your mail

[Girish Beeharry]

Hi,

>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. 

I was just trying to be funny so that you calm down to your ground state! :-)

>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. 

Not at all! No need to apologize, please. 
The reason for which I mentioned Bohr is that he was one of the first to see
the fundamental problems of quantum physics. Yet, even he failed to see the
radically new ideas of Feynman.

>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.

I could not agree more! So let us take a concrete example and see how you 
paNDitas think: Suppose you read that Goraknaatha says that if one gazes at 
one's nose tip, the flow of thought is arrested. How do you understand this 
statement?

a) You read what all the 'great' people heve said on it and try to make a 
synthesis of their thoughts.
b) You go through the literature and try to find other similar statements by
other people.
c) You try to figure out what Goraknaatha means by this statement (and write a
paper on that:-).
d) You actually try to do what he says and see whether it is all nonsense.

You, very probably, will have many other options. I would try option 'd' first!

>theoretical physicists. And quantum mechanics doesn't come into it at all. 

Yes it does. An electron has a finite probability of going through a piece of
matter, although classically it is not 'supposed' to do that. All trnsistors 
are based on this fact.

>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.  

I agree, and a very careful study of the akshara 'ra' will involve formal and
empirical thought as well as this third 'piTaka'. You don't have to believe me
about the importance of 'ra', of course! :-)

Again, I wish to apologize for the low Indological content of this message!

Bye,

Girish Beeharry