Philosophy of research - Part 02

Vedic (Indian) and Western systems of creating new knowledge

When considering to Indian traditional knowledge systems are considered as Vedas. Traditional scientific method are consisting in the Indian culture. 

They have various disciplines such as medicine, agriculture, architecture, music and arts. They have various systems of creating new knowledge and research methods than the western culture. Best example is ayurvedic medicine. It is the most oldest method developed by them and used in very effectively. There were several methods of creating new knowledge with the Indian culture in ancient period. When considering to the rama, ravana story the dandumonaraya is considered as a helicopter like thing. 

World believe that these types of technologies were found by the ancient Indians during the period where the western people even did not think about those things. Therefore, I believe that the most of the new ideas, knowledge were with the ancient Indian civilization, but later on the they do not develop it or it was a slow development. And western world started developing new knowledge later years, but they move forward rapidly. That is why nowadays the creating new knowledge is mostly with western than Indians. 

Indian and most Asian countries have created knowledge on the civilization, agriculture, emergence of towns, craftsmanship and trade than the western culture. Most advance civilization is found in India during the ancient period than the western. Society organized as a cast systems, four vernas such as Brahmins, kshatriya, vaishya and shudras. Due to these several types of class their knowledge development, applying knowledge is different. 

Further, ancient people created knowledge and those were documented in Vedas and written in Sanskrit. Today those can be found in monasteries, universities and other institutes. From four Vedas Ayurveda considered as medical systems, arthasatra includes political theories, dhanurveda includes the art of warfare and gandharvaveda including music, drama and the fine arts (Balasubramanian).

Therefore, when considering to many aspects of ancient civilization in India they have created new knowledge with relevant to various aspects and those were the leading knowledge systems for the new generations especially for the western culture as well. 

When considering to the knowledge generated by the Indians is more with the experiential knowledge and when considering to the western, Europe it is more depends on verified theories and propositions. New knowledge generation is started in ancient Greece. Plato, Aristotle are the ones who developed philosophies of new knowledge. Ancient Indians created knowledge with consciousness, it is also mentioned in the Buddhism as well but when considering to the modern science western science knowledge is created only with the propositional knowledge not the experiential knowledge. 

Western culture, tend to do research to falsify or accept the existing traditional knowledge. Therefore, based on the traditional knowledge they do experiments. Due to their findings they generate theories. western culture develop theories falsify theories with relevant to the observations. Chalmer’s 2012 mentioned that ‘seeing and believing’. The problems comes when people observe a phenomena and make their own interpretations of what they just witnessed. 

Common western view is that the new knowledge is derived from the facts based on a careful observation. This argument is supported with the empiricists and positivists asserting that science driven by analysis of facts rather than mere personal opinions is based on the premise that inductive approach as to establishment of knowledge by way of observation (Chalmer’s 2012). In conclusion, according to this view, the conception that knowledge is constructed by observation implies that new knowledge is objective and falsifiable (Chalmer’s 2012). 

References

Balasubramanian, A.V., Knowledge and belief systems in the indian subcontinent, pp.37-48

Chalmers, A.F (1999), What is this thing called science?. 3 uppl. Buckingham: Open University Press. (266 s)

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Philosophy of research - Part 01
Philosophy of research - Part 02
Philosophy of research - Part 03