I shall discuss the history of Indian astronomy, Aurveda (life science), chemistry and metallurgy to illustrate how downgrading experiments from scientific learning lead to the decline of ancient Indian science and civilization. We shall see that in the glorious period of ancient Indian civilization, lasting up to the 9th century, there was close interaction between experimental investigations and theoretical analyses in each of these sciences. This was further augmented by two-way interactions with the other advanced civilizations of that time. But both these interactions came to an end around 9th century, leading to the stagnation and decline of Indian science and civilization over the next thousand years. This was the cause rather than the consequence of its subjugation by external invaders, though it was no doubt aggravated by the latter.

中文翻译：

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实验在科学进步中的作用：我们的历史教训

我将讨论印度天文学，Aurveda（生命科学），化学和冶金学的历史，以说明科学学习的降级实验如何导致古代印度科学和文明的衰落。我们将看到，在持续到9世纪的印度古代文明的光辉时期，这些科学中的每一种在实验研究和理论分析之间都有密切的相互作用。与当时其他先进文明的双向互动进一步增强了这一点。但是这两种相互作用都在9世纪左右结束，导致印度科学和文明在接下来的1000年里停滞和衰落。这是外来侵略者征服它的原因，而不是后果，尽管毫无疑问，后者会加剧外来入侵者的侵害。