"Science" in India

[Bhadraiah Mallampalli]

Dear Prof Dominik Wujastyk

>At base, what Farmer is trying to do is to find for himself some way of
>understanding how Rajram, Kak, and others can write history that is so at
>variance with the standard model, and is based on poor evidence,
>misleading argumentation, and so forth.  How can someone do something so
>inexplicable?  Why would a scholar, someone dedicated to truth, write a
>book containing untruth?


My credentials first. I maintain a website based on 26 years of experience
in what I think is Indology. The site is still under construction. URL is at
the end of this post.

For whatever reason, Subhash Kak and Rajaram are household names in India
now, at least among reading populations. Government Indologists are most of
the time buried under beaurocracy or bogged down by budget problems. People
heard enough of AIT etc and wanted to hear something else. There was a
market and it was filled.

As for truth and untruth, who knows? Even great scholars get confused
between truth/untruth or existing/non-existing or known/unknown.

Just to give an illustration, what is unknown is not necessarily
non-existing. There things that exist but we do not know.

And what is non-existing is not necessarily untruth. You can still talk
about non-existing objects (like horns of a hare) and still speak truth.

Any thing untruth is not necessarily unknown. There are many untruths which
people instinctively know, not proven in a lab.

Such things become clear only in professional papers or abstracts. That
needs time and careful and studied philosohphical thinking, which is not
possible in a fast moving message board like this where everybody is under
time or moral pressure to write the next mail.

If this board is only to share information, why are we trying to convince
others? I was on this board three years ago, and I have not seen any one who
had "transformed" since then. The same people are taking same positions.
People still think that the incoming note is meant to convince them,
precisely because it was worded to convince people, meaning there was not
enough support material.

I do think there are ways to convince people: explaining things in a broader
perspective. Once we adopt a broad perspective, many minor plus and minus
points and petty differences will become clear to every one. If we do not
take a broad vision, then we end up taking sides, and this will never end.

Or why not enforce a title on each post saying "ABSTRACT" or "MY OPINION"
etc?

If it is a research work it can be an "abstract", and people can take their
sweet time to give it a scholarly thought.

If it is purely personal opinion then title it as "MY OPINION", and nobody
will react.

Just a stray idea.

Regards
Bhadraiah Mallampalli
http://homes.acmectiy.com/friends/harmonica/301

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