Visit the author's Web site at www.11PicsOfTime.com Time is a mystery that has perplexed humankind since time immemorial. Resolving this mystery is of significance not only to philosophers and physicists but is also a very practical concern. Our perception of time shapes our values and way of life; it also mediates the interaction between science and religion both of which rest fundamentally on assumptions about the nature of time. C K Raju begins with a critical exposition of various time-beliefs, ranging (...) from the earliest times through Augustine, Newton and Einstein to Stephen Hawking and current notions of chaos and time travel. He traces the role of organised religion in subverting time beliefs for its political ends. The book points out how this resulted in a facile dichotomy between 'linear' and 'cyclic' time, thereby inaugurating a confusion which, according to the author, has handicapped Western thought ever since, eventually influencing the content of science itself. Thus, this book daringly asserts that physical theory, traditionally regarded as amoral and objective, has depended on cultural beliefs about time. The author points out that time beliefs are again being manipulated today as the credibility of science is being exploited to promote a picture of time and, hence, a pattern of human behaviour which is convenient to the agenda of globalisation of culture. The linkages between modern theology and this 'brave new physics' are traced against the wider context of the so-called 'clash of civilisations', and the attempts to remake the world order. The conclusions point to the need to de-theologise time. The author challenges Einstein's understanding of relativity theory and suggests that a 'tilt in the arrow of time', or a small tendency towards cyclicity, will help repair the prevalent confusion about time. A 'tilt' also enables a physics that permits both memory and creativity, so that purpose and spontaneous growth of order are returned to human life. The book ends with a vision of Man as Creator, surprising God. Extensive research in physics, the history of science, comparative religions, and sociology lend weight to the important and challenging conclusions reached by the author. Written as a rejoinder to Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, this book goes much further and, unlike any previous book, it gives a critical exposition of various world religions-Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Jainism-while exploring their intricate links, through time beliefs, to current physics on the one hand, and to global political and economic trends, on the other. This book will appeal to scholars and laypersons equally. It will fascinate anyone who reads it and will teach its readers to question the unquestionable. (shrink)

C. K. Grant; X*—On a Definition of Knowledge, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 73, Issue 1, 1 June 1973, Pages 157–166, https://doi.org/10.1093/a.

Current formal mathematics, being divorced from the empirical, is entirely a social construct, so that mathematical theorems are no more secure than the cultural belief in two-valued logic, incorrectly regarded as universal. Computer technology, by enhancing the ability to calculate, has put pressure on this social construct, since proof-oriented formal mathematics is awkward for computation, while computational mathematics is regarded as epistemo-logically insecure. Historically, a similar epistemological fissure between computational/practical Indian mathematics and formal/spiritual Western mathematics persisted for centuries, during a (...) dialogue of civilizations, when texts on "algorismus" and "infinitesimal" calculus were imported into Europe, enhancing the ability to calculate. It is argued here that this epistemological tension should be resolved by accepting mathematics as empirically based and fallible, and by revising accordingly the mathematics syllabus outlined by Plato. (shrink)

To eliminate racist prejudices, it is necessary to identify the root cause of racism. American slavery preceded racism, and it was closely associated with genocide. Accordingly, we seek the unique cause of the unique event of genocide + slavery. This was initially justified by religious prejudice, rather than colour prejudice. This religious justification was weakened when many Blacks converted to Christianity, after the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The curse of Kam, using quick visual cues to characterize Blacks as inferior Christians, was (...) inadequate. Hence, the church fell back on an ancient trick of using false history as secular justification for Christian superiority. This trick had resulted in a false history of science during the Crusades when scientific knowledge in translated Arabic texts was indiscriminately attributed to the early Greeks, without evidence. This false history enabled belief in religious superiority to mutate into a secular belief in White superiority. After colonialism, and the Aryan race conjecture, the belief in White superiority further mutated into a belief in Western civilizational superiority, openly propagated today by colonial education. Hence, to eliminate racist prejudice, it is necessary to engage simultaneously with the allied prejudices about Christian/White/Western superiority, based on the same false history of science. (shrink)

Filing charges of scientific misconduct can be a risky and dangerous endeavor. This article presents rules of conduct to follow when considering whether to report perceived misconduct, and a set of step-by-step procedures for responsible whistleblowing that describe how to do so once the decision to report misconduct has been made. This advice is framed within the university setting, and may not apply fully in industrial settings.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

I once wrote to Daya ji about what seemed to me a paradox in contemporary Indian philosophy. It is one thing that Indian philosophers in academia do not engage with science, or even with its history and philosophy. It is quite another thing that they do not engage with ethics. Ethics, after all, is at the core of philosophy. Without an ethical principle one often does not know how to respond to something fundamentally new, such as the bewildering variety of (...) new developments in science and technology that impinge on our daily life. I was disappointed that Indian philosophers remain engaged in the study of Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, and the like, or are immersed in Sanskrit texts—neither of which provide much guidance .. (shrink)

In recent years philosophers have given a good deal of attention to imperatives. They have concerned themselves mainly with the logical grammar of sentences of this kind, that is to say their relations to each other and to interrogative and indicative sentences. Very often this topic has been raised in terms of the problem ‘Is imperative inference possible, and if so, what kind of inference is it?’. Many philosophers have contended that there are logically valid inferences that involve imperative sentences. (...) Against this it has been argued that no such inferences are possible. It has even been held that there are no such things as imperatives at all – regarded, that is, as types of expression logically sui generis and independent of indicative sentences. (shrink)

“Multiple modernities” is not a novel theme, as the editors and contributors amply concede in the volume. At its best, the conception is an invitation to ever more openness to the possibilities of...

In this age of new media, children are exposed to media messages at an early age. What can we do when the mass media exert such a great influence on children? One proposal has been for the introduction of a new school subject: media education. Though media education has not been part of the official curriculum in Hong Kong, some schools, both primary and secondary, have tried it out. This paper argues for the desirability of introducing media education in primary (...) schools in Hong Kong, with regard to social change, recent education reform and learning initiatives of primary pupils. It then draws on the findings of a study conducted in a local primary school to examine the views of pupils, parents, and teachers on the effects on pupils of the implementation of media education lessons and campus radio projects in this age of new media. (shrink)

Charles Ogden (1889-1957) is best known as the senior author of The Meaning of Meaning, the inventor of the 850-word system of Basic English and the expositor of the writings of Jeremy Bentham. Bentham's work had confirmed Ogden in the conviction he had nurtured for 20 years: that language, for all its pitfalls, could be controlled, thus ensuring effective communication and international understanding, perhaps even preventing war.

The purpose of this study was to develop a Physician's Spiritual Well-Being Scale (PSpWBS). The significance of a physician's spiritual well-being was explored through in-depth interviews with and qualitative data collection from focus groups. Based on the results of qualitative analysis and related literature, the PSpWBS consisting of 25 questions was established. Reliability and validity tests were performed on 177 subjects. Four domains of the PSpWBS were devised: physician's characteristics; medical practice challenges; response to changes; and overall well-being. The explainable (...) total variance was 65.65%. Cronbach α was 0.864 when the internal consistency of the whole scale was calculated. Factor analysis showed that the internal consistency Cronbach α value for each factor was between 0.625 and 0.794 and the split-half reliability was 0.865. The scale has satisfactory reliability and validity and could serve as the basis for assessment of the spiritual well-being of a physician. (shrink)

We numerically solve the functional differential equations (FDEs) of 2-particle electrodynamics, using the full electrodynamic force obtained from the retarded Lienard–Wiechert potentials and the Lorentz force law. In contrast, the usual formulation uses only the Coulomb force (scalar potential), reducing the electrodynamic 2-body problem to a system of ordinary differential equations (ODEs). The ODE formulation is mathematically suspect since FDEs and ODEs are known to be incompatible; however, the Coulomb approximation to the full electrodynamic force has been believed to be (...) adequate for physics. We can now test this long-standing belief by comparing the FDE solution with the ODE solution, in the historically interesting case of the classical hydrogen atom. The solutions differ. A key qualitative difference is that the full force involves a ‘delay’ torque. Our existing code is inadequate to calculate the detailed interaction of the delay torque with radiative damping. However, a symbolic calculation provides conditions under which the delay torque approximately balances (3rd order) radiative damping. Thus, further investigations are required, and it was prematurely concluded that radiative damping makes the classical hydrogen atom unstable. Solutions of FDEs naturally exhibit an infinite spectrum of discrete frequencies. The conclusion is that (a) the Coulomb force is not a valid approximation to the full electrodynamic force, so that (b) the n-body interaction needs to be reformulated in various current contexts such as molecular dynamics. (shrink)