Social media (Whatsapp, facebook, twitter etc) is full of a lot of big claims and often people find it difficult to wrap their heads around them. Check out e.g. the following, which seems to be doing rounds now a days among many patriotic Indians:
If this claim is true, this is one of the biggest discoveries in the history of science. So, it is worthwhile taking a careful look at it. Let's note the following:
(1) Though the headline makes a claim about the discovery of gravitation by Kanada, the main text makes a claim about what we refer to as Newton's Laws of motion,
(2) How come the claimant did not see it necessary to mention which British university has accepted that Newton stole his law of gravitation from the work of Kanada? How come the claimant did not consider it to be important to mention the chapter number/paragraph in Kanada's book?
(3) There are two possibilities: either this claim is true, or it is false. One way such a false claim could be propagated is the following: just translate the known Newton's laws into Sanskrit and post on the internet.
(4) If it is true, this claim is so huge that probably, it must be on news channels and newspapers in all the countries of the world (since Newton's law of gravitation is taught all over the world). Why is it not on e.g. New-York Times? Similarly, if this claim is true, it must be published in the most important journals, the books written about this stupendous discovery must be published by the best and most ambitious publishers. How come this is only getting circulated on facebook/whatsapp? Is this a global conspiracy against Indians? Let us not forget the same world media regularly lauds a Vishwanathan Anand or a Sachin Tendulkar.
Thus, the only way this could be true is if there is a world-wide conspiracy by all of media not to mention it, how likely is it that the entire world media is convinced to follow such a directive?
(5) Also, the claim is that Newton did not independently discover it but stole it. What is the evidence in favour of the stealing?
(6) Even if this is true, one must understand that Newton's claim to fame isn't just that he wrote three sentences and called them his laws: in his book principia, he used these laws to do calculations and make predictions. E.g. using the laws of motion and the law of gravitation, he showed that if the gravitational force falls off as inverse square of distance, the trajectory of a planet must be a conic section (this is a calculation all undergrads in physics/math learn). Did Kanada also do this and similar calculations? If yes, where are they located in his book?
(7) At this stage, we haven't even checked whether the stuff written in Sanskrit even means what it is claimed to mean, or whether the Sanskrit language used here is the one used during 600-200 BC. Furthermore, we haven't even opened Kanada's book to check whether these phrases appear anywhere.
Given these observations, it seems that very straightforward reasoning suggests that this claim is much more likely to be false than to be true. Notice that this conclusion is based on evidence and logic and not on any prejudice against Kanada or in favour of Newton.
If it is indeed false, why is it being circulated? What is the purpose of this propaganda? Does asking such reasonable questions about the validity of this claim make us anti-national? Worth giving some thought.
In this regard, see,
- HISTORY AS MYTH, MYTH AS HISTORY (published in the Hindustan Times, 18th January 2015) by Ramachandra Guha;
- It is also useful to read about what is propaganda, see e.g. the wikipedia article;
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