He added that Bhaskaracharya’s book was published in 1210 AD and Newton found it after 500 years. I am talking about Bhaskaracharya who discovered the theory of gravitation and it was 1150 AD ” the Nepalese PM said. Who discovered gravity first Bhaskaracharya or Newton? For the elements earth and water that place is the center of the (geocentric) universe the natural place of water is a concentric shell around the earth because earth is heavier it sinks in water. Science paves a systematic path to get at the best possible approximation of the truth or the unknown.The Aristotelian explanation of gravity is that all bodies move toward their natural place. Science, unlike these “isms”, is not staking claim to exclusive, privileged and hegemonic access to ultimate “truth”, “reality”, “God”, or whatever one likes to call the Unknown. That uncertainty is built into science is proof that unlike religion, nationalism and sociopolitical “isms” with their associated orthodoxies, the scientific method is self-correcting and reinvents itself or perishes in the face of observations not predicted by its framework.
Therefore, the uncertainty in our understanding of the world gained through careful, painstaking scientific research over centuries can’t be replaced by assertions based on superstition and all kinds of quackery as has become commonplace in today’s age of taking random WhatsApp forwards and YouTube videos as gospel. That is because assuming such fantastical concepts and pursuing them in a logical manner has not only led to spectacular scientific achievements such as knowledge of the physical and chemical nature of our cosmos, and the anatomy, physiology and biochemistry of processes that sustains life, but also ushered in technological advancements such as antibiotics, vaccinations, computers, mobile phones, internet and GPS without which modern life can’t be imagined. It would be wrong to conclude from this that if scientific theories are indeed creations of the human mind, then Newton and Einstein are only as “true” as a lay person and, as such, we needn’t bother listening to scientists about climate change, pollution, and vaccinations. Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws, but whether this agent be material or immaterial is a question I have left to the consideration of my readers.” In fact, Newton himself was embarrassed by his idea as he noted in his correspondence with Richard Bentley : “It is inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should (without the mediation of something else which is not material) operate upon and affect other matter without mutual contact…That gravity should be innate inherent and essential to matter so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum without the mediation of anything else by and through which their action or force may be conveyed from one to another is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters any competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it. However, when one sees it as a mystical force acting remotely between objects then the absurdity of the concept of gravity seems inescapable. I am sure it feels absurd to say that the law of gravity, indeed gravity itself, didn’t exist before Newton.
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