolonization and Censorship: C. K. Raju 2017
“Could the similarity between the Indian and the “Aristotelian” syllogism be due to transmission? Certainly, there were regular contacts between India and Greece from before the time of Aristotle, as recounted by Herodotus or as evidenced by Alexander’s attempt to find the sea route to India after his army mutinied at the frontiers of India.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Non-Western Logic , 2016
“In Indian philosophy only empirical proof (प्रतरक प्रमार) was universally accepted, by all schools of philosophy. Further, the Lokayata accepted only empirical proofs; specifically they rejected deductive proof (अिम ाि) as inferior. As the Lokayata critique of deductive proofs shows, and as even formal mathematicians today admit, deductively proven theorems are, at best, true relative to postulates. Hence, mere deductive proof does NOT lead to valid knowledge (the goal of Indian philosophy) until the postulates are empirically validated, as in science.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“While there is nothing Vedic in “Vedic mathematics”, there is church dogma in formal mathematics.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But, the original Indian understanding of calculus as a method of numerically solving differential equations,22 together with non-Archimedean arithmetic and the philosophy of zeroism makes calculus easy enough to teach in five days.24 This ease enables students to solve harder problems such as elliptic integrals required for the first science experiment with the simple pendulum.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 2018, Decolonising Mathematics: How and why it makes science better (and enables students to solve harder problems)
“The key thing to recognise here is that false history was (and remains) a key source of colonial power.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2019 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: How to break the Western hegemony perpetuated by the university: decolonised courses in mathematics, and the history and philosophy of science, 2019
“Of course, formal Western mathematics (and indeed much of Western philosophy) is likely to be a long-term casualty of any departure from 2-valued logic. In fact, the very idea that logic (or the basis of probability) is not culturally universal, and may not be empirically certain, unsettles a large segment of Western thought, and its traditional beliefs about induction and deduction.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: PROBABILITY IN ANCIENT INDIA 2011
“The linguistic error of translation in the term “sine” was accompanied by a conceptual error, as in the very word “trigonometry” where the functions relate to the circle, not the triangle. That error persists to this day in the teaching of “trigonometry” which is stuck in the pre-Āryabhat.a era. The word “trigonometry” is in quotes, since this geometric method wrongly suggests that the concepts of sine and cosine relate to the triangle, whereas they actually relate to the circle.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Specifically, time machines are impossible, since realistic time travel implies spontaneity (different from chance). The novel features of this model can be expected to be especially prominent at the microphysical level of biological macromolecules and single particles.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 2015, Functional differential equations. 5: Time travel and life
“But how trustworthy is that authority? Are mathematicians more honest than church priests? Uncritical acceptance of authority always invites abuse of authority, and mathematicians are no exception.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2020 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Science, reason, and superstition Frontier, 2020
“Since there is no evidence for “Pythagoras”, the terminology of the “Pythagorean theorem” is defended by “myth jumping” successively to each of the myths of the person “Euclid” and the myth of the “Euclid” book, that it has axiomatic proofs. But both those myths are false; there is ample counter-evidence against both myths.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2022 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 2022, Racism in the math classroom: “Pythagorean theorem” and the two myths of “Euclid
“Let us understand one easy implication of this. The claim that the “Greek” proof of the “Pythagorean theorem” in the “Euclid” book is “superior” to its Indian proof is complete balderdash, though lots of “reliable sources” have asserted it. The actual “Euclid” book uses the same principles of proof as the Indian notion of proof, but is only a lot more prolix.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2021 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: California, Indian Calculus and the Technology Race, 2021
“It was much later that I realized that most people conflate formal mathematics with the kindergarten mathematics they learned. Thus, they are ignorant of this divorce of formal mathematics from the empirical, though this is stated even at the level of the class IX Indian school text.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2021 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 2021, THE “PYTHAGOREAN” “THEOREM” ... Arụmarụka: Journal of Conversational Thinking
“But the primary rule of Western faith-based history of math, as one should well understand by now, is that myth is evidence, and all evidence contrary to the myth, even if this is evidence in front of one's eyes, should be thrown out to preserve the myth.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This plays on the psychology of the colonized, who are persistently taught that only Western sources are reliable, a cardinal principle of Wikipedia even today.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2021 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: THE “PYTHAGOREAN” “THEOREM” AND THE RANT OF RACIST AND CIVILIZATIONAL SUPERIORITY – PART 2 Vol 1. No 2. 2021. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/ajct.v1i2.5 2021 C. K. RAJU Arụmarụka: Journal of Conversational Thinking
“It is a common error to confound quasi-cyclic time with eternal recurrence. It was not generally believed that these cosmic cycles were exact or eternal. The whole possibility of deliverance – moksa, nirvāna – was premised on the idea that these cycles were neither exact nor eternal. (However, the category of cyclic time encourages such an error by suggesting that various types of cyclic time are the same.) In India, this was the traditional view of time and life after death held from before the time of the Buddha. The Lokāyata denied the belief in life after death as a fraud. An interesting feature of this denial is how Pāyāsi sought to establish the non-existence of the soul by performing some 37 experiments with dying men, and condemned felons. It is unlikely that such experiments were ever performed anywhere else.”
C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 2008. Time: Non-Western Views , Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures