Vedic/Indian Civilization – The Birthplace of Mathematics, Science and Astronomy
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http://www.indicstudies.us/Mathematics/HECMath1.pdf http://www.indicstudies.us/Mathematics/MathPartI.htm http://www.indicstudies.us/Mathematics/MathPartII.html http://www.indicstudies.us/Mathematic…
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For more videos and information, visit http://www.closertotruth.com Is Mathematics invented or discovered? Our host Robert Lawrence Kuhn poses the question t…
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Jeffrey Armstrong (Canadian/American – Hindu/Vedic Teacher)
The modern Hindu spirituality is a reflection of this ancient civilization
and its knowledge?
Jeffrey Armstrong: Reflection is probably a good word because India has
been aggressively colonized for the last 1200 years. Some scholars have
suggested that as many as 60 million people died in the process of both the
Muslim and British colonization of India. Whatever the numbers, that a
holocaust of this proportion hasn’t even been discussed in terms of history
speaks for itself. But what is simultaneously amazing is that the culture
of India is as intact as it is compared to what one would expect from such
extreme abuse and what we usually see with other decimated indigenous
groups all across the world.
Sixteenth century India has been described as the wealthiest country in the
world, with the best universal educational system – all of which has
obviously become seriously damaged. India of today does not accurately
represent the ancient culture, but what is amazing is that the India of
today, without funding or resources, has spread its knowledge around the
world. Today, there are probably as many as 100 million people practicing
aspects of yoga – not because India spent a lot of money trying to spread
its culture, but because that knowledge is, I would say, innately desired
and needed by people all over the world.
So, to look at current India and then ask if their deep cultural knowledge
is useful for today is misguided and ignorant. Present day India is damaged
badly by recent colonization, internally corrupt and in many ways ruled by
foreign interests opposed to its basic culture. But if we look deeply into
the storehouse of ancient knowledge that the original culture possessed, we
will find a legacy profoundly useful for the world we live in today.
Jeffrey Armstrong (Canadian/American – Hindu/vedic teacher)
There is a lot of evidence that Hindu/Vedic culture was global and as I
mentioned many were seafaring and using extremely accurate astronomical,
heliocentric calculations for both Earth and celestial motions, indicating
an understanding that the Sun is at the center of the solar system and that
the Earth is round. Elliptical orbits were also calculated for all moving
celestial bodies. The findings are remarkable. What India calculated
thousands of years ago, for example the wobble of the Earth’s axis, which
creates the movement called precession of the equinoxes – the slowly
changing motion that completes one cycle every 25,920 years – has only
recently been validated by modern science.
Was this knowledge given to them by divine beings as they claim? Was there
inter-galactic travel? Did the people in India have contact with beings or
knowledge from other planets? We don’t know, but what is certain is that
they had mathematical/astronomical understanding that is extremely precise
and agrees with many of the results of astronomy today. There is no other
way to explain why India and these ancient cultures would have such precise
knowledge other than the fact that they were in a period of impressive
technology and culture beyond our present understanding.
Jeffrey Armstrong: (Canadian/American – Hindu/Vedic teacher)
My lifelong effort has been to try to find things that are universally true
rather than relatively true and I believe that the largest library of that
information exists in India in spite of the fact that India is a very
fragmented culture right now due in large part to 1200 years of violent
colonization by outside invading forces. This library of knowledge
stretches back for thousands and thousands of years and is, as far as I
know, the largest repository of the universal truth that exists on our
planet.
What we now call the West is the outgrowth of a tribal or city/state
approach to living on the planet. This means if you take care of your
tribe, you are seen as good. So, to all those tribes who were fighting
against each other for thousands of years in a series of wars, that
essentially meant that as long as the spoils of the wars were brought back
and shared amongst the tribe, they were good. Alexander the Great was a
prime example of this. He went out to rape, pillage and conquer, and was a
monster to the rest of the world, but was considered great by his people,
hence the name. He was really great at being a warmonger, and a rapist and
a pillager. But he brought his people back the spoils of war. India, on the
other hand, is the only culture of its size in the world that has never
gone out and tried to spread its beliefs by war. In fact, it has
consistently given shelter to anyone from any culture. So, to compare
histories, the west is a competitive, war-based civilization and India has
been a nurturing, cooperation-based civilization on an epic scale. I am
involved in the process of practicing and transferring that cooperative
culture of India to the war-based culture of the west at a crucial time
when it is needed very much.
Jeffrey Armstrong – (Canadian/American – Hindu/vedic teacher)
Religion is the wrong word to use for India’s teachings. Religion is a word
that is more accurately applied to the Middle Eastern Abrahamic cultures.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam are religions. The origin of the word
religion, from the Latin, is re-legare (a legalistic system of rules given
by God) or ‘bound by rules.’ Re = tied up or connected by, and ligion =
legare = ligaments = to tie, bind or bandage. The usual idea is that the
practitioner of a religion is bound up in rules or laws. This especially
applies to the three Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and
Islam, whereas the spiritual practices of India are called a Dharma
Culture. The main difference is religions generally have one book of rules
and stories whereas a Dharma culture has a library of spiritual and
material knowledge aimed at understanding who we really are and how to
properly use everything around us. The phrase Dharma Culture is a more
accurate descriptor for India, as compared to the ‘Indian religion’ or
‘Hindu religion.’
At the core of the Abrahamic Religions is a set of rules given by God that
we are told we must follow because a specific vision of God and His prophet
said so. That is not the basis of the Vedic Spiritual Library of India.
India does not have a single book or an authoritarian/disciplinarian God,
it uses an entirely different approach to the question of who we are and it
is certainly more philosophical than a Religion, but it also contains many
other components. It has a library of self-actualizing sacred knowledge,
rather than just one dogmatic book.
Jeffrey Armstrong (Canadian/American Hindu/vedic teacher)
I went off to university and spent five years working on a double major,
one in psychology and one in creative writing, literature, and poetry.
During that time – which was also the 60s – I was intensely involved in
social developments and what was going on in the world and the experiences
of the time. From that I was led, in almost every subject that I entered
into, toward India. It is my opinion that if one studies most any modern
subject with real diligence, they will be led, as I was, to India. India
has the largest simultaneously scientific and spiritual ‘library’ known to
exist.
My gosh, what a heavyweight this guy Stephen Wolfram is. Robert Lawrence
let him speak for 5 minutes straight without interrupting.
Mathematics is discovered. Even given that the mathematics most explored
by mathematicians today is based upon one of many possible sets of axioms
which themselves result in many possible mathematical “universes,” every
such mathematical universe is nevertheless implied by its respective
axioms. Mathematicians explore the implications of the fundamental axioms
of a mathematical universe or even the nature of all possible mathematical
universes themselves. In either case, mathematicians are discovering the
direct implications of the axioms of a particular mathematical universe, or
discovering the possible variations of mathematical universes based on
different axiomatic structures. Mathematics is not invented, but
discovered.
He makes a good case but it is in the final analysis unconvincing. He bases
his argument on the fact internally consistent systems can be constructed
even if they are founded on arbitrary axioms. However the axioms we use are
not just assumed. They are based on observation and if they do not conform
to observation, such as Euclids fifth postulate, they are discarded. With
that in mind and considering the amazing predictive power of mathematics
the only logical conclusion is mathematics is discovered
Wolfram’s response is self-contradictory. He says our math is an artifact
…but then explains how our math is just one amongst a huge set of maths
that exist in a concept space of various diverse maths.
One way to resolve this contradiction is via an ontology where invention is *the
same as* discovery. That is, the mind that discovers is actually inventing
that discovery. It is only believed to be discovery because the self’s
awareness of its role of creation has been suppressed.
Mathematics is a special language or logical tool not artefacts or
inventions.
I think all these mathematics systems have to collapse to a ‘kernal’ that
all self consistent mathematics have.
This kernal is discovered not invented. And it is embedded in physical
reality.
It doesn’t matter if we use a given “construction”, we are still doing
discovery.
To make an analogy, there are lots of ways to draw a map but how you draw
the map doesn’t change the structure of what you are mapping.
Nice insights
My current views on mathematics are quite similar to these.
Mathematics is like a universal language, like in the Planetary Sciences.
Like calculating the exact time of Sunrise or Sunset at your location. For
years I was trying to find the proper Mathematics for Calculating the exact
Latitude and Longitude on Earth that the Sun is Directly overhead
(Perpendicular), at any given Date and Time. The Math has proven to be
Abstract (imperfect), for doing the calculations. Math for Planetary
Sciences, is far from 2 + 2 = 4. Arithmetic, is a truth, not invented
though.
Nice insights!!
See, I think there’s some equivocation going on here. Kuhn asks Wolfram
whether the other systems of mathematics are self-contradictory and
therefore unused and Wolfram answers no, they are self consistent and valid
and their disuse is a just a consequence of the contingency of history.
Kuhn should have asked, “but what is self-consistency, or validity without
reference to our supposedly contingent mathematics?” That question would
bring Wolfram back to Kuhn’s original. The set of possible mathematics
cannot in itself be fundamental if we can say things of them like they are
possible, they are a set, they are valid and etc. Our math is the
historically contingent instantiation of one self-consistent system out of
the set of all possible self consistent systems, but self-consistency,
validity, all those attributes which the set of all possible mathematical
systems share and by which they count as such systems must be more
fundamental and it’s these fundamentals that may be necessary and eternal.
If mathematics are historical artifacts created by us, then how come
unrelated theories end up been interderivable when they speak about
completely unrelated subjects? E.g Lowenheim-Skolem-Tarski Theorem,
Tychonoff’s Theorem and Zorn’s Lemma are all interderivable. If all
mathematical entities are historical artifacts, how do mathematicians with
absolutely no relation with each other and describing completely different
and unrelated things end up with statements that can be derived from one
another? This points to a deeper structure of mathematics that can not be
explained by the “creation of mathematicians”. It is more akin to a
discovery of a deeper structure of the world than to a creation in the mind
of mathematicians.
The word mathematics comes from the Greek μάθημα (máthēma), which, in the
ancient Greek language, means “that which is learnt”, “what one gets to
know,” hence also “study” and “science”, and in modern Greek just “lesson.”
The word máthēma is derived from μανθάνω (manthano), while the modern Greek
equivalent is μαθαίνω (mathaino), both of which mean “to learn.” In Greece,
the word for “mathematics” came to have the narrower and more technical
meaning “mathematical study” even in Classical times. Its adjective is
μαθηματικός (mathēmatikós), meaning “related to learning” or “studious”,
which likewise further came to mean “mathematical”. In particular,
μαθηματικὴ τέχνη (mathēmatikḗ tékhnē), Latin: ars mathematica, meant “the
mathematical art”.
Brilliant thinker. Wish I had such a mind as my teacher when I was a young
student of mathematics.
Mathematics is invented? Really?
Closer To Truth asks Stephen Wolfram: Is Mathematics Invented or Discovered?
RC-UMD finds it interesting how Dr. Wolfman comes to that conclusion based
on nothing but inferences about “possibilities”, not based on observations
(which, comically, he finds to be “circular”).
Right.
And is that guy’s name really Wolfman? Really?
well he’s wrong. numbers aren’t made up of anything and math is intangible.
Well it clearly is not an artefact by definition, only subsets of the whole
can be artefacts.
I should add that idealization, dreaming, and wishful thinking all have
practical considerations going for it. It raises achievements in many
disciplines, paradoxically, by setting unachievable goals. And sometimes,
it’s what gets us up in the morning. (Especially coupled with zone-out
substances such as a hot cup of java ;))
4:21 = mind blown
i doubt that, but i do agree that constructing a method of predicting
social / animal behavior is possible but the amount of computation it would
require would make it impractical.
I think the platonist inside me just died a little.
You have misunderstand what he says. Studying propositional calculus helps
to understand what he mean.
Bertrand Russell said “even in the remotest depths of stellar space there
are still three feat to the yard.” I believe that mathematics and logic are
absolute.
The lighting is very low in this video. Maybe it can be edited and
re-posted.
Stephen Wolfram is probably the last person I expected to give such an
answer. I was not entirely convinced. I think that in every frame of
reference if A leads to B and B leads to C, then A will lead to C. This is
not manmade logic, then again, I’m using manmade logic to think about it.