Why is hinduism not credited?

[ZarryT]

Is this a falsifiable claim? If yes, how?

The precept of natural sciences is that all phenomena in the universe can be explained in terms of physical principles.

Thus, if this is correct, consciousness can be shown to be a product of particular physical conditions. If consciousness cannot be shown in this way to be an "arising" phenomenon, then, since it is indeed a phenomenon, the alternative explanation is that it permeates all things.

[sanjaya]

I'm all for getting more noteriety and respect for our Hindu religion, which is often misunderstood our outright ignored by Westerners. But our contributions are chiefly spiritual and not scientific, which should come as no surprise since Hinduism is a religion. As Wundermonk already stated, whenever any religious person finds an alleged scientific claim in an ancient Scripture, that claim is always reinterpreted in light of known modern scientific principles. This does great disservice to the real scientists who spent countless hours performing the experiments necessary to discover these facts. And take it from me, it does take a lot of painstaking and sometimes tedious effort to even make small advancements in science. If anyone in the 14th century knew the speed of light, I wonder why there were no 14th century lasers or radio communication. Probably because no one new to interpret the pertinent text the way some people do now.

Now, I don't mean to insult anyone who holds to this view (i.e. don't take this as a personal dig, IcySFX), but this idea that the Vedas specify the speed of light is patently absurd. Every time I've seen any claim that a religious text gives a specific numerical value to a physical constant, a long calculation with numerous questionable assumptions, both literary and mathematical, are needed to produce the desired result. Which brings me back to Wundermonk's earlier point: the interpreter already knows the right answer. One can't derive a known scientific fact from a religious text using questionable interpretations and successfully convince anyone of anything. If you want to prove that a text contains divinely inspired facts about the physical world, here's a simple challenge. Interpret the text so as to determine a currently unknown physical quantity. If you could extract the mass of the neutrino or the spectrum of the cosmic infrared background from the Vedas, I think you would more convincingly demonstrate your point. These are two currently unknown quantities which could very well be discovered in our lifetimes. Derive them before the papers are published in Physical Review or Astrophysical Journal, and I think you'll present a compelling case even to the most ardent Christian that the Vedas are highly spiritual documents.

On a historical note, I feel compelled to mention that the Michelson-Morley experiment was not intended to derive the speed of light, but rather to determine the speed of the lumniferous ether, the supposed medium through which light propagates. Actually, the null result of this experiment, coupled with the theoretical framework later provided by Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, provided convincing proof that no such ether exists. But this experiment was far from a crude setup designed for rough calculations. The Michelson interferometer is capable of detecting path length differences in light beams on the order of 100s of nanometers, and the technique could be easily adapted to make high-precision measurements of the speed of light. In fact, even in the nineteenth century, such measurements were readily available. Measurements by Fizeau using a rotating wheel were able to determine the speed of light with less than a 1% deviation from the currently accepted value, and were confirmed by capacitor discharge experiments by Weber. The theory of electrodynamics relates the speed of light to physical constants related to electricity and magnetism, thus you can measure it without actually measuring the time of flight of a light wave.

Credit where credit is due, right? Nineteenth century scientists made high precision measurements of the speed of light, and those measurements came from rigorous application of the scientific method, not from opening a religious text. Many Western scientists have expressed deep respect for Hinduism because of the spritual truths our religion teaches, and perhaps our philosophy is even conducive of scientific thought. But our modern day knowledge doesn't come from casually opening Scriptures and finding obvious mentions of physical principles.

[ZarryT]

good words about things

What's left to say is that Hinduism can be seen as neither scientific nor spiritual. Its metaphysics create a superposition under which both science and spirituality are subsumed.

Science is akin to spirituality in its form: it is an endless rabbit hole for us to adventure down for as long as we want / can / will, with ever-morphing principles and transient truths.

[wundermonk]

The precept of natural sciences is that all phenomena in the universe can be explained in terms of physical principles.

Thus, if this is correct, consciousness can be shown to be a product of particular physical conditions. If consciousness cannot be shown in this way to be an "arising" phenomenon, then, since it is indeed a phenomenon, the alternative explanation is that it permeates all things.

Agreed with caveats. In fact, if consciousness is proven to be an emergent property of physical substances, that would amount to a defeater for Hinduism. I made a thread on that here.

But, it seems to me, the alternative to this is not that consciousness permeates all things, unless it is further clarified what this means.

On the one had you have Advaita that believes that everything is consciousness. OTOH, you have realist schools (Nyaya, Mimamsa) that hold that consciousness/cognition are adventitious properties of a self that arise only when the self is embodied. For them, consciousness is always intentional, i.e. of an object that is external to the subject. So, even in the absence of consciousness, the external world exists.

[kallol]

For various scientific knowledge that existed and/or was discovered by rishis prior to their 'discovery dates' made by man?

For example I am to understand that the speed of light is in the Vedas as of the 14th century

Light travels at 3 x 10^8 metres/sec



"It is to be noted that the Light due to the Sun travels 2202 Yojanas in half a Nimesha''

When calculated it roughly matches the human speed of light calculation
but that was in the 19th century by Michelson and Morley, celebrated American Physicists in the 19th Century.

Is there no process to have these sort of things cross-referenced and such? I wonder

For most of us the religion or Sanatana Dharma is a mystical theory, which has to be believed.

For the people who found the TRUTH, it is the highest level of SCIENCE, which transcends time.

Our science is only a few steps in that direction.

Once we take the Sanatana Dharma as highest level science, then all the past, present and future discoveries become part of it.

Mind being the greatest lab for the discoveries of the elements of science, it is no wonder that our greatest scientists (so call saints or spiritual scientists) could identify the twin star Arundhati-Vaishista as unique, etc.

We have over the time relied more on the five external senses and externals labs and thereby lost the infinite capability of mind.

Till we take the Sanatana Dharma as the ultimate science, we will continue beating around the bush

[Maya3]

I agree with you, but my point is hinduism is not creation-centric like the abrahamic religions. We do not refute science. So it would benefit those with no knowledge of Dharmic religions to know that there is a faith out there not only that works with science but HAS science, and lots of it.

I agree with this. Personally I could not believe if it contradicted Science. We have come to far with our knowledge of ourselves and our universe that religion has to correspond. It just become silly not to believe in science and insist that the world is 7000 years old like some Christians do.

Maya

[Maya3]

But our contributions are chiefly spiritual and not scientific, which should come as no surprise since Hinduism is a religion. As Wundermonk already stated, whenever any religious person finds an alleged scientific claim in an ancient Scripture, that claim is always reinterpreted in light of known modern scientific principles. This does great disservice to the real scientists who spent countless hours performing the experiments necessary to discover these facts. And take it from me, it does take a lot of painstaking and sometimes tedious effort to even make small advancements in science. If anyone in the 14th century knew the speed of light, I wonder why there were no 14th century lasers or radio communication. Probably because no one new to interpret the pertinent text the way some people do now.

I agree with this too actually.
I did not mean to say that the rishis and swamis from long ago had it figured out perfectly like a scientist who has spent a lifetime studying.
BUT what is wonderful is that it is similar enough, and corresponds enough so that we can see that those rishis were actually on the right track. And we can take comfort in that it is not completely contradictory. Again, we don't think that the world is 7000 years old, we dont think that God created Adam and Eve and they walked around with dinosaurs, or that God sat on a chair and created the world whole that one time and that's that.

Maya

[sanjaya]

What's left to say is that Hinduism can be seen as neither scientific nor spiritual. Its metaphysics create a superposition under which both science and spirituality are subsumed.

Science is akin to spirituality in its form: it is an endless rabbit hole for us to adventure down for as long as we want / can / will, with ever-morphing principles and transient truths.

Yes, I think this is a good way to put it. I can certainly get onboard with the idea that Hinduism teaches accurate ontological truths about the universe. I certainly don't believe that it gives any meaningful physical information (i.e. the speed of light), but there are equally important truths that cannot be arrived at via the scientific method, and I think this is where Hindu philosophy is most applicable.

I agree with this too actually.
I did not mean to say that the rishis and swamis from long ago had it figured out perfectly like a scientist who has spent a lifetime studying.
BUT what is wonderful is that it is similar enough, and corresponds enough so that we can see that those rishis were actually on the right track. And we can take comfort in that it is not completely contradictory. Again, we don't think that the world is 7000 years old, we dont think that God created Adam and Eve and they walked around with dinosaurs, or that God sat on a chair and created the world whole that one time and that's that.

Maya

Indeed Maya, I do find it intellectually comforting that Hinduism doesn't require us to adhere to absurd ideas concerning the age of the universe or other physically quantifiable things. But let us be honest with ourselves and not take the Vedas literally on matters in which it could be (mis)interpreted in a scientific light. For example, the Vedas correctly give the age of the universe as being on the order of 10s of billions of years. However, the Vedas also state that humans have existed for about the same period of time. Now, I have no idea how exactly to interpret this. Perhaps people lived on other planes of existence. Perhaps they lived on other planets. I really don't know; but what I do know is that human life in its current form has only existed on this earth for the last 100,000 or so years, and this is scientifically verifiable. Let us not be like the Christians and mine our Scriptures for scientific truths, cavalierly asserting scientific facts that were discovered by others with great pain using the scientific method instead of religion. No religious Scripture that I know of teaches accurate science. Thus we should see these Scriptures for what they are: religious texts meant to teach spiritual truths, penned by humans who had no concept of a scientific method.

[Maya3]

Sanjaya,

Indeed Maya, I do find it intellectually comforting that Hinduism doesn't require us to adhere to absurd ideas concerning the age of the universe or other physically quantifiable things. But let us be honest with ourselves and not take the Vedas literally on matters in which it could be (mis)interpreted in a scientific light. For example, the Vedas correctly give the age of the universe as being on the order of 10s of billions of years. However, the Vedas also state that humans have existed for about the same period of time. Now, I have no idea how exactly to interpret this. Perhaps people lived on other planes of existence. Perhaps they lived on other planets. I really don't know; but what I do know is that human life in its current form has only existed on this earth for the last 100,000 or so years, and this is scientifically verifiable. Let us not be like the Christians and mine our Scriptures for scientific truths, cavalierly asserting scientific facts that were discovered by others with great pain using the scientific method instead of religion. No religious Scripture that I know of teaches accurate science. Thus we should see these Scriptures for what they are: religious texts meant to teach spiritual truths, penned by humans who had no concept of a scientific method.

Yes and yes. We should not take scripture literary anyway, we have to take into context that they were written thousands of years ago. A time when people had a very limited understanding of not only how our own planet looks, but also how anything beyond their own village, and surrounding villages looked.

I agree too, that we don't have to mine our scriptures for scientific truths. But I do think that it wont hurt to point out that our religion have a wider concept of how the universe look and that it goes more in line with what the scientific community has figured out.
That doesn't mean that we should disregard science and tell them to look at our scriptures instead.
It means that we should look at science, take it seriously and know that we don't have to disregard it, and know most of all that our religion is not threatened by scientific discoveries.

We don't need to panic and try to say that science is wrong and say that only our scriptures know the truth, because God said so!

We know that we get more and more enlightened with each life time and science is proof of that.

Maya

[realdemigod]

IcySFX, good luck on your projects.