Astronomy gyan of our Commie leader!

(1) Copernicus was the first person to put forward a heliocentric model for the planetary system.

(2) An unheard Arab scientist “Al Hessan”  was the leading light  who inspired eminent scientists like Galileo and Newton !!

and in a typical communist style he goes on to bash Church, Americans, English men, Vedic mathematics and what not!

Ignoramus comrade he is, he did not know that Keralites — astronomers from his own region — were responsible for some of the most revolutionary discoveries  in astronomy!

He does not mention even a *single word* on any of the following:

(i) Astronomers from his own state Kerala, much before Copernicus, had shown that planets like Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn orbit the Sun [2] .(see the research paper attached)

(ii) Much before Galileo and Newton, there existed a famous “Kerala School of Astronomy and Mathematics” — a group of pioneer astronomers and mathematicians (see the links below: [3] and [7]).

(iii) He had nothing to say about the well known Kerala astronomers like Madhava,Nilakantha Somayaji, Parameshvara etc who had made revolutionary discoveries in astronomy and mathematics and is now well accepted all over the world.(see the links below [4] and [7])

(iv)  Arguably the most  important mathematical/astronomical  texts of that era were written in  Kerala — Nilakantha’s magnum opus “Tantrasangraha” and Jyesthadeva’s  “Yuktibhasa” .

(v) Now scientists consider   “Tantrasangraha”  as a landmark in the history of astronomy (see the links below [5] and [6]). But our comrade is silent about this.

What does this show ? This shows the standard of a communist intellect. This also shows that one shouldn’t trust the “history” lessons given by a communist!

References

[1] Mathrubhumi daily,  14 Nov 2008 

[2] K. Ramasubramanian, M. D. Srinivas, M. S. Sriram (1994).
“Modification of the earlier Indian planetary theory by the
Kerala astronomers (c. 1500 AD) and the implied heliocentric
picture of planetary motion”, Current Science 66, p. 784-790.
(first page attached; available online)
http://www.scribd.com/share/upload/7042032/19zv2u9gymzovm2fz8fi

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala_school_of_astronomy_and_mathematics

[4] http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Indexes/Indians.html

[5] http://www.springerlink.com/content/j226722t710368k6/

[6] http://www.ias.ac.in/resonance/Apr2003/Apr2003BookReview.html