Indian Physics: Outline of Early History

Abstract

Historians of science are generally unaware of the contributions of India to physics. The main reason for this is that very little research has been done on the subject in the recent past, a consequence of the fact that there are few history of science departments in Indian universities. The objective of this paper is to present a preliminary outline of early history of physics in India. The schools of Vaisheshika and Samkhya, that were interested in general principles of atomic theory and cosmology, are discussed. In particular, ideas on atoms and molecules, the nature of sound, causality, universals, cosmology, uniform and non-uniform motions are described.

36 pages

References in corpus (5)

• Greek and Indian Cosmology: Review of Early History
• Babylonian and Indian Astronomy: Early Connections
• Yajnavalkya and the Origins of Puranic Cosmology
• On Aryabhata's Planetary Constants
• The Cyclic Universe: Some Historical Notes

Cited by in corpus (13)

• Aristotle and Gautama on Logic and Physics
• Nyaya-Vaisheshika: The Indian Tradition of Physics
• Aryabhata's Root Extraction Methods
• Early Record of Divisibility and Primality
• The Aryabhata Algorithm Using Least Absolute Remainders
• Indian Cosmological Ideas
• The Theory Of Matter in Indian Physics
• Aryabhata's Mathematics
• The Conception of Atom in Greek and Indian Physics
• Mendeleev and the Periodic Table of Elements
• A Note on Aryabhata's Principle of Relativity
• Space and Time as Containers of the "Physical Material World" with some Conceptual and Epistemological Consequences in Modern Physics
• Time Cycles in Indian Cosmology