100% pure aryans? Fundamentals of hindu civilization

[Guest guest]

Srinivasan Kalyanaraman <kalyan97@g...> wrote:

Continuous correction is reportedly the process of science. Not so

with non-science. Civilization is perceived to be an inexorable march

towards truth, however nebulously hypothesised. There are guys who

throw the book at every issue, including gay behaviour or languages

without genes, but then these guys end up being terrorists with no

respect for any form of life. Death is the ultimate liberation, so the

fundamentalist burns himself up -- all for the cause, the truth as

revealed.

 

How good is hindu civilization that does not go by the book but by a

comprehensive, the most secular of principles called dharma which is

supposed to be a search for that which sustains phenomena, like black

holes which are neither black nor holes.

 

Keep testing, testing. Search for the genes which explain every change

in language and for that unexplained residual in statistical

correlations and probability exercises, which is another name for

divine (he, she or it) or for the drunkard's walk. Find the 100% pure

mleccha, go fundamental along the himalayas which stretch from Tehran

in the west to Hanoi in the east, and along the rim of the hindu

mahasagar -- all munda, mleccha territory on land, river, swamps,

salty marshes, seas and the ocean, the Indian ocean, the only ocean

named after the hindu civilization which is also called buddha

civilization or jaina civilization or khalsa civilization or just

activity of some human beings in search of livelihood and comaraderie

in harmony with nature and the cosmic. This may also be called going

ballistic.

 

Kalyanaraman

 

Testing, testing...

Umberto Eco finds scientific method a suitable counterbalance to

fundamentalism

 

Umberto Eco

Saturday September 4, 2004

 

The Guardian

 

Many readers probably don't know exactly what black holes are and,

frankly, the best I can do is to imagine them like the pike in Yellow

Submarine that devours everything around it until it finally swallows

itself. But in order to understand the news item from which I am

taking my cue, all you need to know about black holes is that they are

one of the most controversial and absorbing problems in contemporary

astrophysics.

Recently I read in the papers that the celebrated scientist Stephen

Hawking has made a statement that is sensational, to say the least. He

maintains that he made an error in his theory of black holes

(published back in the 70s) and proposed the necessary corrections

before an audience of fellow scientists.

 

For those involved in the sciences there is nothing exceptional about

this, apart from Hawking's exceptional standing, but I feel that the

episode should be brought to the attention of young people in every

nonfundamentalist or nonconfessional school so that they may reflect

upon the principles of modern science.

 

Science is frequently criticised by the mass media, which hold it

responsible for the devilish pride that is leading humanity towards

possible destruction. But in doing so they are evidently confusing

science with technology.

 

It is not science that is responsible for atomic weapons, the hole in

the ozone layer, global warming and so on: if anything, science is

that branch of knowledge that is still capable of warning us of the

risks we run when, even in applying its principles, we put our trust

in irresponsible technologies.

 

The problem is that in many critiques of the ideology of progress (or

the so-called spirit of the Enlightenment) the spirit of science is

often identified with that of certain idealistic philosophies of the

19th century, according to which history is always moving on towards

better things, or toward the triumphant realisation of itself, of the

spirit or of some other driving force that is forever marching on

towards optimal ends.

 

At bottom, however, many people (of my generation at least) were

always left in doubt on reading idealist philosophy, from which it

emerges that every thinker who came after had understood better (or

"verified") what little had been discovered by those who came before

(which is a bit like saying that Aristotle was more intelligent than

Plato). And it is this concept of history that the Italian poet

Leopardi challenged when he waxed ironic about "magnificent and

progressive destinies".

 

But these days, in order to substitute a whole series of ideologies in

crisis, some people are flirting more and more with a school of

thought according to which the course of history is not leading us

closer and closer to the truth.

 

According to these people, all that there is to understand has already

been understood by long-vanished ancient civilisations and it is only

by humbly returning to that traditional and immutable treasure that we

may reconcile ourselves with ourselves and with our destiny.

 

In the most overtly occultist versions of this school of thought, the

truth was cultivated by civilisations we have lost touch with:

Atlantis engulfed by the ocean, the Hyperboreans, 100% pure Aryans who

lived on an eternally temperate polar icecap, the sages of ancient

India and other amusing yarns that, being indemonstrable, allow

third-rate philosophers and writers of potboilers to keep on churning

out warmed-over versions of the same old hermetic hogwash for the

amusement of summer vacationers.

 

Modern science does not hold that what is new is always right. On the

contrary, it is based on the principle of "fallibilism" (enunciated by

the American philosopher Charles Peirce, elaborated upon by Popper and

many other theorists, and put into practice by scientists themselves)

according to which science progresses by continually correcting

itself, falsifying its hypotheses by trial and error, admitting its

own mistakes - and by considering that an experiment that doesn't work

out is not a failure but is worth as much as a successful one because

it proves that a certain line of research was mistaken and it is

necessary either to change direction or even to start over from

scratch.

 

And this is what was proposed centuries ago in Italy by an institute

of learning known as the Accademia del Cimento, whose motto was "

provando e riprovando ". This would normally translate into English as

"to try and try again", but here there is a subtle distinction.

Whereas in Italian " riprovare " normally means to try again, here it

means to "reprove" or "reject" that which cannot be maintained in the

light of reason and experience.

 

This way of thinking is opposed, as I said before, to all forms of

fundamentalism, to all literal interpretations of holy writ - which

are also open to continuous reinterpretation - and to all dogmatic

certainty in one's own ideas. This is that good "philosophy," in the

everyday and Socratic sense of the term, which ought to be taught in

schools.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1296101,00.html

IndianCivilization/pending?view=1&msg=1151

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