8 January 2016 at 10:51 ·
(via Sridhar Bhaskarla)
/*Regarding science - I have no fight with modern science. But I refuse to grant it the position of the ONLY valid system. And I also refuse the demand that other systems, including ayurveda, need to be validated in its language.*/
Aparna Krishnan, very aptly said. In my childhood, I was an ardent believer. By mid-school, after knowing a bit of science, I became a non-believer. While doing physics in my PG and M.Phil, I realized how stupid I was to be a non-believer. Since then I have been agnostic.
Sometime back, in the office, I got engaged in a serious discussion that involved people from other religions who were rather insulting Hindu religion and its practices. I gave them only one example. You take our 'panchangam' and you can verify dates, days, eclipses, moon phases, sun-sets, sun-rises and say they are 'right' because you can use modern science to explain them. But you say rahu-kala, good muhurtha etc., computed using the same formula are superstitions because they are beyond the comprehension of modern science. So which is right and which is wrong?. They had no answer.
T.R. Shashwath Isn't the answer obvious? The observation is pretty much spot on, but the inference is bullshit...
I see people raising this argument almost always only when they want to continue a practice that has no provable benefit, and often one which is patently dangerous.
Sridhar Bhaskarla T.R. Shashwath /*people raising this argument almost always only when they want to continue a practice*/ This is the inference that is to be termed in the same lingo you used. I don't follow muhurthas and mudas, but I don't vehemently abuse it because I don't have the ability to judge. People confuse technical systems with irrational customs. BTW, the inference I intended to give out was not to believe superstitions, but to start thinking beyond the paradigm created by modern science. Modern science assumes certain fundamental natural laws (based on observation again) and then build on top of them. It is not averse to oops factor either and hence the versions like modern physics emanate. More than the constraints, this modern science seems to be giving people a kind of haughty and supercilious attitude which is more dangerous.
Aparna Krishnan Madam - Even science got stuck with microscope part and Heisenberg had to come up with the uncertainty principle.
T.R. Shashwath I had seen enough Ayurveda in my life and we never went to English doctor until our family ayurvedic doctor (Tarakaturi Achari of Machilipatnam) passed away at the age of more than 100. His hospital was always filled with patients and he would cure many diseases that would otherwise take a very long time to cure if not not cured by allopathy at all. He was treating dreadful deseases like cancer, brain tumour etc., with ease. Just one small pill a day is enough for a diabetic person to eat as he likes like a normal being. Tonsils would disappear forever in a week's time. Now how do we make such Ayurveda to be *scientifically* proven?. Subject those drugs to lab tests and come out with the results?. In deed, do we need to?
I still remember UK terming Yoga as as unscientific sometime back. Now it is a world-wide phenomenon. Unfortunately Ayurveda is dying with people like Tarakaturi Achari. Soon it will disappear and remain as one of the superstitions.
The test that stands ahead of any test is the 'time test'. Practices like Ayurveda, Yoga etc., were followed for many centuries with 'proven' results. It is good to be proven by modern science, but not must, just like mechanics of quantum particles cannot be proven by Newton’s laws of motion. Hence I appreciated Aparna Krishnan's post earlier.
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