[000000000000001]

Isn't it an irony, that the parent posts this long comment, supposedly to glorify the ancient texts of the East, attempting to assert an innate superiority of the scientific thought achieved in the past by their culture and yet s/he uses a device invented more or less in the West using science ( math, physics, chem) developed by western minds in no more than last 300-400 years.

I suppose it is in our nature to beam in the artificial yet comforting light of the (false) understanding that we once were at the foremost of scientific thought, thus helping us in ignoring or god forbid, forgetting, the follies of our past or pathetic state of our current affairs.

If even after the industrial revolution and the information age, both of which have made our (humans everywhere in general) lives far easier and comfortable and have thus given us an opportunity to carefully think about the state of the world and ascertain, without any bias, our position in it and to plan for our future, some of us still fall for the trap laid down by scheming politicians and (unholy) religious gurus, we truly should not be very proud, either of our past or of our present.

disclaimer: I am an Indian

[drieddust]

Where exactly he is glorifying? Merely stating a amazingly correct piece of information from the past cannot be considered glorification. Donald Knuth has a hobby of researching the origins of algorithms and giving the credit where its due[1]. By your logic he too is struck in past and a hindrance to progress. When Carl Sagan famously quoted this, he too was engaging in glorification of the past. If India possessed this knowledge in the past then what should we do? Hide it somewhere, erase it from our memories? I can quote many more examples of East and West drawing from each other but you get the point.

“The Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long. Longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang.”

― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

> yet s/he uses a device invented more or less in the West using science ( math, physics, chem) developed by western minds in no more than last 300-400 years.

How did you arrive at this conclusion? He is just doing plain Arthematics. Do you think this was invented 300 years back by western minds? Well then I will say you are giving too much credit to "Western Minds". In-fact you are engaging in glorification of Western Mind.

> some of us still fall for the trap laid down by scheming politicians and (unholy) religious gurus, we truly should not be very proud, either of our past or of our present.

Did you notice the irony in your argument? You are proud of Western Minds but you do not want to be proud of Indian history?

[1] http://steiner.math.nthu.edu.tw/disk5/js/computer/1.pdf

[pritishc]

FWIW, I found this after digging into the comments on the Quora link - https://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/9804020v3.pdf. It explains the context of Puranic cosmology.

I, too, am an Indian, and a healthy dose of skepticism is warranted. However, it is admittedly enjoyable for me to read about Indian history and ancient science.

[000000000000001]

>> However, it is admittedly enjoyable for me to read about Indian history and ancient science.

I am with you on this one.

I have read Mahabharata, Ramayana and Bhagwad Gita ( one of my favorite works ) along with many foreign as well Indian vernacular works. I merely seek to use the teachings/lessons taught in our ancient scriptures so that I can live a wholesome life and find ways for the betterment of my family and my society. It hurts me that some of my well educated fellow countrymen quote these texts to spread pseudo science and sometimes even hatred for others.

[kumarvvr]

Perhaps the skepticism is true, perhaps not.

For me, the take away is not the accuracy in the speed of light.

It's the fact that there was recognition that light is something that has a finite speed that can be measured, and the recognition that that speed is a very high value, measured in thousands of distance units in half of a time unit.

This is extremely remarkable in itself.

[vikascoder]

Sadly this shows literacy has nothing to do with critical thinking and where the most literate of us should yield a higher standard on consuming fake whatsapp forwards, this shows that it is not always the case. In Ancient times we also invented flying ( pushpak viman) and there is a Shiva temple buried under the Taj Mahal called Tejo Mahalaya? Somewhere in India if we dig deep, we will find fossilized versions of a prehistoric TV set complete with Netflix? Why did they not invent a device to erase all corruption and build some good infrastructure is what boggles my mind.

[oarla]

Why should critical thinking be an effect of literacy? There are people who are not literate by western standards, but pretty sharp(Michael Faraday) and those who are literate but not that clever

[kumarvvr]

There is glory. So? Is it wrong to glorify something that is unique, astounding and clearly thought inducing as to the methods, reasoning, mathematics and observational strengths of ancient Indians?

Glorifying something does not automatically imply "asserting innate superiority". That is just a juvenile view.

So, using a modern device to point out meanings in olden texts implies just what you are saying - "asserting innate superiority of western science"

> "I suppose it is in our nature to beam in the artificial yet comforting light of the (false) understanding that we once were at the foremost of scientific thought, thus helping us in ignoring or god forbid, forgetting, the follies of our past or pathetic state of our current affairs."

Civilizations rise and fall, societies become good, go bad, times always change. Mentioning an advanced scientific achievement of our culture, in my view, sets out an ideal to which we have to collectively strive for, from the present state of affairs. This is true of anyone. There must be a lofty goal, to which the society must strive for. Pointing out an already achieved state is a better stepping stone as it does not give the voices of naysayers any strength.

NOTE : The achievement in this case is that ancient Indians recognized that light has a finite measurable speed and that it is a very high value. To me, this revelation is proof of the advancement of ancient Indian thought.

[xstartup]

> Isn't it an irony, that the parent posts this long comment, supposedly to glorify the ancient texts of the East, attempting to assert an innate superiority of the scientific thought achieved in the past by their culture and yet s/he uses a device invented more or less in the West using science ( math, physics, chem) developed by western minds in no more than last 300-400 years.

No, math/physics/chem are no more Western than air/water/sun is. The west was on its quest to conquer the world, so we felt the immense need and desire to twist history projecting a Western superiority, it was much easier to sell to the world - we had all money extracted from plantations and new found world to market aggressively. A lot of ideas known to West originated in East, westerns commercialized them and spread them far and wide, later we also made active efforts to destroy the pieces of evidence too. The only downside was that not all pieces of evidence were available to us at that time, so you'll still find them if you look hard and are lucky enough.

Disclaimer: I am a western.

[empath75]

It’s also totally off topic because not only were these tools not made by Indians they weren’t even made by humans.

[oarla]

Pride in the past or present is a personal choice. Facts about the past/present should not be twisted or ignored for that sake.

[Santosh83]

My reply to parent got downvoted, which tells you all there is to know. I too like history, but this is stretching it.