The Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

The author's direct aim in the present work is to furnish the historians of the special sciences with new material which will serve to widen the scope of their survey. The Hindus no less than the Greeks have shared in the work of constructing scientific concepts and methods in the investigation of physical phenomena, as well as of building up a body of positive knowledge which has been applied to industrial technique; and Hindu scientific ideas and methodology (e.g. the inductive method or method of algebraic analysis) have deeply influenced the course of natural philosophy in Asia-in the East as well as the West-in China and Japan, as well as in the Saracen Empire. The author has undertaken a comparative estimate of Greek and Hindu science. Hindu Philosophy on its empirical side was dominated by concepts derived from physiology and philosophy, just as Greek Philosophy was similarly dominated by geometrical concepts and methods. The author has cared to see that the Sanskrit philosophico-scientific terminology, however difficult from its technical character, is rendered exceedingly precise, consistent, and expressive.

SIR BRAJENDRA NATI{ SEAL (1864-1938) was a renowned Bengali Indian humanist philosopher. He earned his M.A. degree in philosophy from the University of Calcutta in 1884 and started out as a lecturer at the City College, Calcutta. In 1915, he earned his doctorate from the University of Calcutta on the subject of The Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus. In 1896, Maharaja of Cooh Behar offered him the post of a principal of the newly established Victoria College. Thereafter he held the most prestigious chair of philosophy in India, the King George V professorship of philosophy at the University of Calcutta. He helped Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore in founding the Visva-Bharati University and became its first Chancellor. During the same time, he was also appointed the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Mysore, a position he held till 1930, when ill health forced him to retire. In 1926, the government of British India knighted him.

**Contents and Sample Pages**