What do they have in common? Bhagavad Gita and Paradigms?
Gita was thought to be written by Sage Ved Vyasa some time
in the fifth to second century BCE according to Wikipedia, while Thomas Kuhn published
his "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" in 1962. I used to have
both of them in my small collection. But no more.
Kuhn's book I had was the first edition, a paper back which
I remember as having its cover mostly yellow. Now thanks to Wikipedia I could
show what it looked like and I am proud to be one of the owners of first edition
of this highly acclaimed work. Can't remember from which bookshop I picked it
up. It was in Yangon.
It was in the mid sixties, I think. When I first saw its
title I thought it must be about how to launch successful revolutions and at
that time, I must note, that a lot of people were interested in revolutions. At
that time also, I remember being quite skeptical about revolutions that are scientific because I'd read about scientific
method by one Mr. Singer. Singer said when you say "a scientific
boxer" you are misusing what is meant by the true scientific method. Those
were the thoughts occurring before I picked up the book and read the
description about the content on the book cover. Then I saw that it was on revolutions in science.
Bhagavad Gita when I discovered it, was a small, thin, slim book
in the Bogyoke Aung San Museum in Yangon. It was in a small bookcase with glass
doors and I could clearly read the title on the jacket. I am not sure, if the
bookcase was in the bedroom beside a simple bed or in some other place. One of
these days I would visit the museum to see if the book is still there.
When was this visit? I have forgotten completely. But if I
were able to find my own book which was exactly like Bogyoke's I would have
known when it was because I would sign all my books on their title pages with
dates. The fact was that not too long after my visit to the museum I was lucky
to find Bhagavad Gita, the same one as translated by Sir Edwin Arnold with a
yellowish jacket and a red hardcover. I think, I picked up this book from the
City Book Club and if I remember it right it was in the Pansodan Street,
Yangon.
This book must have been misplaced. I've been looking for it
for the last two days and still looking. Of the Kuhn's book, I had given it to
my cousin years ago. Now that he had passed away and his family had moved to US
and UK I would never have the chance to find out when I bought it. What I can
say now is that from it I was able to get some bits of understanding on paradigm shifts in the sciences. Before I discovered Kuhn's book, I'd been
reading quite a bit on history and philosophy of science. It was in the early
sixties and during that time I found myself a year or so away from my studies
at Rangoon University for some reasons of my own. In my recollection as of now of
Kuhn's central idea, before re-reading him, is that while the scientists worked
within an accepted idea (paradigm) of their times, some would find results that
are at odds with the current paradigms. First, these will be recorded as
footnotes in their papers. Later the inconsistencies grew too large to be accommodated
within the current paradigms and new paradigms (revolutions) arise because of
necessity.
As for Bhagavad
Gita, I know it was a 700 verses long part of the great Indian epic,
Mahabharata. I tried reading it, but never got past the first few verses!
Nevertheless it was a great joy that I owned an exact copy of what Bogyoke had
owned. What were his thoughts reading Bhagavad Gita? Where or from whom he'd
heard about it? What was this thirtyish young Statesman contemplating in
relation to the new nation he had been working on? We may never know.
The preface by Edwin Arnold in his translation of Bhagavad
Gita is mostly excluded in many of the download sources on the Web, but included
in the version produced as Project Gutenberg etext at http://livros.universia.com.br/?dl_name=The-Song-celestial-or-Bhagabad-gita-from-the-Mahaharata-being-a-discourse-de-Autor-Desconhecido.pdf.
This
famous and marvellous Sanskrit poem occurs as an episode of the Mahabharata, in
the sixth—or "Bhishma"—Parva of the great Hindoo epic. It enjoys
immense popularity and authority in India, where it is reckoned as one of the
``Five Jewels,"—pancharatnani—of Devanagiri literature. ... the question of its date, which cannot be
positively settled. It must have been inlaid into the ancient epic at a period
later than that of the original Mahabharata, ... The weight of evidence,
however, tends to place its composition at about the third century after Christ;
Encyclopedia Britannica online gives a concise description
of Bhagavad Gita:
Bhagavadgita, ( Sanskrit: “Song of God”) an
episode recorded in the great Sanskrit poem of the Hindus,
the Mahabharata. It occupies chapters 23 to 40 of Book VI of the Mahabharata and
is composed in the form of a dialogue between Prince Arjuna
and Krishna, an avatar (incarnation) of the
god Vishnu. Composed perhaps in the 1st or 2nd century CE, it is
commonly known as the Gita.
On the brink of a great battle between warring branches of
the same family, Arjuna is suddenly overwhelmed with misgivings about
the justice of killing so many people, some of whom are his friends and
relatives, and expresses his qualms to Krishna, his charioteer—a
combination bodyguard and court historian. Krishna’s reply expresses the
central themes of the Gita. He persuades Arjuna to do his duty as a man
born into the class of warriors, which is to fight, and the battle takes
place. ...
Now, after reading the Bhagavad Gita page of Wikipedia I
wonder if Bogyoke had not been reading Bhagavad Gita and thinking about independence movement the way Indian nationalists had been inspired by Gita.
At a time when Indian nationalists were seeking an indigenous basis for
social and political action, Bhagavad
Gita provided them with a
rationale for their activism and fight against injustice. Among nationalists, notable
commentaries were written by Bal
Gangadhar Tilak and Mahatma Gandhi, who used the text to
help inspire the Indian independence movement. ... No book was more central to
Gandhi's life and thought than the Bhagavad
Gita, which he referred to as his "spiritual dictionary". ... Mahatma Gandhi expressed his love
for the Gita in these words:
I
find a solace in the Bhagavadgītā that
I miss even in the Sermon on the
Mount. When disappointment stares me in the face and all alone I see not one
ray of light, I go back to the Bhagavadgītā. I find a verse here and a verse there
and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming tragedies – and
my life has been full of external tragedies – and if they have left no visible,
no indelible scar on me, I owe it all to the teaching of Bhagavadgītā.
Back to Kuhn, February 2012 marked the 50th anniversary of
the publication of "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" and John
Naughton wrote in The Guardian (Thomas
Kuhn: the man who changed the way the world looked at science, 19 August
2012, http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/aug/19/thomas-kuhn-structure-scientific-revolutions):
Fifty years ago this month, one of the most influential
books of the 20th century was published by the University of Chicago Press.
Many if not most lay people have probably never heard of its author, Thomas
Kuhn, or of his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, but their
thinking has almost certainly been influenced by his ideas. The litmus test is
whether you've ever heard or used the term "paradigm shift", which is
probably the most used – and abused – term in contemporary discussions of
organisational change and intellectual progress. A Google search for it returns
more than 10 million hits, for example. And it currently turns up inside no
fewer than 18,300 of the books marketed by Amazon. It is also one of the most
cited academic books of all time. So if ever a big idea went viral, this is it.
... Before Kuhn, in other words,
we had what amounted to the interpretation
of scientific history, in which past researchers, theorists and experimenters
had engaged in a long march, if not towards "truth", then at least
towards greater and greater understanding of the natural world.
"Whig history is
the approach which presents the past as an inevitable progression towards ever
greater liberty and enlightenment, culminating in modern forms of liberal
democracy and constitutional monarchy. ... The term is also used
extensively in the history of science ... which focuses on the
successful chain of theories and experiments that led to present-day science,
while ignoring failed theories and dead ends" (Whig history,
Wikipedia). In this context, Kuhn was able to accommodate the failed theories
and dead ends as well as uncertainties and phenomenal successes of science in a
coherent way in his more realistic version of the history of science.
Kuhn's version of how science develops
differed dramatically from the Whig version. Where the standard account saw
steady, cumulative "progress", he saw discontinuities – a set of
alternating "normal" and "revolutionary" phases in which
communities of specialists in particular fields are plunged into periods of
turmoil, uncertainty and angst. These revolutionary phases – for example the
transition from Newtonian mechanics to quantum physics – correspond to great
conceptual breakthroughs and lay the basis for a succeeding phase of business
as usual. The fact that his version seems unremarkable now is, in a way, the
greatest measure of his success. But in 1962 almost everything about it was
controversial because of the challenge it posed to powerful, entrenched
philosophical assumptions about how science did – and should – work.
... What Kuhn had run up
against was the central weakness of the Whig interpretation of history. By the
standards of present-day physics, Aristotle looks like an idiot. And yet we
know he wasn't. Kuhn's blinding insight came from the sudden realisation that if
one is to understand Aristotelian science, one must know about the intellectual
tradition within which Aristotle worked. One must understand, for example, that
for him the term "motion" meant change in general – not just the
change in position of a physical body, which is how we think of it. Or, to put
it in more general terms, to understand scientific development one must
understand the intellectual frameworks within which scientists work. That
insight is the engine that drives Kuhn's great book.
Nevertheless, it is nothing strange that Kuhn's great book has its share of
serious criticisms. Some would be strong, some quite mild. Of the first variety,
I felt, what were mentioned under the section "Criticisms" in the Wikipedia
page "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" would qualify. I would
say Greg Radick's criticisms recounted in "The Guardian" (Beyond our Kuhnian inheritance, Rebekah
Higgit, 28 August 2012) at http://www.theguardian.com/science/the-h-word/2012/aug/28/thomas-kuhn
were a milder example. I'm sure there is much more than what is touched here by
me, second hand and a bit outdated.
Now, what do they have in common? Bhagavad Gita and
Paradigms?
Personally, I could just say I used to have a book of Sir
Edwin Arnold's translation of Gita and the first edition of Thomas Kuhn's book
on scientific revolutions or the progress of the paradigms. What they have in
common was a common owner, me; nothing simpler than that.
Nostalgically I've downloaded additional five versions in
English of the Gita, and Kuhn's book.
If you are interested, for Gita try:
Get Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions"
at:
http://projektintegracija.pravo.hr/_download/repository/Kuhn_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions.pdf
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