In September 1893, Swami Vivekananda stood before the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago and told an American audience that Hinduism was not a heap of superstitions . Three years later, after a winter of classes in New York, he published “Raja Yoga” (1896). There he went further. Patanjali’s yoga, he said, was a science. Not like a science. A science, as exact as chemistry, open to anyone willing to do the experiment on their own mind.

The audience loved it. The claim does not hold.

Start with what science asks for. Karl Popper put it plainly in “The Logic of Scientific Discovery” (1934): a claim is scientific only if it can, in principle, be shown wrong. You make a prediction, you test it, and if it fails, you drop the idea. Using words like “force” or “energy” does not make a theory scientific. Neither does saying it rests on experience. What matters is the willingness to be refuted. Vivekananda’s yoga never offered that.

Does prana belong in physics?

Look at prana .…