In the presence of Narendra Modi, Hindutva Scientists say ancient hindus used to fly around to different planets on special planes

bw wrote:trishanku was a rocket man - take that!

Merlot Daruwala wrote:

bw wrote:trishanku was a rocket man - take that!

Excuse me. It was Vishwamitra who was the rocket man. He not only launched Trishanku into orbit, he even built an entire space station around the man - the first of its kind - called Trishanku Swarga.

Our space technologies were the first things that those monomaniacs destroyed, and with good reason too. Their primitive land armies and sailboat flotillas would have been devastated by our ICBMS.

The session that sought to make India proud of its ancient proficiency on science and technology was titled Ancient sciences through Sanskrit and obviously the speakers freaked out. And it was the first time that the century old Indian Science Congress Association, incidentally founded by two British chemists, featured anything like this.

What distinguishes science from pseudosciences is evidence and peer review. Both start with a hypothesis. While science rigorously scrutinises the evidence for and against the hypothesis, pseudoscience looks only for suitable evidence. It either abandons or hides the conflicting evidence. Science needs reproducible results and pays no attention to anecdotes, while pseudoscience relies largely on exceptions, personal testimonies and stories.

And most importantly, science is peer reviewed and it’s progressive - more and more is found on the invention as time progresses, while in pseudoscience, the revelation is static and it adds no value to human life. As the famous Anglo-Irish physicist George Johnston Stoney had noted, "a theory is a supposition which we hope to be true, a hypothesis is a supposition which we expect to be useful; fictions belong to the realm of art; if made to intrude elsewhere, they become either make-believes or mistakes".

The grand proclamations on ancient science at the Science Congress, unfortunately belong to the realm of art. And it was not new either, because we have read it many times in Indian mythology which is full of mind-blowing ideas, limitless imagination and philosophic wisdom. They do have tremendous value for human life and even scientific exploration, but they are not science, but only a work of art. Claiming authorship of technological inventions because they were once fantasised by ancient Indians is against the principle of science that the Indian Science Congress seeks to pursue.

Unfortunately, the claims on ancient science on Sunday reeked of mythology, a certain ideology and pure jingoism. What's the purpose of the claims that India possessed 40-engine inter-planetary planes when the National Aerospace Laboratory is unable to produce even a prototype of an usable passenger aircraft after so many years of its expensive existence? In contrast, Brazil and China, which make no claims to ancient wisdom on aeronautical engineering have thriving aerospace industries. About 96 percent of the component cost of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, reportedly, is on imported items.

The status of technological advances is similar in many other national undertakings such as the DRDO and the Indian nuclear energy sector. Besides the plane, ancient science experts also claim that Indian were pioneers of rocket technology although most of its present successes had to rely on imported expertise and materials.

Rashmun wrote:http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/science-meet-didnt-hear-40-years-ago-iisc-debunked-flying-claims/99/

Rashmun wrote:

Rashmun wrote:http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/science-meet-didnt-hear-40-years-ago-iisc-debunked-flying-claims/99/

http://cgpl.iisc.ernet.in/site/Portals/0/Publications/ReferedJournal/ACriticalStudyOfTheWorkVaimanikaShastra.pdf