parsuram wrote:Following is the introduction to an essay I have written recently. It provides the framework on which I have successfully built about 20-25 years of serious experimental research, and on which I have also built up an alternate understanding of physical and biological phenomenon. I will be interested in begining a serious dialog with physicysts who are atleast as dedicated to their Hindu faith & philosophy as they are to physics (and I hope, are more adept & better at both than I am).
The Human species, by instinct, ceaselessly embarks upon journeys of learning through its senses and its mind. Yet, in all these journeys, it remains always at the center of an infinite sphere of knowledge; no matter in which direction it travels, it acquires information & learning; and its next step is rationally predicated upon all the steps it has already taken. Thus it is that so much depends on the initial direction of these journeys of the human mind – since much of how groups of humans who travel together on such journeys organize their lives and their societies on their collective understanding of the universe beyond themselves.
Now, it came to pass in human antiquity, that there were groups of peoples who embarked on intellectual journeys in different places, asking more or less the same questions. And remarkably, some of them came to diametrically opposing answers or conclusions than others. In essence, they disagreed on the reality of subjective experience. One view, now dominant among all most all peoples, comes to us from the rationalist Greeks. This view asserts that reality is based on a shared experience; that truth is what the vast majority of people share as a common experience. Thus, a man who sees a yellow sky and white tree leaves is not experiencing any truth, because as is generally experienced, the sky is blue and the leaves are green. The individual with the alternate experience is missing the truth. This is Truth by consensus; democratic truth. This, along with Judeo-Christian theology with its monotheistic divinity as an entity external to and creator of the universe have become the dominant paradigm governing the vast majority of advanced organized human societies of our time. The Bible is the bedrock which has provided direction to the Western Paradigm. In essence, the intellectual foundation of western civilization rests in Genesis, the first book of the Bible, which states categorically that god created man in his own image, and bestowed upon man “dominion over the beasts on the land, birds of the air, and all creatures of the deep”. There is more, relating to the complicated divinity of Jesus Christ, and it all comes together neatly to give us, not just Western Theology but also the impetus that has taken Man to the moon, biotechnology to fight the natural processes of physiological decay, and all the flowers and fragrance which are the art, literature, science, mathematics, industry, jurisprudence and more that is the best of Western Civilization. In its entirety, Western civilization represents Man’s “outward journey”, and, as constituted, its underlying Western civilizational paradigms continue to expand into all alternative human enterprises, having begun to do so with increasing rapidity about 1500 years ago.
We Hindus have been, and stubbornly continue to be, the exception. We are the original fountain from which flow Indic traditions, viz, Jain, Buddhist and Sikh theologies & philosophies. Despite almost a thousand years of subjugation, we represent the alternative; indeed, we are all the alternatives, inclusive also of various paradigms based on shared objective realities alone. The alternative to one God, is 0, 2, 3, 4, etcetera infinity of Gods; the alternative to an external single God creator, is a Deity that itself constitutes the universe and animates it; the alternative to a defined singular event of Universe creation from which issues a single, one dimensional time line, is cyclical acts of Universe creation and destruction intimately associated with a Deity/Deities. That is us, the polytheistic Hindus and our other Indic faiths. We are those who accept the reality of subjective experience, and inculcate it, study & revel in it through yog and other disciplines. We assert that subjective truth is as much a part of the greater universal truth as is objective truth. It is given to us, therefore, to maintain and uphold this alternate paradigm that governs our enquiry into the universe. In essence, Hinduism and its variant Indic intellectual pursuits represent Mankind’s “Inward Journeys”, which, we assert, equally or better describe the ultimate reality and truth concerning the universe external to ourselves. Thus it is that just as Western canons shaped and continues to shape western society, so do Hindu paradigms govern Hindu and associated Indic faith & societies.
Parsuram,
Fascinating writeup. Would love to read the entire essay, if available, and consider your conclusions.
Can't really disagree with anything you've stated here in the dichotomy between Western Judeo-Christian philosophical discipline and Indic thought which encompasses the entire antithesis of the former. Just one nitpick, perhaps. You say:
There is more, relating to the complicated divinity of Jesus Christ, and it all comes together neatly to give us, not just Western Theology but also the impetus that has taken Man to the moon, biotechnology to fight the natural processes of physiological decay, and all the flowers and fragrance which are the art, literature, science, mathematics, industry, jurisprudence and more that is the best of Western Civilization.
I wonder if this isn't perhaps giving too much credit to Judeo-Christianity. As I see it, it wasn't that neat at all. You are absolutely correct in attributing the initial impetus of inquiry to the rationalist Greeks, leading to a manner of thinking about the universe that found its greatest realization in Hellenistic Rome. However, with the onset of Christianity came the Dark Ages, setting back the course of intellectual development in the West by several centuries.
To the extent that the Renaissance represented a recovery from this period of stagnation, it was still a cloistered and apologetic recovery. It created wonderful art, most of which paid ample thematic homage to the god of the Bible even as it rediscovered Hellenistic Greco-Roman form and technique. In the sciences, Renaissance-era scholars largely shielded themselves from any course of intellectual inquiry that might invoke the ire of the mighty Church (Galileo, an exception, discovered this to his peril when his eyes were put out for suggesting that the planets go around the sun.)
It was only after the Thirty Years' War (claiming 20% of the entire population of Europe!) finally hammered home the terrible consequences of overpowered and Jihadistic Church rule, that relatively "secular" power structures began to evolve and reshape the European sociopolitical landscape in a manner that was relatively independent of the Catholic and various Protestant Churches.
Only then, did the Age of Enlightenment finally dawn in the West. In delving back into the Greek Rationalist/Roman Hellenist roots of Western thought (before Christianity descended on them like a mosaic viruses) the West was able to rediscover what it had left behind. It is to the Enlightenment and its pre-Christian antecedents, then, that I would credit:
the impetus that has taken Man to the moon, biotechnology to fight the natural processes of physiological decay, and all the flowers and fragrance which are the art, literature, science, mathematics, industry, jurisprudence and more that is the best of Western Civilization.
One thing I will say for the Church though... in the Middle Ages, by fostering a Europe consumed with bloody religious warfare, it spurred the development of military technique (in terms of shipbuilding, gun design, steelworking and other things) that created weapons more advanced than anything possessed by the rest of mankind. Also, in the Early Modern Age, Christianity provided Europeans with the kind of single-minded fanaticism and extreme moral hypocrisy required to invade the lands of others, exterminate the weaker inhabitants and steal their wealth on a colossal scale. Without successful Colonialism, many experimental endeavours of the Age of Enlightenment may have remained underfunded, and many of its technological marvels may never have been realized. This may never have happened in a "Dharmic" setting.
Some of my own thoughts about this kind of thing are on my blog, if you're interested
http://indospheric.blogspot.com
Which I haven't updated in far too long.
But not to worry, I know what I dont know.
Actually it may simplify the visualization, if we think of starting from one corner, and note the two tangents [in "x" and "y" direction"] and see how they change as the "x"-tangent moves along the "y"-side one edge, and same for the "y" tangent moving along the "x" side one edge [so they stand on ends of the diagonal facing the starting point]. If there is a difference - the surface must be "twisted" or "curved" inside the "square".
