Past Continuous or Present Perfect? Continuity and Change in Contemporary Indian Philosophy

Contemporary Indian philosophy is a distinct genre of philosophy that draws both on classical Indian philosophical sources and on Western materials, old and new. It is comparative philosophy without borders. In this paper, I attempt to show how contemporary Indian philosophy works through five instances from five of its protagonists: Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya (his new interpretation of the old rope-snake parable in his essay “Śaṅkara’s Doctrine of Maya”, 1925); Daya Krishna (I focus on the “moral monadism” that the theory of karma in his reading leads to, drawing on his book Discussion and Debate in Indian Philosophy, 2004); Ramchandra Gandhi (his commentary on the concept of Brahmacharya in correspondence with his grandfather, the Mahatma, in his essay “Brahmacharya”, 1981); Mukund Lath (on identity through—not despite—change, with classical Indian music, Rāga music, as his case-study, in his essay “Identity through Necessary Change”, 2003); and Rajendra Swaroop Bhatnagar (on suffering, in his paper “No Suffering if Human Beings Were Not Sensitive”, 2021). My aim is twofold. First, to introduce five contemporary Indian philosophers; and second, to raise the question of newness and philosophy. Is there anything new in philosophy, or is contemporary philosophy just a footnote—à la Whitehead—to the writings of great thinkers of the past? Is contemporary Indian philosophy, my protagonists included, just a series of footnotes to classical thinkers both in India and Europe? Footnotes to the Upaniṣads, Nāgārjuna, Dharmakīrti and Śaṅkara, as much as (let us not forget colonialism and Macaulay) to Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Hegel? Footnotes can be creative and work almost as a parallel text, interpretive, critical, even subversive. However, my contention is that contemporary Indian philosophy (I leave it to others to plea for contemporary Western philosophy) is not a footnote, it is a text with agency of its own, validity of its own, power of its own. It is wholly and thoroughly a text worth reading. In this paper, I make an attempt to substantiate this claim through the philosophical mosaic I offer, in each instance highlighting both the continuity with classical sources and my protagonists’ courageous transgressions and innovations.

On pairwise super continuous mappings in bitopological spaces

The aim of this paper is to define and study super-continuous mappings and some other forms of continuity such as strong continuity, perfect continuity and complete continuity in bitopological spaces and investigate the relations between these kinds of continuity and their effects on some kinds of spaces.

Characterization of Al and Al-Cr-Al Thin Films

ABSTRACTTEM, X-ray diffraction, and electrical resistivity measurements were used to study the microstructure and the growth of AI-Cr-AI film sandwiches, where the individual Al layers were 300 Å thick and the Cr thickness was varied between 0–10 atomic layers. The base vacuum was around 1.0 × 10−10 torr, substrate temperatures varied between 100–350 °C, and evaporation rates were 3Å/s for Al and ∼0.1 – 0.2 Å/s for Cr. All Al films had a strong (111) texture and showed a non-percolative island structure at 350 °C. The films became connected at lower substrate temperatures, reaching perfect continuity at 100°C. However, electrical conductivity is achieved also for the films deposited at 350 °C when one or more atomic layers of Cr are sandwiched between the Al layers. Results for the superconducting critical temperature and resistivity are discussed in terms of Cr diffusion into Al and the film size effect.

The Curriculum of Mathematics in Secondary Schools

The high-school subjects in mathematics are algebra and plane geometry. Changes in content or in method, if any, should be made for purposes that may be enumerated as follows: first, to secure more perfect continuity with the elementary school work; second, to prepare more perfectly for comprehension of mathematical science in general; third, to secure the pupil’s spontaneous interest by giving him as wide command as possible of such utilitarian problems as are likely to enlist his ambition.

XII.–Note on a Crystallised Slag isomorphous with Olivine

The crystals referred to were found in considerable quantity in the slags produced in Mr. Hollwaf's experiments on the reduction of metallic sulphides at Penistone, in July 1878.The experiments were carried out with ordinary Bessemer plant. Upon running the molten mass from the ladle into one of the ingot moulds the slag ran in a thick stream of perfect continuity, falling without noise a distance of some feet into the liquid portion below. The crystals occurred lining cavities in the partially cooled slag from which a portion of the molten material had been withdrawn.