February 03, 2017 Friday
Bedtime Story
Inference as Taught at the Nyaya School
The Hindu Nyaya School was a broad disciplined institution that
almost like a modern university had branches embracing wide spectrum of
subjects, including philosophy, religion and spiritualism.
All those are not only beyond the scope of my stories but I
personally have a subjective revulsion for some of those aspects of so called knowledge
or philosophy.
Religion and spiritualism are among the top of my detest list.
I will restrict myself to two basic themes that the Nyaya School
developed:
1. Epistemology or the science of correct knowledge (In Sanskrit
Pramana-sastra) and the second:
2. System of Logic.
Many of the theories propounded are in the form of hymns and
verses that put forward spiritual curiosities in the form of logical
propositions.
The scholars of the school to my mind took great pains in trying
to fathom the science of rational and reasoned enquiry and pursuit of
knowledge.
They fully understood the difficulties, errors and pitfalls that
accompany any form of knowledge acquisition.
According to the Nyaya School, these exists four means of
acquiring true or meaningful knowledge:
1. Perception
2. Inference
3. Comparison and
4. Testimony of reliable source.
Perception itself is discussed in great detail with special
attention to the limitations of the five human senses and hence the
unreliability of it.
It is in the discussion of inference where the Nyaya School broke
new grounds.
The Sanskrit word for the inference is anumana.
The theory of inference was formalized into a 5-step procedure.
Let me demonstrate these 5-steps of inference or the anumana with
an example.
Step 1.
What is to be proved?
The woman died of septic shock and multi-organ failure.
Step 2.
Reason.
Death of a woman.
Step 3.
Previous Example.
There ought to be previous other cases wherein the death had
similar clinical signs such as fever, tachycardia and falling urinary output.
Step 4.
Application or reaffirmation.
The woman in question who died showed similar signs as is seen in previous
cases of septic shock.
Step 5.
Conclusion.
The woman died of septic shock and multi-organ failure.
This might seem very trivial, but even today many of us even in
our daily lives fail to apply these simple 5-step rules of inference or the
anumana.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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