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In the context of the huge controversy the last few days over the "USA Today" article whether math is racist, some people might be happy to know about the following. My keynote/ distinguished lecture on "Euclid must fall" at the Universities of Tübingen and Pretoria is now published as two articles:
- “Euclid” Must Fall: The “Pythagorean” “Theorem” and the Rant of Racist and Civilizational Superiority — Part 1,0Arụmarụka: Journal of Conversational Thinking 1, no. 1 (2021): 127–55.
- “Euclid” Must Fall: The “Pythagorean” “Theorem” and the Rant of Racist and Civilizational Superiority — Part 2. Arụmarụka: Journal of Conversational Thinking 1, no. 2 (2021): 57–105.
I understand that this sort of early childhood indoctrination deeply affects colonised minds, and that colonised Indians hence fanatically support this brazenly false terminology of “Pythagorean theorem”, long used to bolster racism. (also see Sage Journal). “Fanatically” because there is no evidence for “Pythagoras” or “Euclid” (e.g. my Rs 2 lakh prize for evidence about “Euclid" standing unclaimed for a decade).
Worse, regardless of who wrote the “Euclid” book, there are no axiomatic proofs in it (any manuscript): axiomatic proofs were an invention of the Crusading church to suit the politics of its crusading theology of reason, against Muslims. Such blatant lies (about "superior" axiomatic proofs) in a book which lacks them are not sustained for centuries without an agenda.
The key consequence: our present-day teaching of mathematics (a compulsory school subject) is not even secular. (Some of the resulting science is still pro-church and against Muslims, Hindus etc.) But our secularists and “rationalists” seem fully content with this state of affairs, and their consequent ignorance of math acts as an opiate.
What is hilarious is the colonised belief that their ignorance of math is somehow “natural”, not a result of abysmally bad colonial/church education, and that their consequent forced reliance on only (Western-approved) mathematicians is equally “natural”, and this blind belief in is actually the hallmark of “scientific temper”!
The colonised believe that formal mathematicians, whose livelihoods depend on it, are the best judges of whether or not the math we teach is secular, and can decide it without public debate (for our math curriculum is decided secretively by committees behind closed doors), and the membership of the committees is decided by Western certificates of approval (e.g. PhD from Cambridge).
This is exactly like saying that Brahmins are the best judges of the Lokayata criticism of the Vedas as a means of livelihood of Brahmins, and they have the further right to decide secretively! (Of course, traditionally India had a better system of open public debate.)
The foolishness and fanaticism of the colonially educated apparently knows no limits.
Here is another article which exposes the theft of the Indian calculus by Newton and Leibniz, and how it has led to a cul-de-sac for frontline technology development in the US.
As the "Euclid must fall" articles explain, the West has built up a systematically false history of science: a crusading model (e.g. Euclid), an Inquisitional model (e.g. Copernicus, Clavius, Tycho, Kepler etc.) and a "Christian Discovery" model (e.g. attribution of calculus to Newton and Leibniz, experimental method to Bacon etc.).
But the colonized who mostly (a) know zilch about math and science just because of colonial education (which they nevertheless keep saying came for the sake of science!) are (b) deeply attached to those stories of false gods of science, solely due to childhood indoctrination (no evidence or knowledge needed).
So, those who don't know calculus but are unhappy with my takedown of Newton and Leibniz, can also respond to my takedown of the missionary argument (echoed a few years ago by Prabir Purkayastha in "Ganashakti").
The bad argument is that Pythagoras is "superior" compared to the sulba sutra, since he purportedly provided a proof of the theorem named after him. This involves only IX standard math. Of course, I see the electoral logic, but for the life of me, I cannot understand why some Indian Marxists follow in the footsteps of missionaries and want to prove that everything Indian is inferior.
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Reacting to the above email alert by Prof Raju, Dr S Faizi said:It is important to bring out the legacy of science in ancient India, China, Arab world and Africa eclipsed by western science. Joseph Nidam's work on China was excellent, Fritjolf Kapra's Tao Physics was meant to be something similar about Indian science but failed. Huge lot of new findings about ancient African knowledge system are happening, entire libraries of ancient books are discovered for West Africa....
Legitimate research on ancient indian science is severely damaged by the Hindutwa claim of things like first genetic engineering, plastic surgery and so on.
I am looking for a copy of this old book Hindu Chemistry by a Bengali author/chemist, detailing how the caste system has impaired the scientific enterprise; any help to find a copy would be appreciated.
To this CK Raju replied:
First, you have completely missed my central concerns, expressed in the calculus article, about the bad math teaching resulting from the utterly false history in Indian school texts, such as the false history (class XI text) that Newton discovered calculus, or the false history (class IX text) that Greeks did some superior type of math.
I also understand that the colonised mind is very comfortable with false history so long as it is of church/White/Western origin, whether that is false history on the Crusading model (Euclid) or the Inquisitional model (e.g. Copernicus, Clavius), or on the Christian Discovery model (Newton, Leibniz etc.), or the subsequent racist or colonial models. (Euclid must fall, part 1) That is because colonial education came as church education, which indoctrinated the colonized at a young age, into that false history as in our current school texts. You perhaps prefer that false history and want it to continue.
Thus, you have nothing to say even about the failure of NCERT to produce evidence for Euclid in our school texts, or for its constant reiteration of the false and racist terminology of the "Pythagorean theorem" or about Purkayastha's wrong defence of that terminology all documented in the above articles. You haven’t even noticed, the point made in my articles about the false assertions about “axiomatic proofs in Euclid” used by triumphalist historians like Needham, long after that crusading history was publicly exposed as false. Your actions speak a lot louder than your words.
It also does not seem matter to you that that false history is today used to sustain racism, and Western dominance, and was used to justify genocide (of over 100 million native Americans) + slavery (of Blacks) + colonialism (including our own). Don’t expect me to sympathise with those values. Indeed, my “Euclid must fall” articles are all about how to combat racism, by destroying that false history, since it was a talk addressed to Africans.
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*Indian computer scientist, mathematician, educator, physicist and polymath. Source: E-mail alert by Jan Vikalp
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