America at its best 3877

I'm afraid you are confusing me with someone else. The jedi knights sound like a lot more fun than most religions, but not to my taste!

We agree there....

We also agree there, if they are representative of that culture. But if they have studied and taught the traditions of an ancient and civilised people for forty years, as the Indians were, then they do not fall into the traps of cultural superiority on the part of either, but understand and are tolerant of their strengths and weaknesses.

What is that supposed to mean? I do not deny the story of Cinderella is deeply embedded in the western tradition, and indeed it tells us an interesting view of morality at the time, but it does not mean I believe it as history.

The Indians have produced remarkable mathematicians - scientists generally, in fact. All present day algebra is essentially Indian. The decimal system etc. is purely an Indian mathematical invention. But it is also blindness not to be able to separate imaginative story-telling from its social basis.

But I don't have any problem with that, as a theoretical position. What I will want to see is some evidence of its use in an applied situation.

Ah. Then you are a strange sort of scientist, for even the best of scientists admit that their ideas are right only for a specific set of variables, not something absolute. That puts you in the ranks of creationists in terms of approach, and that means you are setting yourself up for failure. Try a little humility.

Go for it! It's commendable to attack positions that are set in concrete by their disciples. Einstein himself had to do that, as did Steven Hawking. I don't have the technical expertise to debate your propositions with you on a theoretical level and have no intention of doing so.

You can't be a very good scientist, or you would not make such a statement - based on no evidence of who I am or what I know. You simply select one item that irks you - a challenge to the world you have constructed, and you react like a petulant schoolboy. A scientist has a more mature approach.

You are enbreastled to your opinion; it's a comment on your mindset. Remember in future to try to base it on evidence as far as that's possible, and not speculation.

Much of nineteenth century European scholarship towards India was exactly as you say - the evidence is all there in the literature of the period. But that is not to say that there is not a body of positive, rational European scholarship of India. That simply puts you in denial.

Agreed! But do not replace it with fairy tales, or you defeat your purpose completely.

As I teach my students every semester....

This too, except I would amend it to read "...and HELP TO explain the past...."

I loved them as a child. As an adult, I see them in a somewhat different light. I'll give them credit where it's due, but it doesn't mean I believe in Peter Pan or Dumbo the Flying Elephant.

This is the statement of a closed mind, not that of a scientist. It is like rejecting the contribution of an entire civilisation to world culture because you don't like parts of it.

What's the nonsense? Are you saying that this is not part of the story?

No, I am just paraphrasing the story as it is narrated by Vyasa. Of course many stories have symbolic meaning, but that is up to the skill of the interpreter to appreciate.

Of course. Just as some of the biblical stories may inform the lives of Christians. Allegories are like that. But in the end that is what they are - allegories.

I suggest that you open your mind to all possibilities, not close off half of them. That is as unproductive as the intellectual colonialism you despise. If you take too literal an interpretation of ancient stories you betray their function as instruments of education and enlightenment, because you set yourself up for ridicule from people who do not understand what they are on about or appreciate their social and artistic brilliance.

Rifty -- Academic and Computing Help