The course is meant for academics and professionals who want to deepen and broaden their understanding of Indian psychology.

Its central focus is on the knowledge, skills and attitudes that are needed if one wants to include elements of Indian Psychology in one’s teaching, research and professional practice.

For further details and the registration form, please visit http://ipi.org.in/events/ssip2012-info.php

The last date for registration is 15 February, 2012.

Matthijs Cornelissen

The global consciousness needs new academic courses that transcend older intellectual tyrannies. Philosophy of science courses worldwide portray the development of science and its dynamic conceptual frameworks as a simple, linear, European development in which the rest of the globe played no role. This would be contrary to history. It is in fact false history.

The proposal to decolonize education—on which most universities are agreed—requires, as a first step, the dismantling of false history, and the equally distorted philosophy of science which accompanies it.

For example, Kuhn’s idea of paradigm shifts builds on the stories of Ptolemy and Copernicus, both of which are today known to be abjectly false: Claudius Ptolemy in fact did not exist, the Almagest is an accretive text; and Copernicus, a priest, copied from Ibn Shatir and the Maragheh school of Nasiruddin Tusi.

The story of the Newtonian revolution also needs critical review. The calculus was invented in India, in a different epistemological soil, hence Newton misunderstood it through the metaphysical doctrine of fluxions. This intrusion of metaphysics into his physics was exactly what led to the failure of his physics. Nevertheless, it is this European misunderstanding of calculus using limits, set theory etc. which is taught in schools and colleges today. This has nil practical value, and most practical applications are done using computers which use a different type of arithmetic closer to the way calculus actually developed in India.

As a third example, consider how myths about early Greeks are used, for example, the present-day formalist philosophy of mathematics is founded on the story of Euclid and his deductive proofs. It is now known that  Euclid did not exist, that the Elements uses empirical proofs even in its very first theorem, and that it was authored many centuries later by “Neoplatonists” who believed in the African idea of mathesis, articulated by Plato. That involved a notion of the soul accepted in early Christianity, but cursed  in post-Nicene theology.

Eventually, military failure in the Crusades led to Thomist Christian rational theology, and the acceptance of mathematics reinterpreted in accordance with it, and disconnected from the soul. Hence, the formalism of Russell and Hilbert ended up making mathematics metaphysical, though better applications to science would requires us to downgrade this Western metaphysics. Doing so not only makes math easy, it leads to better applications in science and technology, as have been recently demonstrated.

There are the well-known racist assertions of Kant and various other European and American philosophers relating human creativity to the colour of the skin, or falsely claiming the universality of 2-valued logic, etc.

There are many more examples of this sort, and all need to be critically reviewed. To escape the trap of these Western myths and superstitions which pervade the present-day history and philosophy of science, a piecemeal approach is inadequate. What is required is a full-scale revision of the history and philosophy of science syllabus from a decolonised perspective, starting almost from scratch.

To do this, a five day  international workshop is scheduled at Al Buhkary International University, Alor Setar, Kedah, Malayasia, from March 26 to 30, 2012 which will be anchored by Prof. C.K. Raju, physicist, mathematician and scholar, presently Visiting Professor at the Universiti Sains Malaysia. For more details, look up www.multiworldindia.org.

Participants would be provided local hospitality for the duration of the workshop. Intending participants should contact Dr Claude Alvares at multiversityindia@gmail.com with a short note on the reasons for their interest in participating in this meeting. The subject of the email must be “Decolonization workshop”, and the email should reach by 15 Feb 2012.

The details about the program and application form are attached with this email. We request you to please share it with students who may benefit from it. The application deadline is March 10th, 2012. Please visit our website www.sambhaavnaa.org for more information about us.

Sandhya Gupta
Sutradhaar
Sambhaavnaa: The Institute of Public Policy & Politics
Kandbadi, Palampur
Dist. Kangra, Himachal Pradesh 176061
Mobile:09816314756
Email: sutradhaar@sambhaavnaa.org
www.sambhaavnaa.org

About the Conference

Registration Form

For more details including the programme, visit the website:

http://www.iisoc.org/iis2012

This book of essays as a sequel to the “International Conference on Decolonising Our Universities” held in Penang, Malaysia from June 27 to 29, 2011. The Conference was jointly organised by Universiti Sains Malaysia and Citizens International in cooperation with the Higher Education Leadership Academy of the Malaysia Ministry of Higher Education.

At the Conference, speaker after speaker pointed out that education in Asia and Africa is too Westcentric. It blindly apes European universities, European curricula and European paradigms. The papers in this volume examine possible ways of overcominig this problem of intellectual enslavement in Asian and African citadels of learning.

Order the book from: http://www.penerbit.usm.my

Call for papers.

We are pleased to inform you that the Department of History and Civilization, IIUM, with the collaboration of International Institute of Islamic Thoughts and Civilization (ISTAC) and the National Archives of Malaysia will be organizing the above programme at ISTAC, IIUM KL Campus on 17th-19th April 2012.

We are inviting you to contribute generously by sending abstract to the conference. You may send your paper in English, Arabic and Bahasa Melayu or Indonesia. We have an editorial board to look your abstracts and papers to make them publishable.

Kindly visit our website for further details: www.ICCD2012.com

ASSOC. PROF. DR. ARSHAD ISLAM
Head
Department of History and Civilization
Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge
and Human Sciences

Please visit our New IIUM Website by clicking www.iium.edu.my

Multiversity, with offices at Penang, Goa and Tehran, proposes to facilitate a week long workshop which will prepare a “decolonised” curriculum on the Philosophy of Science. Most universities do not have such a course of study. If they do, this is mostly structured around some well known names mostly from the western world (including Popper, Kuhn and Feyerabend).

Local organiser of the workshop is the brand new AlBukhary University, located in Kedah, Malaysia. The workshop dates are from 25 March 2012 to 1 April 2012. (Participants will arrive on 25^th and depart on April 1, 2012.)

You are invited to select competent persons who would like to be part of this workshop. We recommend selection of persons who have a background in science and/or mathematics and who may be part of your university’s programmes to initiate or modify “philosophy of science” courses within the university. We also recommend younger rather than older lecturers for the workshop.

The workshop will be conducted by Prof. C.K. Raju who is presently Visiting Professor at the School of Mathematics at the Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang. However, since the workshop programme is being circulated in advance, any of the persons participating in the workshop would be welcome to also address the workshop on areas in which they have core competence.

The specific and limited objective of the workshop: to prepare a curriculum of studies for a philosophy of science course in Asian universities including a syllabus.

The travel to and from Malaysia will be committed by your institution. Local hospitality (including board and lodging) will be made available by AlBukhary University.

Please act on this urgently as we have just three months to go before the workshop.

About Prof. C.K. Raju:

He was awarded the 2010 Telesio-Galilei Academy of Science Award for pointing out an error made by Albert Einstein in his special theory of relativity.

Raju website: http://ckraju.net/

About AlBukhary University:

Website: http://www.aiu.edu.my/

About Multiversity:

Website: www.multiworldindia.org

The incidence of home learners a decade ago was few and far between. Not so today, if one were to go by the traffic on virtual communication and social networking sites. This fact is amply clear from three recent developments.

A full half hour programme was aired recently on national news. It centered round the home educators of Pune city and their children.

Watch it here: http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/india-matters/india-matters-coming-home-to-school/216468

The Nov 28, 2011 issue of Outlook carries a full length article on Home Schooling in India also listing institutes that support such open learning efforts.

Read about it here: http://www.outlookindia.com/printarticle.aspx?279013

Marking the movement’s official presence is a call from home schooling families to initiate a National Body of Homeschoolers under the banner of the Open Learning Foundation which presently is an online group. Its objective is to best represent the rights and interests of parents who wish to take the sole responsibility of teaching their own children.

Write to them here: openlearners@googlegroups.com

The year 2011 may well one day be remembered as a significant one in the history of Home Schooling in India. Parents with complete trust in their children and in their own abilities have made it happen. Parenting has come of age!

Anshuman Das and Malini Mukherjee are offering a “Theatre for Bonding” workshop for the age group 18 and above on 26th, 27th and 28th of November from 11 am to 5 pm at Kolkata.

The workshop is targeted to build performance skills related to theatre. Apart from this, a strong focus would be to build intra and inter personal skills like communication, expression, collaboration etc which are an integral to any performing art.

Malini had been involved with Third Theatre Movement since her university days. She and Anshuman are the founder members of Saanko, a third theatre group in Santiniketan.

As theatre practitioners they have conducted workshops for several groups of theatre enthusiasts. As educators (their second passion) they have used theatre as an education tool for both teachers and students.
To register, please contact Anshuman (9433079847) or Malini (9432338436) by 20th Nov or mail at dasanshuman@yahoo.com or mukherjeemalini@yahoo.co.in.

Requested contribution is Rs 100/- per participant towards venue hire charge.