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[Dominik Wujastyk]

On Mon, 9 Sep 1996, Girish Beeharry wrote:

> This is quite unconvincing. It is only your opinion; based on your 'deep
> sensitivity and empathy' for your subject. :-) 

Oh, I wish!  If only I *had* written something of that calibre.  But
actually, I was talking about the sensitivity of those scholars I most
admire, and who have contributed most substantially to our understanding
of the past. 

> Well, if you are closed to new ideas, which are not based on
> 'authority', then its pointless arguing about anything. As a physicist
> (former) you might remember that each time a new idea has been put
> forward in Physics, it has been said to be 'crazy'! For instance Bohr
> asked Feynman whether he understood quantum mechanics when the latter
> was explaing his new approach for the first time... :-)

Oh dear.  You've taken umbridge.  I'm sorry, I must have come across more
strongly than I intended. I apologise.  But actually, I don't quite
understand how what you say here relates to my message.  Bohr could be a
boor, certainly. 

> The mere fact of your using email/computers etc is a way of attesting to
> the 'rigorous' thinking of physicists. It is all based on very serious
> thinking in Quantum Mechanics. 

I'm not saying scientists are bad at science and technology; I'm saying
they are often bad at humanistic scholarship. Such is the contemporary
prestige of science and technology that those trained in these subjects
tend to think their training is more general than it really is.  That's
why, in my opinion, we are these days subjected to a flood of feeble books
by scientists claiming to reveal "the mind of God"  and so forth.  The
current culture of science can be very arrogant.  Rigorous thinking is not
the prerogative of physicists.

And anyway, Shannon and Weaver, who probably contributed more than anyone
to the theoretical underpinning of the systems we use for electronic
informaion interchange today, were engineers by profession, not
theoretical physicists. And quantum mechanics doesn't come into it at all. 
The contemporary development of computer communications has much more to
do with hardware and software engineering, i.e., technology, than with
theoretical physics. 

> Yes, but has it got anything to do with reality? How do you know that
> they are right? Is it because they write well? Or they are
> 'distinguished' orientalists from a 'prestigious' university? What
> 'experiments' can you do to convince a reader that you actually know
> what you are writing about? 
>
> Indology is not like Mathematics, where internal consistency is of
> primary importance, but more like Physics. After all, both Indologists
> and physicists are trying to 'grasp' reality (in the etymological
> sense), no?

No. I would say indology is more like philosophy and history than either
mathematics or physics.  You are suggesting that all intellectual
endeavour has to be either formal or empirical.  But as Isaiah Berlin
argued years ago ("The Purpose of Philosophy" reprinted in _Concepts &
Categories:  Philosophical Essays_, OUP, 1980.) there is a third "pi.taka" 
into which questions may fall: precisely those questions for which the
means of finding the answer is neither through formal rules, nor through
empirical observation.  And that is a reasonably plausible definition of
philosophy. Indology comprises writing in many different categories, some
empirical, some formal, some philosophical, and so forth.  

Best wishes,
Dominik