The Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus

The author's direct aim in the present work is to furnish the historians of the special sciences with new material which will serve to widen the scope of their survey. The Hindus no less than the Greeks have shared in the work of constructing scientific concepts and methods in the investigation of physical phenomena, as well as of building up a body of positive knowledge which has been applied to industrial technique; and Hindu scientific ideas and methodology (e.g. the inductive method or method of algebraic analysis) have deeply influenced the course of natural philosophy in Asia-in the East as well as the West-in China and Japan, as well as in the Saracen Empire. The author has undertaken a comparative estimate of Greek and Hindu science. Hindu Philosophy on its empirical side was dominated by concepts derived from physiology and philosophy, just as Greek Philosophy was similarly dominated by geometrical concepts and methods. The author has cared to see that the Sanskrit philosophico-scientific terminology, however difficult from its technical character, is rendered exceedingly precise, consistent, and expressive.