Bridging Indian Knowledge Traditions and Modern Physics:A Critical Framework for Interdisciplinary Inquiry

Abstract

The growing institutional interest in Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) has reopened a difficult but productive question: how should premodern Indian accounts of matter, motion, space, causality, number, astronomy and observation be placed in conversation with modern physics without collapsing historical differences or promoting retrospective claims of scientific priority? This article develops a critical framework for such interdisciplinary inquiry. It is a conceptual and evidence-informed study based on established scholarship in the history and philosophy of Indian science, classical Nyaya–Vaisesika thought, Indian mathematical astronomy, the Kerala mathematical tradition, and contemporary philosophy of science. Rather than claiming that ancient Indian categories are identical to quantum mechanics, relativity or particle physics, the paper distinguishes six possible relations between knowledge traditions: historical precursor, structural analogy, heuristic resonance, independent convergence, substantive incompatibility, and unsupported retrospective projection. Selected cases—Vaiśeṣika atomism and categories of substance and motion; Indian mathematical astronomy; Kerala power-series mathematics; and observer-related epistemology—are examined through this lens. The analysis shows that Indian traditions contain sophisticated conceptual, mathematical and observational practices that deserve historically responsible study, but their scientific significance is best established through philology, contextual history, mathematical reconstruction and empirical validation rather than similarity of vocabulary. An interdisciplinary research protocol is proposed for physics education and IKS scholarship. The framework supports plural intellectual history while preserving the methodological standards that make modern physics experimentally testable and cumulatively revisable.