5 ms·

Sanskrit As A Language Of Science

72 points by crazyphoton 14y ago

madhadron 14y ago
Ah, the glorification of your old, dead language. This reads very much like an Oxford don extolling the virtues of Latin or Ancient Greek. Many of his claims are sheer nonsense, such as his digression on the ordering of alphabets. Sanskrit didn't use a fixed alphabet until the 19th century, and there are certainly other writing systems with collation orders just as sensible. Everyone likes to claim that their old sophisticates were scientists before the scientific revolution in Europe. The basic insistence on repeatability, independent of any individual, and trumping any logical system, wasn't there, though. Thus mathematics flourished throughout the world for thousands of years, and philosophy, too, but not science. Vaisheshika had atomic theory? So did Democritus, several centuries earlier. Nyaya was doing logical syllogism? Yeah, Aristotle was doing that, again a couple centuries earlier. We don't think of Aristotle or Democritus as scientists, though, because they wouldn't test their ideas. The whole thing is the ill informed cant of a bigot who wants to ensconce his particular folk tale that glorifies his heritage and denigrates all others.
- leke 14y ago
  It resurrected, so it seems! There is a village in India that adopted Sanskrit. It's certainly still endangered, but not dead yet.
- naveensundar 14y ago
  Sanskrit is quite a unique language and is far from being dead. Modern linguistics owes quite a lot to Sanskrit, e.g. Chomsky's famous notation, thematic roles in semantics, controlled grammar, compositional semantics etc. I suggest the following article in the AI magazine which merely touches the surface of what makes Sanskrit stand out. http://www.aaai.org/ojs/index.php/aimagazine/article/view/466 http://www.aaai.org/ojs/index.php/aimagazine/article/view/46...
- yumraj 14y ago
  The whole thing is the ill informed cant of a bigot who wants to ensconce his particular folk tale that glorifies his heritage and denigrates all others. The vitriolic tone of your comment sounds much the same as what you wrote above, which in turn makes me ignore it. Not sure if you disagree with the article, or are merely offended that it denigrates your heritage.
tokenadult 14y ago
There are several very controversial ideas here about the prehistory and history of India. And the history of India is such a controversial subject within India that many thoughtful writers who live in India pass up the opportunity to dig into the sources and write thorough histories of their own country. http://www.historytoday.com/mihir-bose/india%E2%80%99s-missing-historians http://www.historytoday.com/mihir-bose/india%E2%80%99s-missi... Readers from India who read widely are probably already well aware of the controversy about many of these issues (which have considerable influence on domestic politics in India and on foreign relations between India and neighboring countries). I point this out for the benefit of readers of HN who haven't read much about the history of India and who may not be aware that not all statements in the 2009 speech kindly submitted here enjoy agreement even within India. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_India#Historiography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_India#Historiography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_Invasion_Theory_(history_and_controversies) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_Invasion_Theory_(history_... In particular, the person who gave the speech http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markandey_Katju http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markandey_Katju has wide-ranging interests but has no specialized training as a linguist or any kind of scientist, but rather is a former judge and political commentator http://www.indianexpress.com/news/ten-ways-of-being-foolish/940095/0 http://www.indianexpress.com/news/ten-ways-of-being-foolish/... from a long family line of lawyers and politicians. The speech is not really about language, nor is it about science, but it is about politics, and I am aware that some readers of Hacker News take great care to keep discussions of politics off Hacker News, in the interest of finding more articles about the core subjects of Hacker News here.
- statictype 14y ago
  It would be nice if you could expand on what the actual controversies are.
  - foogoo1 14y ago
    for one, the language of Tamil did not even get a passing mention in that article, even though it is a classical language just like Sanskrit, and its influence on ancient India, especially developments in South India. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_language#cite_note-richestClassical-7 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_language#cite_note-riches...
signa11 14y ago
i found this http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/sanskrit-nasa.html http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/sanskrit-nasa.html to be pretty interesting.
gajomi 14y ago
A very interesting discussion, I think, even if its promoting some strange ideas. But I don't think enough was done to explain the success of English as the dominant scientific language, as a basis for comparison. The subtext is that it is due to various geopolitical factors, which is likely not far from the truth. But I think one important feature of scientific English (I am a scientist, and so often write in this dialect) is the lexicon. I think the upper bounds on the number of words are around a million and a significant fraction (5 percent?) is used in science writing. Having this large pool of words, mostly co-opted from other languages, allows one to make precise technical statements in a simple way. This is not an elegant grammatical solution, as the author discusses in his analysis of Sanskrit. It is a practical solution. It is scalable inasmuch as scientific communication is specialized, so that I don't have to be familiar with the technical subset of the scientific lexicon outside my field. I feel as if the argument I am making here is not original, but I don't think I know the references. Any suggestions?
- mbq 14y ago
  Agreed; it has just happened -- in a rapid idea-exchange environment science just works way better using a common language, regardless how hard or illogical it is; and English was on a right place and time (German and French used to have their chance, but they lost due to WW2).
hadronzoo 14y ago
From my father (who can read/write Sanskrit): I'll add that at the University of Chicago, someone noted that modern linguistics really had its launch when German philologists in the 19th century encountered Sanskrit and the Sanskrit grammarians. Not just in grammar itself, but in phonemics as well. Wikipedia appears to verify in part: "This body of work became known in 19th century Europe, where it influenced modern linguistics initially through Franz Bopp, who mainly looked at Pāṇini [most famous Sanskrit grammarian]. Subsequently, a wider body of work influenced Sanskrit scholars such as Ferdinand de Saussure, Leonard Bloomfield, and Roman Jakobson. Frits Staal discussed the possible European impact of Indian ideas on language. After outlining the various aspects of the contact, Staal posits the theory that the idea of formal rules in language, first proposed by de Saussure in 1894, and finally developed by Chomsky in 1957, based on which formal rules were also introduced in computational languages, may indeed lie in the European exposure to the formal rules of Paninian grammar. In particular, de Saussure, who lectured on Sanskrit for three decades, may have been influenced by Pāṇini and Bhartrihari; his idea of the unity of signifier-signified in the sign is somewhat similar to the notion of Sphoṭa. More importantly, the very idea that formal rules can be applied to areas outside of logic or mathematics, may itself have been catalyzed by Europe's contact with the work of Sanskrit grammarians." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_linguistics#India http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_linguistics#India
rblion 14y ago
My name, Amar, means 'eternal' or 'deathless' in Sanskrit.
- rblion 14y ago
  wow. this was negged? there are some really cynical people on this site. Peace to all sentient beings ('hackers' included).
sirfried 14y ago
i dozed off after the first few paragraphs
aangjie 14y ago
Disclaimer: My mother tongue is Tamil(one of those dravidian language). Two points turned me off/ stopped me from reading the article. 1. He mentions that "it is believed now that Dravidians could have come from pakistan/afghanistan. This was a surprise news to me and after reading through that Brahui(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahui_people#Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahui_people#Origins) wikipedia article, i realized it is one of the 3 leading theories. 2. Direct Quote "A language was created by the great grammarian Panini, namely Classical Sanskrit, which enabled scientific ideas to be expressed with great precision, logic and elegance. Science requires precision. " This is when i stopped reading. Not because i disagree with sanskrit having provided precision so many years ago(i have no clue). But whatever sparse sanskrit i picked up living in Allahabad, India is very imprecise for modern science.
leke 14y ago
I think Esperanto is a pretty good candidate for the language of science. As an attempt to not show linguistic or cultural bias, the International Academy of Sciences San Marino already uses it... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademio_Internacia_de_la_Sciencoj_San_Marino https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademio_Internacia_de_la_Scie... Students write their thesis in both Esperanto and another language of their choice. More interesting reading: http://www.uea.org/dokumentoj/IKU/en/science.html http://www.uea.org/dokumentoj/IKU/en/science.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto#Science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto#Science
- tokenadult 14y ago
  The best website about Esperanto, the remarkably little used constructed language: http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/ http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/ Esperanto is actually full of linguistic and cultural bias, as this website carefully demonstrates, and Esperanto is not a successful language for international scientific communication.

72 points by crazyphoton 14y ago

Ah, the glorification of your old, dead language. This reads very much like an Oxford don extolling the virtues of Latin or Ancient Greek. Many of his claims are sheer nonsense, such as his digression on the ordering of alphabets. Sanskrit didn't use a fixed alphabet until the 19th century, and there are certainly other writing systems with collation orders just as sensible. Everyone likes to claim that their old sophisticates were scientists before the scientific revolution in Europe. The basic insistence on repeatability, independent of any individual, and trumping any logical system, wasn't there, though. Thus mathematics flourished throughout the world for thousands of years, and philosophy, too, but not science. Vaisheshika had atomic theory? So did Democritus, several centuries earlier. Nyaya was doing logical syllogism? Yeah, Aristotle was doing that, again a couple centuries earlier. We don't think of Aristotle or Democritus as scientists, though, because they wouldn't test their ideas. The whole thing is the ill informed cant of a bigot who wants to ensconce his particular folk tale that glorifies his heritage and denigrates all others.

leke 14y ago
It resurrected, so it seems! There is a village in India that adopted Sanskrit. It's certainly still endangered, but not dead yet.
naveensundar 14y ago
Sanskrit is quite a unique language and is far from being dead. Modern linguistics owes quite a lot to Sanskrit, e.g. Chomsky's famous notation, thematic roles in semantics, controlled grammar, compositional semantics etc. I suggest the following article in the AI magazine which merely touches the surface of what makes Sanskrit stand out. http://www.aaai.org/ojs/index.php/aimagazine/article/view/466 http://www.aaai.org/ojs/index.php/aimagazine/article/view/46...
yumraj 14y ago
The whole thing is the ill informed cant of a bigot who wants to ensconce his particular folk tale that glorifies his heritage and denigrates all others. The vitriolic tone of your comment sounds much the same as what you wrote above, which in turn makes me ignore it. Not sure if you disagree with the article, or are merely offended that it denigrates your heritage.

tokenadult 14y ago

There are several very controversial ideas here about the prehistory and history of India. And the history of India is such a controversial subject within India that many thoughtful writers who live in India pass up the opportunity to dig into the sources and write thorough histories of their own country. http://www.historytoday.com/mihir-bose/india%E2%80%99s-missing-historians http://www.historytoday.com/mihir-bose/india%E2%80%99s-missi... Readers from India who read widely are probably already well aware of the controversy about many of these issues (which have considerable influence on domestic politics in India and on foreign relations between India and neighboring countries). I point this out for the benefit of readers of HN who haven't read much about the history of India and who may not be aware that not all statements in the 2009 speech kindly submitted here enjoy agreement even within India. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_India#Historiography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_India#Historiography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_Invasion_Theory_(history_and_controversies) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_Invasion_Theory_(history_... In particular, the person who gave the speech http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markandey_Katju http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markandey_Katju has wide-ranging interests but has no specialized training as a linguist or any kind of scientist, but rather is a former judge and political commentator http://www.indianexpress.com/news/ten-ways-of-being-foolish/940095/0 http://www.indianexpress.com/news/ten-ways-of-being-foolish/... from a long family line of lawyers and politicians. The speech is not really about language, nor is it about science, but it is about politics, and I am aware that some readers of Hacker News take great care to keep discussions of politics off Hacker News, in the interest of finding more articles about the core subjects of Hacker News here.

statictype 14y ago
It would be nice if you could expand on what the actual controversies are.
- foogoo1 14y ago
  for one, the language of Tamil did not even get a passing mention in that article, even though it is a classical language just like Sanskrit, and its influence on ancient India, especially developments in South India. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_language#cite_note-richestClassical-7 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_language#cite_note-riches...

signa11 14y ago

i found this http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/sanskrit-nasa.html http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/sanskrit-nasa.html to be pretty interesting.

gajomi 14y ago

A very interesting discussion, I think, even if its promoting some strange ideas. But I don't think enough was done to explain the success of English as the dominant scientific language, as a basis for comparison. The subtext is that it is due to various geopolitical factors, which is likely not far from the truth. But I think one important feature of scientific English (I am a scientist, and so often write in this dialect) is the lexicon. I think the upper bounds on the number of words are around a million and a significant fraction (5 percent?) is used in science writing. Having this large pool of words, mostly co-opted from other languages, allows one to make precise technical statements in a simple way. This is not an elegant grammatical solution, as the author discusses in his analysis of Sanskrit. It is a practical solution. It is scalable inasmuch as scientific communication is specialized, so that I don't have to be familiar with the technical subset of the scientific lexicon outside my field. I feel as if the argument I am making here is not original, but I don't think I know the references. Any suggestions?

mbq 14y ago
Agreed; it has just happened -- in a rapid idea-exchange environment science just works way better using a common language, regardless how hard or illogical it is; and English was on a right place and time (German and French used to have their chance, but they lost due to WW2).

hadronzoo 14y ago

From my father (who can read/write Sanskrit): I'll add that at the University of Chicago, someone noted that modern linguistics really had its launch when German philologists in the 19th century encountered Sanskrit and the Sanskrit grammarians. Not just in grammar itself, but in phonemics as well. Wikipedia appears to verify in part: "This body of work became known in 19th century Europe, where it influenced modern linguistics initially through Franz Bopp, who mainly looked at Pāṇini [most famous Sanskrit grammarian]. Subsequently, a wider body of work influenced Sanskrit scholars such as Ferdinand de Saussure, Leonard Bloomfield, and Roman Jakobson. Frits Staal discussed the possible European impact of Indian ideas on language. After outlining the various aspects of the contact, Staal posits the theory that the idea of formal rules in language, first proposed by de Saussure in 1894, and finally developed by Chomsky in 1957, based on which formal rules were also introduced in computational languages, may indeed lie in the European exposure to the formal rules of Paninian grammar. In particular, de Saussure, who lectured on Sanskrit for three decades, may have been influenced by Pāṇini and Bhartrihari; his idea of the unity of signifier-signified in the sign is somewhat similar to the notion of Sphoṭa. More importantly, the very idea that formal rules can be applied to areas outside of logic or mathematics, may itself have been catalyzed by Europe's contact with the work of Sanskrit grammarians." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_linguistics#India http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_linguistics#India

rblion 14y ago

My name, Amar, means 'eternal' or 'deathless' in Sanskrit.

rblion 14y ago
wow. this was negged? there are some really cynical people on this site. Peace to all sentient beings ('hackers' included).

sirfried 14y ago

i dozed off after the first few paragraphs

aangjie 14y ago

Disclaimer: My mother tongue is Tamil(one of those dravidian language). Two points turned me off/ stopped me from reading the article. 1. He mentions that "it is believed now that Dravidians could have come from pakistan/afghanistan. This was a surprise news to me and after reading through that Brahui(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahui_people#Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahui_people#Origins) wikipedia article, i realized it is one of the 3 leading theories. 2. Direct Quote "A language was created by the great grammarian Panini, namely Classical Sanskrit, which enabled scientific ideas to be expressed with great precision, logic and elegance. Science requires precision. " This is when i stopped reading. Not because i disagree with sanskrit having provided precision so many years ago(i have no clue). But whatever sparse sanskrit i picked up living in Allahabad, India is very imprecise for modern science.

leke 14y ago

I think Esperanto is a pretty good candidate for the language of science. As an attempt to not show linguistic or cultural bias, the International Academy of Sciences San Marino already uses it... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademio_Internacia_de_la_Sciencoj_San_Marino https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademio_Internacia_de_la_Scie... Students write their thesis in both Esperanto and another language of their choice. More interesting reading: http://www.uea.org/dokumentoj/IKU/en/science.html http://www.uea.org/dokumentoj/IKU/en/science.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto#Science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto#Science

tokenadult 14y ago
The best website about Esperanto, the remarkably little used constructed language: http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/ http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/ Esperanto is actually full of linguistic and cultural bias, as this website carefully demonstrates, and Esperanto is not a successful language for international scientific communication.