UDHBHAVAHA brings you SHOULD OUR SCHOOL CHILDREN LEARN “EUCLIDEAN” GEOMETRY OR RAJJU GANITA? By Prof. C.K RAJU A 2-day workshop to discuss: (1) The falsehoods and obscurities in “Euclidean” geometry, as currently taught (2) Why Indian śulba (string) geometry is a better way to teach geometry. DATE: 5th and 6th Read more…
To access the presentation for my zoom talk on ‘”Euclid” must fall’, described in the previous post, click the image below. A video of the recording premieres on 23 May 2021 at 12 noon IST.
The keynote is on the origin of the excessively foolish, but persistent, belief in racist superiority, AND its cure. Here are the details of the International Colloquium and an extended abstract. The times in the program are German times. How does this concern Indians? Because the colonial myth of civilizational Read more…
This is a video recording my concluding seminar (25 March 2021) as a Tagore Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study. Twitter summary: 1. Ganita (गणित) differs from (formal) math, 2. it makes math easy, and 3. makes science better. 4. This is an obituary of formal math. Slogan Read more…
(In response to a post asking about the possible cure for racism, by Ron Eglash on the Isgem mailing list (International study group on ethnomathematics) Well Ron, Let us ask what we and Isgem, in particular, can do about it. The false sense of racist superiority was created and is Read more…
Recently, I presented my talk on “Pre-colonial appropriations of Indian ganita: epistemic issues”. This was at a round table at IIAS Shimla which replaced the now-postponed conference on Indology. My talk was primarily about the inferior math we teach in school today based on the European misunderstanding of the Indian ganita which Europe imported.
But as a sidelight, I took up a novel aspect of the Aryan race conjecture. Indologists have so far talked about the Aryan conjecture solely in the Indian context. However, I pointed out the need to link this discussion also to the Aryan race model as it applies to the African context. In particular, to the issue of the Aryan model vs Ancient model as in Martin Bernal’s Black Athena, vol. 1: The fabrication of ancient Greece 1785-1985. (The date of 1785 alludes to William Jones whose philological researches started these wild speculations on race.)
The fabrication of ancient Greece has a direct bearing on the history of Indian math. But first let us understand how racists did it.
Racist history
Bernal’s key point was that after 1785 racist historians systematically rewrote history to appropriate all achievements of Black Egyptians to White Greeks. This aligned with George James’ Stolen Legacy: Greek philosophy is stolen Egyptian philosophy. But instead of philosophy, Bernal applied it, for example, to architecture where the evidence of Greeks copying Egyptians is not easily contested: the so-called Greek architecture of columns is manifestly copied from Egypt and Iran (Persepolis).
Bernal made only scattered remarks on math and science, perhaps out of deference to his father J. D. Bernal, who wrote his famous (but now hopelessly dated) volumes on the history of science. However, after going through my PHISPC volume Cultural Foundations of Mathematics, Bernal (Jr) strongly encouraged me to look at the related issues of concern to the history of math where undue credit has been given to Greeks (as explained in an earlier blog “Greediots and Pythagoras”, which also provides the relevant background to this post).
One point in my above book relates closely to Afrocentrist concerns about undue credit to Greeks in the history of math.
Thus, my point (later summarised e.g. in Is Science Western in Origin?) was that the church falsified history even before racist historians. This process of falsifying history went virulent during the Crusades against Muslims. (Bernal agreed with me here.) The Toledo mass translations of Arabic texts into Latin, beginning 1125, involved learning from the books of the religious enemy. The church, which had earlier consistently burnt heretical books, needed to justify learning from the books of the religious enemy. It provided this justification through the coarse falsehood that all scientific knowledge in Arabic books came from the sole “friends of Christians”, the early Greeks. As such, it claimed that knowledge in Arabic books as a Christian inheritance: and that Arabs contributed nothing to it. Later racist historians modified the church thesis by insisting that the authors of Greek books, even in Africa, were white-skinned, hence claimed it as part of White achievements. The racist historian Florian Cajori is an example of how religious chauvinism was absorbed into racist chauvinism. No evidence exists, and none was needed!
Egyptian and Persian texts were translated into Greek, by Alexander and the Ptolemy dynasty, but any material coming from these texts was all attributed by racist historians to Greeks. Western historians against Afrocentrism, such as Lefkowitz, falsely state that there is no evidence for such translation. As I pointed out in my UNISA lectures, Zoroastrians have been complaining about the burning and Greek translation of their texts for over 2000 years. Western historians rightly assume that their parochial readers would be unfamiliar with those texts. Obviously, also, for the Greediotic brain it is equally easy to imagine (when required) that skin color relates to the language of the text: thus, any Indian author writing in English, such as this one, must be white-skinned! There are no early original Greek sources available, but even if they were a claim of any Greek originality (e.g. on Sphere and Cylinder, attributed to Archimedes), would need proof, since this is also found in the Ahmes papyrus from a thousand years earlier, as pointed out by Diop. Lefkowitz has only some utterly foolish comments to offer claiming that Archimedes compared the area of a cylinder to the volume of a sphere. That is the typical standard of racist historians.
Relevance to Indology
Anyway, the fact is (1) that the Abbasid khilafat in Baghdad made huge investments in knowledge (e.g. Bayt al Hikma), so that, following the knowledge gradient, numerous Arabic texts were translated FROM Arabic into Byzantine Greek (then Constantinople was a tributary of Baghdad). The fact also is that (2) much Indian knowledge travelled to Baghdad, as is well known and as repeated and explained during my talk (e.g. al Khwarizmi’s Hisab al Hind). As stated in the abstract, a striking example of both (1) and (2) is the case of the Panchatantra which was translated from Sanskrit to Farsi to Arabic and then to Byzantine Greek to other European languages as Aesop’s fables. Knowledge of Indian math could similarly have got into late Arabic and Byzantine Greek texts.
So, the question that arises, and was raised in Cultural Foundations of Mathematics, was this: could Indian knowledge have been mis-attributed to Greeks in the process of appropriating Arabic texts to Greeks? Specifically, on the strength of this appropriation, people like Pingree and his students have been clamouring that trigonometry was transmitted from Greeks (“Ptolemy”) to Indians. My question challenged this claim (and Pingree ducked the challenge in 2004 when, on a trip to the US, I directly challenged him to publicly debate the claim).
My counter-points to that claim are the following. (more…)
My point in part 1 and part 2 of this post was that there were no axiomatic proofs among Greeks, and that the cult of Pythagoreans as also the book Elements were both concerned with religious beliefs about the soul linked to geometry. The church reinterpreted the book Elements, to Read more…
As pointed out in the previous blog entry, there are, in fact, no axiomatic proofs in Greek math. But there is a widespread and sticky belief to that effect.
Why is this false belief about axiomatic proofs among Greeks so widespread and sticky? In fact, Western/church education spread the false myth.
Cambridge foolishness
Thus, on (1) that false myth of axiomatic proofs among Greeks, linked to (2) the false myth about the person Euclid and his intentions, (3) the order of theorems in the Elements was regarded as very important, and the key contribution made by “Euclid”.
This third myth was so important that the Cambridge Board of Studies foolishly laid down in its exam rules in the 1880’s that students must follow that order. This Cambridge foolishness is extraordinary because the Cambridge syndics commissioned a new text, which liberally uses empirical proofs, including, of course, the empirical proof of SAS (Side angle Side or proposition 4). Order is unimportant once an empirical proof is used: for instance the Indian proof of the “Pythagorean theorem” in the युक्तिभाषा proves the theorem in one simple step, without needing 46 earlier propositions.
The Cambridge foolishness in insisting on the order of the propositions, while using a text which gives empirical proofs tells us how the education system propagates Greediotic myths for centuries, and teaches students to ignore facts.
Church hegemony over the Western mind
Even Bertrand Russell, as a product of Cambridge, continued to believe in the “Euclid” myth of axiomatic proofs, though he realized the myth did not fit the actual book. He foolishly declared it to be Euclid’s error and not the error of the false myth of Euclid and his intentions!
That is the effect of the church control over the Western education system, and consequent hegemony over the Western mind, including the minds of those opposed to the church. This church “education” from Cambridge widely spreads myths and superstitions, which were then globalised by colonial education. It created “Greediots, Greediots everywhere and not a stop to think”.
A politically convenient reinterpretation
As Proclus explains (and the reason why he wrote his Commentary on the Elements), the Elements is a “pagan” religious text, i.e. a text on Egyptian mystery geometry which is meant to arouse the soul, exactly as Plato argued in Meno. The book Elements was never intended to be about axiomatic proofs. How did “Euclid” fit church needs to a T?
The church simply re-interpreted the book to suit its politics of reason. The church was well aware that most people are gullible, because of childhood indoctrination. And such was the fear of the church (not only the Inquisition, but even in England), that the church as well aware that no one would dare to challenge its interpretation. The facts is the no one did so for centuries.
During this time the church used the Elements to teach reasoning to its priests: a special kind of metaphysical reasoning, which suited the church, since its divorced from facts, and involving faith based or axiomatic proofs.
The church monopoly on education, through the “reputed” institutions it set up and controlled, such as Oxford and Cambridge, resulted in spreading this superstition widely among Westerners.
So widely, that when the myth of axiomatic proofs in “Euclid” ultimately collapsed (among the knowledgeable), people like Russell and Hilbert created formal mathematics to save it.
The Pythagorean calculation
Curiously, Greediots and Western historians, intent on glorifying themselves, never ever speak of the “Pythagorean CALCULATION”, though a formal proof of the “Pythagorean proposition” has no practical value, and all practical value derives from the ability to use it to CALCULATE the diagonal of a rectangle whose sides are known.
Western historians are silent about the process of calculation among Greeks. Why? (more…)
Recently, I presented my talk on “Pre-colonial appropriations of Indian ganita: epistemic issues”. This was at a round table at IIAS Shimla which replaced the now-postponed conference on Indology.
The key point of my talk was that much present-day school math is an inferior sort of math which Europeans appropriated from Indian ganita without fully understanding it, and then returned during colonial times by packaging it with a false history and declaring it superior. A philosophical comparison between ganita and math was done in earlier posts and publications.
This post focuses on the false history aspect, going back to the purported Greek origins of the “Pythagorean theorem”.
False Western claim
Egyptians built massive pyramids very accurately. One would assume that to achieve that marvellous feat of engineering they knew the so-called “Pythagorean theorem”.
But in his book Mathematics in the time of the pharaohs, Richard Gillings speaks of “pyramidiots”: people who claim various sorts of wonderful knowledge is built into the pyramids of Egypt. Gillings’ argues in an appendix (citing the Greek historian Heath) that “nothing in Egyptian mathematics suggests that Egyptians were acquainted with…[even] any special case of the Pythagorean theorem.” Heath adds, “there seems to be no evidence that they [Egyptians] knew [even] that the triangle (3, 4, 5) was right-angled”. The Egyptologist Clagett chips in, “there have been exaggerated claims that Egyptians had knowledge of the Pythagorean theorem which is, of course, a formal Euclidean theorem of the Elements.”
First, Gillings, Heath etc. are not honest enough to add that there is no evidence for Pythagoras. Nor is there any evidence for the claim that he proved any sort of theorem. So, one should rightfully say, “There have been persistent false claims about a Pythagoras having proved a theorem, though there is no evidence that there was any Pythagoras nor any evidence that he proved any theorem.”
Obviously, Western history of Greeks is of very inferior quality, since the tacit norm is that stories about Greeks need no evidence and must be accepted on mere faith in Western authority: it is only stories about others which require evidence!
That is why I use the term Greediots to describe people who fantasize about all sorts of scientific achievements by Greeks without any evidence, starting from the “Pythagorean theorem”: if they can believe in that they can believe anything on their blind faith.
Religious connection of geometry
A key point: not only is there nil evidence for the story of the “Pythagorean theorem”, it is CONTRARY to all available evidence.
The Pythagoreans were a religious cult: their interest was in the connection of geometry to the RELIGIOUS belief in the soul as described by Plato, in Meno, Phaedo, Republic, etc. Anyone can check in two seconds this connection of geometry to the soul by searching for the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th occurrence of “soul” in Meno, a primary source for Plato readily available online from the MIT repository. But for Greediots the story of a theorem is what is important: so they don’t and won’t check facts. (Is Plato evidence for Greek thought? If not, why has no one ever explained the grounds for rejecting Plato? And what are the other “reliable” sources, if any, for Greek history? )
Proclus, in his Commentary, explicitly asserts that this religious belief linking geometry to the soul was the sole concern of the Pythagoreans with geometry. But Greediots not only have no evidence for their beliefs, they ignore all the counter-evidence.
As Proclus further explains in his Commentary (on the book Elements today falsely attributed to an unknown “Euclid”) the book does geometry with exactly the same religious concerns. The subtle issue here is to understand Egyptian mystery geometry (and related Greek mathematics) as a sort of meditative discourse which drives the attention inwards and away from the external world.
All this is explained at great length in my book Euclid and Jesus: how and why the church changed mathematics and Christianity across two religious wars, Multiversity, 2012. See the webpage, or look inside. But Greediots will be Greediots they not only have no concern with facts they will not tolerate a counter-narrative or allow any space for it.
No axiomatic proofs in Elements
The interesting thing is how this “virgin-birth history” propagated by Greediots creates false “facts”. Clagett’s claim that “the Pythagorean theorem…is, of course, a formal Euclidean theorem of the Elements” is one such false “fact” which is widely believed.
The real fact is there is no axiomatic or formal proof of the “Pythagorean theorem” in the book Elements of “Euclid”. One has only to read the book; its very first proposition has an empirical proof not an axiomatic one. But just as most people do not read Plato, most people do not read the Elements. They just naively assume that even if the myth about its author as Euclid is false, the myth about the book must be correct. (Ha, Ha, they don’t know how thick are the layers of church lies!)
After centuries, some including Bertrand Russell finally understood the absence of axiomatic proofs in the Elements. What is shocking is for how many centuries Western scholars collectively failed to realize that even the first proposition of the Elements is contrary to the myth of axiomatic proofs in it.
So, what are the lessons for decolonisation from part 1 and part 2?
Lesson 1. Do not blindly trust Western/White authority. Fight to reject any system which forces such trust.
If the editor of the most prominent math journal (Notices of the AMS) can act so shamelessly in such a public case, just imagine what mischief an editor can do in secret. Yet our whole academic system forces academics to trust editors. University academics are required to submit papers to editors and get their certificates of approval through a secretive process of refereeing. This system of valuing only publication in secretively refereed “trusted” and “authoritative” journals, whose ranking strongly correlates with their degree of Westernization, turns university academics across the world into slaves of the West. For their career advancement they are forced to keep Western authority happy. This is particularly the case in formal mathematics, where authority is the sole guide to truth.
With such secretive editorial control over what constitutes valid knowledge, no serious critique of colonial knowledge is possible. For example, the racist editor of the Conversation censored my article on decolonising math, after it was published and went viral. (For more details see “Mathematics and censorship“, Journal of Black Studies, and Rhodes Must Fall.) Her stupid excuse was that (as a non-White) I am not allowed to cite original ideas from my own published work, but must only repeat White/Western falsehoods. It is strange that so many news portals across the world, which first reproduced my article, believed that excuse, and pulled down my article.
That editor’s idea of a proper article was one which began with the fake history that “mathematics…is the work of dead white men”, and hence blacks and women are bad at math. The recommendation “imitate the West/Whites”. This way of using fake history to demand imitation of the West was the strategy of colonisation, and that is being now passed off as a strategy of decolonisation.
Reject this system of thought control. Refuse to be guided by such editors. As stated in Ending Academic Imperialism, in this digital age, there is a very easy alternative in the form of post-publication public review. (That would diminish colonial power of thought control, which is exactly what the decolonial activist wants.)
Lesson 2. Colonial authority is built on false myths of supremacy, just as racist authority was built on the false myth of racist supremacy. Tear it down by demanding evidence for those myths.
Much colonial power is based on lies propagated through colonial education. To teach the intellectual supremacy of the coloniser, math texts tell all sorts of glorious but false tales of White/Western/ colonial achievements in math, such as those of early Greeks such “Euclid”, “Archimedes” etc. for which there is no serious evidence. (See the drafts of these lectures. “Not out of Greece”, delivered at the University of South Africa, Pretoria.) The Greeks and Romans knew little math little math as shown by their defective calendar, copied, like their gods, from Egyptians.
Challenge that false claim of Western intellectual supremacy by repeatedly pointing out the falsehood of these myths. Demand solid evidence, as I did through my Euclid challenge prize mentioned also in my censored article. And keep pointing out the falsehood of those myths for at least a century to drive home the point.
Apart from the early Greeks, in “official history, scientific discoveries are mostly attributed to post-renaissance Europeans. Atiyah is hardly the sole case where brazen theft has been passed off as “independent rediscovery”. As regards post-renaissance “discoveries” in science there are numerous fraud cases of people glorified on the strength of such “independent rediscovery” just when dependent discovery was possible. This includes cases such as Copernicus, or Newton’s purported invention of calculus, as described in my books Is Science Western in Origin? (Multiversity etc., 2009, 2014) and more elaborately in Cultural Foundations of Mathematics (Pearson Longman, 2007)
First, the simple remedy is this: the onus of proof must be on the one who claims independent rediscovery or glorifies it. This principle must be applied especially to fake Western heroes. Second, there is no reason to continue to give credit to the one who claimed the idea at a later date. Give credit only to the one who did it earlier. Thomas Kuhn in his Copernican Revolution (1956) brazenly continued to glorify the “second discoverer}, Copernicus, AFTER he was exposed in 1952 by Kennedy as having copied from Ibn Shatir. Was Kuhn such a bad researcher that he didn’t know about Copernicus’ exposure? (When I ask this question in my decolonised course on history and philosophy of science, all students opine that Kuhn tried and succeeded in a cover-up.)
Keep in mind the trick of “Atiyah’s hypothesis”: that most people go by nomenclature, not facts. Hence, insist on large-scale changes in nomenclature in history books to reflect this principle, that the numerous second discoverer’s cannot cannot continue to be credited, and delete the names of people who have been fraudulently credited with ideas on the strength of “independent rediscovery”. Smashing fake Western icons, and the related claim of intellectual superiority, by speaking the truth, would expose the true face of colonialism, and greatly diminish its continuing power.
Lesson 3. Beware of the counter-reaction when editorial authority and false myths are challenged.
Colonial power was based on lies, like the power of the church. The church developed a systematic technique of preserving its lies, and the West continues to use it. The stock technique is to demonise all those who challenge its authority . That is, the simple trick is to preserve fake heroes by painting any challenger as a villain, through further lies.
(more…)