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C. K. Raju

77 quotes

• “The history of astronomy and physics in texts should be fundamentally revised. It should be pointed out, for example, that a scientific evaluation of the evidence indicates that Claudius Ptolemy did not exist (this would also teach students a lesson on how and why to do physics practicals in a more genuine way). It should also point out that Copernicus was no revolutionary, that Newton was a deeply religious person, and that Einstein might have played legalistic tricks which a patent clerk is expected to know. There are many other aspects of history and physics nomenclature which need to be revised (in texts).”

  C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “To recapitulate, in mathematics, the East-West civilizational clash may be represented by the question of pramâna vs proof: is pramâna (validation), which involves pratyaksa (the empirically manifest), not valid proof? The pratyaksa or the empirically manifest is the one pramâna that is accepted by all major Indian schools of thought, and this is incorporated into the Indian way of doing mathematics, while the same pratyaksa, since it concerns the empirical, is regarded as contingent, and is entirely rejected in Western mathematics. Does mathematics relate to calculation, or is it primarily concerned with proving theorems? Does the Western idea of mathematical proof capture the notions of ‘certainty’ or ‘necessity’ in some sense? Should mathematics-as-calculation be taught primarily for its practical value, or should mathematics-as-proof be taught as a spiritual exercise?”

  C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2000 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Computers, mathematics education, and the alternative epistemology of the calculus in the Yuktibhâsâ 2000

• “The second consequence follows from the first: for if the Indian infinite series were established using a method of calculation and demonstration that does not constitute a formal mathematical proof, valid according to the present-day belief in the potency of formalism, then the Indian infinite series may forever have to be consigned to the status of "proto- calculus", or at best "pre-calculus", for that is how Western historians of science would surely like to classify them, if at all they are compelled to link these Indian infinite series to the infinitesimal calculus in Europe. After all, Indian infinite series were very similar to, if not identical with, the series used by Cavalieri, Fermat, Pascal, Barrow, Gregory, and Wallis, and these efforts are already classified as “pre-calculus” by Western historians of science. While such a strategy of classification and labelling may suit the political interests and the morbid narcissism of the West, it works against the grain of history regarded as an attempt to reconstruct the past.”

  C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “This book, since it presents a new account of Indian history, inevitably involves a critique of Western history. However, some Western scholars, recognizing the intrinsic weakness of that history, tend to respond to any critique of Western history not by examining the evidence (which would expose it) but by launching personal attacks on the critic with labels—in this case, the label "Hindu nationalist" seems to commonly arise to the tongues of shallow scholars. Now I completely fail to see why the only choice one has is between different kinds of hate politics— why the rejection of Western racist history necessarily implies the acceptance of some other kind of hate politics. ... It is easy to find many people who oppose one kind of hate politics while being "soft" on another set: however, as stated above, I fail to see why one's choice should be restricted to different brands of hate politics. I am not in any such camp, my stated system of ethics does not admit hate politics of any kind, and I oppose all attempts to mix religion with politics... Suppose “Hindu nationalists” were to seize power, strangle dissent by passing laws to kill dissenters, in painful ways, and then continuously expand their power through multiple genocide for the next 1700 years. What sort of history would emerge? We do not need to imagine very hard, for we have a concrete model before us, in the sort of Western history that has been written since Eusebius! Because of the long history of brutal suppression of dissent in the West, various fantasies, contrary to the barest common sense, have been allowed to pile up, and these continue today to masquerade as the scholarly truth.”

  C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Only when it started emerging from the Dark Age did Europe first come to know of the Elements—through 12th c. translations from Arabic into Latin by Adelard of Bath and Gerard of Cremona—after the capture of the Toledo library, and the setting up there of a translation factory. However, at this time of the Crusades, there was a strong sense of shame in learning from the Islamic enemy. Also at the time of the Inquisition, the fears that Toledo was a Trojan horse that would spread heresy could not be lightly discounted. The shame was contained by the strategy of "Hellenization"—all the world knowledge, up to the 11th c. CE found in the Arabic books (including, for example, Indian knowledge) was indiscriminately assigned an early Greek origin, with the Arabs assigned the role of mere transmitters (and the Indians nowhere in the picture). The fear of heresy was contained by the strategy of Christianization of this incoming knowledge, by reinterpreting it to bring it in line with the requirements of Christian theology.”

  C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Nevertheless, this laughable hypothesis is exactly what has been adopted with the 12th and 16th c. sources of “Greek” or “Hellenic” tradition." Hence, virtually all the knowledge prevalent in the 11th c. world, as known to Indians and Arabs, is attributed to Greeks like Aristotle, Archimedes, and Ptolemy. The fact is that the knowledge in these 11th c. texts accurately reflects the knowledge that then prevailed—as is naturally to be expected. However, Western historians explain this fact not by the simple and natural hypothesis of accretive up- dating of the texts, but by the extraordinary claim that all (or most of) the contemporary knowledge of the 11th c. world was derived by transmission from the Greeks, who had anticipated these developments. There is no other, or direct, evidence that these Greek authors wrote anything at all. Thus, by way of evidence, this extraordinary‘theory of transmission simply begs the question! To complete the story, it is thought enough to supplement it with a speculative chronology, attached to Greek names, based on stray remarks of doubtful authenticity in late texts. This sort of story-telling may be perfectly consonant with the standards of theology (and most early Western historians were priests), but is completely unconvincing from a somewhat more sceptical and down-to-earth point of view.”

  C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Attributing a book to a famous early source added not only to-the authority of the book, but also to its market price in what was evidently a flourishing book bazaar in Baghdad. That many books were fakes and falsely attributed to famous early sources is evident from the Eihrist of al Nadim, a Baghdad shopkeeper of the 10th c., who hence prepared this fihrist or list of books he regarded as genuine. Of course, al Nadim was a shopkeeper, not a scholar, and his concerns about genuineness were limited to saleability—so, common hearsay was good enough for him— and he is unlikely to have been bothered by a well-established fake.”

  C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “So, in practice, Western history has used two standards of evidence for transmission: one ultra-lax standard of evidence for transmission from "Greeks", and another ultra-strict standard for transmission to the West. For cases of alleged transmission from the Greeks, mere speculations—a speculative chronology combined with speculative attribution—are regarded as ample evidence of transmission. In the other direction, similarity with a real earlier work, by a real author, together with a clear channel of transmission, do not prove anything, for there is always the possibility of repeated miracles by which any number of people in the West may independently reinvent things just when they could be transmitted.”

  C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The Doctrine of Christian Discovery, which instigated the subsequent triple genocide in three continents of South and North America and later Australia—the only known successful cases of genocide in a literal sense—was explicitly proclaimed in papal bulls (Romanus Pontifex, 1454, and Inter Caetera 1493), which declared it the religious duty of Christians to kill and enslave all non-Christians. The first-hand descriptions of the genocide in the Americas provided by Las Casas (who accompanied Columbus) clearly show that it was religiously motivated, and that those engaged in the genocide thought they were doing their Christian duty by eliminating non-Christians and carrying out God’s will here on earth as it would be in hell.”

  C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “In the many centuries, since Toledo, that Western historians have been talking of transmission from the Greeks, who ever produced a Sanskrit manuscript of Ptolemy? Who ever proved that Aryabhata had seen such a Sanskrit manuscript? Yet every Western reference work on the subject asserts that Indian astronomy is transmitted from the Greeks. So is it the case that these reference works are all out of date, and that the standard of evidence for transmission has now changed? Does Owen Gingerich now deny transmission from the Greeks on the grounds that there is no evidence? Not at all; in the very same article he sticks to the entire fairy tale about transmission from the Greeks. So, it is not so much that the standards of evidence have changed, but that there are (even as of today) two simultaneous standards of evidence for transmission. One for transmission to the West, and another for purported transmission from the West. Not only is the judge biased, the very rules of evidence are biased!”

  C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “In support of the West’s physical claim to the whole world, the Western history of science sought to establish an intellectual claim to all knowledge in the world, especially all scientific knowledge. To situate this claim in its proper perspective, we need to probe a little deeper to understand a bit of the unstated logic behind colonialism. According to the religious beliefs of the colonialists, such an intellectual claim of discovery, in turn, established the colonialist’s moral claim to the whole world. It was these “moral” claims that distinguished colonialism from a simple project of robbing the world by physical force.”

  C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “But the mysterious source of Mercator's precise trigonometric values, and his technique, remains unknown to this day. Mercator, who worked with Gemma Frisius at the Catholic University of Louvain, obviously had privileged access to information brought in by sailors and priests returning from India and China, via Antwerp. So it is hardly surprising that the "Mercator" projection is identical with a projection used in maps of the celestial globe from China from at least five centuries earlier—and the same principle could obviously be applied to the terrestrial globe. How- ever, since Mercator was arrested by the Inquisition, and was lucky to escape with his life, it is also not surprising that he kept his "pagan" sources of information a closely guarded secret. The tables of trigonometric values published by Clavius, in 1608, used the Indian de- finition of sines and cosines, and the then common Indian value for the radius of the circle. Hence, these tables far exceeded in accuracy the "tables of secants" provided by earlier nav- igational theorists like Stevin for calculation of loxodromes, which were (at the accuracy of) Aryabhata's values, known to the Arabs. It is hard to see how such accuracy (unprecedented for Europe) could even have been attempted without calculus techniques. Clavius, who au- thored the calendar reform proclaimed by pope Gregory, certainly had access to every bit of information brought in by the Jesuits, but could hardly be expected to be truthful enough to acknowledge his “pagan” sources. Since Clavius’ tables were published several years be- fore the first hint of the calculus “officially” appeared in Europe in the works of Kepler, and since Clavius provides no explanation of his method, it remains a mystery how these high- precision trigonometric values were calculated. The only reasonable explanation is that like his contemporaries, Tycho Brahe, who merely articulates Nilakantha’s astronomical model, or Scaliger, whose “Julian” day number system copies the Indian ahargana system, Clavius obtained his trigonometric values from India.”

  C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “We have seen that calculation of loxodromes involved the solution of a problem equivalent to the fundamental theorem of calculus. But that theorem was unknown to Europeans in the 16th c. How, then, did Mercator draw the chart? The abiding nature of the Mercator mystery is due to the fact that it cannot be appropriately solved within the framework of the Western historical narrative about the calculus. The mystery can be resolved by changing that narrative. It is hard to believe that Mercator drew his chart through sheer skill in draftsmanship. It is rather more likely that he had access to information from India or China, which he kept a secret. That this information was adequate to enable the calculation of loxodromes is evident from the fact that loxodromes were earlier used to map the zodiac, and a Chinese [Dunhuang] star map from ca. 950 follows the very same principle of isogonal cylindrical projection that has come to be known as the “Mercator” projection. This chart is reproduced in Needham’s volume.”

  C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The trigonometric values published by Clavius, who was at the centre of the Jesuit web, provide further circumstantial evidence that the Jesuits had obtained the latest Indian texts on mathematics and astronomy, and had studied them. Thus, Clavius’ trigonometric values use exactly the Indian definition of the sine and also the same value of the radius?? used by Indian sources in stating Madhava’s sine values. Further, Clavius was unable to give any explanation for the way those trigonometric values were derived, and, obviously enough, the derivation of such precise values required essentially calculus techniques. Had Clavius himself discovered a striking new procedure, by which to obtain more precise trigonometric values, would he not have announced it, to establish his priority, especially since this was towards the end of his life? In fact, Clavius, though he published sophisticated trigonometric tables in his name, lacked a proper understanding of even elementary trigonometry, since he was unable to use trigonometry to determine a key navigational parameter—the size of the globe.”

  C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “When Indian astronomy works, translated by Jesuits in Cochin, started arriving in Europe, Tycho, as one of the most famous astronomers of his day, and the Mathematician of the Holy Roman Empire, would naturally have been chosen as the person to whom they were referred. Nilakantha's model was what later came to be called the “Tychonic” model, which Tycho was trying to check against observations. Why, after all, was Tycho so secretive about his papers, not even allowing his trusted assistant Kepler to see them? In any case, on Tycho's sudden death, Kepler obtained not just Tycho's observations, but also the rest of his papers which contained the underlying theory.”

  C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Galileo's access to Jesuit sources at the Collegio Romano is well documented. Galileo did not himself take up the calculus because he did not quite understand it, as is clear from the difficulties and the various paradoxes of the infinite that he raised in his letters to Cavalieri. Thus, this state of affairs is better explained by supposing that there was a common body of Indian work related to the calculus, known to both Galileo and Cavalieri, and that Galileo was not satisfied with Cavalieri's interpretation of it, and not willing to risk his reputation, while Cavalieri was. Nevertheless, out of deference for his teacher, he waited five years before staking his claim.”

  C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The influence of Cavalieri’s work on Torricelli and Roberval is well known. Roberval was a member of Mersenne’s discussion group, and was involved, along with Fermat and Pascal, in debating with Descartes, the validity of these new methods. There is a clear chain of influence from Cavalieri to Torricelli, to Wallis to Gregory and Newton. As is well known, while Newton acknowledged the influence of Wallis, Leibniz acknowledged the influence of Pascal on their respective works relating to the calculus. A diffusionist model for the calculus in Europe is, therefore, rather more appropriate than the simplistic Eurocentric model which gives all credit to Newton and/or Leibniz just because the two had a nasty priority dispute! There is further circumstantial evidence of transmission. The calculus methods of Cavalieri, Roberval, Fermat and Pascal are very similar to those of the Yuktsbhasd, TantrasangrahaVyakhya, Kriyakramakari.”

  C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Briefly, Europe inherited not one but two mathematical traditions: (i) from Greece and Egypt a mathematics that was spiritual, anti-empirical, proof-oriented, and explicitly religious, and (ii) from India via Arabs a mathematics that was pro-empirical, and calculation-oriented, with practical objectives.' Much mathematics taught at the K-12 level is of Indo-Arabic origin: (1) arithmetic, (2) algebra, (3) trigonometry, and (4) calculus. Despite the obviously different philosophical orientations of these two streams of mathematics Europe recognized only a single possible philosophy of a "universal" European mathematics, into which it forcibly sought to fit both mathematical streams.”

  C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “However, those precise trigonometric values were calculated by Indian mathematicians using infinite series expansions (today called “Taylor's” expansion, “Leibniz” series, etc.), and sophisticated techniques to sum infinite series. These techniques were not comprehended by European mathematicians (who were, then, still struggling at the level of decimal fractions introduced by Stevin, only in 1582). The key difficulty was with the notion of infinite sums, as in the non-terminating, non- recurring decimal expansion for the number pi. The notion of infinity brought religious beliefs prominently into play.”

  C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Another piece of non-textual evidence is the calendar. Because of their arithmetic backwardness, Greeks made a mess of the calendar they had earlier copied from Egypt like their gods. Acknowledging that mess Julius Caesar reformed the Roman calendar with great fanfare, though the net result only aggravated the mess about months (e.g. July has 31 days in honour of Julius, so August competitively has 31 days in honour of Augustus, and February is reduced to 28 or 29)! That (Julian) calendar was adopted as the Christian religious calendar in the 4th c Nicene council to fix the date of the Easter ritual, then the main church festival. However, even that "reformed" calendar had the wrong length of the year (as 365¼ days). That was a gross error even in comparison with 3rd c calendars from India. The gross error arose because the Roman system of numeration had no way to articulate fractions, except for simple fractions like half and quarter; therefore they were unable to state the true length of the year (but that wrong figure is what the colonially educated still learn!). This error (in the second place after the decimal point) naturally led to a noticeable slip in the date of Easter within a century. The church repeatedly tried to correct the error, but even the 5th c Hilarius reforms failed. The church controlled the Roman state then, and Hilarius was a pope, so the only possible reason for this persistent failure to fix the error in the date of the key religious ritual was this : basic knowledge of astronomy was unavailable in the Roman empire. Thus the non-textual evidence states the real hilarious story of Roman incompetence in astronomy, contrary to the tall tale of a Graeco-Roman Ptolemy who authored an advanced text on astronomy in the 2nd c. That is, neither "Claudius Ptolemy" nor advanced knowledge of astronomy existed anywhere in the Roman empire in the 5th c. Lack of accurate knowledge of so basic a parameter as the length of the year nails those false claims?”

  C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Not Out Of Greece. Frontier Vol. 47, No. 25, Dec 28, 2014 -Jan 3, 2015

• “In the Mahabharata, we find the story of Nala and Damayanti. Damayanti announces her intention to remarry by choosing a husband (swayamvara). As Nala and Rituparna (the king of Ayodhya) are rushing from Ayodhya to Vidarbha to participate, they stop near a Vibhitaka tree—the five-faced fruits of which were used in the ancient Indian game of dice. Rituparna shows off his knowledge of statistics by saying: “The number of fruits in the two branches of the tree is 2095, count them if you like.” Nala says he will do exactly that – count them by the empirical method of physically cutting down the tree. Anxious not be delayed, Rituparna dissuades Nala by offering to explain how it was done using sampling and probability theory, also used in the game of dice.”

  C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2019 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Do Indians have a scientific temper? Ancient texts reveal we did, way before the West, 2019

• “The Indian origin of infinite series, found in widely distributed texts, has long been publicly known to Western scholars (Whish 1832). Recent research (Raju 2007) has shown that these Indian developments really did amount to the calculus. (This brings to the forefront various epistemological issues, and the very philosophy of mathematics taken for granted in Western discourse.) This research has also pushed the historical origin of the calculus in India much further back, to the 5th c. CE Āryabhat.a, and his method of obtaining sine values by numerically solving the corresponding differential equation using a finite difference technique.”

  C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: 2016, Calculus

• “Zeroism is an alternative philosophy of mathematics,1 based on śūnyavāda, a realistic philosophy often ascribed to the Buddhist teacher Nagarjuna (2nd c. CE).2 It is now called zeroism to emphasize that the concern is with the practical and contemporary benefits of that śūnyavāda philosophy, as distinct from fidelity to this or that interpretation of the textual sources of śūnyavāda, which have often been misunderstood and mangled by scholars unfamiliar with the idiom. Indeed, the whole idea of relying on the authority of textual sources is a practice of scriptural traditions, and contrary to śūnyavāda, which denies the validity of proof by authority.”

  C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: 2016, Zeroism

• “The translated Indian texts would naturally have gone first to the Jesuit general. There is ample circumstantial evidence that did happen. Christoph Clavius, who authored the Gregorian calendar reform, also published in his name a table of sines in 1607. Curiously, these were the so-called Rsines, in that they explicitly involved the radius of the circle. Simon Stevin follows the same practice for his secant tables. Curiously, Clavius used the same large number for the radius as used in Madhava’s values (Clavius 1607). Documentary evidence of a connection comes from Clavius’ student Matteo Ricci who visited Cochin just prior to the Gregorian reform to get information about Indian methods of timekeeping (Ricci 1581). The Indian timekeeping or astronomy texts near Cochin contained detailed accounts of the calculus. On the epistemic test, those who copy don’t fully understand what they copy. This is also evidence of transmission: Clavius got the imported sine values explicitly interpolated to build a larger table, but did not know enough trigonometry to calculate the size of the earth. Recall that this size was routinely mentioned in Indian texts, and that the size of the earth was a key parameter needed for determining longitudes. (The calendar reform only settled the problem of latitudes.)”

  C. K. Raju (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There is other circumstantial evidence of transmission of calculus to Europe. Clavius’ contemporary, Julius Scaliger, is credited with Julian day-number system which is the same as the Indian ahargan.a. Likewise, another contemporary Tycho Brahe, Royal Astronomer to the Holy Roman Empire, produced the Tychonic astronomical model (in which all planets go round the Sun, which itself goes round the earth) which is just a carbon copy of the astronomical model of Nı̄lakant.ha, stated in his Tantrasangraha. Tycho’s masonry instruments (copied from Ulugh Beg’s Samarkand observatory) were not accurate enough to make accurate observations of Mars, such as made by Parameswaran over a 50 year period. Nevertheless, Tycho, in those days of the Inquisition, kept some secret documents with which his assistant Kepler decamped, after Tycho’s untimely death or murder. Why did Tycho keep mere observations such a secret from his own assistant? How did Kepler, a nearly blind person, arrive at those super-accurate observations, without appropriate instruments?”

  C. K. Raju (born 1954) first seen 1016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Raju, C. K. ‘Calculus Transmission’. In Encyclopedia of Non-Western Science, Technology and Medicine, edited by Helaine Selin, 1016–22. Dordrecht: Springer, 2016

• “To put matters bluntly, I come from a tradition where, even over 2500 years ago, in supposedly barbaric pre-Christian times, the followers of Buddha and Mahavira were ferociously debating whether it was ethical to unintentionally step on an ant and kill it (hence Jain monks wear masks to avoid unintentionally swallowing any tiny creature, or insect, and carry brooms to sweep aside any ants etc. in their path, to avoid “unintentionally” stepping on them and killing them). So the question is really: what was the ethical or moral justification in the West for mass murder and mass slavery of human beings?”

  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

• “However, there is a further problem with deductive proofs. Mathematical theorems, even if validly proved, are invalid knowledge. Hence, the people's philosophers (Lokayata) from India rejected deduction as fallible thousands of years before the church declared it as infallible! The Lokayata objection was simple: deduction may begin from false premises. The classic Lokayata example (SURI 2000) was that observing a wolf’s footprints, people wrongly inferred that a wolf was around, when in actual fact the wolf’s footprints were made at night by a man to demonstrate the fallibility of deductive inference.”

  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