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Thread: Mathematics

  1. #1

    Mathematics

    Pranam-s,

    I would like to share what is on my mind:

    "Like the crest of a peacock, like the gem on the head of a snake, so is mathematics at the head of all knowledge."

    -Old Hindu Saying (from Vedānga Jyotisha)

    Here's an interesting article from Asia Society: Math, Science, and Technology in India: From the Ancient to the Recent.

  2. #2
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    Re: Mathematics

    Very nice! kuddos to you and thank you!

  3. #3
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    Re: Mathematics

    Dear Paijavana et al.

    These are some of the interesting quotes of our Guru on the subject of mathematics, perhaps in a rather philosophical parlance. And, frankly to admit that I still haven’t comprehended, at least experientially, what exactly he would have tried to make references to.



    God has been sometimes compared to a mathematician by modern philosophers of science. The mathematical cause of the universe has therefore to respect all that belongs to the game of mathematics. If God is placed on one side of the question, what he created and what is produced should be jointly placed on the other side. The rules of the game of transposing factors from one side to the other, or in removing plus or minus signs to replace them with others, or even including or excluding sets or elements under different grades of brackets, involve not only the rules of the basic computing operations of addition, subtraction multiplication and division; but also of the distribution and association of mathematical elements. Abstract generalized elements must belong to the same homogeneous grade even as such. Apples cannot be multiplied by pears.

    When thought of realistically, the God responsible for painting the wings of a butterfly or designing the tail feathers of a peacock could not be a mere mechanistic mathematician. He would rather correspond to an artist. Even as an artist, we have still to distinguish the different attitudes of God when he created a rhinoceros or a hippopotamus and then a lotus flower or a butterfly. The tiger "burning bright" with his "fearful symmetry' in a dark jungle must have been in the mind of a God who understood not only lyric but fully tragic effects as well.

    ===

    Values, both positive and negative, have to be fitted into a fourfold structure, the limbs of which could be summarily indicated in advance as representing the conceptual, the perceptual, the actual and the virtual. This fourfold structure has been known to poets in the West since the time of Milton, and in India since the time of Kalidasa. The lingua mystica of every part of the world seems to have had this mathematical secret hiding within its semantic or semiotic structuralism - sometimes referred to as "semantic polyvalence".

    ===

    Speculation scaled very high in India at the time of the Upanishads, which centred around one main notion - the Absolute (Brahman). The structural implications of the Absolute found in the mystical language of the Upanishads has served as a reference and nourished subsequent thought down to our own times. In the light of the structuralism that has come into modern thought through the back door of science, as it were, and through the precise disciplines of mathematics going hand in hand with the progress of experimental scientific findings, it now becomes possible to see these ancient writings as consistent with a fully scientific modern outlook.

    ====

    All philosophy consists of generalisation and abstraction in order to give meaning to the Absolute. This meaning must have human value significance. "Beauty" or "Bliss" is the final term of speculation bringing us to the very door which opens onto the Absolute. Thus, there is the world of beauty in aesthetics just as there is the world of discourse to which logic belongs, or the world of calculables of mathematics. Mathematics has its elements which can be algebraic or geometric in status.

    ===

    Beauty, especially when it is colourful and full of significant lights and lines, lends itself to be considered the most tangible content of the otherwise empty or merely mathematical notion called the Absolute





    .

    Love

    "burning bright" and "Fearful Symmetry" are usages from William Blake's poem "The Tyger"
    ॐ इदम् न मम
    be just l we happy

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    Re: Mathematics

    If you have a torrent client, you can download "Ancient Indian Leaps into Mathematics" from thepiratebay.

    http://pirateproxy.nl/tpbtorrents/81...67.TPB.torrent

  5. #5

    Re: Mathematics

    Quote Originally Posted by Sahasranama View Post
    If you have a torrent client, you can download "Ancient Indian Leaps into Mathematics" from thepiratebay.

    http://pirateproxy.nl/tpbtorrents/81...67.TPB.torrent
    Pranam-s,

    I am not tech savvy at all, and I have no idea what a torrent client is, forgive me. However, I found the book on iBooks and have downloaded the sample and shall start reading it soon. It's quite expensive as a standalone, full-copy, though; but...if it is a book that I can't stop reading, heck...I'll buy it in order to have access to the full copy. It'll feel good knowing that I am supporting the authors.

    ps - I might have to make the purchase sooner than I thought; it deals with the Shrauta tradition of Vedic-altar mathematics in relation to the geometrical set up of fire-altars, analyzing various math-related concepts from the great Shulba Sutra-s. In Sudasic-laymen terms: extremely, extremely important topics!!!

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    Re: Mathematics

    Here is an example of a torrent client:
    http://www.utorrent.com/

    You can download the book for free, but if you want to support the authors that is fine too.

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    Re: Mathematics

    You can download another book on Indian mathematics by Kim Plofker:

    http://pirateproxy.nl/tpbtorrents/57...69.TPB.torrent

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    Re: Mathematics


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