Date: Fri,  2 Jan 2004 04:48:19 -0600
Subject: Fwd: RE: Re: BHA: Social Science, doing science & CR


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Hi all:

Meera Nanda just responded to me off list with the following remark.  It seems
to speak to a number of concerns raised by other list-members.

Viren

----- Forwarded message from Meera Nanda <meerananda-AT-comcast.net> -----
    Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 15:17:50 -0500
    From: Meera Nanda <meerananda-AT-comcast.net>
Reply-To: Meera Nanda <meerananda-AT-comcast.net>
 Subject: RE: Re: BHA: Social Science, doing science & CR
      To: vvmurthy-AT-uchicago.edu

Dear V. Murthy:

Just a small intervention: I fully agree with you that Hindutva ideologues,
as you say, "actually presuppose the validity of science, when they try to
link traditional Indian philosophy with modern science." Not just Hindu
rightists, but indeed, religious conservatives and fundamentalists of ALL
faith traditions *fully* appreciate the validity of science. (Why do you
think they are so keen to appropriate science, tame it, take on its
prestige?) In *that* sense, they are much more astute and worldly-wise than
the tenured radicals who assume a stance of utter disdain toward the
question of validity and persuasiveness of the scientific world-picture.

Nowhere in my work have I ever denied that Hindutva accepts the superior
sense-making potential of modern science. (Indeed, a while ago I wrote a
short piece for The Week (Chennai) which was titled "Why Hindutva Loves
"Science").

In my book, I show very clearly that Hindutva ideologues are very different
from crude Taliban-style fundamentalists, or even the old-fashioned
creationists, who are determined to protect the literal truth of their
sacred texts, even (or *especially*)  in matters that overlap with natural
sciences.  Instead, Hindutva ideologues see themselves as defenders of "true
science" derived from the Vedas which they say will be a more complete
science of nature. Unlike "Western" "Semitic" and "dualist" science (i.e.,
modern science as we know it) Vedic science will not exclude the presence of
"spirit" from "mere matter," and reduce knowledge to "mere
facts"/"objectivity"  without "values"/"subjectivity." They claim that they
don't reject science, but only seek to "decolonize" it and "transcend" it by
incorporating it in the unified, holistic cosmology of the Vedanta.

Incidentally, in this insistence on making science "better," more "unified"
and whole, Vedic science is no different from the strands of the so-called
theistic science among the intelligent-design creationists in the West, or
the so-called Islamic science among Islamic philosophers.

Now, the central aim of all these so-called "sacred sciences" is to present
their own Brahman-soaked/ God-created cosmologies as legitimate scientific
explanations of the world. All these movements of "strong religion" (Scott
Appleby's label for fundamentalists) are not content to take god as a light
in their hearts. They want their version of God to be actually working in
the world of nature and men, right here and now, at every moment,
everywhere. The liberal separation of faith and reason is not for them: they
want faith to actively inform reason.

What has postmodernism to do with this?

Very simply: Postmodern perspectivalism and anti-dualism have provided
philosophical arguments that the defenders of the faith use in order to
bring their sacred sciences at par with modern science.

The fundamental social-constructivist thesis - namely, all truths are active
cultural constructions, and not closer representations of the independently
existing objects in nature --   has opened the door for justifying
alternative truths as equally valid, equally scientific and equally
deserving of state support for education and research.

Indeed, as I have shown in my book, "Prophets facing Backward," there is an
exact overlap between the radical/feminist/postcolonial defense of local
knowledges of the oppressed and the Hindutva defense of Vedic science. The
alternative science proponents have no arguments against those who defend
vedic astrology, for e.g.

Does this mean I am censoring all defenses of all local knowledges? Does
that mean I am rejecting all empricial sciences of non-Western peoples? Not
at all. I am only suggesting that they all need to prove their worth against
the same standards of acceptability as those developed by modern science.
Local knowledges are welcome as long as they can pass rigorous double-blind
tests and as long as the causal mechanisms underlying them can be discovered
and expressed in universal laws of science. (The universality of the
standards has been under attack by the postmodernists.)



**



I apologize for interjecting in this debate without being invited to.

A friend of mine forwarded me the discussions about my Frontline essay. I
could not help making this clarification. I hope you won't mind

Wish you  a wonderful new year

Meera Nanda

Ps. the second part of the essay in question has appeared in print already.
It should be on the website of the Frontline within a day or so
(http://www.flonnet.com <http://www.flonnet.com/> )

All I am saying is that the philosophical arguments in which the superiority
of these supposed alternatives to the naturalist ontology and objective
epistemology of modern science


----Original Message-----
From: Ralph Dumain [mailto:rdumain-AT-igc.org]
Sent: Wednesday, December 31, 2003 11:31 PM
To: meerananda-AT-comcast.net
Subject: Fw: Re: BHA: Social Science, doing science & CR


-----Forwarded Message-----

From: vvmurthy-AT-uchicago.edu
Sent: Dec 30, 2003 8:58 PM
To: bhaskar-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
Subject: Re: BHA: Social Science, doing science & CR



Hi Tobin, Carrol, Steve, Mervyn and all,



grendal: thanks for cleaning up the article; I was having some trouble
sending it. The article published in the Indian newspaper, the Hindu
thehindu-AT-web1.hinduonnet.com

I think Tobin is correct to point out some of the flaws in Nanda's
arguments.

I think the relativist version of postomodernism is especially prevalent
in the US and hence I have become more sympathetic to some strands of it,
since I have been away from the states past year.  For example, I think
that in China some aspects of pomo have served to criticize an overly
positivist conception of science.  Of course, I still don't think that one
can find in pomo an adequate theory of objectivity and this is why, even
though many pomos do not want to be relativist, they may end up there.
Lacanians are an excellent example, since they often talk about the "real"
which escapes signification and disrupts it.  I thought this might be
something like Bhaskar's existentially intranstive realm; however for
Lacanians it seems that the real only comes into view as ruptures and
hence one can not have any type of access to it (mediated or unmediated).
I think Steve may have been expressing a version of this position, since
he associated mediated access with ideology.

There is one other potential problem with Nanda's link between the
postmodernists and the Indian rightists. Unlike the pomos, the Indian
rightists actually presuppose the validity of science, when they try to
link traditional Indian philosophy with modern science.  The pomos, I
think would like to stress the difference between these different ways of
knowing, but avoid any king of value judgement.  Hence the pomos would
retort that it is not pomo relativism, but scientism that is at the back
of the Hindu right.  So, according to the pomos, in the hands of the Hindu
right, the Indian tradition ceases to offer resistance to the Western
science, since there interpretation of ancient texts reduces them to
versions of Western science.

I think Tobin and Mervyn's responses provides a way to develop a more
sensitive version of Nanda's critique.  In short, the answer is clearly
not to abandon all non-Western forms of knowing.  As Tobin noted, many
aspects of traditional medicine continue to work.  Critical realism may
provide an overarching framework to evaluate traditional forms of
knowledge.  The point is that if such forms of knowledge work, then they
have probably grasped something about a reality that exists, at least,
quasi-independently of one's subjective will. I think, for example, even
traditional Chinese and Indian medicine presuppose some notion of
objectivity--your qi being out of balance is an objective phenomena.

Viren





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