Yuva Bharati – March 2018

36 / March 2018 / Yuva Bharati

‘delayed causation’. Unlike physics where

causation is only immediate and empirically

traceable back to the cause, in Karma an

action can have both immediate and delayed

consequences. So Karma theory would see

physics as a subset, because it deals with

immediate empirical effects only.

Stop mopping Vedic Categories to

Modern Scientific categories

Vedic scientists should stop the habit of

mapping Vedic categories on to similar

sounding modern scientific ones, because in

doing so they are destroying human kind’s

collective knowledge and blocking potential

advancements. What Vedic scientists must do,

instead, is to map modern science into Vedic

categories, and investigate with open minds

the feasibility of various such mappings both

in empirical testing and theoretical debates.

Certain mistranslations

Do not translate ‘aakash’ as space or ether.

‘Rather, space /ether type of entities could

be seen as a small subsect of aakash. ‘Fire’

is a subset ‘agni’ and its many forms. The

fashionable term ‘energy healing’ (itself

largely based on appropriating Vedic ideas)

is a subset of the vast terrain. We know as

‘Pranic healing’. This list is endless.

There is another problem with rash translations

of Vedic terms into modern science. As

science is ‘smriti’, the Vedic mappings to

science will make the Vedic framework seem

obsolete. For instance Bharateeya mapped

‘aakash’ as ‘ether’ in the late 1800s in order

to make Vedic knowledge look as scientific.

‘A few decades later, physicists rejected the

concept of ether. What did that do to the

category of aakash? It became embrassing

as something that ‘science’ had proven to be

false’. So it is better to let ‘aakash’ remain

‘aakash’ and resist the craving to impress

modern scientists.

Whatever is nontranslatable is also

nondigestible. As long as we retain our

frame work and its categories, and utilize

them actively in futuristic research, we will be

able to protect the integrity of our tradition.

This should be the basis for our identity, it is

priceless.

The key research project for us is to identify

principles and practices of Vedic knowledge

that can be should to be distinct from the

conventional science of a given epoch. It

has been shown that the mathematical

idea of infinitesimal and infinite series was

incompatible with Christianity’s worldview

and was imported from Bharat to Europe,

leading to the ‘discoveries’ by Descartes,

Newton and others. Many Ayurveda

principles are simply alien to Christianity

as well as modern medical science because

Ayurveda uses notions of physiology that

western medicine lacks. Hence, certain

Bharateeya diets that are becoming trendy

in the west for medical benefits have been

validated empirically by modern medicine,

but the science behind these is still new in the

west and is disconnected with core western

assumptions about the nature of the human

being. Vedic principles of the environment

are rapidly, being assimilated for the sake

of modern ecology, but the framework on

which they are based is being separated out,

the ‘useful elements’ isolated and grafted

on to western frame works. As a result,

the environment is now being protected

more for the sake of ‘natural resources