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My father (not a scientist, but a successful businessman) has been making such claims about ancient Hindu texts for the last 40 years. I've always wondered how

My father (not a scientist, but a successful businessman) has been making such claims about ancient Hindu texts for the last 40 years. I've always wondered how otherwise educated people succumb to such obvious metaphorical myths. Perhaps the current trend is partly cultural insecurity but mostly scientific/epistemic illiteracy.

srean 8y ago
Part of the reason is that the 'humanism' movement that was instrumental in separating the church from the state in Europe during Renaissance was not uniformly replicated in India. It did happen in pockets, Bengal, Maharashtra were some of these pockets but this phenomena was not uniformly distributed. Gandhi, for instance, believed that nothing ever good came out of the European civilization and its ideas. If you take such a stance you cant learn from them. His views were in stark contrast to, say, Tagore who had no problems in acknowledging the good parts while attacking the bad. What amuses me is that that banning of the practice of sati - burning of widows on the stake -- was strongly influenced by Muslim literature from Muslim golden age, the Mutazils to be precise. RamMohan Roy the chief figure in getting the practice abolished was a scholar of Persian literature and of course Mutazil literature. Its amusing because Islam is the current poster child of everything retrogressive. Back to Renaissance, had Europe not retrogressed Renaissance would not have been necessary. The same holds for India. BTW I am in admiration of the fact that you can talk about something that's this close to home. My father, a scientist was heading a governmental body at the time of the previous BJP government headed by Vajpayee. He run a foul of them. He was being coerced in to scientifically endorsing that artifacts from ayodhya, bricks, to be particular, were from Ram's times. He refused to do so as those bricks indicated quite something else. It was a very trying time for our family. I have my full sympathies and respect for those who stand up against a corrupt government be it intellectual corruption or corruption of some other kind. I have immense respect for my father because given what he was going through I am not sure I would have made the same choices that he made. I would like to believe that I would have been as honest and upright but since I was not in the center of that harrasment I sincerely dont know what trade offs I would have made. This is the first time I have ever spoken about this to anyone.

srean 8y ago

Part of the reason is that the 'humanism' movement that was instrumental in separating the church from the state in Europe during Renaissance was not uniformly replicated in India. It did happen in pockets, Bengal, Maharashtra were some of these pockets but this phenomena was not uniformly distributed. Gandhi, for instance, believed that nothing ever good came out of the European civilization and its ideas. If you take such a stance you cant learn from them. His views were in stark contrast to, say, Tagore who had no problems in acknowledging the good parts while attacking the bad. What amuses me is that that banning of the practice of sati - burning of widows on the stake -- was strongly influenced by Muslim literature from Muslim golden age, the Mutazils to be precise. RamMohan Roy the chief figure in getting the practice abolished was a scholar of Persian literature and of course Mutazil literature. Its amusing because Islam is the current poster child of everything retrogressive. Back to Renaissance, had Europe not retrogressed Renaissance would not have been necessary. The same holds for India. BTW I am in admiration of the fact that you can talk about something that's this close to home. My father, a scientist was heading a governmental body at the time of the previous BJP government headed by Vajpayee. He run a foul of them. He was being coerced in to scientifically endorsing that artifacts from ayodhya, bricks, to be particular, were from Ram's times. He refused to do so as those bricks indicated quite something else. It was a very trying time for our family. I have my full sympathies and respect for those who stand up against a corrupt government be it intellectual corruption or corruption of some other kind. I have immense respect for my father because given what he was going through I am not sure I would have made the same choices that he made. I would like to believe that I would have been as honest and upright but since I was not in the center of that harrasment I sincerely dont know what trade offs I would have made. This is the first time I have ever spoken about this to anyone.