Sāñkhya philosophy described prakṛti or nature in terms of three qualities called sattva, rajas, and tamas, which constitute three logical opposites. Since everyone finds it hard to visualize ternary opposites, therefore, the same three qualities are also described in terms of binary opposites. Below is one way to describe them ...

The Nature of First-Order Logic What most people call logic is technically called first-order logic. The nomenclature suggests that there must be second-, third-, fourth-, and infinite other higher-order logics. Most people are unaware of these higher-order logics because they violate the three principles of first-order logic—(a) the law of ...

The Six Systems Known as Upaveda It may surprise many people to know that the Vedic tradition never created dictionaries or rules of grammar. However, since time immemorial, there are six systems of study, collectively called Vedāṅga (and sometimes Upaveda), that include Nirukta and Vyākaraṇa, which are erroneously translated as ...

First- and Second-Order Logics Suppose I show you an apple, and ask you: Is it one truth, or is it many? What will you answer? Here are some facts to consider. The taste, smell, color, shape, size, and weight are many truths about the apple. So, obviously, there are many ...

The Effect of Western Dualisms Since Greek times, Western philosophy has separated subjects from each other. These include epistemology (how we know), ontology (what exists), and logic (relations between propositions). The separation relies on two dualisms. First, the dualism of mind and body in which epistemology pertains to the mind ...

Abstract This paper illustrates, through examples[1], how quantum theory can be seen as a theory of symbols. Ordinary signs have classical properties but not meaning; we interpret their physical properties as meanings. This is because the signs are described physically. If, however, space-time is interpreted as a domain of types ...

Abstract While it is well-known that general relativity allows degenerate solutions to the field equations, it is believed that this indeterminism does not have experimental consequences. In this article I argue to the contrary: that current ways of thinking about matter distributions miss one important kind of distribution in which ...

Classical vs. Modern Space and Time Newtonian mechanics came out of a separation of space, time, and matter, which had not existed in European thinking previously. Early Greeks spoke of four substances called Earth, Water, Fire, and Air and did not recognize space and time as categories separate from substances ...

The Problem of Simplicity and Complexity All the fundamental differences between European science and the Vedic system can be traced back to an assumption about simplicity in European thinking. Factually, ordinary sense perception is immensely complex. Food, for instance, has taste, smell, color, taste, texture, shape, weight, hardness, and so ...

Problems in Scientific Idea of Knowledge Modern science uses a model of knowledge based on axioms, logic, objectivity, mathematics, and mechanism. Axioms are the basic truth. From it, other truths are derived by logic. Since the axioms are fixed, therefore, to test these against reality, each thing must also be ...

Transformation of Platonism into Univeralism Plato is credited with the idea of a world of pure forms, of which the present world is an imperfect reflection. For example, there is a pure form of man, after which ordinary men are modeled as imperfect reflections. Thus, according to Plato, we compare ...

Unique Idea of the Soul in the Vedic System There are several ways in which the soul in Vedic philosophy differs from the soul in other religions: (a) It establishes unity in diversity, and it is detected by that unity, (b) Its immortality is exactly the same as the immortality ...

Two Distinct Forms of Monotheism Contrary to common belief, "monotheism" is not a comprehensible word and every translation of this word given by monotheists (i.e., the followers of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism) results in self-contradiction. In this article, I will discuss the contradictions resulting from translating monotheism as "one God" ...

The Description of the World as Māyā Modern science emerged from the distinction between space, time, and motion. It required the space, time, and motion to be continuous and smooth, which were formulated as axioms in calclus. The concepts of continuity and smoothness in calculus are false because bodies (such ...

The Origin of Calculus in Change vs. Constant Underlying every kind of scientific theory is a fundamental conundrum between change and constant. For example, if we want to do sociology, we must talk about how society is changing. But in so talking, we have to say that there is a ...

The Problem Presented by Flying Objects At present, there is no clear understanding of how airplanes fly. The Scientific American article No One Can Explain Why Planes Stay in Air details the problems associated with flight. In this article, I will talk about an alternative theory of flight, rooted in ...

Introduction and Overview There are widespread misconceptions about monotheism at present—(a) that it is about a transcendent God, (b) that it has had no connections to polytheism, and (c) that it has always been monotheistic. These are far from the truth. The truth is that monotheism emerged out of polytheism, ...

Two Notions of Omniscience There are two versions of omniscience, one in Abrahamic religions and the other in Vedic philosophy. The Abrahamic version of omniscience is that God knows everything, and the Vedic version of omniscience is that knowing is a power of God, which God can use as per ...

Personalism is Not Monotheism Many people at present see similarities between Abrahamic monotheism and Vedic personalism and contrast these two philosophies to impersonalism and voidism. Personalism is similar to monotheism in some superficial ways but different from it in essential ways. Likewise, personalism is different from impersonalism in one way—accepting ...

Four Positions on Reincarnation Some religions accept a soul without reincarnation while others accept reincarnation without a soul. In this post, I will talk about why a soul without reincarnation is problematic but reincarnation without a soul is not. We will divide ideologies into four—(a) reincarnation with a soul, (b) ...

What is the Aryan Invasion Theory? Definition of the Aryan Invasion Theory "Aryan Invasion Theory" (AIT) originated during colonial times to align the history of India to the European history. Since Europeans immigrated from the Steppe Region in Central Asia into Europe, the historical project wanted to trace common ancestry ...

Confusing Claims About Sanskrit There is much confusion regarding the importance of Sanskrit at present. Some people treat Sanskrit as the origin of many languages, especially those spoken in India. Others have talked about the key role that Sanskrit can play in Artificial Intelligence. And yet other people are talking ...

Descriptions of Verbal Testimony Vedic texts cite four fundamental defects of souls "conditioned" by the material energy—(a) imperfect senses, (b) illusions, (c) committing mistakes, and (d) cheating propensity. All living entities are incapable of acquring perfect knowledge through their senses, mind, and intellect due to the presence of these four ...

God as Creator, Controller, and Enjoyer The Structure of the Brahma Samhita Verse We can scan the length and breadth of Vedic texts and we will not find anyone asking for proof of God's existence or someone providing it voluntarily. That doesn't mean we cannot provide an argument for God's ...

Names as Descriptions of a Person There are many ways to demonstrate the problems of logic, set theory, and Gödel's incompleteness. They are all different ways to look at the problem, to become convinced that there is a problem. One such way is the statement "God has many names". These ...

The Problem of Free Will and Its Solution I have earlier discussed the differences between two distinct ideas of free will: Self-control vs. other control. The key point of that article was the conception of free will in which we are free to control others is false, but the conception ...

The Reason for Writing This Article In a recent conversation, someone asked me: "Is the universe causally closed?" For a moment I was stumped because I realized that what he is really asking is whether God intervenes in the universe. If God intervenes in the universe, then the universe is ...

Bhedābheda and Physical Analogies All physical analogies fail to correctly describe Bhedābheda philosophy. One such analogy is a drop in an ocean. The Bhedābheda proponent says: The drop is distinct from the ocean and yet one with it. The reductionist's counter to that claim is that if you remove all ...

Religions Frame Alternative Logics There is a widespread assumption at present that religion is independent of logic. Under this assumption, people might insist that claims of religion must be "logical"—i.e., follow the principles of identity, non-contradiction, and excluded middle. This attitude is predominantly Western because alternative logical systems have either ...

The Role of Dreaming in Philosophy In a recent article, I discussed the four tiers of reality, called waking, dreaming, deep sleep, and transcendent. Each successive stage of reality is given greater importance, which means that dreaming is more important than waking. This surprises people—We dream when we sleep; how ...

Zero and Conscious Experience It is often said that Indians invented the zero, which then allowed the invention of negative numbers, complex numbers, and then modern mathematics and physics. The Roman numeral system (which followed the Greek system of counting) did not have zero. After all, zero represented "nothing", which ...

Alternative Conceptions of Truth Truth in Vedic philosophy is defined quite differently than in Western philosophy. While Western philosophy talks about empirical and rational proofs of truth, Vedic philosophy gives the following peculiar conception of truth. If you reject the truth, then you will commit bad deeds; due to those ...

The Origin of Chicken-and-Egg Problems Numerous chicken and egg problems that arise while trying to construct the notions of space, time, and objects. For instance, when distance is defined in terms of a meter, then the extension of the meter depends on space and space depends on the meter. Likewise, ...

All Religions Aren't Equal There is a prominent misconception about religious equality under which all religions must be treated with respect. According to this misconception, sacredness is a private belief, and there is no objective sacredness in anything. Hence, either all religions must be rejected or all of them should ...

The Problem of Sacred Objects Some religions argue against the Vedic system that its followers worship "idols". An "idol", or a deity, as the Vedic traditionalists call it, is a symbol of God. It communicates meanings just like symbols in a book. If we burn a book, we don't burn ...

The Hegelian-Marxist Ideology Hegel is credited to have been the first in the Western world to bring the study of history as a subject of philosophy proper. He did so by creating the thesis-antithesis-synthesis framework for history. Hegelian philosophy became the foundation of Marxism that saw society in terms of ...

The Unity of All Scientific Subjects I used the last article to weave many seemingly disjointed ideas—modalities, inseparability, qualities, how the illusion of motion is created without a motion by revelation and hiding of modes, how this leads to alternative ideas of space and time, an alternative conception of laws ...

The Problem of Indeterminism No two people are completely alike. No two roses look exactly the same. No two oranges are identical. Even as we classify the world into concepts, those classifications do not entail that two things are exactly alike. They just mean that two things might have some ...

Vaiṣṇavism and Non-Dualism Vaiṣṇavism presents a conception of God that doesn’t fit into well-known categories such as monotheism, polytheism, monism, pantheism, panentheism, henotheism, deism, and others. This is because Vaiṣṇavism accepts all their assertions and rejects all their negations. For example, the monotheistic claim that “God is one” doesn’t negate ...

Revolutionary vs. Incremental History In the previous article, I made a pithy remark in passing—Progressive history doesn’t have revolutions and paradigm changes. I will use this article to explain how this is a consequence of the modern scientific assumptions about the separation of locations, times, and things. Separation allows us ...

Article Overview and Summary Laws are supposed to predict and explain. Predict means to describe the future relative to the present. Explain means to justify that prediction based upon ideas about reality. The Law of Diminishing Returns is a law that predicts that returns on investment must diminish over time ...

Free Will in Abrahamic vs. Vedic Religion In Abrahamic religions, free will is defined as the soul's capacity to control matter. The soul is said to be free in the sense that it can do whatever it wants with material things. Conversely, the soul shouldn't do such things to other ...

Two Classes of Vedic Texts Vedic texts are broadly classified into Nigama and Āgama. They respectively pertain to theory and practice. The practice is accepted due to Nigama and the theory is confirmed due to Āgama. In this article, we will discuss the differences and relationships between Nigama and Āgama, ...

Pratyakṣa vs. Empiricism Distinction Pratyakṣa or observation is considered one of the types of pramāna, proof, or evidence in Vedic epistemology. We sometimes loosely call it empirical evidence. This nomenclature is, however, then confused with scientific empiricism, which is not observation but measurement. That can lead to the false idea ...

The Illusion of Perceptual Location Imagine that you are sitting inside a room. You will likely say that there is a space, inside which there is a planet, in which there is a country, inside which there is a city, inside which there is a house, inside which there is ...

Dualistic vs. Non-Dualistic Logic Modern logic is defined by three principles—identity (A is A), non-contradiction (it cannot be both and A and not-A), and mutual exclusion (it cannot be neither A and not-A). In Vedic philosophy, we will call this a dualistic logic in the sense that the categories neither ...

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Theoretical vs. Practical Forms Aristotle divided all Platonic forms into two classes—theoretical and practical. The theoretical forms could be quantified by converting them into geometry, essentially reducing them to shape. The practical forms, such as beauty, justice, and truth, could not be so converted and had to be decided by ...

Human Modes of Understanding Even as Western epistemology is defined as the theory  knowledge, owing to numerous dualisms in Western philosophy, such as the separation of the observer and the observed, it has never been clear if epistemology can meet its goals. In this article, I will discuss the problems ...

Article Introduction and Overview In the last article, I discussed the nature of Personhood as six traits—self-awareness, intention, emotion, cognition, conation, and relation. Modern science depersonalizes persons as machines governed by laws. Therefore, in this article, I will discuss what I mean by a machine in contrast to a person ...

Introduction and Overview In modern societies, a person is defined as something that has rights. Forests, rivers, mountains, oceans, birds, animals, fishes, and insects are not considered persons in modern scoeities and hence not given rights. Conversely, corporations are given rights, therefore, they are treated as persons. Moreover, the rights ...

Two Flavors of the Problem of Evil The problem of evil has two distinct flavors. The first flavor says: There is famine, war, pestilence, and disease in this world and since God created an evil world, therefore, He must be evil. The second flavor says: So much suffering is caused ...

Three Flavors of Laws A law is defined as things that could or could not happen, should or should not happen, and would or would not happen. The limitation of could and could not depends on a person’s ability; a more capable person can do more things and a less ...

Physics vs. Metaphysics Definition Western philosophy has a famed distinction between appearance and reality. This distinction began with the idea that appearances are outward projection, while reality is the thing in itself. For example, consider a cheater, who talks suavely and pretends to have your best interests at heart, but ...

What is Advaita Impersonalism? Advaita Impersonalism can be summarized into four claims: (a) Brahman is real or true, (b) the material world is false, (c) the soul or living entity is Brahman, and (d) there is nothing beyond Brahman. We have to remember that the first three of these claims ...

The Problem of Realism Skepticism was started by Descartes. He begins his argument by doubting everything and says that he could be hallucinating about the world. After claiming that nothing is certain, he says: I can doubt everything, but not my own existence, and concludes: "I think therefore I exist" ...

The Bhedābheda Mind-Body Doctrine Many people equate the mind to the brain, based on the neuroscientific experiments, in which injecting electrical signals into the brain results in novel experiences. This equivalence is in no small measure the result of the mind-body duality created by Descartes and readily embraced by Christianity ...

Numbers: Truth vs. Usefulness Even as I often criticize quantity thinking, I don’t mean to say that it is completely useless. Many quantitative truths are pervasively true. 2 + 2 = 4 in all situations, for example. This truth can be used for practical purposes like counting the number of ...

Distinction Between Truth and Existence What is truth? Some people say that truth means existence. If a tree exists, then it is true. But it also means that if you think that the tree doesn’t exist, that thought is also true, because your thought exists. To allow for the distinction ...

Material Inertness in Religions It is well-known that the material energy is personified in Vedic texts as Durga. And yet, starting with Advaita, the Vedānta doctrines have designated matter as achit—inert, inanimate, or insentient. Descartes, of course, designated matter as being distinct from the mind in his famous mind-body dualism ...

Body Weight and Calorie Intake There was a time when I used to eat a lot—up to four times a day. And yet I was very thin. Then came a time when I did not increase my food intake, and yet I gained a lot of weight. Then there have ...

The Enemy of Economic Growth Economics has an unknown enemy in the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which says that entropy (disorder) cannot decrease in a physical process. If the net disorder is increasing, then how can there be net growth in wealth? Net growth in wealth is possible only with ...

Qualities and Non-Binary Logic Quality thinking breaks ordinary logic whereas quantity thinking does not. In ordinary logic, there are always two opposites. Only one of these could be true, and one of them must be true. The former condition forbids both opposites from being true, and the latter condition forbids ...

Different Skills of Four Classes The Varṇāśrama system of the division of society into four classes is based on a skill ladder. It progresses in skill from the understanding of inanimate objects (sudra), to the understanding of non-human living entities like trees, plants, crops, and domestic animals (vaisya), to the ...

Introduction and Overview Vedic vs. Western Notions of Realism There is a sense in which Vedic philosophy is realist—a soul moves in a space of meaning-states called childhood, youth, and old age (higher) and hungry, thirsty, lusty (lower). All these states are fixed and eternal, but the soul’s connection to ...

Article Introduction and Overview In several places, I described a semantic conception of reality in which all reality is like a book, comprising symbols of meaning. The book expands out of an idea, and the individuality of the idea divides into the individuality of chapters, paragraphs, sentences, words, and phonemes ...

How Descartes Came to Philosophize It is commonly believed that Descartes was the first modern philosopher, but the fact is that philosophy was an afterthought for Descartes. His initial work was on analytical geometry, which created a relation between geometry and algebra through the use of a coordinate system. Descartes ...

Origins of the Modern Idea of Law Modern society is based on “laws”. These laws exist in religions, social organizations, and sciences, and they are considered “universal”. For instance, the laws of a nation apply to all citizens of a nation. The laws of a religious institution or business apply ...

The Doctrine of Satkāryavāda If you put your hand in the fire, it will be burnt. Science will say: Fire is energy; when you bring your hand in contact with fire, then energy is transferred to your hand, and that causes the burn. Likewise, if you jump off a cliff, ...

Introduction and Overview There are many common characterizations of science and religion that claim an incompatibility between the two, but upon closer examination, all these characterizations can be shown to be false. That doesn't mean that science and religion are similar or identical; they are indeed incompatible, just not in ...

The Vedic System Neglects History The Vedic tradition has always had a very weak interest in chronological history. Vedic texts only record the important events—e.g., those about the incarnations of God on earth, or those of great devotees of God, who then spread devotion to God all over the earth ...

The Broadening and Deepening of Diseases Ayurveda has a very unique concept of “depth” and “breadth” of a disease, which we do not find in modern medicine. The idea is that when a disease begins, it typically has only one effect or symptom. At that time, symptomatic cures can be ...

In Indian philosophy, the voidism of Buddhist philosophy is seen as the opposition to the materialism of demigod worship and rituals. Then, classical impersonalism or Advaita is seen as the opposition to voidism in Buddhist philosophy. Finally, classical personalism or Vaishnavism is seen as the opposition to the impersonalism of ...

The Intelligent Design Argument has a well-known flaw that is often used by critics against it: The world is not perfectly designed. In a hilariously perverse example of this argument (that I saw on YouTube a few weeks ago), an atheist argues that men’s testicles are not perfectly designed because ...

Defining the Problem of Evil The problem of evil refers to the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil in this world with an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God. The argument for the problem of evil goes as follows: We can see that evil exists in this world—cheating, ...

Introduction and Overview In my first book—Six Causes—I described a theory of creation that comprises six causes, namely, Material Cause, Efficient Cause, Personal Cause, Formal Cause, Instrumental Cause, and Systemic Cause. This was in a way a contrast to the Greek use of four causes (Final, Efficient, Material, and Formal) ...

Contracts in Religion Modern society is constructed on the idea of contracts. This idea can be traced back to Judaism which instituted a “covenant” with God in which God will do certain things for Abraham if Abraham did some things for God. The first covenant of Judaism for instance says: ...

Laws in Western and Vedic Thinking Modern science uses two kinds of laws—these are called “conservation laws” and “predictive laws”. A conservation law states what cannot happen, and a predictive law states what must happen. For example, the law of conservation of energy says that if two particles collide then ...

All over Vedic texts, the world is described as "sound" or "text". The source of this world is stated to be the original meaning, called "knowledge". This original meaning then expands to create various other types of meanings, which are all partial knowledge. The Mīmāṃsā system of philosophy gives this ...

Beginning with my first book, "Six Causes", I have been describing a paradigm of creation that stems from conscious creativity. In this paradigm, the self goes missing in the self, and when this "absence" is created, then creativity occurs to overcome this absence by expanding the self into works of ...

Cognition and Adaptation in Disease The world is today gripped by the CoVID pandemic. Every few days new vaccines and virus variants are talked about. The governments are pressured into vaccination, the doctors have no time (and limited ability) to test if a person is already immune to CoVID before ...

The following is an excerpt from the Vaiśeṣika Sutras, that describes the three principles of One, Oneness, and Separateness, which create two paradoxes—unity in diversity and diversity in unity. Many things emerge out of the One, therefore, they must have existed in the One previously; this is the paradox of ...

Below are some verses from the Nyāya Sutra that discuss the nature of the Supreme Lord, and describe how He is one and many, how He is attained by devotees and yet never truly attained by anyone, and how the varied aspects of His personality are hidden inside the other ...

If you lift a ball in your hand while awake, you feel downward pressure. If you ask a physicist why that is the case, then he will say: This pressure is felt because of Newton’s gravitational law – GM1M2/R2 – where G is the Gravitational constant, M1 and M2 are ...

The Nyāya system of philosophy describes a category called abhāva or 'absence' and then explains how bhāva or 'presence' manifests from the absence. This is a very long discussion in Nyāya Sutra (which I'm translating presently) and has many nuances. It is hard to capture all these details here, but ...

The Doctrine of Māyāvāda All over Vedic texts, the material nature or prakriti is also termed as māyā, which literally means—“that which is not”. Pursuant to this, there is a doctrine called Māyāvāda, which says that the world doesn’t exist. It is literally like a “hallucination”, which has no objective ...

Below is the translation and commentary on some of the Nyāya Sutras, which describe the nature of a scientific theory as comprised of four aspects. The first aspect represents the purpose of the system; the second, the functional parts that execute this purpose; the third, a mechanism of control that ...

Introduction and Overview Vedic texts describe the self in three words, namely, sat, chit, and ānanda. The chit is the knower and known, sat is knowing, and ānanda is the happiness derived from the knower knowing the known. What we call ‘consciousness’ is the process of knowing that operates under ...

The following are excerpts from Sāñkhya Sūtras on the doctrine of Satkāryavāda. This is important for anyone interested in Sāñkhya. The full text is available as Material and Spiritual Natures ...

Beauty and Knowledge The question of beauty has been incessantly debated since Greek times in Western philosophy, but it has some simple answers, if we adopt the view that the world is idea-like. When we look at a rose, and we cognize it as a rose, then we might also ...

Three Kinds of Genders In the previous article, we discussed how matter is also consciousness, although a different type of consciousness. We identified three types of consciousness—God, soul, and matter—and discussed their natures. This article extends that discussion and identifies three genders associated with the three types of consciousness—masculine, feminine, ...

Is Matter Inert or Conscious? The modern scientific study of matter arose out of the mind-body duality created by Descartes, who wanted to separate the endeavors of the Church (i.e. religion) from those of a rational-empirical inquiry (i.e. science). Similar kinds of dualities have existed in Vedic philosophy too. For ...

The Religious Problem of Causation Imagine that a moving billiard ball collides with a static one, and transfers its energy, which causes the static billiard ball to start moving. The cause of the change is energy, and due to conservation, once energy is transferred to the new ball, the cause ...

Introduction and Overview What is love? Is it one thing or many? Is there anything in common between brotherly love and motherly one? Why is love so elusive to understand, even though many of us may have felt it? Why is love often equated to sacrifice, service, and dedication? This ...

Introduction and Overview This article discusses how choice arises from conflict, in the act of conflict resolution. The nature of this conflict, how conflict resolution leads to compromises in which one side goes dominant and the other subordinate, and how the dominant-subordinate structure is later reversed, producing a cyclic change, ...

Hypothesis of the Maxwell's Demon When James Clerk Maxwell proposed the second law of thermodynamics, he envisioned a thought experiment in which two chambers of gas were joined by a small door under the control of a ‘demon’ who would selectively open the door depending on which direction the gas ...

Introduction and Overview It is common to think that a person has a body and a mind. But when groups of people act in concerted ways, it seems that they are a singular body controlled by a mind. How is a random collection of people (who act in individual ways) ...

Introduction and Overview It is commonplace for people to assert that quantum theory indicates a lack of objectivity or reality, when all it indicates is the failure of the classical conception of reality. In the classical conception, when you cut an apple, you get smaller pieces of apple. In this ...

Introduction and Overview Since the beginning of science, nature was believed to be controlled by some laws which can be used to make predictions about the future independent of the individual observers. The observers cannot have choices because through these choices the future could be changed, in contradiction to the ...

The How and Why of Causality In modern science, causes are equated to forces. These forces represent how change occurs; it involves explaining the creation of a trajectory. However, forces don’t explain why change occurs, which involves the goal or destination along with a moral justification of the goal. For ...

Introduction and Overview In this article I will describe what consciousness is and argue that while we cannot reduce consciousness to matter, we still can study matter using consciousness as the model. In short, we begin by assuming the soul, and then explain matter. Modern science tries to study matter ...

Introduction to the Problem Genetic determinism—or the idea that we are fully determined by our genes taken from our parents—is now a thing of the past. Empirical evidence now shows that genes may exist but may not be expressed. The expression is controlled by some ‘epigenetic’ factors (which are also ...

Introduction to the Problem In an earlier article we talked about the problem of mathematical realism of negative and complex numbers; the issue was that you can construct these numbers logically and conceptually, but you will never find them in the real world. The problem of irrational numbers is the opposite: ...

Philosophical Reality of Numbers Numbers for the greater part of history have been viewed alternately as concepts and as quantities. Now, this raises problems about many types of numbers, which include negative numbers and imaginary numbers, because these cannot be viewed as quantities although there are compelling theories that can ...

An Alternative Concept of Evolution Species in modern science are defined by the type of body and often by their DNA, and they evolve through random mutations and natural selection by the environment. Cracks in this notion of evolution appear when one zooms out to look at ecosystems. An ecosystem ...

Introduction to the Problem The debate between individualism and collectivism lies at the heart of all modern political debates, but it is obvious that we could not live without both. If everyone acted individualistically, society—which hinges on cooperation—could not exist; there could be no common agreement on social laws that ...

Introduction and Overview Even as choice and responsibility are essential features of any moral conception of human life, they often present a paradox when the three aspects of the soul—pleasure, ability, and responsibility—are differentiated and what we enjoy becomes different from what we are capable of, and what we are ...

Introduction and Overview The word ‘dharma’ means duty. In the Śrimad Bhāgavatam, dharma is described as a ‘bull’ who stands on four ‘legs’—austerity, cleanliness, truthfulness, and kindness. These principles, also called ‘the four pillars of dharma’, are common to all aspects of human life, including that which is not directly ...

Seven Steps to the Knowledge of God Before we can understand the nature of God, we have to understand the nature of the self or the soul. The soul is identified as the triumvirate of eternity, knowledge, and happiness. In the material world we seek knowledge and happiness but they ...

The Cost of a Chair’s Design Profits require that the whole must be greater than the sum of the parts. For example, half a chair is not half price of the full chair; most times you cannot sell two halves of a chair separately, or price them separately, even when ...

Introduction and Overview The laws of nature in current science are mathematical formulae that predict the behavior of objects deterministically, which precludes any role for choice and morality in nature. Therefore, if nature permitted choices, how would we reconceive natural laws? In Vedic philosophy, the law is a material entity ...

Introduction and Overview Free market economics is about competition between businesses, and it operates under the assumptions of a closed system in which wealth can be redistributed, but the total wealth must remain constant. Capitalism is the contrary idea that the economy is an open system in which wealth can ...

Introduction and Overview In Vedic philosophy, the soul has three properties—sat or consciousness, chit or meanings, and ananda or pleasure. These three aspects of the soul are also reflected in matter and pervade throughout the body—the parts of the body are due to chit, the functions of each of the ...

Introduction and Overview In all Vedic texts the term yajña is used, translated as a “sacrifice”. The performance of yajña is the means by which one advances spiritually. For most people, yajña is seen as a fire lit in a pot into which food grains are offered with a mantra ...

Two Descriptions of the Unconscious The initial thesis of Freudian psychoanalysis and that of Vedic philosophy are similar—that our surface behaviors are the result of a deeper “unconscious” reality. The person in both cases is described hierarchically—e.g. as an iceberg, with only the tip visible, while most of its reality ...

Introduction and Overview Vedic knowledge was previously imparted in a systematic manner, covering the nature of spirit and transcendence, social duties and moral responsibilities, as well as vocational education based upon a person’s role in society. For example, Mahabharata describes how the Pāndava and the Kaurava were sent for education ...

Introduction and Overview “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus,” says that bestseller book from John Gray. This book has become a classic, although it stereotypes both men and women, disregarding the fact that each person has both masculine and feminine tendencies in them to varying degrees. We can ...

Introduction and Overview A soul has three tendencies called sat (consciousness), chit (meaning), and ananda (pleasure), and its choices draw a compromise between meaning and pleasure. The original sat-chit-ananda Absolute Truth creates five forms—Kṛṣṇa, Rāma, Hara, Ramā, and Jīvā, called the pañca-tattva or five categories. Two of these are masculine ...

Introduction and Overview Sāńkhya has a theory of atomism, which is quite different than the theory of modern atomism. The modern description of atoms is based on the distinction between matter and force whereas the Sāńkhya description is based on the distinction between words and meanings. The key question is: ...

Introduction and Overview Vedic philosophy describes the body as a universe and the universe as a body. Since the world is intended for life, there is no fundamental divide between "physical sciences", "life sciences", and "social sciences". The cosmic structure, the social structure, the biological structure, and the psychological structure ...

Introduction and Overview The term guna indicates what we desire, and the term karma indicates what we deserve; both exist as possibilities, but their combination in time produces the cycle of birth and death. This is the essence of the Vedic science in which guna, karma, and kāla combine to create ...

Introduction and Overview This article elaborates on the Sāńkhya theory of the five “gross” elements. The theory is rather complicated, and not well-understood today. One primary source of confusions is a comparison between the Sāńkhya elements and the Greek elements going by the same name. This article will hopefully illustrate ...

Introduction and Overview In an earlier article, I described the problem of computing in nature, namely that scientific laws employ mathematical formulae, but it is not clear how these formulae are being calculated in nature. The reasons for this are historical and date back to Newton’s formulation of the three ...

Introduction and Overview In the previous article, I alluded to the idea that society is built on the stories of heroes, which are produced through a combination of two of the six qualities—knowledge and fame—of Lord Viṣṇu. These heroes can be famed due to other five qualities—i.e. knowledge, renunciation, power, ...

Introduction and Overview All texts like books, magazines, and papers for instance have two components: cognitive and aesthetic. The distinction between the cognitive and the aesthetic is apparent if we distinguish between prose and poetry. They can both convey the same meaning, but poetry says it more aesthetically. Similarly, you ...

Introduction and Overview Since the advent of computers, it has been widely believed that the human mind is just like a computer. I have previously described why this is a false analogy due to two problems: (1) the problem of meaning, and (2) the problem of choice. I have also ...

Introduction and Overview The soul in Vedic texts comprises sat, chit, and ananda—i.e. consciousness or relation to things, the search for meaning, and the search for happiness. The search for meaning creates a personality—i.e. how others know you. The search for happiness creates an individuality—i.e. what kinds of pleasures one ...

Introduction and Overview Many people believe modern science is reductionist and an alternative anti-reductionist science must replace it. This article discusses why Sāńkhya is reductionist—because it reduces everything to only three modes of nature (sattva, rajas, and tamas). It also discusses why Sāńkhya is anti-reductionist—because the first mode of ...

Introduction and Overview The previous article discussed the model of the human body in Ayurveda. The most surprising aspect of Ayurveda is that it is silent on what modern medicine calls heart, lungs, intestines, brain, pancreas, spleen, etc. It is surprising because modern medical education begins with anatomy and memorizing ...

Introduction and Overview Vedic knowledge provides detailed information about many aspects of material nature such as cosmology, sociology, psychology, and biology. For example, the Śrimad Bhāgavatam provides a detailed cosmic model. Varṇāśrama is a sociological model. Sāńkhya is a cognitive model, and Ayurveda is a biological model. All these models ...

Introduction and Overview The world around us is filled with dualities or oppositions. There are two main resolutions of this duality as we have seen earlier—(1) finding the relation between the opposing ideas and the next “higher level” idea from which these oppositions were created, and (2) finding a quantitative ...

Introduction and Overview In Vedic cosmology, space is meant for living beings, because the material universe exists for life. When space is the canvas on which we describe living phenomena, then macroscopic phenomena in the space constitute the evolution of society, while the microscopic phenomena indicate the evolution of the ...

Introduction and Overview This article discusses how locations in a conceptual space are defined differently than in a physical space. A physical space defines locations in relation to an origin, whereas a conceptual space defines locations in relation to a boundary. In a physical space, points are constructed through absolute ...

Introduction and Overview Hierarchical space brings a problem of having to reconcile a hierarchy in an observer with the hierarchy of the different planetary systems in the universe. The problem is that every living being in the universe has a morality, ego, intelligence, mind, senses, properties, and sense objects, but ...

Introduction and Overview Vaishnava literature describes four forms of God—Vasudeva, Saṅkarṣaṇa, Pradyumna, and Aniruddha. These four forms are also said to be the masters of mind (Aniruddha), intelligence (Pradyumna), ego (Saṅkarṣaṇa) and mahattattva (Vasudeva), which are material elements in Sāńkhya. This leads us to ask: how is God the “master” ...

Introduction and Overview In an earlier article, I discussed how I discussed the Sāńkhya notion of manifest and unmanifest matter and how the unmanifest becomes manifest through several stages—para, pasyanti, madhyama, and vaikhari. We also talked about how the agency to cause this manifestation is prāna, which acts as the “force” ...

Introduction and Overview The modern atomic theory describes perception as a change both to reality and to our perception. For instance, when we see the redness of an apple, light impinges on the apple, is absorbed by the atoms in the apple, and then emitted. The color perceived by the ...

Introduction and Overview Even a casual look at Sāńkhya reveals an apparent asymmetry in its ontology, namely that there are five sense-objects called Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Ether, corresponding to the five senses of knowledge Nose, Tongue, Eyes, Skin, and Ears respectively, but there aren’t corresponding sense-objects for the ...

Introduction and Overview Sāńkhya describes four ethers—vaikhari, madhyama, pasyanti, and para—which are successively deeper descriptions of reality. The understanding of the successive ethers depends on the understanding of the previous ether. In that sense, there are four tiers of causality and each such tier must be fully understood to obtain ...

Introduction and Overview Sāńkhya divides matter into manas (mind), prāna (life force), and vāk. Manas and vāk are related as meaning and word or matter and mind. The conneciton between word and meaning is not universal because the same meaning can be expressed by different words in different contexts and ...

Introduction and Overiew The book The Yellow Pill describes the conceptual basis of an economic system different than the one that presently exists. These foundations include: (1) the real economic value lies in the objective properties of matter rather than in its human perception, and an economic system, when organized around ...

Introduction and Overview In Sāńkhya philosophy, each sound has a native meaning. This meaning is used in the chanting of mantras whereby a chanter can derive the benefits of the mantra without knowing hte meaning of the sound. We can also express the same meanings through a different sound but ...

Introduction and Overview Since the 1960s, when computers first appeared, a machine that can think just like humans was claimed to be just a few years away. This idea has been called Artificial Intelligence (AI) and it reappears every few years in a new form, the latest being the brouhaha ...

Introduction and Overview I'm always looking to formulate new ways of describing a problem and its solution; this not only helps us understand what is missing but why the solution is necessary. This article presents a different way of understanding my Semantic Interpretation of Quantum Theory previously described at length ...

Introduction and Overview This article discusses the widespread notion that the mind is some kind of computer; that the computer is able to represent knowledge, and this knowledge can be about the world. As we will see, this notion is silly, although people—who are either not physicists, mathematicians, or computer engineers, ...

Introduction and Overview Modern science employs two contradictory ideas—possibility and choice—although in practice only one of them can be used, resulting in incompleteness. An example of that incompleteness is that quantum theory describes the world as a possibility that needs to be completed by a choice, although that choice cannot ...

Introduction and Overview While writing mathematical equalities, we assume that if A = B, then B = A. But this principle doesn't hold in logic when we employ two concepts, one of which is more general than the other. For example, "cat is a mammal" doesn't imply that "mammal is ...

Introduction and Overview When John von Neumann introduced the idea of the “conscious collapse” into quantum theory, he committed a heresy—or at least something that would have been considered a heresy up until that point—by introducing a causal agent called “consciousness” within science. Science until that point had worked explicitly ...

Introduction and Overview It is commonly assumed that science describes objective facts about the world, which are discovered through measurements of physical properties. The problems in this measurement are generally not understood, and this post describes them, highlighting two key issues of circularity and recursion in the definition of measurement ...

Introduction and Overview Modern science grew out of the idea that the universe is comprised of independent parts, and a complex system can be reduced to these parts without loss of completeness. The independence of parts became the basis of reductionism―the idea that the whole is simply a linear sum ...

Introduction and Overview The Twin Paradox in Einstein's Relativity Theory describes a thought experiment in which there are two identical twins, one of whom makes a journey into space in a high-speed rocket and returns home to find that the twin who remained on Earth has aged more. This article ...

Introduction and Overview What is a Number? Is it an idea or a thing? This question has been debated since Greek times, and it still remains unanswered in philosophy and science. This article examines the nature of the problem, and what its likely resolution will look like. It illustrates how ...

Introduction and Overview Since the time of Greek philosophers—Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates—it has been believed that the present universe is comprised of two things: form and substance. Forms are the ideas that exist even when substances don't; the world of things combines form and substance, kind of like the form of ...

Introduction and Overview A computer is a canonical example of a machine. Every machine can be described by a mathematical theory, and every mathematical theory can be automated on a computer. Therefore if you could describe something mathematically, you could also automate it in a computer. People often suppose that ...

Introduction and Overview This article describes a problem in Evolutionary Theory that arises when we consider why all living beings eventually die. I will compare the death of a living being to a computer program that halts after completing execution. The issue of program halting is problematic in computing theory ...

Abstract An assumption implicit in this question is that non-living objects probably don’t present a problem for materialism, because if that weren’t the case, we would be asking if materialism is a sound approach for all of science and not just the study of living forms. In this essay, I ...

Introduction and Overview One problem that has repeatedly bothered me for the last decade is the distinction between physical properties, their measurements, and the values of properties that are discovered during measurement. I have flip-flopped in my understanding of the problem and what might be a solution. I will use ...

Two Mind-Body Problems The Mind-Body problem in Western philosophy concerns the difficulty in conceiving the nature of the interaction between mind and body, considering that these two are supposed to be different substances—one physical and material while the other spiritual or mystical. In Indian philosophy, matter itself transforms into the ...

Introduction and Overview Every area of knowledge begins with the question: What is reality? If I see an apple, is it real? If I see some work of art and think it is beautiful, is it really beautiful? Is money real? Is power real? Is objectivity real? Does she really ...

Problem of Perception in Materialism How we perceive taste, smell, touch, sound, and sight is a fact about our perception, but it has never been properly understood in biology, psychology, or philosophy. The problem is that we suppose material objects to be the length, mass, charge, momentum, energy, temperature, etc ...

Dualism in Western and Vedic Philosophies Descartes created the mind-body divide and claimed these to be two different substances—the extended substance (res extensa) and the thinking substance (res cogitans). However,  with the progress in science (and attempts to subsume thinking under matter), the distinction between mind and body gets hazier ...