Most significant philosophical ideas

DMB · Post by **DMB** » Fri May 05, 2017 6:46 am

[quote=""Tubby""]

Incidentally, I know of a Christian who claims animals don't suffer. He realizes the implications for the goodness of God if creatures who aren't guilty of original sin do suffer, so, clinging to scripture as the ultimate authority in all matters, he is forced to assert that animals only appear to suffer.[/quote]

How does he explain the nervous systems of non-human animals, so many of which are very similar to ours? What was God's purpose in creating them?

Tubby · Post by **Tubby** » Fri May 05, 2017 5:11 pm

[quote=""DMB""]How does he explain the nervous systems of non-human animals, so many of which are very similar to ours? What was God's purpose in creating them?[/quote]

He hasn't gone into that, as far as I know. I can have some fun working up what his response might be: "Scripture tells us that only humans are made in the image of God. That makes us fundamentally different from the rest, even if God made use of some of the same physiological structures. You read too much into those trivial similarities. The animals were placed on the planet by Him to aid us, and for no other purpose."

I may someday ask the fellow if he thinks the ASPCA is just a waste of money. (It's an animal cruelty prevention organization here in the USA.)

plebian · Post by **plebian** » Sun May 28, 2017 5:37 pm

(View video on YouTube)

jayem · Post by **jayem** » Fri Jun 02, 2017 4:06 am

Several philosophic doctrines that have had significance. They may have been mentioned or alluded to in some prior posts:

Determinism

Naturalism (both metaphysical and methodological)

Existentialism

Positivism

Pragmatism

Objectivism (i.e,, Ayn Rand)

Postmodernism

ruby sparks · Post by **ruby sparks** » Fri Jun 02, 2017 7:34 am

I like your sig.

BWE · Post by **BWE** » Tue Jan 16, 2018 5:00 pm

Systems. I am reading a book by Ervin Laszlo called "introduction to systems philosophy" which, though dated to some degree, is brilliant in a lot of ways.

plebian · Post by **plebian** » Tue Jan 16, 2018 7:56 pm

Heh. You're welcome.

Koyaanisqatsi · Post by **Koyaanisqatsi** » Wed Jan 17, 2018 2:03 pm

Did anyone list solipsism yet? Thats pretty much the whole shooting match right there.

Gná · Post by **Gná** » Thu Jan 18, 2018 10:55 am

I did.

Ajay0 · Post by **Ajay0** » Fri Jan 19, 2018 4:37 pm

The Sankhya and Buddhist ( Shunyata) philosophies which provided the philosophical conceptions for the numeral system and zero, which provided the foundation for modern mathematics and science.

We have to be grateful to the Indians for teaching us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made. - Albert Einstein

Hermit · Post by **Hermit** » Fri Jan 19, 2018 10:12 pm

[quote=""Ajay0""]
We have to be grateful to the Indians for teaching us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made. - Albert Einstein[/quote]

The only reference to the quote I could find is to a 2010 issue of a magazine published in Illinois, USA, titled Vedic Revelations.

Ajay0 · Post by **Ajay0** » Sat Jan 20, 2018 2:28 am

[quote=""Hermit""]

Ajay0;682880 wrote: We have to be grateful to the Indians for teaching us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made. - Albert Einstein

The only reference to the quote I could find is to a 2010 issue of a magazine published in Illinois, USA, titled Vedic Revelations.[/QUOTE]

The internet does not contain all the facts and information in the world. Anyone who has researched the net can understand this. I found the library more useful in this regard.

Also one does not need Einstein as well to figure out the importance of Indian mathematics, which had a dramatic effect on Europe , when it was finally accepted instead of being vilified as satanic, and which had been groping in the dark ages till then.

"It is India that gave us the ingenuous method of expressing all numbers by the means of ten symbols, each symbol receiving a value of position, as well as an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit, but its very simplicity, the great ease which it has lent to all computations, puts our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions, and we shall appreciate the grandeur of this achievement when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest minds produced by antiquity."

-- French mathematician Pierre Simon Laplace (17491827)

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 16 May 2007. Quote: "A full-fledged decimal, positional system certainly existed in India by the 9th century (CE), yet many of its central ideas had been transmitted well before that time to China and the Islamic world. Indian arithmetic, moreover, developed consistent and correct rules for operating with positive and negative numbers and for treating zero like any other number, even in problematic contexts such as division. Several hundred years passed before European mathematicians fully integrated such ideas into the developing discipline of algebra."

Hermit · Post by **Hermit** » Sat Jan 20, 2018 2:58 am

[quote=""Ajay0""]

Hermit;682887 wrote:
Ajay0;682880 wrote: We have to be grateful to the Indians for teaching us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made. - Albert Einstein

The only reference to the quote I could find is to a 2010 issue of a magazine published in Illinois, USA, titled Vedic Revelations.

The internet does not contain all the facts and information in the world. Anyone who has researched the net can understand this. I found the library more useful in this regard.

Also one does not need Einstein as well to figure out the importance of Indian mathematics, which had a dramatic effect on Europe , when it was finally accepted instead of being vilified as satanic, and which had been groping in the dark ages till then.

"It is India that gave us the ingenuous method of expressing all numbers by the means of ten symbols, each symbol receiving a value of position, as well as an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit, but its very simplicity, the great ease which it has lent to all computations, puts our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions, and we shall appreciate the grandeur of this achievement when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest minds produced by antiquity."

-- French mathematician Pierre Simon Laplace (17491827)

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 16 May 2007. Quote: "A full-fledged decimal, positional system certainly existed in India by the 9th century (CE), yet many of its central ideas had been transmitted well before that time to China and the Islamic world. Indian arithmetic, moreover, developed consistent and correct rules for operating with positive and negative numbers and for treating zero like any other number, even in problematic contexts such as division. Several hundred years passed before European mathematicians fully integrated such ideas into the developing discipline of algebra."[/QUOTE]
That's a very wordy way to say you can't find an authoritative source for the alleged Einstein quote either.

dancer_rnb · Post by **dancer_rnb** » Sat Jan 20, 2018 5:24 am

Too bad they didn't use a power of 2 instead of ten.

Ajay0 · Post by **Ajay0** » Sat Jan 20, 2018 12:06 pm

[quote=""Hermit""]

Ajay0;682893 wrote:
Hermit;682887 wrote:
Ajay0;682880 wrote: We have to be grateful to the Indians for teaching us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made. - Albert Einstein

The only reference to the quote I could find is to a 2010 issue of a magazine published in Illinois, USA, titled Vedic Revelations.
The internet does not contain all the facts and information in the world. Anyone who has researched the net can understand this. I found the library more useful in this regard.

Also one does not need Einstein as well to figure out the importance of Indian mathematics, which had a dramatic effect on Europe , when it was finally accepted instead of being vilified as satanic, and which had been groping in the dark ages till then.

"It is India that gave us the ingenuous method of expressing all numbers by the means of ten symbols, each symbol receiving a value of position, as well as an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit, but its very simplicity, the great ease which it has lent to all computations, puts our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions, and we shall appreciate the grandeur of this achievement when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest minds produced by antiquity."

-- French mathematician Pierre Simon Laplace (1749–1827)

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 16 May 2007. Quote: "A full-fledged decimal, positional system certainly existed in India by the 9th century (CE), yet many of its central ideas had been transmitted well before that time to China and the Islamic world. Indian arithmetic, moreover, developed consistent and correct rules for operating with positive and negative numbers and for treating zero like any other number, even in problematic contexts such as division. Several hundred years passed before European mathematicians fully integrated such ideas into the developing discipline of algebra."

That's a very wordy way to say you can't find an authoritative source for the alleged Einstein quote either.

[/QUOTE]

So would you say that if Indian mathematics had not reached Europe through the Arabs, Europe would still have climbed out of the Dark Ages on its own in a short time period, and build up science and technology to its present levels, including the conception of the numeral system and zero instead of the cumbersome roman numeral system!

Btw, I like Steve Waugh and Shane Warne, who I think are the most famous Australians ever.

Hermit · Post by **Hermit** » Sat Jan 20, 2018 1:25 pm

[quote=""Ajay0""]So would you say that if Indian mathematics had not reached Europe through the Arabs, Europe would still have climbed out of the Dark Ages on its own in a short time period, and build up science and technology to its present levels, including the conception of the numeral system and zero instead of the cumbersome roman numeral system![/quote]
No, I would not say that at all. Why do you speculate about what I did not say? Is what I did say (posts #36 & 38) not good enough for you?

[quote=""Ajay0""]I like Steve Waugh and Shane Warne, who I think are the most famous Australians ever.[/quote]Among cricket fans below the age of 50 that may be true.

Ajay0 · Post by **Ajay0** » Sat Jan 20, 2018 2:40 pm

[quote=""Hermit""]

Ajay0;682896 wrote:So would you say that if Indian mathematics had not reached Europe through the Arabs, Europe would still have climbed out of the Dark Ages on its own in a short time period, and build up science and technology to its present levels, including the conception of the numeral system and zero instead of the cumbersome roman numeral system!

No, I would not say that at all. Why do you speculate about what I did not say? Is what I did say (posts #36 & 38) not good enough for you?
[/QUOTE]

Your posts does not mean much to me. I am more bothered about the substance in the quote, rather than the quote itself.

With respect to the quote, I can say I picked it up from magazines and books I read decades back. Though as with almost any quote, there is no authoritative source put.

I reproduced it from memory, though the actual quote is different as shown in the net.

If you are thinking it's a fake one, I would say you are probably incorrect. There are many other sayings of mathematicians which substantiate the same theme as I put over here.

Einstein also made similar appreciative comments with respect to Mahatma Gandhi and corresponded with him, was known for his recorded conversations with fellow Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. His collaboration with the Indian scientist Satyendranath Bose lead to the foundation of Bose-Einstein statistics, and the theory of the Bose-Einstein condensate.

The class of particles that obey Bose–Einstein statistics, bosons, was named after Bose by Paul Dirac, which also includes the Higgs Boson discovered in 2012.

So Einstein was known for his association with Indians in this regard.

Now if you ask me to find authoritative sources for all this, I will be in a spot of bother.

[quote=""Hermit""]

Ajay0;682896 wrote:I like Steve Waugh and Shane Warne, who I think are the most famous Australians ever.

Among cricket fans below the age of 50 that may be true.[/QUOTE]

Who were the most famous Australians of your generation!

Hermit · Post by **Hermit** » Sat Jan 20, 2018 3:37 pm

[quote=""Ajay0""]as with almost any quote, there is no authoritative source put.[/quote]
Authoritative sources are books published under the author's name, contemporary audio and video recordings as well as authenticated tweets of same, and so on. Wikiquote is one of several sites that distinguish authentic from attributed, misattributed, inaccurate, and plain made up quotes. I frequently consult those sites. Most quotes turn out to be authoritatively authenticated. Others, including quite a few I had regarded as authentic, are not.

[quote=""Ajay0""]If you are thinking it's a fake one, I would say you are probably incorrect.[/quote]Don't tell me. Tell him. If you do, be sure to cite a source that actually does verify the quote - or a very similar one - and authorship.

[quote=""Ajay0""]Who were the most famous Australians of your generation! [/quote]Among cricketers it would be Donald Bradman for any generation. For mine it would be the Chappell brothers, Dennis Lillee, Jeff Thomson, Rodney Marsh and of course Alan Border. Other famous Australians of the recent past are Ivan Milat, Christopher Skase, Alan Bond, Patrick White, Jack Brabham, Heath Ledger, Kylie Minogue, Elle Macpherson, Mel Gibson, Phar Lap, Banjo Patterson, Henry Lawson... Unfortunately most of them are entertainers of one sort or another. Our Nobel prize winners, inventors and whatnots escape the public eye. And I don't even know what any of this has to do with the invented Einstein quote.

Ajay0 · Post by **Ajay0** » Sat Jan 20, 2018 3:56 pm

[quote=""Hermit""]

Ajay0;682899 wrote:as with almost any quote, there is no authoritative source put.

Authoritative sources are books published under the author's name, contemporary audio and video recordings as well as authenticated tweets of same, and so on. Wikiquote is one of several sites that distinguish authentic from attributed, misattributed, inaccurate, and plain made up quotes. I frequently consult those sites. Most quotes turn out to be authoritatively authenticated. Others, including quite a few I had regarded as authentic, are not. [/QUOTE]

If you think the internet and wikiquote contains all the quotes stated by a person, and all the factual information in the world, you are badly mistaken.

Many even keep disappearing. A few good quotes by a philosopher in the net a few years back is now completely missing. The net is not a foolproof academic source of information.

[quote=""Hermit""]

Ajay0;682899 wrote:If you are thinking it's a fake one, I would say you are probably incorrect.

Don't tell me. Tell him. If you do, be sure to cite a source that actually does verify the quote - or a very similar one - and authorship. [/QUOTE]

Even the person over there making the judgement hints a probability that he might be wrong. Also this is not an academically acclaimed professional website for addressing queries in this regard.

[quote=""Hermit""]

Ajay0;682899 wrote:Who were the most famous Australians of your generation!

Among cricketers it would be Donald Bradman for any generation. For mine it would be the Chappell brothers, Dennis Lillee, Jeff Thomson, Rodney Marsh and of course Alan Border. Other famous Australians of the recent past are Ivan Milat, Christopher Skase, Alan Bond, Patrick White, Jack Brabham, Heath Ledger, Kylie Minogue, Elle Macpherson, Mel Gibson, Phar Lap, Banjo Patterson, Henry Lawson... Unfortunately most of them are entertainers of one sort or another. Our Nobel prize winners, inventors and whatnots escape the public eye. And I don't even know what any of this has to do with the invented Einstein quote.[/QUOTE]

This is less boring for me.

Hermit · Post by **Hermit** » Sat Jan 20, 2018 4:21 pm

[quote=""Ajay0""]

Hermit;682900 wrote:
Ajay0;682899 wrote:as with almost any quote, there is no authoritative source put.
Authoritative sources are books published under the author's name, contemporary audio and video recordings as well as authenticated tweets of same, and so on. Wikiquote is one of several sites that distinguish authentic from attributed, misattributed, inaccurate, and plain made up quotes. I frequently consult those sites. Most quotes turn out to be authoritatively authenticated. Others, including quite a few I had regarded as authentic, are not.

If you think the internet and wikiquote contains all the quotes stated by a person, and all the factual information in the world, you are badly mistaken.[/QUOTE]
That's not what I think Just give me an authoritative source for Einstein having written or said something like "We have to be grateful to the Indians for teaching us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made." Book title, publisher, author, ISBN and page number will do. Maybe there's a newsreel in some institution's archive. Give me anything that is verifiable. Or shut up already. There really is no point in you continuing to dig the hole you're in.

Ajay0 · Post by **Ajay0** » Sat Jan 20, 2018 4:52 pm

[quote=""Hermit""]
That's not what I think Just give me an authoritative source for Einstein having written or said something like "We have to be grateful to the Indians for teaching us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made." Book title, publisher, author, ISBN and page number will do. Maybe there's a newsreel in some institution's archive. Give me anything that is verifiable. Or shut up already. There really is no point in you continuing to dig the hole you're in.[/quote]

If I may say so, common sense itself is enough to judge the role Indian mathematics have to do with the theme stated in Einstein's quote, whether it is true or false..

Your monomaniac obsession with the said quote is frankly amusing, inspite of similar quotes I presented earlier.

Ajay0 · Post by **Ajay0** » Sat Jan 20, 2018 5:00 pm

Here are wikipedia sites on Indian mathematics for more information in this regard....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_mathematics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_o ... ral_system

Some more sayings by scholars from all over the world on the contribution of Indian mathematics to the world....

The logic of the Greeks prevents them having the idea at all and it is to the Indian cultures that we must look to find thinkers who are comfortable with the idea that Nothing might be something.
John D. Barrow, The Book of Nothing (2009) chapter nought, "NothingologyFlying to Nowhere"

the world owes most to India in the realm of mathematics, which was developed in the Gupta period to a stage more advanced than that reached by any other nation of antiquity. The success of
Indian mathematics was mainly due to the fact that Indians had a clear conception of the abstract number as distinct from the numerical quantity of objects or spatial extension.

Thus Indians could take their mathematical concepts to an abstract plane and with the aid of a simple numerical notation devise a rudimentary algebra as against Greeks or the ancient Egyptians who due to their concern with the immediate measurement of physical objects remained confined to mensuration and geometry.

Australian Indologist Dr. A.L. Basham ( author of 'The wonder that was India')

"In the Surya Siddhanta is contained a system of trigonometry which not only goes beyond anything known to the Greeks, but involves theorem which were not discovered in Europe till two centuries ago.

"There is no question of the superiority of the Hindus over their rivals in the perfection to which they brought the science. Not only is Aryabhatta superior to Diaphantus (as is shown by his knowledge of the resolution of equations involving several unknown quantities, and in general method of resolving all indeterminate problems of at least the first degree), but he and his successors press hard upon the discoveries of algebraists who lived almost in our own time!"

- Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone (1779 - 1859) - ( author of History of India)

"India is the source from which not only the rest of Asia but the whole Western World derived their knowledge and their religion."

-- Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren (1760-1842)

(source: Historical researches into the politics, intercourse, and trade of the Carthaginians, Ethiopians, and Egyptians - By A. H. Heeren Vol. II p. 201).

I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc. It does not behoove us, who were only savages and barbarians when these Indians and Chinese peoples were civilized and learned, to dispute their antiquity.

- Voltaire, quoted in Sanskrit Reader 1: A Reader in Sanskrit Literature by Heiko Kretschmer

Hermit · Post by **Hermit** » Sun Jan 21, 2018 4:02 am

Who are you arguing with, Ajay0?

Our dialogue started with me commenting on the provenance of a quote you cited. In none of my previous eight posts did I say a word about the role of India regarding the development of mathematics.

You could have just admitted that you could not find a proper source for that quote either. Then we'd both be done with that particular issue and gone on to discuss other things.

The reason I made my initial post is that the profusion of misattributed and plain made up quotes annoys me. They are a pest and remind me of a joke concerning religious relics that an 18th century sceptic had allegedly made. It goes something like this: "If all pieces of the cross Jesus died on were gathered in one place there'd be enough wood for ships of an entire navy, and if all nails used to nail him on to it were gathered likewise, there'd be enough to nail those ships together."

John Calvin was almost as scathing about the matter: "There is no abbey so poor as not to have a specimen. In some places there are large fragments, as at the Holy Chapel in Paris, at Poitiers, and at Rome, where a good-sized crucifix is said to have been made of it. In brief, if all the pieces that could be found were collected together, they would make a big ship-load. Yet the Gospel testifies that a single man was able to carry it."

In my opinion we have enough genuine material to let us ignore the trash.

Ajay0 · Post by **Ajay0** » Sun Jan 21, 2018 5:06 am

[quote=""Hermit""]Who are you arguing with, Ajay0?

Our dialogue started with me commenting on the provenance of a quote you cited. In none of my previous eight posts did I say a word about the role of India regarding the development of mathematics.

You could have just admitted that you could not find a proper source for that quote either. Then we'd both be done with that particular issue and gone on to discuss other things.

The reason I made my initial post is that the profusion of misattributed and plain made up quotes annoys me. They are a pest and remind me of a joke concerning religious relics that an 18th century sceptic had allegedly made. It goes something like this: "If all pieces of the cross Jesus died on were gathered in one place there'd be enough wood for ships of an entire navy, and if all nails used to nail him on to it were gathered likewise, there'd be enough to nail those ships together."

John Calvin was almost as scathing about the matter: "There is no abbey so poor as not to have a specimen. In some places there are large fragments, as at the Holy Chapel in Paris, at Poitiers, and at Rome, where a good-sized crucifix is said to have been made of it. In brief, if all the pieces that could be found were collected together, they would make a big ship-load. Yet the Gospel testifies that a single man was able to carry it."

In my opinion we have enough genuine material to let us ignore the trash.[/quote]

Nice long post.

Truth is , no one has ever asked me for an 'authoritative source ' for quotes till now. But I will make a consideration for you in the future.

Aupmanyav · Post by **Aupmanyav** » Sun Jan 21, 2018 1:46 pm

[quote=""Hermit""]Among cricketers it would be Donald Bradman for any generation. For mine it would be the Chappell brothers, Dennis Lillee, Jeff Thomson, Rodney Marsh and of course Alan Border. ..[/quote]Hey Hermit, you are forgetting Glen McGrath. McGrath is the second highest wicket taker for Australia after Shane Warne. Lillee is the third highest and hugely popular in India for things other than Cricket (Charity).