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Comment by Arun2009 | Hacker News Reader

Arun2009

One of the things I want to do before I die is to acquire an authentic knowledge of classical Indian philosophy (particularly the monistic idealistic strands of thought in it) and the modern scientific account of reality, and evaluate for myself how their claims fare against that of the other.

I don't understand why more Indians and particularly Hindus are not doing this. This looks to me like a thrilling intellectual and even spiritual adventure, and one of the few things that are truly worth doing in life.

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Me too! However why stop at Indian philosophy?

My aim is evaluate the metaphysical claims of Indian philosophy from the perspective of the most holistic account of reality that we can acquire in the 21st century. This will obviously include studying other streams of knowledge that has anything to say about reality.

As to why Indian philosophy - this primarily stems from my Indian background. I have always wondered if the claims of Indian philosophy can be validated scientifically. For e.g., how might a Nagarjuna or Shankara have argued for their claims if they were born in the 21st century?

I suppose I don't have any deeper reasons other than sheer inquisitiveness or jijnAsA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jijnasa) :-)

> other streams of knowledge

The Road to Reality by Penrose, perhaps.

That book has been gathering dust on my shelf for the last 10 years :-)

I only recently completed an undergraduate sequence in quantum mechanics. I still have general relativity and quantum field theory left, which will take some more time to do properly. I also don't know how moral it'd be to wade into those waters without being on a first name basis with Jackson and Goldstein.

Suffice it to say that there's a lot of work to do. But time is something that I have!

Can I recommend Donald Hoffman’s lectures and discussions? They might correlate, as there seems to be common threads in his take to that of the general cosmology/consciousness model as the Theosophists and Rudolph Steiner (Waldorf Schools), which were summarily heavily influenced by ancient Indian mysticism among other branches.

Hoffman might give you a pretty good launching point for some of the scientific aspects as they relate as he apparently tries to keep up with what’s new in theoretical math and physics and how they relate to what we’re once purely metaphysical positions. (Ex. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amplituhedron)

Some of it is purely awesome stuff. It’s easy to get swept away by it, so if you don’t want to rock your worldview it’s best to keep the work somewhat cordoned to its own intellectual space.

If nothing else it’s a fun thought experiment and some perspective.

Good luck in your pursuit.

beautifully said

even better than an authentic knowledge is an authentic experience

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