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Comment by unmole | Hacker News Reader

Interesting collection. Disappointed to see the typical Hindu apologist, revivalist nonsense in the description though.

Edit: What I mean by typical: http://youtu.be/RSHFzZmQPj0

Physics - Concepts of atom and theory of relativity were explicitly stated by an Indian Philosopher around 600 BC.

Looks pretty accurate to me. All the best science comes from philosophers backed by feelings and visions instead of math.

he he. In fact every group claim that the "ancients" already knew "everything" but we just forgot about it and rediscovering it..

That's a stretch, but we can certainly argue that we mostly validate and refine ideas that have been around for a while. After all we have hundreds thousands years of human knowledge, most of it forever gone. It's not like we only started thinking after the Illuminism, or even ancient Greek.

Well, The Ancients did know a lot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_(Stargate)

lol . touche!

Well the "ancients" did know everything. As do I. No, really, I know every conceivable thing! It's just knowing which things I know are right that's the hangup.. Everyone has hindsight, but few are blessed with foresight :\

Based on that sentence, there is an interpretation that would make that true. The idea that the matter may be discrete rather than continuous is quite old; the word "atom" after all from ancient Greece. Wikipedia also mentions Indian philosophers had the idea. Of course, they never were able to prove that the idea was correct, and a modern educated viewer can not help but bring in the modern view of the atom when they see the word "atom" (protons, quarks, gluons, etc), but the modern view would not match either the Greek or Indian conception. The word choice of "stated" is correct enough; they did not prove, they did not demonstrate, they could not resolve the argument, but the very fundamental root idea was recognized.

Similarly, the modern ear hears "relativity" and can't help but think of Einsteinian relativity, but the adjective "Einsteinian" is not redundant as it is not the only idea of relativity. Relativity as a concept also goes back a long way, but it looked more like Galilean relativity (if indeed it was even that formalized, which it probably wasn't), which contains certain contradictions in it which can be determined with pure reasoning, and indeed may have been (see [1]).

The summary leads to misleading ideas about what the Indian philosophers really knew/discovered/thought, if for no other reason than there is no way to accurately summarize the ancient ideas in modern words that briefly; it is not clear to me whether the author of the linked web page is himself confused or being deliberately mendacious.

[1]: http://mathpages.com/rr/s3-07/3-07.htm , and indeed, the entire first half of that book or so. Among this book's many points is that physicists were seriously beginning to consider whether they were going to have to give up on the general idea of relativity until Einstein was able to rescue it.

Problem is that anyone could come up with the concept of the atom, and even relativity is not beyond the bounds of possibility. We are all genetically identical to the earliest Homo Sapiens who left Africa. And the ones who stayed in Africa. Any one of those people who had the fortune to have a life of diverse experience and the spare time needed to think about things, would have discovered any number of supposedly modern things. They might have even written about it 10,000 years ago on parchment or leaves which have long since disappeared.

But we have no evidence of any of this, and therefore we claim that it did not happen. That is not a very rational position to take. It should be clear by now that wonderfuly discoveries often happen in parallel in different geographical locations. Sometimes they are almost forgotten for generations until a historian discovers old documents. There is no good reason to believe that this kind of thing has been going on since Homo Sapiens first came to be.

The only real advantage that we have today is the law of large numbers and the network effect.

> Problem is that anyone could come up with the concept of the atom, and even relativity is not beyond the bounds of possibility. We are all genetically identical to the earliest Homo Sapiens who left Africa. And the ones who stayed in Africa.

The last sentence is manifestly not true (we're not even genetically identical to each other, much less all of us to the earliest example of H. Sapiens, or even the earliest examples of H. Sapiens sapiens.)

And even if it was, the first doesn't follow from it: intellectual capacity may have an upper bound set by genetics, but realizing it is more than genetics, its environment starting in the vary early environment.

And nutrition is, manifestly, a big part of that.

> The only real advantage that we have today is the law of large numbers and the network effect.

And lots of other things; to name just one key one, the adoption of the scientific method which does a lot to help identify the useful ideas from the attractive-but-useless ones. Even if we were no better at thinking up ideas, we are a lot better at validating ideas, and its not just through numbers, its through approach. Because of an idea that was thought up, and widely adopted.

Agreed - why dig up ancient books that did not stand the test time? Just go forward with what is present and focus on future.

When these issues come up, there's always a vague "comes from india" contingent willing to riot and avenge their country over the fact they are the best at everything. (Don't bring up any discussions about infosys, else you'll be inundated with how great and expansive they are.)

Maybe it's because such a huge population actually has an origin place and story going back quite far? I don't have an origin. I come from some vague stock of medium-tall people with transparent skin in northern europe where the sun don't shine. I've nothing of ancestry to fight for, so I'm not sure I can even understand how they approach the world largely focused on the past.

I'm from India and it pisses me off a bit as well, but you've got to admit there are people all over the world who're stuck in the past, where they're from etc. and on the other hand, ones who'd rather worry about where they're headed :)

Agreed. These medium-tall people with transparent skin in northern europe where the sun don't shine are definitely not stuck in the past.

That partly comes from the ignorant uncivilized outsiders calling India ignorant and uncivilized, at the least before the internet era.

yes, there is always the "we invented zero" gang that jump up during these types of discussion.. To be fair, this is not a India specific thing but the chip-in-the-shoulder contingent that exists in every tribe ...

History is important.

Why indeed, And also why to spend time and money on exploring the archeological places and rebuilding old ancient machines? In short it interests some people and it gives clear picture of how knowledge evolved. It does not need to be advanced than the current technologies.

"its out of curiosity and to attain peace" -- for a person. Nobody really knows what everybody else is into. Not everything interests everyone.

There are certain people (or very few tv shows) who re-build ancient machines which might not be needed in the current age. Because we acquire knowledge enough to live in a point-of-time.

Money is just "to get things done". Not sure if everyone gets it.

Amen. you echoed my thoughts, but able to put it in good english. :)

"universe is also ancient, why are we still exploring it, by calling such a process as science" ?

The answer is simple. "Human Thirst for knowledge never ends" and nobody really knows for sure where they are headed.

"The present" which we feel really proud of, will be called ancient and worthless in the future. Because, the knowledge of humans increases with time (or understanding of nature increases with generations, some become dumb over time as well)

"The future" few people have envisioned it (saints in ancient form - who didn't expect anything from anybody but wanted to spread the knowledge, "visionaries" in the current business world - who want to rule the world with money, etc)

"stand the test time" just because they are not accessible doesn't mean they didnt' stand the test time. We keep discovering the same things whichever has been told in the past and the same things will happen in future as well. Its just that we love to call it with different names.

Someone has to connect the dots. Nobody has time in the current world. Everyone just moves on.

CTRL+F - hindu - 0 results in home page. Where is the "nonsense" that you're talking about?

In general, when talking about pre-Islamic India to an Indian audience the word Hindu is not always used explicitly since Hindu culture was the dominant culture in that period and there is no need to distinguish it from any competing culture except in special circumstances. The claims of greatness of culture spread though out the site refer to a period such as this.

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