From: pankaj@bass.bu.edu (Pankaj Tyagi)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian
Subject: Re: Some Comments [RSS : Silent Revolution etc.]
Date: 8 Sep 92 02:59:18 GMT
Reply-To: pankaj@bass.bu.edu (Pankaj Tyagi)
Followup-To: soc.culture.indian
Organization: Boston University

In article <1992Sep1.164323.14107@tamsun.tamu.edu> gagrawal@cs.tamu.edu (Gopal Agrawal) writes:
%In article <1992Sep1.054730.20102@colorado.edu% paulchem@tigger.cs.Colorado.EDU (Icarus) writes:
%%
%%   When a generation of people are brought up on false ideas of past
%%   glory, tragedy is the only result.
%% ...lots of stuff deleted...
%
%%   The introduction of vedic math may have some virtue in it, if it is
%%   shown to be practical in its application to modern problems.
%%   If the advantage to be gained by introducing this system outweighs 
%%   the cost of overturning the current methods, than this is a good thing.
%%   If on the other hand it is a pointless exercise in nostalgia, it
%%   deserves to be laid to rest.
%%
%
%I agree with all above. It seems RSS believes that the only way 
%to instil national pride is to glorify our past and play down 
%all that was sullied. Some movement towards TRUTH ! Introduction
%of vedic mathematics is commendable in that it will give insight
%in solving problems in a different way than we have so far been 
%doing. I had taken a 1 month course in Vedic mathematics and 
%I found it pretty interesting when doing simple things like 
%multiplication, squareroots etc. However, when it comes to higher
%mathematics like calculus or algebra, I did not find it much 
%different or any easier than our current mathematics. Infact 
%I was skeptical of some of the methods they claimed was developed 
%in Vedic times. A lot of them seemed to have been blatantly 
%plagiarized from modern mathematics. Further, fields like statistics
%and vector calculus don't seem to exist in vedic mathematics. 
%It is obvious that modern mathematics cannot be dispelled off.

	Well, it must be mentioned here that the obvious antcipation
of western mathematics in several branches of mathematics by indians
and vedic mathematics is surely astounding. Positional notification of
numbers readily comes to mind. Also Indian arthmatician had
anticipated several other mathematicians in history. Aryabhatta and
bhaskara were the first true formalists. However they were in no ways
close to the advances greek mathematicians had made. First of all what
comes to mind is the Pythagorean assertion that proof must be preceded
by axioms. He was the first artmatician to lay down that very
important foundation in mathematics. Such a framework was totally
missing in Indian arithmatics. With no fixed logical framework to
follow, indian mathematicians were often forced to give up to their
own inconsistencies. And hence the only area they could excel was in
computation. Even though Indians developed the methods for calculating
squareroot of 2 they, I am asserting at the peril of being too rash,
did not realize the true meaning of square root of two. Here is an
interesting story behind how pythagora hit open this problem. He was
trying to find a square that would be eual to twice the area of a
given square. He tought that he could represent the length of the new
square in terms of some ratio of natural numbers to the first
square.He couldn't ... and that was the first time he challanged his
own conviction that natural numbers and there ration govern the
unvierse.

	There in lies the modern mathematical analysis. And these
answeres were not satisfactorily answered till the advent of Cauchy
and Gauss some 2000 year later.

	Statics was not even invented till the time of Pascal and
Fermat.. so it is quite imposible that vedic mathematician would have
anticipated entire mankind by over 1900 years.

	The point Im trying to make is that the advances made by
indian mathematician were quite different than western mathematicians.
And though they cannot be compared in any way, from usefulness point
of view, itwas perhaps the western mathematics with its emphasis on
analysis and proof that was more rigourous and perhaps more sturdy to
erosion of time. 

	I suspect that only useful lesson a high school student can
learn from comparative study of vedic mathematics and Greek and modern
mathematics is rather philosiphical one, dealing with the method of
mathematics and science itself, than anything else.

%If the MP govt. is only introducing a chapter of it just to 
%make the children aware that there are different methods of 
%doing elementary mathematics, then I see no harm in it. But to 
%say that vedic mathematics is superior to our current mathematics
%without any proof is sheer self delusion. 
%

	Well, like I said there is no way you can compare the two
style of mathematics, and say that one is better than the other. Even
though there is no comparision to modern mathematics and vedic
mathematics, the contemporary of vedic mathematics, the greek
mathematics, had several inherent qualities that were perhaps richer
than vedic mathematics. However one cannot be stated to be superior to
another but you can definitely use the difference in approach to
highlight some deeper meaning to mathematics, other than vapid rote of
formulae and technique of solving standard problems.

%
%regards,
%--   
%   ______ ______ ______ ______ __  |\/\/\/|
%    ____/  __  /  __  /  __  /  /  |  \  /|   LIFE'S COMPLEX - IT HAS 
%   / __   /   /  /   /  /   /  /   | (o)(o)   REAL & IMAGINARY PARTS  
%  /   /  /   /   ___/  __  /  /    C      _) 
%_____/ _____/ __/   __/ __/ ______/ | \___|  
%E-mail - gagrawal@cs.tamu.edu       |   /   All Std. Disclaimers apply.





	Ciao,

Pankaj Tyagi....
--
#include std.disclaimer| pankaj@bass.bu.edu,pankaj@pub2.bu.edu
#if IDONTLIKEYUORQUOTE |"..I mean if I said that I'm the king just because some
#include local.joke    | watery tart lobbed me a scimitar, they'd put me away"
----------------------- Quote from Monty Pythons "Quest of the Holy Grail------
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian