Claiming something was already discovered in ancient India, a case study.
A lot of Indians love to claim that scientific things were already discovered/invented in ancient India. Although, this is not always incorrect (you can find Panini’s name in the list of pioneers in computer science ), most of these claims are unsubstantiated. Recently, I came across a youtube video claiming Netwon’s Laws of Motion were alreay discovered by Kanada, an ancient Indian plilosopher who is known for his atomist approach of matter (Kana). A big problem with such videos is that they don’t do their research very well and just publish anything that resonates with their ideology.
tl;dr
Please properly check your sources before claiming that “it was already discovered in ancient India”. It is possible that it was but please don’t publish it till you check it, otherwise it just becomes misinformation.
Validity of the Video
A short video titled Is NEWTON Really GREAT? | This will Shock you was published on Youtube. I got intrigued because I share my nickname with Rishi Kanada, a name I got from my late maternal grandfather. This video cites a 2020 paper named Origin of Laws of Motion (Newton’s Law): An Introspective Study which was written by a 2nd year bachelor’s student without any supervision and was publised in a questionable journal
For a second, even if I were to stop questioning this journal and the credential of the author, and go into the paper itself, it still has problems. The sutras (principles) being talked about in the paper don’t even exist in The Vaisheshika Sutras of Kanada. Yes, I checked and none of the sutras start with the word “Vegah” (वेगः meaning impetus). After some reverse engineering I found a 2013 webpage with identical sutras and a 2018 quora question (which probably also picked these up from the former) which have these sutras.
This means that someone made these up and others are propagating this misinformation to the extent that someone published it in a questionable journal and someone else used that paper to bolster their claim in a video. There is already so much misinformation and “already discovered in ancient India” claims don’t help stuff that were actually discovered in ancient India. People have started considering “already discovered in ancient India” as a joke.
Were Newton’s Laws of Motion discovered by Kanada first?
In the previous section I have given evidence as to why the sources of the video linked is fabricated. But that doesn’t prove the claim wrong and one might wonder if the claim if actually correct. The answer to that is yes, and no. I did come across an insightful blog by Dr. Subhash Kak titled “Kaṇāda, Great Physicist and Sage of Antiquity” which does point out to sutras (which actually exist in Vaisheshika Sutras, I checked) which might have the essence of being predecessor ideas to more concrete and explicit versions of Newton’s Laws of Motion. Check out yourself.
I also found a comment in the quora question’s answers which did point to exact sutras corresponding to each of the laws:
1st law
2nd law
3rd law
Conclusion
Even though not exactly the same, these do point to the fact the ancient Indian philosophers might have been thinking in the right direction. This is probably the difference between philosophy and science (I will write a blog about this in the future). And I appreciate the efforts of Rishi Kanada for this. It is especially very surprising for me that he nailed the 3rd law before the Common Era (BCE). Which is very cool!
If you are interested here are 2 different translations/interpretations of “The Vaisheshika Sutras of Kanada”: