Empedocles of Aragas is believed to have lived in the fifth century B. C. E. (G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers, 1957). He was one of the ancients who speculated on aspects of evolution. He is regarded as the originator of the four-element theory of matter in ancient Greece. He referred…
One of the most ancient expressions of the notion of evolution in the sense of a gradual development towards a more sophisticated state may be found in a Hindu mythic vision. In this framework, the cosmic principle that sustains the universe is referred to as Vishnu. Vishnu, the divine, was incarnated periodically in ages past,…
The history of science is wrought with a great many milestones, but some are more significant turning points than others. The Copernican dismissal of the long-held geocentric view of the universe was only one of those revolutionary upheavals. The classification of celestial bodies into stars and planets which probably began in ancient Babylonia, and the…
Fire was undoubtedly one of our earliest conquests of Nature. We do have evidence of hearths in caves dating back to almost a hundred thousand years ago among the Sinanthropus (Peking Man, more than 500,000 years old), as also (much later) in the dwellings of the so-called Neanderthal Man (disappearing about 30,000 years ago), although…
Religions are cultural frameworks that are based on doctrinal beliefs and prescribed practices to which significant numbers of people subscribe. They rest on the utterances of men of wisdom of the distant past. (There is no major religion that was initiated by a woman.) Their thoughts and sayings are embodied in various sacred texts. The vast…
In the world of science the discoverers of phenomena, and the proponents of theories are recalled through their names. We speak of Newton’s laws and Pascal’s principle, Raman effect and Dirac equation. But there is no record of the first human being who harnessed fire or invented the wheel, counted the planets or recognized their…
There are a great many things in the world around us: mountains and rivers, plants and trees, birds and animals, sun and moon, sky and stars, and countless more. We humans are aware of all this, and sometimes we think and reflect on them. Such awareness and reflection, as far as we can tell, is…
Dialogues between science and religion have ranged from friendly exchanges with mutual respect to unhappy confrontations bordering on mutual contempt. The latter have generally been between scholars: some scientifically inclined thinkers on the one hand and some religiously committed theologians on the other. Millions of words are spoken and written on either side, and there…
After running continuously for more than two years, this will be the last installment of Polydoxy. Look for V.V. Raman’s new column launching March 27 in The Global Spiral. Each of us has a worldview which determines our attitudes and actions in important contexts in life. Our worldview has many components, which take shape and…
A number of philosophers of science have reacted to postmodernism in forceful ways. Most of these are people who have spent some time doing serious science. Just as the religious practitioner reacts with some anger when people who have had no religious experience whatever speak and write about religion as if it is some sort…