Knowledge vs Knowledge Systems in Indian Knowledge Systems
 K. P. Mohanan, PhD (Massachusetts Institute of Technology,1982), taught at the University of Texas-Austin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, the National University of Singapore (NUS), and at the Indian Institute for Science Education and Research, Pune, from where he retired in 2017. |
 Tara Mohanan, PhD (Stanford University, 1990), also taught at NUS, where together, she and Mohanan designed and developed a 4-year undergraduate program in linguistics founded on Inquiry-Oriented Education. |
This talk is the result of a pursuit of the epistemology and ontology of Academic Knowledge that we have been engaged with over the last four decades. Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) was proposed in India in the National Education Policy 2020.
Why, then, is Ayurveda, the sciences of health, illness, and healing that originated in the Indian Subcontinent, dismissed as pseudoscience?
We would like to suggest that the reasons are to be found in (a) the way Ayurveda is presented to the world outside; and (b) the way it is taught to students, as blind faith, instead of as rational knowledge that is open to doubting, questioning, and self-correction.
