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More specifics
August 25, 2007 by Dr C K Raju (not verified), 2 years 10 weeks ago
Comment id: 24700
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The article lacks specifics because it is not backed by any recent peer-reviewed publication. The ethics of this is well known. Hence, the focus is on the story, not facts, and don't expect the story to be reliable.
On August 25, 2007, Hindustan Times, New Delhi (p. 2), published a correction to this story dismissing it as incorrect. It pointed out that the Indian infinite series have been known to British scholars since 1832 (at least). It also pointed out that work on transmission of the calculus has already been published in my book, "Cultural Foundations of Mathemamtics: the Nature of Mathematical Proof and the Transmission of the Calculus from India to Europe in the 16th c. CE"
The correction also mentioned that one of the researchers had been warned in 2004 by Exeter university against plagiarising my work. So, as you can see, this process of suppressing non-European sources is still very much at work, and it should not be presumed that it happened innocently, any more than the suppression of the non-European sources of the calculus happened innocently. The book relates the origins of racist history to theology and the religious fanaticism that prevailed in Europe during the Crusades and Inquisition. So it would be more accurate to replace the term "non-European" by "theologically incorrect".
You are absolutely right that the Indian material was too far ahead of its times from a European perspective to have been understood there. This thesis is discussed in detail in the book, and you can find a quick glimpse of it from the reactions of Descartes and Galileo mentioned in the elementary expository article on the Indian Rope Trick at http://IndianCalculus.info/ropetrick_journal.pdf . (Descartes, in his Geometry, declared it beyond the capacity of the human mind to determine the length of a curved line.) It was due to this lack of understanding that Newton's theory of fluxions had to be eventually abandoned.
The lack of understanding arose because Indian mathematics was practical unlike European mathematics which was spiritual (since Plato) and theological (since Aquinas). This thesis of a "clash of epistemologies" is disccussed in detail in the book, and in supporting papers indicated at the site http://IndianCalculus.info.