History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c95.62

v7.c95.62

²⁴⁵³ Prof George Sarton in 'A History of Science' (Harvard University Press, 1952) states (p. 247) that Empedocles born about 490 B. C. (in Greece) postulated only four elements, fire, air, water and earth and that a fifth, ether, was added by Plato and Aristotle. Vide also Introduction (p 11) to Plato's Timaeus (in Loeb's classical library, Vol. VII, ed of 1952) translated by Rev R G. Bury. Plato's exuberant imagination constructed the physical world on the pattern of geometrical figures most familiar to him and assigned the cube to earth and different kinds of triangles to fire, air and water (vide Jowett's translation of Timaeus, Vol III pp. 638-639) The Greek philosophers relied on reason and not on ancient texts (as Indian sages did) and Plato's philosophy and cosmology were looked upon as the acme of wisdom even up to the 19th century, but Sarton (on p 420 of the above work) remarks that modern men of science can regard it only as a monument of unwisdom and recklessness (rather a harsh judgment). Dr. W. M Smart in 'Origin of the Earth' remarks that in probing into the mystery of creation science has not been more successful than the poetic Hebrew expounders of cosmology (pp 8-9) For comparison of ancient Indian ideas on cosmology with those of ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hebrews, and Greeks one may read a small book in the 'Corridors of Time' Series' Vol. I on 'Apes and men' by H. Peak and H J. H. Fleure pp. 6-8 (Oxford, 1927), on p 7 there is a figure of a Babylonian tablet recording part of the creation story. On p 56 it states that the probable place of the origin of man and the period at which human story began are matters of great speculation. The principal questions that arise in cosmology are: (1) when were the earth and planets produced, (2) what is the process that accounts for the present state of the earth and the solar and other systems. Sanskrit works from the Ṛgveda down to the Purāṇas tried to answer these questions in their own ways During the last one hundred years or so the theories of Lemaitre and Darwin and the developments in the sciences of Geology, Biology, Physics and Astronomy have revolutionized the whole conception of cosmology Even the work of Sir A. Eddington 'The expanding Universe' (Cambridge, 1933) has become (Continued from last page) somewhat outmoded by recent discoveries. The present author does not know much of science. But from what little he has read in a few scientific works he may say that the history of science makes it clear that the actual state of man's scientific knowledge is provisional, that scientific theories are always subject to corrections and modifications. For instance, Newton's laws of motion were regarded for over two hundred years as absolutely correct enunciations of fundamental and universal laws of physics, but in recent times they have been found to be mere approximations.