Of what use is mathematics in refugee camps? And its history and philosophy? Explaining this was a tough challenge.
P.S. Here is a video summary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPWNL5YL2ds&list=UUTUs46gzu-mvO9hDIzzMfBg&index=1,
and on the Campus in Camps website: http://www.campusincamps.ps/en/projects/c-k-raju/
https://www.facebook.com/CampusinCamps
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Europeans made calculus difficult because they did not understand it. The infinite series of the Indian calculus did not fit their religious idea of mathematics as eternal truth, hence perfect. (Newton made a mistake in his physics just because he did not understand the calculus, and that physics has only recently been corrected.) Read more…
This talk announced below was to have been webcast live.
Update: The videos were long ago taken down by USM, and my versions do not work any more.
The videos are now posted at
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEK1FCrLHjU
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFf5co3G3R8
Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zomZU949Cnw
Anyway, the video is now online at the USM website at
http://www.usm.my/index.php/en/about-usm/usm-videos/video-on-demand.html
My version is at
http://ckraju.net/videos/videos.html
There are no subtitles so I should perhaps explain that the persons on the dais are (from left to right) Prof. Tan Sri Dato’ Dzulkifli Razak, VC, USM, CKR, Dato’ Saifuddin Abdullah, Deputy Minister for Higher Education, Malaysia, S. M. Mohammed Idris, Chairman, Citizens International, and Prof. Ahmad Shukri, Deputy VC, USM.
Don’t miss out the prize I have offered of RM 10,000 (about USD 3300) for reliable primary evidence on Euclid (with the caveats attached).
The long comment (about Needham) was very strange, and I did not want to be rude. But, on second thoughts, that is what I should have done, and that is what I should do in future.
Of course Needham studied the scientific revolution, and not the industrial revolution. The questioner was afraid to use the right term, since I have already shown that the Copernican revolution and the Newtonian revolution are bogus. (more…)
As modified and posted on H-ASIA, June 25, 2011.
Witzel will be remembered for the amusing botch he has made. This sort of thing is an extremely common occurrence among Western scholars whose scholarship is hence unreliable, for they are so often so eager to demonstrate their own superiority by trying to score a point. (Remember that editor of a Cambridge journal who solicited my book for review, and passed it on to an “expert” so illiterate in philosophy that he did not even understand that the philosophy was in chp. 8!)
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The debate seems to have generated wide interest, so I thought I would record it here. Here is my original post on H-Asia. The comment from Michael Witzel, of Harvard University, is given in the comments section under that.
Probability in Ancient India
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The history of Asia is somehow understood in the West in such a way as to *exclude* the history of science, and, by extension, the possibility that the Asian philosophies can ever contribute significantly to present-day science.
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Like calculus, probability too started off in India. People have long been asking me to write about it, and I finally did so. My article on “Probability in Ancient India” is finally out in the Handbook of the Philosophy of Science, vol. 7. Philosophy of Statistics by Elsevier. The first Read more…
Believing the propaganda regarding trouble in Iran, I nearly postponed my visit there. However, the situation was entirely peaceful, even at Khorramshahr, the border with Iraq. There was an invasion of dust, so all flights were cancelled, and we had to travel back to Tehran by road, a distance of Read more…
Though Stephen Hawking seems to have moved on from singularity theory in his latest book (http://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/review_the-christian-propaganda-in-stephen-hawkings-work_1495047), there is one point about singularities which still needs to be clarified, since even the Large Hadronic Collider website confounds a singularity with a moment of creation.
The question is what sort of singularity? Most physicists think of a singularity as a Robertson-Walker singularity, or a point of infinite mass-density.
There are three key points to notice here.
A Robertson-Walker singularity is readily avoidable, if the cosmos rotates, for example. The whole point of Hawking’s singularity theory was to try to show that a singularity (or a true beginning of time, or creation) is somehow inevitable.
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Press reports http://ckraju.net/press/press.html
(inaccurate, but some journalists made a good effort, and it is the feeling that counts).
Videos of the TGA award ceremony at the University of Pécs, Hungary http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO-AuJy5tF8&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93PVVX_TigU
Acceptance speech for the TGA Gold Medal Award, 2010
Dignitaries on the dais,
fellow Laureates,
friends,
I am indeed honoured to be here today to receive this award in this august assembly in this historic city and cultural capital of Europe.
Bernardino Telesio and Galileo Galilei are both symbols of resistance to authority. Therefore, it is apt that a key reason why the award is being given to me is for having pointed out Einstein’s mistake, and for having corrected it—for Einstein is one of the greatest figures of scientific authority today.
When I visited Iran I was a bit apprehensive. All that I had read in the newspapers spelt trouble. The visa required a visit to the pathologist to ensure that I was free from various diseases. At the immigration check, the officer asked me the purpose of my visit. I told Read more…