{"id":9112,"date":"2010-12-12T12:50:34","date_gmt":"2010-12-12T11:50:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=9112"},"modified":"2010-12-12T12:50:34","modified_gmt":"2010-12-12T11:50:34","slug":"devotee-scholars-attend-cosmology-conference-at-bangalore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=9112","title":{"rendered":"Devotee Scholars attend Cosmology Conference at Bangalore"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Basu Ghosh Das<\/strong><\/p>\n

To see pictures of the event please click:
\n
\nhttp:\/\/picasaweb.google.com\/basughoshdas2\/PerspectivesOfTheUniverseAGlobalConferenceOnCosmologiesBangaloreDecember242010#<\/a><\/p>\n

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\nA \u201cGlobal Conference on Cosmologies \u2013 Perspectives of the Universe\u201d took place from December 2-4, 2010, at Bangalore The conference was organized by the Srinivas Jyotish Vigyan Research Foundation, founded and headed by Sri Dev Nath Acharya, and headquartered at Srirangam, Tamil Nadu.
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\nThe conference venue was the auditorium of the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), located on the campus of the famed Indian Institute of Science, established more than a century ago.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

The invited speakers were accommodated in the NIAS guesthouse adjacent to the auditorium.
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\nThe conference was inaugurated by Karnataka Chief Minister (functional head of the Government of Karnataka), the Honorable Sri B.S. Yeddyurappa.\u00a0 In his inaugural address he expressed his pleasure of being present at the conference as well as expressing the importance of the knowledge of the ancient Indian literatures.
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\nThe keynote address was presented by Dr. G. Madhavan Nair, the former chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization, ISRO, the Indian Government space exploration agency.\u00a0 He presented a slideshow depicting ISRO\u2019s \u201cChandrayaan\u201d project that launched an unmanned research vehicle into outer space, and its findings. \u00a0
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\nThe rest of the 3-day conference was a series of sessions in which various invited academics discussed Cosmology in its various aspects from different perspectives.
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\nThe list of prominent speakers included Professor B. V. Sreekantan, the distinguished High Energy Astrophysicist, Dr. Smita Jha from the humanities department at IIT Rourkela, , Dr. Jarita Holbrook from UCLA, Rasaraj Das, Director of the Bhaktivedanta Institute, Prof. M.A. Lakshmi Thathachar of the Samskrit Foundation, Prof. M. Venkata Krishnan, Head of the Dept. of Vaishnavism, Madras University, Sri. R. Ganesh, \u201cshata avadhani\u201d, Prof. K. Ramasubramanian, Presidential Awardee from the Humanities Department at IIT, Bombay, and Dr. Priyadarshana Jain, Head, Dept. of Jainism, Madras University.<\/p>\n

The readers of this would be particularly happy to learn that three ISKCON devotees, Basu Ghosh Das (yours truly, President, ISKCON Baroda), Rasaraja Prabhu (AKA Prof. Ravi Gomatam, Director, Bhaktivedanta Institute, as well as Director for the newly formed Institute for Semantic Information Sciences and Technology [ISIST], Berkeley\/Bombay) and Sriman Antardwip Das (Bhaktivedanta Academy, Sridham Mayapur), were invited to speak, and each gave a talk and submitted written papers at the conference.
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\nRasaraja Prabhu\u2019s talk was titled \u201cToward a possible new mathematical conception of space to understand Puranic cosmology scientifically.\u201d He started by pointing out that Bhagavat descriptions of cosmology seem to defy common sense perception and modern scientific observations, as in describing the height of the Himalayas as 80,000 miles (SB 5.6.19). <\/p>\n

He then showed how his own original research in developing a new field of physics called Macroscopic Quantum Mechanics (MQM) opens the way for a new conception of space in both scientific and commonsense thinking that can fit Bhagavat descriptions nicely. One of the attendees, a physics teacher, later said that while many other attempts to link Vedic cosmology to modern science were weak, \u201cyour talk alone made attending the conference worthwhile for me.\u201d
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\nBasu Ghosh Das, who\u2019s talk was entitled \u201cThe Cosmos and it\u2019s depiction in the Temple of the Vedic Planetarium: presenting the Bhagavat concept of the Universe to the World\u201d first of all presented a short movie displaying the design concepts of the Temple of the Vedic Planetarium at Mayapur.<\/p>\n

He then explained how ISKCON was founded to propagate the vedic concepts, knowledge and dharma around the world. ISKCON\u2019s founder-acharya Srila Prabhupada conveyed the clear conception of the origin of the universe based on both the Mahabharata \u2013 in the Bhagavad-gita \u2013 and the Srimad Bhagavatm, the Bhagavat Mahapurana.<\/p>\n

He also commented that Prabhupada and the vedic tradition teaches that the vedas, itihasas and puranas are true history and not mythology. He expressed surprise that a number of Indian scholars accept the Western contention that this is all false, and that they accept the \u201cwild speculation\u201d of the \u201cbig bang\u201d theory of the creation of the Universe.<\/p>\n

He presented more than sixty slides showing the Bhagavat conception of the creation and the universe, Srila Prabhupada\u2019s desire to construct the ToVP, Srila Prabhupada inspiring Ambarish Prabhu (Alfred B. Ford) to finance the ToVP, and pictures of the ongoing construction of the ToVP at Mayapur and section plans of the ToVP. He also presented a few interesting details about the construction of the ToVP, such as the fact that the ToVP will be supported by two thousand seven hundred pilings that have already been made, and that in the pilings stainless steel was used instead of regular steel, etc.<\/p>\n

Antardwip Prabhu spoke on the topic: \u201cOn reconciling Puranic cosmologies and Surya Siddhanta.\u201d He pointed out that while Puranic cosmologies give a description that presupposes subtler planes of perception, the Siddhanta texts describe a cosmology more akin to present common sense perception, and how both descriptions can be reconciled.<\/p>\n

Rasaraj Prabhu chaired one of the nine, one and a half hour sessions, and Basu Ghosh Das also chaired one session.<\/p>\n

Some of the other topics presented at the conference: African Cosmology, Pre-historic observational astronomy in India, Creation \u2013 Shrishti Vignana [presenting the vedic concept of cosmology], Physics of Rotating and Expanding black-hole universe, Metaphysics and modern Science, Cosmogony and space from rock arts, Cosmology of Sankhya-yoga, Reconciling aspects of Darshanas [the six ancient Indian philosophies] and modern physics, The esoteric cosmology of the Vedas, Ancient Indian Cosmology \u2013 observational perspectives, How did Indian Astronomers predict the celestial events accurately?, Cosmology in ancient art, Cosmology in Sanskrit folk literature, Indian astronomical tables with special reference to the South Indian practices, Cosmic geometries of holy places of North India, Jain Cosmology and it\u2019s application for conscious evolution, Cosmology and Agama [shastras], Cosmology according to the Puranas, and Cosmology and Sankhya.<\/p>\n

Concluding the program, the Honorable former Justice of the Supreme Court of India, Sri M.N. Venkatachaliah gave the valedictory address. Thereafter, concluding remarks were presented by the NIAS Director, Prof. V.S. Ramamurthy.
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\nThe proceedings of the conference containing all the papers will be published in the near future by the organizers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Basu Ghosh Das<\/strong><\/p>\n

A \u201cGlobal Conference on Cosmologies \u2013 Perspectives of the Universe\u201d took place from December 2-4, 2010, at Bangalore The conference was organized by the Srinivas Jyotish Vigyan Research Foundation, founded and headed by Sri Dev Nath Acharya, and headquartered at Srirangam, Tamil Nadu<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9112\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}