1

SCIENCE SEEKS CERTITUDE. A human being is naturally curious about two fundamental problems which are contained in the sentences: "Whence this world?" and "Who am I? When the first of these questions is kept in mind, we may be said to limit our enquiry to the visible world, perceived or perceptible. In its extended sense this domain can be said to comprise that of physics.

When one puts to oneself the question "Who am I?" one has to do so with the knowledge of factors which are not merely physical. One has to rely more on concepts than on mere percepts derived from sense data. One introspects or speculates on general ideas, mostly taken for granted by common sense experience. Such ideas are largely relied upon in the matter of arriving at any degree of certitude in metaphysics, which is the other aspect of knowledge, besides physics, under reference here. One's whole vision vis-a-vis the Physical world, together with one's own subjective experience, which is not experimentally demonstrable, thus emerges into view as the legitimate and unified basis of our present enquiry, containing the domains proper to physics and metaphysics. Physics is quantitative while metaphysics may be said to be qualitative. If physics gives primacy to space, metaphysics may be said to give primacy to time. if physics is phenomenal, metaphysics is noumenal. If physics is relative, metaphysics tends to look at this relative plurality in the light of something that is non-relative. When physics and metaphysics, thus understood, are treated unitively so that the certitude contained in the one helps the certitude contained in the other, by mutual verification, we have the beginnings of a Science of the Absolute.

2

The Science of the Absolute can also be called a Science of Sciences, a Unified Science, or an integrated body of knowledge. When such an enquiry is pushed further, so as to yield a common notion serving as a normative reference for all sciences, we then have a fully integrated Science of the Absolute.

Science, in its progressive and triumphant march, and as it is now understood, is faced with the problem of incertitude rather than the certitude which it thought it was gaining. The inductivo-hypothetical approach to the formulation of scientific laws or theories, based on calculations found permissible according to prevailing practices in mathematics, yields at present varying pictures of the physical world. Scientific myth-making is a danger to which we are becoming more and more exposed. When science is thus being allowed to part company with common sense, one becomes confused, both about what one should doubt as well as what one should believe. A normative or integrated notion of the Absolute, such as we have indicated above, can alone act as a regulative reference in this matter. Thus our attempt to give precision to the whole range of scientific thought is not a fanciful undertaking. Science, even as at present understood, consists of both conceptual and perceptual factors, being a mixture of calculations and observations.

3

The notion of the Absolute has gone out of favour in the world of modern thought. This notion often leaves a bitter taste behind it when mentioned in the various contexts of modern life. In politics this bitterness is felt at its worst, as absolutism is quickly associated with totalitarianism, fascism, or dictatorship. The absolute religious authority of the Church has also contributed to this aversion, nay, horror, in the best of modern western minds. The excesses of the Inquisition and of witch-hunting, associated with the regime that has now been superseded by what is called the Age of Enlightenment or Reason, has given to scepticism a more dignified position than to any dogmatically authoritarian set of beliefs.

Modern humanity is still trying its best to shake off the after-effects of the nightmare of the Dark Ages, when the Pope wielded unbridled and arbitrary authority and, what is more, glaringly misused such authority. The one concern of modernism is to avoid a relapse into this outmoded way of thinking. The very notion of the Absolute, although implicitly taken for granted by almost all Western Philosophers, from Hume to Hegel, has begun to be at least explicitly discredited. Modern Philosophy is sometimes characterized as being non-absolutist and analytical.¹

When we keep these modern prejudices in mind, we know in advance that the very title of the present work will raise doubt and suspicion about the tenability of even taking one's position on the side of the notion of the Absolute.

4

Our excuse for taking such a position is that modernism, especially progressive modern scientific thought, has made it imperative for us to drastically revise epistemological, methodological and axiological foundations, whether of philosophy, or science, or both.

Unified science cannot recognize any frontiers, nor can it set itself any limitations between the various scientific disciplines, It must form an interrelated whole, with a proper absolutist epistemology, methodology, and axiology. It must also transcend the limits of language, tragically referred to in the Bible as "Babelization" or confusion of tongues. Parochial cultural values vary from one geographical unit to another. Linguistic frontiers exist between vernacular and vernacular. Tradition and custom also contribute to the crisscross patterns that cut across and divide common human understanding, making for many specialized and closed branches and sub-branches of their own The bane of compartmentalization and overspecialization of departments of knowledge is an impediment, rather than a guide, to a healthy and intelligent life.

Varied units, standards, norms and frames of reference are presently being adopted at random by specialists in the various branches of science. Double and multiple standards also prevail sometimes within the same discipline. The Special, the General, and the Unified Field Theories of modern relativity are examples of such a tendency. There are thus implied in many cases subtle violations of fundamental epistemological laws, often resulting in confusion between the arbitrary axiomatic convention in mathematical or logical thinking, and the actual experimental data to which they are meant to refer.

5

Conceptualism and perceptualism ought to lend validity to each other without either one being given exclusive primacy. The a priori approach and the a posteriori approach often interlace promiscuously making scientific literature sometimes resemble fable or even myth, and almost always violating the standpoint of common sense. A unified or normative Science, based on the notion. of the Absolute, can alone serve as a regulative factor to effect orderly integration of all branches of human enquiry. Thus it would be possible and necessary to transcend geographical, cultural and linguistic frontiers if anything like a Unified Science is to emerge at all. Without this, both physics and metaphysics treated unilaterally are bound to confuse the healthy sense of human values which alone can guide humanity purposefully and consistently to its natural goal.

An integrated Science of all sciences, implying both normalization of concepts and their renormalization with reference to the domain of percepts, has become in our time an imperative need; hence the justification for the present work. Modern progress in mathematics is opening the way more and more to the possibility of such a science.

Modern trends in scientific investigation are revealing that certain striking common features are at once characterizing both the microcosmic and the macrocosmic worlds. Science is becoming more interested in description than in actual objective facts as unilaterally understood. Concepts thus gain more importance and what is more, the observer and the observed tend to belong together to a common context.

6

Thus cosmology and psychology are approaching each other, as it were, from opposite poles of the total knowledge-situation to which both belong. In such a process of integration of perceptual and conceptual aspects, physics and metaphysics have their equal share of importance on neutral ground. Quantum Mechanics relies on the same structure as is found in astronomy. Mathematics, logic and semantics are also revealing each day new parameters on the structural frontier which tend to conform to each other, as between disciplines previously considered to be different or distinct. Many modern books are beginning to stress the common structural aspect that underlies both the "subject-matter" and the "object-matter" of science. In the philosophy of science we have begun unconsciously to develop a science of philosophy, because of the common structural features that underlie both.

The logical form was known to Aristotle. Now we speak of logical frames, or matrices, which are valid and common as even between man and machine. Cybernetics and thermodynamics reveal structural features of a subtle subjective and selective order, all of which are capable of being treated together as constituting one startling development in modern scientific thought. It is now within the reach of thinkers to build a Unified Science, such as this present work is interested in.

Electromagnetism now occupies the central place once occupied by Newtonian Mechanics. Qualitative geometry is now replacing the purely quantitative one. Post-Hilbertian notions of the groundwork of both algebra and geometry are revealing new possibilities in which mathematics, as an independent science, becomes self-sufficient in matters relating to certitudes in both domains. Algebra can support geometry and vice-versa.

7

Thus we live at a time when far-reaching possibilities are opening before us. This in itself is encouraging enough to embolden us in our present undertaking. The common structure to which subjective thinking and objective events can be referred to for normalization and renormalization, in view of the certitude coming from both the perceptual and conceptual sides of human understanding, is perhaps the one most encouraging sign of our times. Sir Edmund Whittaker says this about renormalization:

"The development of quantum electrodynamics has, in fact, shown the necessity for what is called renormalization, which is precisely a recognition of this difference between the observed and the theoretical values of e and m .... Although Eddington did not live to see the development of this modern practice of renormalizing e and m, he said that a situation of this kind must arise and he uttered a warning against expecting too close an agreement between his theoretically calculated values and those obtained by measurement"²

This makes it possible to have a Science of the Absolute which previously we did not have.

A subtle, though tragic element of paradox lurks within the structure of thought. Only a normative study of the Absolute can bring this to light. There are two dichotomous aspects, two distinct poles, sometimes called antinomian principles, with a complementarity and ambivalent reciprocity between them, evident when the total knowledge-situation is reduced to its most simple, abstract, and general terms. They are based both on its conceptual elements on the one side, and its corresponding perceptual image on the other. These two join schematically in the core of human consciousness.

8

It is here, as it were, that from opposite sides of a subtle parameter, algebraic thinking may be said to meet its own dialectical counterpart made up of pure geometrical elements, entities or things. To transcend this tragic element, implying paradox, has been the major task of philosophy and is also the central problem which we have to face here.

The polemical battles that have raged between those who stressed concepts at the expense of percepts, and others who stressed the opposite, have raised and are still raising in our own time, clouds of controversy which contribute to fill libraries with more and more verbose books of vain speculation. Even today, such rumblings do not tend to abate. There are those like A.J.Ayer, who will too readily take one side and assert that metaphysics is 'nonsensical' and without significance and that humanity can live wholly with the help of empirical knowledge and propositions based on it.

These are empirical, positivist, and analytical philosophers, variously called functionalists, operationalists, or pragmatists. In such a company we can also include instrumentalists, even when the instrumentalism implied by them is only logical or mathematical. Such philosophers tend to expect the whole truth to emerge to view one day when what are called the laboratory methods of science are pushed forward more and more scientifically. As they understand it, this is to be accomplished by piecemeal and trial-and-error methods until, by a gradual process of annexation of new ground, the unknown is brought within the scope of the known.

9

They then expect to triumph finally in creating a philosophy which would fully retain what they would prefer to call its "scientific" status. Such a dream is like that of a promised land; one which does not seem to recognize the paradox lurking at the core of truth, but rather tends to bypass it by a one-sided approach.

When unitively, structurally and schematically examined, such laboratory-biased scientists may be seen to be not fundamentally different in their one-sidedness from those in the rival camp who belong to the context of the wisdom of the seminary. Between these two rival worlds there is only an apparent outer contradiction. When the nature of this apparent opposition is more closely examined and intuitively understood, we come to realise the truth common to both, and then it is that the legitimate claims of a possible Unified Science of the future will come more clearly into view.

When Shakespeare said that one may call a rose by any name, yet it will still smell as sweet, he was putting his finger on the very tragic or paradoxical core of the total knowledge situation while trying to overcome the contradiction. Names are nearer to concepts, while smell belongs to the opposite pole of the world of percepts; both belong to the rose. The promiscuous mixing of these aspects leads to the confusion of tongues known as "Babelization" of which the natural consequence is a vain and voluminous verbosity often mistaken for good metaphysics. Unilateral approaches whether to physics or to metaphysics, are both wrong. One necessarily presupposes the other, and to learn how to give to each its due place in speculation is what we call the normative, unified, or unitive approach. The a priori approach is anathema to the physicist. Even phenomenologists of modern times, who stem out of Kantian and Hegelian idealism, have a secret repugnance of anything that savours of the a priori.

Husserl writes the following:

10

"I avoid as far as possible the expressions a priori and a posteriori, partly on account of the confusing obscurities and ambiguities which infect their ordinary use, but also because of the notorious philosophical theories which, as an evil heritage of the past, are interwoven with them."⁴

There are positivists or empiricist of our own time, like Bertrand Russell, who are becoming more and more conscious of the limitations of empiricism, especially because quantum mechanics has dealt a death blow to their programmes. A theory of knowledge accommodating quantum mechanics and electromagnetics with time, space, gravitation, and the principle of causality in the unified field of nature, or in the name of a continuum where space and time enter on equal footing, is in the process of being discovered by modern scientific thinkers. When they come nearer to their objective it could be expected that they will be able to shed their long -standing prejudice against the a priori synthetic approach of philosophers like Kant. By insisting on only the a posteriori analytic, they will never be expected to resolve the paradox. Only when this happens will it be possible for strict thinkers to have a complete bilaterally understood or reciprocally balanced theory of knowledge serving as a regulative principle for the normal progress of human knowledge.

Theologians may be charged with being dogmatic a priori sts, who are ready to believe anything, even though wholly indemonstrable and thus unscientific in the usual sense. Those who belong to the seminary school of thought can have legitimately laid at their door many grave errors of omission or commission. This does not mean, either, that all truth is to be sought solely from the custodians of the laboratories.

11

There is a large body of general ideas taken for granted by the simplest of human beings, just because they happen to be human. The importance of general ideas in any total, yet strictly scientific scheme, should not be overlooked. When a child of two or three is watching an elder playing hide-and-seek with it, a third person observing the features of the child could notice an alternating play of expectation and dismay, hope or despair, suggesting a tendency alternately to scepticism, and to a willingness to believe. The child could be seen to be torn between the world of the visibles and the world of general ideas, both of which exist together only in the core of its absolute tabula rasa, as Locke said, constituting its normal consciousness.

When the hiding elder is not seen for a minute longer than expected by the child, one could see sadness and disappointment, ever growing stronger, reflected in its face. When the hiding face reappears, the wonder of it becomes too much to be contained by the little heart of the child. Here, in such a situation, the child's spirit swings, as it were, alternately between scepticism and belief. If we should substitute philosophers and scientists for the alternative realms of scepticism and belief possible to the child's mind, we would get a picture of the same total scope and alternating movement at the core of the bipolar paradoxical total knowledge situation which we have already tried to explain. We shall not go further into this question, however, because of having gone into such matters more thoroughly in previous studies.

Einstein is a good example of how mysticism itself is being included within the scope of science, as the following quotation shows:

"The most beautiful and most profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead.

12

To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling is at the centre of true religiousness"⁵

If one makes a statement such as "All men are mortal", and one has the alternative of choosing the laboratory or the seminary for verifying the validity of the statement, common sense might tell us that it is not the laboratory one resorts to, but rather the seminary which normally deals with most general ideas, such as eternal life, etc. In the laboratory one can, at best, expect verification of such a truth by means of experiments with rats or rabbits in which they might die, or be killed, not all together, but on an average duration corresponding to the expectation of life proper to each species of animal. Proverbial wisdom does not, however, emerge in this manner. Statistical averages referring to the expectation of life have only a theoretical status, as "unreal" as in any metaphysical statement. That statistics tell lies is also a proverbial joke. If theologians cannot be trusted as the custodians for general ideas because of their past sins, where then have we to look for conformation, and the formulation of general ideas so desirable for all correct speculation?

General ideas do have their own valid source, although such a source is, at present, at least in the West, for many historical reasons, not fully relied upon, or acceptable to the mind of modern man. A priori sm and absolutism have thus become notions which are non grata to the scientist. The decisive factor in our choice between seminary wisdom and laboratory knowledge consists in being able to transcend that tragic element of paradox hiding between the name of a rose and its own perfume, already referred to. They belong together to one and the same significant value-reality, truth, or fact.

13

If the mind is a tabula rasa, as assumed by Locke and other empiricists, it is not difficult to assume that there is a no-man's-land between concepts and percepts. These do not grow out of each other by any necessary sequence. There seems to be a strange gap between them. Percepts cannot be promoted to the status of concepts by straining our mind or forcing it into any kind of ratiocination. The very fact that children have to learn how to say "cat" and "rat" by a method called "look-and-say", so as to learn naturally how to bind percepts with their corresponding concepts, proves that there is a gap which has always to be bridged by a process of learning.

At the basis of what we have already referred to as "Babelization", or confusion of tongues, there is this element of strangeness as between names and forms. They seem to come to each other as if from opposite sides of the total knowledge-situation, normally consisting of the tabula rasa. While the empiricists might hold that percepts have primacy over concepts, thus minimizing the a priori element in human understanding, idealists and rationalists might do the opposite. It would be impossible to settle this dispute, because we can never observe what took place at the beginning. The case is similar to that of the primacy of the seed over the tree, or the egg over the chicken. For our purpose such an enquiry is both vain and unimportant. All we wish to underline here is the polarity between concepts and percepts, names and forms, the a priori and the a posteriori. As already indicated, if one is quantitative, the other is qualitative; if one is physical the other is metaphysical.

14

Thus, structurally speaking, a straight horizontal line tragically divides the vertical domain of purer thought. This line of demarcation has tragic implications. This is most evident with all its tribulations in courts of law, where it becomes most important that visual first-hand evidence strictly corroborate the various verbal statements made by witnesses. Even a simple road accident is best understood, and the guilty party most surely traced, when a sketch of the accident supports the verbal statement. Between the world of words and the world of visible events, there is room for all sorts of criminals and charlatans to thrive.

Even the apparent misunderstanding prevailing between people like Einstein, who say that observation is the final arbiter in the matter of scientific validity, and those like Kant, who give the a priori its full status independent of the a posteriori - which in effects divides the domain of thought into two rival camps, one called physics and the other called metaphysics - has its own raison d'être in this tragic gap subtly persisting between name and form.. The implied paradox between them has to be dissolved or made to fall if a normative Science of the Absolute is to emerge. Normalization and renormalization have to be applied correctly to one or other of the perceptual or conceptual aspects of reality, so that it is not a unilateral certitude we come to have, but a certitude that is verifiable from both ends, making it more final, ultimate, or absolute.

The best analogy to reveal the subtle reciprocity persisting between percepts and concepts can be derived from the contrast between light and darkness. These two cannot co-exist, in principle at least. Light implies something the opposite of darkness, and one cannot grow out of the other in direct quantitative proportion. Darkness can be more dark and brightness can be more bright.

15

The gap between them can be said to increase or to decrease, but the difference of qualitative content between them is intrinsic, and can be established by the normalization of the one in terms of the other, resorting to a principle of double negation or double assertion. These are some of the deeper aspects of the dialectical methodology to which we shall return later. Let us only note at present that concepts and percepts approach each other from opposite sides of a structurally understood total knowledge-situation, belonging to normal human understanding.

There seems to be a film tragically separating the world of percepts from its corresponding world of concepts, so that a stranger who finds himself in a country whose language he does not know is made helpless, even in the matter of buying the simplest items of food or drink. The entire surface of the earth is divided into units where this dumbfoundedness is equally enforced, to his disadvantage. This element of agony he shares with many other members of his race.

This situation comes into evidence distressingly when children have to learn lessons from wordy books. Such is the agony of the classroom to which children of all countries are perennially exposed. Even with grown-ups the same element of agony is present, though perhaps in a more diffused and unrecognized form. Many nuisible, humourous, or tragic situations or disasters in life have their fecund origin in this film or factor separating horizontally, as it were, the observable and the intelligible aspects of our common human existence. The importance of this tragic element is therefore not to be minimised.

16

While there is a necessary connection between sense data (plain sensum) and the percepts formed in our minds, different names are possible between a percept and its corresponding conceptual aspect. The latter - that is the concept - has only a contingent relationship to the sense data. We have noticed the gap separating percepts and concepts. When this gap has been transcended and we have reached the other side where conceptualizing takes place in the mind, we find that here too there is a fixed relationship between concepts and their corresponding word or name aspect. Every word in the dictionary corresponds to its concept. The overall structure of mutual relation between sense data and percepts on the one side, and words and their corresponding concepts on the other, remains constant and complete.

We can here be helped by imagining two persons conversing at a distance. There is an inter-subjective and a trans-physical, or an inter-physical and trans-subjective exchange based on sensory-motor impulses, taking place in the conversation. The whole event, with its double aspect, can be reduced to a common schema moteur, as Bergson has done so masterfully.⁶

Without entering into any further details of this structure at this preliminary stage, it will suffice for us to notice for the present that in the total structural situation involved, there is a jump or gap existing vertically between ontological or immanent percepts and their own teleological or transcendental aspects called names or concepts.

17

In this, there is a subtle ambivalence, distinctly revealing two poles. The pole of possibility, or of all possibilities, is recognized as the a priori, where axiomatic thinking has its fullest validity. At the other extreme of the same vertical axis, we can locate a corresponding pole where, instead of axiomatic thinking, we have mutual exclusion between given sets of sense data. This can be called the source of a posteriori thinking. Thus, we come back to the nominal, which is at the basis of the sentence; "One can call a rose by any name," and the actual, which refers to its smell; "it will smell as sweet," linked into a complete situation so as to reveal its ambivalent aspects. Here we have axiomatic thinking residing at the top pole, and necessity to exclude contradiction, as between actual aspects, at the bottom.

We have entered in preliminary fashion into these interrelationships between sense data, percepts, concepts, and names or words corresponding to them, so as to bring into relief the other pole which is not represented by what we have called the perceptual or laboratory-centred source of knowledge. Axiomatic thinking does not originate in the experimental world proper to physics. On the contrary, all axiomatic thinking has, in full measure, the a priori implicit in it, and should therefore be delegated to that pole where general ideas originate within the structure of total human understanding. This can also be called the metaphysical or the ultra-physical. The conceptualized version of both the immanent and the transcendental aspects of reality could be comprised within the scope of this pure logical parameter. Descartes has marked clearly the limits within which metaphysical thought may be said to live and move, when he indicates in his Discourse on Method that cogito ergo sum is a natural starting point for all systematic doubting or speculation.

18

He says:

"Accordingly, the knowledge: "I think, therefore I am", is the first and most certain that occurs to one who philosophizes in an orderly (way)."⁷

He further adds that God is the source of all general ideas:

"When the mind afterwards reviews the different ideas that are in it, it discovers what is by far the chief among them - that of a Being omniscient, all-powerful, and absolutely perfect; and it observes that in this idea there is contained not only possible and contingent existence, as in the ideas of all other things which it clearly perceives, but existence absolutely necessary and eternal."⁸

Even if we find it necessary to avoid this theological second limit and prefer to call it by another name than that of God, it remains true all the same. There is an axiomatic source of all possible a priori thinking where all general ideas originate at the top of the vertical axis, lending support in a descending dialectical way to give validity to more or less possible ramifications of general ideas. Pure nominalism, where any name is as good as any other, gives full scope to the contingent element in thought. Names become more definitely understood or grasped through the meaning we have given to them by what we call concepts. There can be a hierarchy of concepts belonging to sets or sub-sets representing different grades of significant human values with their corresponding terms with which all dictionaries of any linguistic region are seen to be filled.

19

Word and meaning thus are coupled together as with two dictionaries with a one-one correspondence between them.
Corresponding to this descending ramification we can build up, from the necessary pole of existence, a ramification of perceptually ascending terms resembling a Tree of Porphyry. The ascending and descending ramified sets meet in a tragic no-man's-land, already referred to as the region where innocent school-children suffer boredom in their schoolrooms. We shall reserve further justification of these structural details for future treatment in their relevant context as they arise, but the rough outline has to be kept in mind from the very beginning, so that our further discussions could become easier to follow.

It is necessary for us to give a precise idea regarding what this work is about. In short, it is concerned, as the title itself indicates, with the Science of the Absolute. The word Absolute has so far had only a vague content giving room to a great deal of ambiguity. Both tautology and contradiction find their place at the very core of this basically ultimate notion, as explained elsewhere in our writings.⁹

20

We have already tried, as far as we could, to fix in philosophical terms the content of the notion of the Absolute. We are more concerned in this work with giving it scientific precision rather than a merely philosophical, religious or mystical description.

Contemplative literature of all countries, whether Chinese, Upanishadic, Persian or European mystic, contains many helpful indications which can be kept in mind in order to arrive at the precise notion that we are seeking to fix. They contain subtleties or secrets, sometimes clothed in exalting or exaggerated language, relying on analogies derived from popular proverb, fable or parable, and sometimes even mythology, all tending to detract, to a greater or lesser degree, from their scientific character, depending on the mood of the contemplatives. The modern positivist approach has to develop its own sober style in keeping with disciplines such as logic, semantics or mathematics, each of which is receiving attention by modern thinkers. A Russian scientist and his American counterpart are now able to communicate precisely and scientifically on such subjects as nuclear physics and quantum mechanics.

The notion of the Absolute is normally within the reach of human understanding. The mystery hitherto surrounding it is only due to an epistemological paradox which has to be shed, dissolved, abolished or banished from our way of thinking. Then a content can emerge from behind it, as it were, helping us to give precise significance even to such a subtle and ultimate notion.

The nature of the paradox itself needs much research to lay it bare, so as to enable us to fix the varying levels of perception or conception, analysis or synthesis within the limits of which it can reside. The possible number of such levels are many. We to reserve their enumeration for a later stage.

21

Meanwhile, we can avail ourselves of the rich indications, some of which conform to scientific requirements, found in a vast body of contemplative literature generally known as the "Perennial Philosophy". They sometimes lend themselves admirably to structural analysis, and sometimes we can also discern in them traits of a special mystical language based on proto-linguistic characteristics. What Leibniz dreamt of accomplishing through the universal mathematics found in his writings could be of interest to us, as also what is cryptically suggested in texts such as the Upanishads, some of which we have examined elsewhere.¹⁰

It is not impossible either, that even when clothed in mythological language certain scientific, subjective or structural verities do reveal themselves in writings such as the Upanishads, which by themselves constitute a vast body of literature devoted to the one aim of giving content or meaning to the Absolute. No particular one of these traditions is more important to us than another in the present work. We have to be free to benefit from all of them, especially where indications conform to the requirements of the scientific approach to which we are committed in advance. Our attitude is one that avoids exaggerations and exaltations though these are natural enough to the mystic. Closed loyalties to static religious forms of belief or behaviour are also avoided.

22

Our basic dictum is that a normative notion of the Absolute is within the reach of human understanding as given to humanity anywhere in the world. Such attainment of the Absolute is very natural to man, although requiring intense intellectual research on his part. The a priori and a posteriori approaches to truth or knowledge have to be made to come together from opposite poles, as it were, to meet on common ground. Concepts must marry their corresponding percepts, and in the resulting fusion paradox is abolished. A process of normalization and renormalization in a reverse sense is implied here. When the paradox, which could only be schematic and nominal in its status becomes wholly transparent to itself, the Absolute reveals itself in all its unified or unitive significance. It then becomes a powerful instrument for certitude in the domain of thought. It affords a fecund frame of reference for regulating all precise thinking, which would then gain a beauty of its own, forever and everywhere enhancing its value in the cause of human understanding.

The Absolute is not a thing nor is it a mere idea. When the philosopher has correctly located the paradox lurking between appearance and reality, the paradox itself tends to be abolished into the Absolute. The Absolute is a neutral notion in which all real things and all possible ideas about them can be comprised without contradiction or conflict. Thus, it is both a thing and an idea at once. Truth, reality, fact or existence refer to aspects of this central neutral notion named for convenience, the Absolute.

All notions or entities, from the most gross or tangible to the most subtle, reside at the core of the Absolute without rivalry.

23

They are absorbed unitively into its being and becoming. It is hard to give a definitely fixed status to the notion. Existence, subsistence and value factors are inclusively comprised in it, and as for its own reality, the question itself should not arise when the perfect neutrality of its status is once admitted. All dualities are to be dropped before the Absolute can be comprehended. In the context of the Absolute, even the faintest duality has to fade away into something which can even be said to be nothing. Whatever duality may still be suspected, it must be laid at the door of the limitations of human understanding, in its attempt to attain an ultimate notion of the Absolute. We have to admit this by the very validity of the general ideas based on human understanding which can be presupposed by us. More on this argument later. A truth that is not understandable can have no significance to man, and, conversely, what is merely significant to him, as it were, from this side, will, by that very reason not fully attain to any absolute status. Half of such a conviction at least has to come from direct or indirect human experience, but the other half has to depend on the descent from above of general ideas, in the overall situation of human enquiry into the totality of which everyone of us is born. There is a double process, with both the aspects of endosmosis and exosmosis involved in the overall process of human understanding.
One does not educate oneself merely by everyday experience, but is obliged, consciously or unconsciously, to accept general ideas which are sometimes most elusive, because of their being axiomatic in character. Throughout this work we have to remember this bilateral nature of the progress of human thought.

24

It is said that primitive religion begins with the fear of natural forces affecting simple human life. This fear foisted on to so-called primitive man can easily grow into a wonder, rather than a fear, when the "man in the street" is kept in mind. When we think of still more civilized individuals we might use the term "natural curiosity" for the same element of the desire to know. Man naturally seeks to dispel all doubts, some of which are more proper to immature persons rather than to would-be philosophers. Whatever the grade of curiosity involved, the satisfaction has to take place from both the poles of the knowledge-situation we have referred to. There is both a descending and an ascending dialectical process involved, and what we call certitude is a resultant of the meeting of experiences and valid expectations, as well as probabilities and possibilities, all lending apodictic or dialectical certitude to each other. The quest is only satisfied when such a meeting takes place. Neither the inductivo-hypothetical approach nor the unmethodical reliance on the a priori, where all general ideas reside, can bring the final conviction of absolute certitude. Absolute science must seek such an absolute certitude. Epistemologically, the Absolute has only a nominalistic and schematic status.

Even scientists who are normally against absolutist notions have much use for this term in its varying connotations or denotations. We know of terms like absolute zero temperature, which is a kind of ultimate limit in the measurement of heat. Independent, self-sufficient, pure, unchanging or constant factors wherever they come into scientific discussion, are often referred to as being absolute.

25

If we take the notion of space in Euclid, so important to classical mechanics, we see that it is now condemned as unsatisfactory, because of its being an absolutist notion. Whether pure space can be called absolute or not is an open question, although from a common-sense standpoint it is generally taken for granted. The nature of space and its ultimate status for the scientist is one of those questions about which there is much vagueness prevailing at present. Relativistic space is not rigid and admits of some qualities such as curvature or elasticity. On the one hand we find that while Einstein strongly condemns Newtonian ideas of space as absolutist, he openly admits on the other hand that his own frame of reference for his special Theory of Relativity is as absolutist as that of Newton:

"With the discovery of the relativity of simultaneity, space and time were merged in a single continuum in the same way as the three dimensions of space had been before. Physical space was thus increased to a four-dimensional space which also included the dimension of time. The four-dimensional space of the special theory of relativity is just as rigid and absolute as Newton's space."¹¹

The layman endowed with good common-sense has reason to complain that the term "absolute" is arbitrarily used here, and he can even suspect that he is being let down. Theologians do the same with gullible minds in the domain of belief.

26

We do not know, for example, whether we have to consider space as tending to become more absolutist or relativist in character when it is given a Lobachevskian or Riemannian matrix or structure, or even in the notion of a space-time continuum brought into use after Minkowski. If we think of time instead of space we find that the simultaneity of two events is summarily excluded from the way of thinking adopted by Einstein. This might be because the notion of time will too easily attain an absolute status if simultaneity of events in space is admitted by the relativist. Space has to be measured both by its character of vacancy as by its capability of being filled with something real or tangible, at one and the same time.

Einstein writes:

"If two bodies are of equal value for the filling of one such interval, they will also prove of equal value for the filling of other intervals. The interval is thus shown to be independent of the selection of any special body to fill it; the same is universally true of spatial relations. It is plain that this independence, which is a principal condition of the usefulness of framing purely geometrical concepts, is not necessarily a priori. In my opinion, this concept of the interval, detached as it is from the selection of any special body to occupy it, is the starting point of the whole concept of space.
Considered, then, from the point of view of sense experience, the development of the concept of space seems, after these brief indications, to conform to the following schema - solid body; spatial relations of solid bodies; interval; space. Looked at in this way, space appears as something real in the same sense as solid bodies."¹²

27

The paradox involved here is glossed over by modern relativists who do not wish to characterize pure space either as relative or absolute in status. They prefer rather to pin their faith on light, which can be considered as something perceivable and actually visible, such as the flashes of light whether in corpuscular or wave form emitted from the most distant of stars. Even after the failure of the Michelson-Morley experiment, revealing the astounding fact of the total absence of any ponderable ether, postulated by classical physicists as a sort of substitute for some absolute medium for light to travel through, modern physicists refuse to recognize any kind of space with an absolutist character. The above epoch-making experiment has laid bare the fact that light travels at an enormously high velocity, ungraspable to common-sense experience and, what is more, that the relative speeds or positions of the observers or the motion itself of the source of light that they observe do not in the least affect this factor referring to light in its power to fill all space.
One hears such statements as "thousands of light years" for a ray of light to travel from a distant star before it reaches an observer on earth. Three-hundred thousand kilometers per second has to be multiplied many times by time units before common-sense is able even to think of such a supposedly perceivable physical event.

I

28

The person of common-sense has a right to object to the physicist who claims, even here, that this ray of light comes within the scope of perceivability which is the single condition dividing physics from metaphysics. The physicist thus rudely shocks and violates norms of common-sense thinking, wanting the poor "man in the street" to believe in fables not less far-fetched than those sometimes woven by theologians. Because physicists do not want to give an absolutist status to pure space they prefer to give more importance to the velocity of light, which they characterise by the less pretentious, yet synonymous term "constant".

If we come to examine impartially what this term "constant" is meant to imply to a normal man, who is neither prejudiced in favour of physics or of metaphysics, it is easy to see, in the independent, pure and ultimately phenomenal status of the velocity of light, the rudiments at least of a notion participating both ways. This could be either as an actuality or as an analogy, bridging, as it were, the intellectual gulf separating the domain of physics from that of metaphysics. In fact such expressions as "the light of the world", as used in theology, justify such a two-sided participation or transparency between the twin aspects involved here. The transition between the mental and the physical is a problem to which we shall be returning more than once in this work. Meanwhile, all that we wish to indicate here in advance is that instead of calling the velocity of light a mere constant for physics, it is justified to give light a more central place, having at one and the same time both a perceptual and a conceptual status in the context of the normative Absolute.

29

The term "absolute" as used by scientists undoubtedly leaves room for much clarification and precision. Space and time can be integrated more intimately than suggested by Minkowski, who, at best leaves the notion in the form of an amalgam of space-like and time-like factors. He gives primacy to space for purposes of physics, rather than to time which would necessarily compel them to be included under the inner life experience of metaphysics. How such an integration is possible will become more and more evident as we proceed.

Relativity and absolutism are antonymous. One depends for its meaning on the other, and it is impossible to think of any theory of relativity without assuming its own inevitable dialectical counterpart. The observed fact of relativity does not need any theory to support it. Every schoolboy can be easily taught that when one or more trains on a railway platform move we witness in familiar terms the relativity of movement.
When this simple brute aspect is elevated to the full-fledged status of a theory, applying to the whole of the physical world, we are compelled to look for a mental frame of reference in respect of which this relativity can stand revealed, in the same way as a pillar on the railway platform acts as a reference for the schoolboy in appraising the relativism with which he is faced. Because the earth itself happens to be in motion, this reference to the actual pillar of the railway station has to be considered defective in an extended sense in the direction of which any theory of relativity might have to be developed.

30

If a schoolboy asked why the Empire State Building did not tumble down after he "proved" Newton and Euclid wrong, Einstein would be compelled to use many ambiguous "ifs" and "buts" before finding an answer sufficiently convincing to the schoolboy. The factual aspect of relativity is what should properly belong to physics, because physics avowedly gives primacy to the visible or perceivable.

Of the two poles of certitude mentioned above it is the perceptual pole that properly belongs to the physicist. Perceived or perceptible aspects of physical phenomena must normally carry more conviction than theories, that are bound to be more and more conceptual, thus tending to be metaphysical rather than physical in status. The more one moves away from brute facts into what might be mathematically constructed, the more one's calculations tend to have a necessary metaphysical status.

Strangely enough the history and the origin of the modern theory of relativity reveal a reverse order of progression because they have, consciously or unconsciously, been given a philosophical status instead of being kept strictly within the limits of the practice of physics in the laboratory or observatory. It consists of more than one stage of growth marked by the Special and General Theories followed by an attempt at a Unified Field Theory, more generalized and absolute, if we may say so, than the other two. One remarkable feature of the origin of these theories is that it is on the failure of an experiment, rather than on its success, that the whole speculation or calculation started.

31

The Michelson-Morley experiment was expected to prove some ether-like substratum, acting as a ponderable or material medium for light to travel from one locality to another, however distant or near. Yet, in spite of its repetition, the experiment insisted on revealing the opposite of what was expected. Instead of boldly drawing the conclusions natural to this experiment, which would have perhaps compelled physicists to accept an immaterial medium for light to travel in, Einstein and others preferred to take backward steps and began to take refuge in what is now famous as the Lorentz transformation, consisting of a mathematical equation whereby the Fitzgerald contraction became verified. An equation is not a factual starting point but is itself based on arbitrary a priori and axiomatic considerations as in mathematics as a whole, whether algebraic or geometric.

Even a cow being chased out of a field by a gardener, may be said to be conscious of the fact of the relativity of motion. Thus leaving behind the brute fact of relativity, Einstein on the other hand backed out even from the natural consequences of the Michelson-Morley experiment. Still wanting to be true to physics rather than metaphysics, he built up three grand stages of his noble edifice, based on the presupposition of a principle of universal relativity for the whole of physics. When closely scrutinized, as Bergson has done in a whole work dedicated to this very question, it becomes completely evident to anyone of common-sense, let alone a philosopher, that he remains all through these theorizations true to fundamental Cartesian schematic notions, which have been acceptable to all rationalist philosophers in modern Europe.

32

We shall be devoting more space to an examination of these aspects because the claims of absolutism cannot be established without facing fully the serious implications and consequences of this theory, which has taken possession of all modern minds as a substitute philosophy.

Enough has been said for the present, at least to make it clear that this theory of relativity, seeming to loom so large in the modern mind, lends itself easily as a ready idiom to be flung against any absolutist way of speculation. Yet, the theory of relativity still rests on very tentative and unstable epistemological ground. The fact that Einstein has not fully succeeded in enunciating his Unified Field Theory is sufficient evidence of this. Concerning Einstein's inability to fully succeed with his Unified Field Theory, we read the following:

"Believing in the fundamental unity of nature, Albert Einstein worked on this problem continuously, reporting his tentative conclusions in an appendix to the 4th edition of his Meaning of Relativity (1953). His death in 1965 interrupted these labours."¹⁴

The Absolute can be attained in many ways. Some of them are more speculative and indirect, while others are simple and direct.

When we start from simple everyday experience and attain the core of the notion or the reality of the Absolute, we can be said to be most scientific in our approach.

33

In this respect there is a method of approach favoured by the Guru Narayana which seems to be very simple. He said that if we should think of a body it would be possible to divide it into parts and each part could be further subdivided, this process being continued ad infinitum, At the term of such a process, the quantitative aspect of the body concerned tends to get abolished and attains to a more qualitative status. In other words, the visible tends to become intelligible, having a mental or subjective, rather than an objective existence. When this notion remains in the mind and is further conceived independently and purely as a reality or notion sufficient to itself, we attain the Absolute. Other thinkers like Descartes have preferred to speculate on time or duration which is within the inner experience of every human being. Pure duration, according to Descartes, is God. By this he only means to say that it attains the status of the Absolute. He is not necessarily thinking of the theological God of the scholastic context. Thus we see two fundamental notions, one of matter occupying space, and the other of time filled with events, both of which when subjected to contemplative or scientific purification, can attain the Absolute in a most direct and simple manner.

Besides space and time, represented schematically after the manner of Cartesian correlates, we can think of cause as a third and very fundamental category. Cause implies effect and when related to the time axis it represents a link in a chain of successive alternating pairs of causes and effects. It is possible for us to think of this process of causes and effects as operating in this world both prospectively, and retrospectively.

34

The former is called imagination and the latter memory. At any given moment anywhere, and with anybody, there is an eternal present unequivocally established by philosophers like Plato and made acceptable to other philosophers.

Causality as a principle can further be abstracted and generalized by the human mind, being capable of such mathematical or scientific abstraction and generalization without knowing any limit. Herein lies the possibility of finding the central locus of all future scientific speculation, whether based on outer experiments or inner certitude. Thus, the principle of causality can be put on a pedestal of a universalized basis as functioning at the core of the process of becoming, to which the whole of the universe is subjected, as could be seen by all of us.

Even scientists like Max Planck have been obliged in recent years to give this principle of causality its full recognition and status, although such matters were, until recently, considered outside the scope of physics as belonging to the outmoded so called metaphysical way of thinking. Einstein has approved of Planck's stand on this subject and with such approbation on the part of the dean of modern scientific thought, it is fully permissible for us to say that the principle of causality has once again been elevated to an absolutist status.

Thus, Time, Space, and Causality, when each of them is given its capital initial letter, can be considered as attaining, each by its own right, the status of the Absolute.

35

This way of thinking has long been accepted in the Platonic tradition. Plato could similarly elevate notions such as Beauty by the purifying process of generalization and abstraction, going on, hand in hand, as it were, to the status of an absolute value, each by its own right.

Attaining the Absolute in this manner has therefore nothing unscientific nor unphilosophical about it when we further consider that causation, common as an abstract principle of life, lives in the heart of each of us, making it possible for us to live from one split second to another, causality itself being nothing. We can locate this Principle at the apperceptive core of all consciousness, whether it belongs to human, animal, plant or sub-organic life; giving it a fully psychological status. In the phenomenal world it goes without saying that the same principle has a cosmological status. Further, there is no objection in giving this same principle, when fully glorified, a theological status as Descartes and even Hegel have already done in philosophy. Max Planck's remarks here confirm what we have to say:

"Some essential modification seems to be inevitable; but I firmly believe, in company with most physicists, that the Quantum Hypothesis will eventually find its exact expression in certain equations which will be a more exact formulation of the law of causality.

The principle of causality must be held to extend even to the highest achievements of the human soul.

36

We must admit that the mind of each one of our greatest geniuses - Aristotle or Plato, Kant or Leonardo, Goethe or Beethoven, Dante or Shakespeare - even at the moment of its highest flights of thought or in the most profound inner workings of the soul, was subject to the causal fiat and was an instrument in the hands of an almighty law which governs the world."¹⁵

We now quote Einstein who wrote a foreword to Planck's book and is in complete agreement with what Planck said:

"I am entirely in agreement with our friend Planck in regard to the stand which he has taken on the principle. He admits the impossibility of applying the causal principle to the inner processes of atomic physics under the present state of affairs; but he has set himself definitely against the thesis that from this unbrauchbarkeit or inapplicability we are to conclude that the process of causation does not exist in external reality. Planck has really not taken up any definite standpoint here. He has only contradicted the emphatic assertions of some quantum theorists, and I agree fully with him. And when you mention people who speak of such a thing as free will in nature it is difficult for me to find a suitable reply. The idea is of course preposterous ..... Honestly I cannot understand what people mean when they talk about freedom of the human will."

37

From the above discussion we are able to extract a schematic outline which will be of great linguistic help to us for our purpose. The essence of time is its continuity as a process, tracing itself on the purest of notions of duration and, as we have said, it can attain an absolute status. Space when schematized, on the other hand, whether thought of pluralistically or as being merely empty of plurality, can be represented, after the principle underlying Cartesian correlates, by a line at right angles to time. We can represent it to ourselves as consisting of a contiguous rather than a continuous line extending horizontally and numerically rather than qualitatively, grading into more and more virtuality or actuality as it traces itself on the abscissa, on the plus or minus side according to its location. Such a schematic representation must have its own correct degree both of subjectivity and objectivity, and has to be neutralized between these two opposites in the human mind at one and the same time. It is in the world of qualitative values that such a schema can hold good and not in the world of mere quantitative things.
Matter and mind have to attain here an equal degree of transparency between them to make participation between the two correlates possible on homogenous and neutral ground. Further aspects of this schematic representation will be elaborated later.

Here it might be in place to add that almost any fundamental notion can be subjected to the kind of treatment we have adopted above. In the first instance the notion can be subjected to abstraction and generalization, and then it can be fitted into a schema. The first part of the process can be recognized as belonging to mathematical symbolism as prevails in algebraic calculations.

38

The second way of abstraction and generalization corresponds rather to the method known to geometry. We know in analytic geometry, and more so in the modern post-Hilbertian algebra of geometry, that one discipline corresponds to the discipline of the other when. structurally or schematically understood. Thus we can take the notion of truth and give it a neutral normative status in the context of the Absolute.

When the Upanishads speak of the One Eternal Female, or of gods such as Vishnu or Siva, they tend as in Plato, to give such notions a fully normalized and absolutist status. There are however, slight epistemological asymmetries, implicit or explicit, in the standpoints natural to various philosophers. We have to make allowances for this when we are thinking of a fully corrected version of the same before they could be considered fully normalized, both from the algebraic and the geometrical sides. Each fundamental notion can be given its legitimate central value, whether considered as a reference or a referent for human understanding treated in its most all-comprehensive sense.

39

Francis Bacon conceived of scientific method as consisting of experiment, observation and inference.

In his days science was thought of mainly as a laboratory discipline, and the tradition of earlier classical science, based on astronomy and on the wonders revealed by the telescope, had its own complicated theories in which calculations such as those of Kepler played a large part. By Bacon's time all that was extraneous and theoretical in the domain of science tended to be cut out and the main task of the scientist was to try different ways of putting together or taking apart visible things. This was what Bacon understood by experiments.

Modern science, on the other hand, relies largely on both calculations and observations at one and the same time. Euclidian and Newtonian ideas are not enough to satisfy the modern scientist. The inductivo-hypothetical method, having been accepted for scientific investigation, yields a large number of theories. Since the time of Newton and Euclid many of these theories have been subjected to drastic revisions. Classical physics has thus become more and more a stranger to modern physicists. Exactly how many classical ideas have been discarded by moderns, and how precisely other substitutes have been developed by them, still remain an open question.

The universal law of gravitation enunciated by Newton remains almost intact, in spite of the drastic changes in the theories of the structure of space and the relativity of motion brought about by modern scientific theories. The method proper to science has now changed and the roles played by analytical geometry and algebra are now very great. Mechanics has still to include rigid Euclidian or Newtonian frames of reference side by side with more subtle versions of the same, giving place within its scope to electromagnetics and quantum mechanics. These latter call for a more flexible basis on which alone they can have meaning.

40

In modern relativity and quantum mechanics we find a more central place being taken by mathematical equations instead of laboratory experiments. It is legitimate now to speak about a non-experimental science of the type Eddington stood for. Leading scientists now feel the inevitability of a thoroughgoing epistemological revision of the whole position of scientific thought. When epistemology is drastically subjected to revision, it is natural to expect that a corresponding methodological revision will also follow in its wake. Thus it is that many thinkers brought up on modern scientific ideas are beginning to adopt some new ways hitherto considered outside the scope of respectable scientific method.

Conclusions based on probability, being essentially statistical in character and therefore of questionable certitude, are now admitted as correct scientific findings. This is evident in quantum mechanics where the positions of particles structurally understood are fixed, even sometimes when not observable at all. They are treated as observed, from statistical laws of averages, with the possibility of grave incertitude, or indeterminism at the very core of science, which Heisenberg's principle has clearly brought out. The claims to exact and objective precision for the methods employed by scientists have now become highly questionable. It is interesting to note at this juncture how scientific thinkers, wanting to enrich and supplement the methods of science, are looking to other fields hitherto considered heterodox.

41

One striking example of this is the fact that they are beginning to speak of the dialectical approach which was, till now, considered taboo, belonging, as it were, to the other side of the barrier.

Marx and Engels, who employed dialectics for the first time after Hegel, were not fully favoured by those who belonged to the earlier group. Political and cultural prejudices tended to make them heterodox thinkers. Modern progress in scientific thinking, especially in the matter of an ever more imperative need to formulate bolder and bolder theories about the universe, now makes a reconciliation necessary. The dialectical approach is thus being made acceptable. The inductivo-hypothetical approach can no longer claim a high degree of certitude, even though it was considered good enough by scientists up to the present time. When statistical methods based on 'samplings' and 'probability curves' are thrown into the bargain, the position becomes even worse as far as scientific certitude is concerned.

A closer scrutiny of the epistemological implications of these two methods has made it evident, to some modern thinkers at least, that in essence the dialectical approach is not fundamentally different from what they have already accepted. Large trial-and-error samplings where probabilities are revealed as yielding vague degrees of certitude are not altogether unlike the certitude found in the Hegelian dialectical approach, where the thesis and the antithesis cancel out into a synthesis at a higher level. What the three levels, here implicitly taken for granted are, is a difficult question to resolve. The cancellation of thesis against antithesis in favour of a synthesis cannot even be imagined to take place except on the presupposition of an absolutist 'world-ground' or reality as its basis.

42

Thus by a long detour we are at present watching the strange phenomenon of orthodox scientists shaking hands with their worst opponents. When we remember that any dialectical methodology must presuppose some sort of absolutist basis on which alone it can become even ideologically understandable, we should be fully justified in thinking that modern scientists are already tacitly accepting the absolutist approach.

We have already referred to the hesitations of scientists. Even a scientist of the grade of Eddington had to be apologetic in the matter of suggesting some epistemological and methodological innovations of which he himself was a pioneer. We have already alluded to these elsewhere. It was he who first emphasized that concepts, not percepts, had to be given their important place in future scientific thought. In this conceptualizing and application of new mathematical norms and standards for scientific thought, he had to take care not to estrange his own opponents who remained more conservative and orthodox. Parochial limitations affect even the open domains of scientific thought and progress. In spite of science being an open and public discipline, cramping influences exist here and there, and sometimes come into evidence in an ugly way. In the matter of adopting a dialectical methodology we see the same hesitations and reservations, sometimes amounting to fear of opposition from the more prejudiced or conservative section within the same group.

We notice again a striking instance of the same pressure applied to another bold scientific thinker, Paul Freedom, who recently brought out a book entitled Principles of Scientific Research.

43

It is sad to note how he has had occasion to complain, in the third person, as follows:

"Before proceeding further, a small digression is necessary. The author has been advised by his friends to omit the next few pages because they refer to scientific principles enunciated by two men whose names are now associated with bitter political controversies. Such an omission appears to him to be impermissible by standards of scientific honesty. If science, emancipating itself from theology, is to be enmeshed in political prejudices, then it is the duty of all honest scientists to combat such a disaster. The author believes that most of his readers will be with him in this attitude.

"The fundamental principles to which the author now proposes to refer without further preamble are those first enunciated by Marx and Engels."¹⁹

We can cite two others; the first is Vincent Edward Smith, who belongs to the Roman Catholic Thomist School of thought; and the other is Professor Karl R. Popper, whose affiliations are definitely pragmatic. Both tend to recommend, with their own particular reservations and hesitations, the adoption of dialectical methodology for science. It will be interesting for us to examine the reasons put forward by them so that we are able to bridge the gap existing in our own minds between the old inductivo-hypothetical reasoning and the dialectical methodology properly belonging to the absolutist way of thinking.

44

The former method has its affinity with the trial-and-error approach, having no methodic roots of its own. The Cartesian approach, by systematic doubting, from the starting point of cogito ergo sum, although more methodically sound, has closer direct reference to what we have distinguished as the metaphysical rather than the physical. In a unitive science combining both the physical and metaphysical, trial-and-error can supplement systematic doubting in order to make the methodology applicable to a more complete science. Probabilities and possibilities enter into the game, as it were, from the opposite poles of the a priori and the a posteriori. When the game between the two sides is played fully and freely we then have dialectical methodology. Let us first hear what Professor Popper has to say on the subject:

"If the method of trial and error is developed more and more consciously, then it begins to take on the characteristic features of 'scientific method' .... Criticizing and testing go hand in hand; the theory is criticized from very many different sides in order to bring out those points which may be vulnerable. And the testing of the theory proceeds by exposing these vulnerable points to as severe an examination as possible. This, of course, is again a variant of the method of trial and error .... Its success depends mainly on three conditions, namely, that sufficiently numerous (and ingenious) theories should be offered, that the theories offered should be sufficiently varied, and that sufficiently severe tests should be made….

45

"If this description of the development of human thought in general and of scientific thought in particular is accepted as more or less correct, then it may help us to understand what is meant by those who say that the development of thought proceeds on dialectic lines."

He however makes the following reservation which brings out his hesitancy on the matter:

"From all this I think it is clear that one should be very careful in using the term 'dialectic'. It would be best, perhaps, not to use it at all - we can always use the clearer terminology of the method of trial and error."²¹

The subtle relationship between what is probable and what is actually proved, is masterfully analyzed by Professor Vincent Edward Smith, as we shall presently see. Probability, he points out, has to be accepted by the mind before actual proofs can be advanced. The former resides in the domain where dialectical reasoning is valid, while the actual inductions are made probable in the more realistic stratum of scientific findings. The following extracts will help to show how he accepts dialectical reasoning:

"Now the questions we raise and the consequences we deduce from various possible answers to our questions are not in themselves propositions about the real world. They do not become propositions about the real until the consequences are tested by induction. Until this induction takes place, dialectical propositions are provable only; by the subsequent induction they are proved ....

46

"A proposition about reality is secured when, leaving the dialectical or logical level, we go to physical things and make an inductive test to see which consequence fits observed fact.

"Demonstration deals with propositions about real causes and real effects. Dialectic, as such, deals only with logical beings.

"Dialectic is a logic of questioning. A dialectician proposes possible answers to the questions he raises about any subject proposed to him. He then works out the consequences that follow from answering each question in an affirmative or negative way .... In contrast to the dialectical questioning that precedes it, induction is an operation of quite a different sort. It puts the mind in correspondence with the real.

"To the extent that an investigator is still engaged in the dialectical preliminary to induction, his conclusions are probable but not yet proved. If the quest for nature's first principles is inductive because the principles cannot be demonstrated without using them, our induction to the principle must nevertheless be prefaced by a suitable dialectic. However, the dialectic yields only provable conclusions, which can be shown to be certain only by inductions."²²

Here the writer stands for a conditional dialectical approach.

A more thoroughgoing recognition of the dialectical approach is found in Paul Freedham, whom we have already quoted. He is bold enough to face his opponents land has clarified the situation, as follows:

47

"One may hope that a time will come when Engels' "Dialectics of Nature" will be removed from political book-shops and put on the shelves of those devoted to scientific publications. Needless to say, the fundamental principles enunciated by Marx and Engels do not supercede all previously discovered principles of scientific research, or invalidate other principles discovered at a later date. They can in no way serve as exclusive guides to such research, any more than any great scientific discovery can give a complete knowledge and understanding of the whole Universe. But they are of the utmost importance."²³

He goes on further, elaborating the principles of Dialectical Materialism, tracing certain aspects of this method back to the times of Heraclitus:

"Of the four principles embodied in Dialectic Materialism, the first is that everything in Nature has a history, nothing is eternal and immutable, and everything is in a continued state of change. This principle, although first enunciated in this all-embracing form by Marx and Engels, had been formulated in more limited forms long before them. It was first propounded by Heraclitus, and found expression is the works of Bacon, Descartes and Leibniz, in Niels Stensen's theory of the possibility of tracing the history of the Earth through fossils, in Kant's cosmogony, and in the evolution theory of Lamarck. In the twentieth century this principle has been extended by Lemaitre and Dirac, and particularly by Milne."²⁴

48

He continues, showing in detail the other principles found in Dialectic Materialism, and how scientific experiment has confirmed them:

"The other principles embodied in Dialectic Materialism, which, according to Marx and Engels, must be accepted by any scientist, consciously or unconsciously, in the framing of a correct hypothesis or final induction, are Unity of Opposites, Change of Quantity into Quality, and Negation and Negation of Negation.... According to the principle of unity of opposites, however, the only correct theory would be one which could unify the two conflicting theories. The present theory of light, which confirms the correctness of both the corpuscular and wave concepts .... is therefore a striking confirmation of the correctness of the 'unity of opposites' principle.

The principle of transition of quantity into quality is perhaps most strikingly illustrated in the case of radioactivity, when the mere quantitative increase of U 235, or of plutonium, above a certain critical point, suddenly produces a nuclear fission of the entire aggregate with liberation of enormous quantity of atomic energy.

"The principle of negation and negation of negation is perhaps most impressively illustrated in astrophysics by the supernova phenomenon. According to the modern theory of stellar bodies, increase of mass beyond a certain point produces a decrease of volume .... Increase of mass thus negates the volume that mass may occupy, and beyond a certain point uncontrollable contraction to a geometrical point sets in. According to the principle of negation, however, such a state of affairs cannot exist without creating an opposite tendency, a factor which tends to, and at a certain point actually must, negate the negation .... This is what has actually been observed, when Zwicky discovered a number of supernovae."²⁵

49

Finally, he sums up as follows:

"The primary value of the principles of unity of opposites, of change of quantity into quality, and of negation and negation of negation, from the point of view of scientific research, must reside in their value as guides to formulation of correct hypothesis .... It may be said, that on the whole, the possible value of dialectic materialism as a guide to scientific research is almost unexplored."¹

Thus dialectical reasoning which supposedly originated in the so-called idealistic absolutism of Hegel has now found its legitimate place at the very heart of realistic and even experimental scientific thinking. We do not accept the term "Dialectical Materialism" which seems to tamper with the perfect interaction of thesis and antithesis by touching as it were only one scale of the balance when something is being weighed. We do accept, however, that there is a method of thinking which gives equal primacy to the immanent and transcendent aspects of truth, the implications of which we shall presently clarify.

There are various kinds of logic, ratiocination or inference possible in scientific or speculative reason. Syllogisms which descend or ascend between generalities and particulars are meant to yield various degrees of certitude. There is always a middle term whereby certitude is established, whether in its ascent or in its descent.

50

Induction and deduction are processes of thinking pointing in opposite directions. Logical and mathematical calculations resemble each other in the reasoning process taking place within the mind. What is called proof or certitude is not a tangible thing, but refers to actuality or reality whether in a peripheral or central sense. Reason moves, it were, in a vertical axis that is both transcendental and immanent at one and the same time and which is also fully subjective in status.

We have only to think of the Pythagorean theorem as an example. The central truth of this theorem could be established in two different ways well known in the classroom. Those of the lower grades arrive at the truth by a method resembling that of experimental trial-and-error. It would consist of making drawings of right-angle triangles on paper and then constructing squares on each side, on any number of such triangles of varying sized and dimensions. These squares could be cut out according to certain plans. This practical method can prove that the squares of the sides are together equal in a area to the square on the hypotenuse. There is also the more usual method of proof that school children learn at a later stage when their esprit de finesse is more fully developed. This latter proof is through graded acceptance of axioms, postulates, propositions, theorems, riders and lemmas.
Each lends certitude to the other in a graded hierarchy of descending truth-values. By manipulating them in a certain way the teacher is able to "prove" on the blackboard the same truth that the children in the lower grades arrived at through their esprit géometrique as Pascal would have called it.

51

There are not two verities involved here. The central truth is neither pure nor practical, but a resultant of both. Mathematics and logic are processes of thinking. They are independent of things physical or objective in the actual sense, and may thus be imagined as approaching each other on two poles of the vertical axis, having at one and the same time both an immanent and transcendent epistemological status. Two proofs thus meet in one neutral certitude at the core of consciousness. This certitude, having a subjective transcendental-cum-immanent order of its own, properly belongs to a normative Science of the Absolute.

In the familiar parlance of Vedanta Philosophy this way of reasoning is referred to as the one that abolishes triputi (tribasic prejudice in thought) for purposes of proper absolutist speculation. Horizontally viewed in the context of actualities or corresponding virtualities, as they refer perceptually to the senses, this is necessarily divided tri-basically into subject, object and central truth-value. This splitting of awareness into three disjunct components is not favourable to unitive or integrated certitude. We have to be able to take a verticalized view of this same tribasic situation.

As in the example of the Pythagorean theorem, the immanent aspect of this tribasic situation is represented by the schoolchildren dealing with actual triangles and squares cut out on paper. The transcendental aspect corresponds to a more generalized and abstracted version of the horizontal tribasic situation.

52

The proof of the Pythagorean theorem results when both the immanent and transcendental approaches cancel themselves out into a central certitude which is truly absolutist and neutral. This neutral seat at the core of consciousness is the correct epistemological source of all scientific or metaphysical certitude.

The essence of the dialectical method can be seen here to be incorporated naturally into a kind of speculative reasoning, both experimental and axiomatic at the same time. The self-consciousness of man understood under the notion of the Absolute is what finally gives certitude to all or any miscellaneous certitude we seek in life. Syllogistic reasoning is only a lukewarm or feeble version of the same certitude characteristic of reasoning. Many other forms of eristic or sophistic reasoning are no better. Trial-and-error experimentation can be considered only ratiocination of the lowest order, possessed even by animals. The high sounding inductivo-hypothetical method is only a form of glorified guesswork. The method of sampling based on statistical averages and probabilities yields a weaker form of certitude still. No probability can be established except where possibility has first been established. All possibilities which can be proved by even one unique case of success instead of depending on large statistical averages, are basically nearer to the context of the Absolute than to the pluralistic world of multiple interests in life.

Significant human value-certitudes necessarily reside at the core of human consciousness itself and belong to the context of dialectic as properly understood in a science of the Absolute.

53

We have indicated so far the global, integrated or unitive nature of our subject matter; the approach being from the physical and metaphysical aspects of the subject-matter and object-matter of science treated together. This is done in a neutral manner without prejudice to either of these disciplines. Having indicated how dialectical methodology properly belongs to the content of the Science of the Absolute, there remain some structural outlines to be clarified, as also some logical parameters derived from thermodynamic or cybernetic disciplines.

We have just said that the tribasic prejudice natural to man has first to be neutralized if a unitive verticalized version of total truth or value is to emerge. Let us again rely on Vedanta tradition and refer to the three aspects familiarly understood as sat, cit, and ananda into which the notion of a central global Absolute can be referred for purposes of critical analysis and easy communicability.

Anything that deserves the attention of man must fulfil the following three basic requirements: it must first respond to the question whether it exists; it must respond to the question whether it remains true even when subjected to logical scrutiny: and thirdly, whether it has any value-significance to man.

In Vedanta each fact, reality, or truth is either existent, subsistent or has value. Existence corresponds to the Sanskrit term sat (also called asti: exists), and is ontological in its philosophical status.

54

Subsistence, which determines something that subsists or is substantial and looms into consciousness even after reason has been directed to it, is referred to as cit, of which the act of entering consciousness is called bhati (looms). The axiological aspect is also added on top of existence and subsistence and recognized by the term ananda (value factor), also called priya (dear). The totality of the Absolute as it interests man, is comprised within these three categories of existence-subsistence-value corresponding respectively to asti-bhati-priya².

It should not however be imagined that these categories stand apart disjunctly. Each one is meant to neutralize or modify the asymmetry implied in the other, so as to fuse the three categories into one homogeneous content belonging to the same golden streak of a real and central logical or rational truth-value. Vedantic tradition also indicates other lines which any integrated Science of the future must follow. The departmentalization of cosmology, psychology and theology is not favourable in bringing to light any unified Science. It is therefore always tacitly understood in Vedantic tradition that the adhibhautika (what refers to the elements, i.e. cosmological), adhyatmika (what refers to the self, i.e. psychological), and adhidaivika (what refers to the gods, i.e. theological and therefore axiological), should all be comprised within the scope of any complete philosophy.

55

The cosmological, psychological and theological have always to go hand in hand with the notion of the Absolute as the unifying reference. Besides these two Vedantic conventions there is also a third to keep in mind. This last convention refers to the two broad divisions of the situation with which the contemplative is most directly concerned.

Nature, into which all men are born, when treated as a global datum, has two aspects. One can be characterized objectively as "made for man", and the other, its reciprocal opposite, refers subjectively to "man as its enjoyer". These two are distinguished respectively by the technical term often employed in Vedantic literature: Viz. bhogya (something to be enjoyed or appreciated as having value-significance), and its natural and inevitable dialectical counterpart bhokta (the enjoyer) which is the subject represented in the Self. Fichte also correctly treated the Self and the non-Self as bilateral counterparts in his philosophy. Thus Nature corresponds horizontally to the Natura Naturata and vertically to the Natura Naturans of Spinoza. Among modern scientists of high standing it is Erwin Schrodinger who recognized for the first time how conveniently suitable the Vedantic way of thinking was for paving the way for the future integration and ordering of the epistemology and methodology of a Unified Science. We shall return to take advantage of his remarks at a later stage. For the present the three integrating items we have borrowed from Vedanta must suffice to give us a general idea of the scope and normal delimitations of our subject.

We have to first remember that triputi (tribasic prejudice) is to be abolished; secondly, that sat, cit and ananda are to be treated as triple categories neutralizing each other; thirdly, that cosmology, psychology, and theology should always be kept hand in hand in our discussion; and finally, that the vertico-horizontal correlation is always to be kept intact between the Self and the non-Self, as enjoyer and what is to be enjoyed (bhokta and bhogya). When this is remembered, we shall have fulfilled some of the more important and fundamental prerequisites of an integrated Science of the Absolute.

All certitude resides, as we have already explained, at the core of absolute consciousness. On final analysis the Absolute proves itself from both sides of the total knowledge-situation. It was Eddington who was responsible for the pleasantry : "Proof is an idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself." Wittgenstein, on the other hand, has become famous for saying that all propositions prove themselves. He states the following axiom in his famous Tractatus:

"Every proposition must already have a sense: it cannot be given a sense by affirmation. Indeed its sense is just what is affirmed. And the same applies to negation, etc."⁴

And further on he states (in 6.125):

"It is always possible to construe logic in such a way that every proposition is its own proof."⁵

We have also the popular saying, "The proof of the pudding is in the eating thereof. " This is judging proof by effects.

57

Absolute proof can be judged by the correctness of its starting postulates or by its experimental conditions, as when an experiment is correctly arranged and made to work in the laboratory. "It works," is a sufficiently valid proof in the simple mechanistic world. We have previously examined how the Pythagorean theorem could be proved from two ends of the total knowledge-situation. How causes meet correct end-results, giving validity both ways, is the type of proof to be kept in mind when we think of this present work. Neither the laboratory nor the observatory is all-important. Nor do we completely rely on the body of general ideas, often haphazardly put together in seminaries and scholastic centres of learning. We have to take account of both sides from a normalized central position, where the visibles and the calculables come together and confirm each other. It is therefore in the very centre or middle term that the greatest scientific certitude is to be sought; neither in its major nor minor, positive or negative ones. As we depart from this central position we come to unilateral domains of certitude, tending to reach the existential bottom of the vertical axis, or the vague axiological pole of reality at the top of the vertical axis.
These two partial certitudes that reside experimentally or axiomatically at the two poles of the pure and almost mathematical knowledge-situation tend to tally by the efforts made by the true contemplative. When the tallying is perfect normalization and renormalization yield the central, normative notion of the Absolute.

58

Modern science consists of findings which are capable of being expressed in the form of equations. Einstein, Planck or Schrodinger, each has his famous equations expressed not only in algebraic symbols, but also incorporated into their structural counterparts which are geometrical in status. Equations in analytical geometry answer to graphs and vice versa, and they may be said to prove each other giving a fully scientific character to the certitude involved. Post-Hilbertian geometry is now an independent self-sufficient discipline, whose theories and actual objects come together, yielding high scientific certitude in the field of mathematics.

In the present case of the normative notion of the Absolute, its beauty, power and fecundity besides practical applicability to the whole domain of knowledge should be taken as a sort of proof by end-result". The starting premises of our work are also unquestionable, because the direct evidence of the senses is not denied its legitimate right to influence or guide our thoughts throughout the range of this Science.

Pratyaksha, a Vedantic term which refers to the empirical evidence on which the positive sciences normally rest, is given its due place in the methodology of the Vedanta. Ontology, in Vedanta, refers to the very first item of the triple categories that finally compose the Absolute, which have been referred to collectively as sat-cit-ananda (existence-subsistence-value). Vedanta is therefore not an "idealistic" philosophy as some authorities tend to think but one that is a normalized version of truth arrived at from both the ends of existence and value.

59

At the other pole of the knowledge-situation, Vedanta fully recognizes what it calls sabda-pramana, the validity of the Word. This refers to the a priori or the axiomatic in the domain of pure names where each proposition can fully prove itself without any consideration of contradiction entering into it. At the very core is to be located the normalized neutral certitude, which is no less scientific than the other two and on both of which it depends. This verity is not unknown to some modern thinkers. Bergson strikingly refers to these "two efforts of opposite direction" as follows:

"Coinciding with this matter, adopting the same rhythm and the same movement, might not consciousness, by two efforts of opposite direction, raising itself and lowering itself by turns, become able to grasp from within, and no longer perceive only from without, the two forms of reality, body and mind? Would not this twofold effort make us, as far as that is possible, re-live the absolute?"⁶

Even in ordinary life if one should call a carpenter and ask him to make three or four yardsticks or footrulers, the correctness of what the carpenter produces could be questioned, in spite of the minutest efforts to make them exact. The questioning man who wants to accept them after applying the right tests would have to lay them one over the other to see if the edges tally, and then also verify the lengths with the standard yardstick kept, say in the British Museum. The second test is based on something a priori and arbitrarily fixed.

60

The truth of such a standard is accepted nominalistically. It is not questioned and belongs to the world where something can prove itself. After making one yardstick with the help of the standard bar, the carpenter duplicates or triplicates it, employing the Euclidean axiom, "things which are equal to the same thing are also equal to one another."⁷ Here again the carpenter abandons the visible test and accepts unconsciously the calculable or intelligible. The man who is to pay for them first tests them by piling them one on the top of the other, passing his fingers on both ends of the sticks to see if they are all the same. If he finds even a hairbreadth of a discrepancy he would (or should) reject them, and ask the carpenter to standardize or normalize them more correctly.

Thus even here in such a simple operation of everyday applied science we find both the observables and calculables entering into interplay yielding the desired result, and having a correct scientific significance in daily life. When this is so in such simple cases, it is not necessary for us to give other detailed examples. There could be great disparity between the experimental and calculable aspects of certitude which enter into the formulation of a general law such as Newton's theory of gravitation. Textbooks tell us that he did not get the initial suggestion from any experiment conducted in the laboratory, but instead happened to see an apple fall from a tree.

61

This was enough to start him on a train of thought whereby he traveled through the astronomical calculations of Kepler and others before him. Newton, by this strong common sense or intuition was bold enough to formulate a theory that has not ceded its position as a central theory even in our post-Einsteinian world, referring to the whole universe anywhere and at any time. The experimental portion properly belonging to this bold theorization happens to be minimal, yet the beauty, fecundity and force of Newton's vision remains and uniquely dominates the total scientific world, still commanding our admiration.

Another striking innovation in the world of modern thought is the discovery of the coordinates by Descartes, which are being used now in almost every department of precise thinking. A nurse in a hospital, a pilot of a ship heading towards a port, makers of maps and directories, and even those tabulating a simple thing like bus fares, all use the Cartesian coordinates. They are also used, ever-increasingly in the domain of verification of abstract equations, such as those of Schrodinger for his suggested field theory. These coordinates of Descartes constitute a powerful instrument of scientific research depending on itself for its validity. The credit of this epoch-making discovery goes to the great philosopher. Likewise, the scientific validity of the present work which is not concerned merely with one department of science, nor with one way of speculation to the exclusion of all others, looks primarily for its certitude within itself.

62

Its starting assumptions and end-results have to tally in such a way as to confirm each other. It is the common structure underlying both the visible and the intelligible aspects of reality when treated together, that is our final normative reference. As Whittaker pointed out, the a priori framework of the universe and its material aspect have to lend certitude to each other.
Distinguishing them in clear terms he writes:

"We stand in awe before the thought that the intellectual framework of nature is prior to nature herself - that it existed before the material universe began its history - that the cosmos revealed to us by science is only one fragment in the plan of the eternal."⁸

Such is the central seat of the norm for certitude with which we are concerned. Whittaker himself elsewhere speaks of normalization and re-normalization for certitude. If we are able to consistently reveal the same structural outlines of logical parameters throughout the range of the various disciplines involved in our subject, the requirements claimed for such a Science of Sciences will be fulfilled to the maximum measure.

63

Facts, truths or local events as reported in newspapers and periodicals have only an incidental and non-generalized character. Scientific or philosophic thought consists of not allowing any prejudice or partiality to vitiate eternal and universal verity, either as a Truth of existence, subsistence or value. Scientific thought and philosophical speculation become all the more dignified when they have a correct and global symmetry of structure. Science is only interested in universal values. Schrodinger points out the difference between the correctly philosophical and the non-philosophical attitudes as follows:

"The unphilosophical and philosophical attitudes can be very sharply distinguished (with scarcely any intermediate forms) by the fact that the first accepts everything that happens as regards its general form, and finds occasion for surprise only in that special content by which something that happens here today differs from what happened here yesterday; whereas for the second, it is precisely the common features of all experience, such as characterise everything we encounter, which are the primary and most profound occasion for astonishment; indeed, one might almost say that it is the fact that anything is experienced and encountered at all."⁹

All partialities have to be rubbed off. Even prejudices such as big and small, part or whole, one or many, whether belonging to the context of being or becoming; all have to be rounded off to bring fact truth or value under the aegis of the normative notion of the Absolute. If we say, for example, as Protagoras said, that, "Man is the measure of all things," we have to examine man as placed in his total environment in the universe. He has to be placed in the complete context to which he properly belongs.

64

Instead of man we can think, as in the Socratic context, of "Know thyself," pertaining to human consciousness. Here again consciousness has to be understood with all its implications of being or becoming. It can only be divided into bits sub species aeternitatis, if we are to correctly understand Spinoza's notion of substance. Its natura naturans and natura naturata have to be considered as belonging together. If we think of Liebnitz and his monad, the plurality of monads should not be considered prejudicial to the understanding of the overall relation of the monas monadum or the Monad of Monads, to the structure to which each monad is meant to conform. Liebnitz writes about the monad as follows:

"1. The Monad of which we speak here, is nothing but a simple substance, which enters into compounds. By 'simple' is meant without parts. 2. And there must be simple substance, since there are compounds; for a compound is nothing but a collection or aggregation of simple things. 3. Now where there are no parts, there can be neither extension nor form (figure) nor divisibility. These Monads are the real atoms of nature and, in a word, the elements of things."¹⁰

In the Upanishads we have varying instances of items of simple existence, subsistence or value taken and treated as proper to the context of a normative notion. Abstraction and generalization have to go hand in hand without losing their way in the bypaths giving place to distortions or exaggerations of facts or events. We have seen how Plato glorifies without distortion or exaggeration such notions as Truth and Beauty, thus correctly placing them in the world of high values where they properly belong.

65

Any "ism" such as polytheism or pantheism can be justified if such notions are fitted into, and understood in, the overall context of the structure of the Absolute, without any unilateral lack of proportion or harmony with other items belonging to the same group or family of ideas. The task of normalization and neutralization in any integrated or unified Science has to respect all such important pre-requisites.

In his "An Introduction to Metaphysics"¹¹ , Bergson has enumerated some other items belonging properly to the absolutist approach. Modern phenomenology has also adopted a normalized method of scientific speculation which respects such a normative approach, although it still fights shy of the a priori approach and other such classical notions, even when they are harmless. (See page 9 and our reference to Husserl.) Among modern scientists it is once again Schrodinger who is able to point out this necessity of normalization for future scientific thinking.

As an example of neutralized thinking between life and matter in the biological context, it is interesting to read his plea for a kind of neutral and monistic approach to the consciousness in which animals such as the fly hydrafusca may be said to live. He closely considers the phenomenon of regeneration in this species of living beings, and he is able to prove, with the help of other experts in biology, that the animal lives in an indivisible unit of consciousness of its own.

66

Matter and mind could similarly be thought of as belonging together in the neutral zone or stratum of absolute consciousness. Such a view is natural to Vedanta. Even outside Vedanta great thinkers like William James have referred to the same factor as neutral monism. All variations of the visible world can be reduced to generalizations or abstractions having a schematic status, while all names and classes belonging to the world of concepts can be fitted together into one unitive category in generalized abstract terms. When the schema and the nominalistic abstraction lend truth-value to each other, correct scientific speculation becomes possible even in the context of the Absolute. Schrodinger gives another picturesque example of this Vedantic way of normalization. It is interesting for us to quote him here at some length, both because it would serve as a model for scientific thinking, and more especially because it comes from a scientist fully alive to the requirements of a revised way in scientific thought. What is more, he cannot be charged with any traditional prejudice in favour of the Vedantic method which he so highly commends.
We read:

"Suppose you are sitting on a bench beside a path in high mountain country .... and facing you, soaring up from the depths of the valley, is the mighty, glacier-tipped peak, its smooth snowfields and hard-edged rock-faces touched at this moment with soft rose-colour by the last rays of the departing sun, all marvelously sharp against the clear, pale, transparent blue of the sky.

67

"According to our usual way of looking at it, everything that you are seeing has, apart from small changes, been there for thousands of years before you. After a while - not long - you will no longer exist, and the woods and rocks and sky will continue, unchanged, for thousands of years after you. What is it that has called you so suddenly out of nothingness to enjoy for a brief while a spectacle which remains quite indifferent to you? The conditions for your existence are almost as old as the rocks. For thousands of years men have striven and suffered and begotten and women have brought forth in pain. A hundred years ago, perhaps, another man sat on this spot; like you he gazed with awe and yearning in his heart at the dying light on the glaciers. Like you he was begotten of man and born of woman. He felt pain and brief joy as you do. Was he someone else? Was it not you yourself? What is this Self of yours? What was the necessary condition for making the thing conceived this time into you, just you and not someone else? What clearly intelligible scientific meaning can this 'someone else' really have? If she who is now your mother had cohabited with someone else and had a son by him, and your father had done likewise, would you have come to be? Or were you living in them, and in your father's father .... thousands of years ago? And even if this is so, why are you not your brother, why is your brother not you, why are you not one of your distant cousins? What justifies you in obstinately discovering this difference, the difference between you and someone else, when objectively what is there is the same?

"Looking and thinking in that manner you may suddenly come to see, in a flash, the profound rightness of the basic conviction in Vedanta: it is not possible that this unity of knowledge, feeling and choice which you call your own should have sprung into being from nothingness at a given moment not so long ago; rather this knowledge, feeling and choice are essentially eternal and unchangeable and numerically one in all men, nay in all sensitive beings."¹²

68

The Vedantic way of approach to science or even to metaphysics is thus correctly in accord with what modern scientists like Schrodinger think on this subject.

In the mind of even some of the most advanced modern scientific thinkers there seems to persist a strange prejudice against giving an equality of status to both a priori and a posteriori processes of thinking. These terms are themselves sometimes even considered outmoded, at least to the post-Voltairian western mind, and flavouring of the Dark Ages and the horrors associated with it. Prejudices die hard, and orthodoxies and heterodoxies are like a pendulum swinging from one extreme to the other. Even such an advanced thinker as Einstein, who had the boldest of dreams about establishing a Unified Field Theory, remained to his last days a staunch adherent of experimental evidence as against the a priori. This is evident in one of his later writings, entitled "Space, Ether and the Field in Physics", where he puts forward his finalized theoretical version in respect of his noble dream.

69

This prejudice in favour of the observables as against the calculables, comes into evidence very distressingly for us here. Referring to the change of attitude in the method of science, of which Einstein was fully conscious, and in spite of the rival claims of the deductive as against inductive methods, he does not seem to be prepared to shed his prejudice in favour of observed facts. Nonetheless some of his own followers like Eddington have accomplished a breakthrough in this matter, standing for what we have previously discussed above as normalization.
The idea of taking a neutral position between rival claims of observation and the a priori method has not established itself fully in the thought of scientific thinkers. Einstein admits the claims of deduction as against induction as follows:

"The predominantly inductive methods appropriate to the youth of science are giving place to tentative deduction. Such a theoretical structure needs to be very thoroughly elaborated before it can lead to conclusions which can be compared with experience."13

It was really after the posthumous publication of the Fundamental Theory of Eddington that Whittaker and Milne began to think in terms of normalization and renormalization of the experimental with a priori calculations. This hesitation in giving axiomatic thinking its due place in the total scheme of normative absolutist thinking, so desirable for a Unified Science, has been one of the main impediments for the progress of thought in the direction of fully meeting the imperative demands of a Science of the Absolute.

70

In spite of the difficulty however, even as early as in the time of Constantine the Great, his nephew, the Emperor Julian, was able to write as follows:

"Reflect, therefore, whether self-knowledge does not control every science and every art, and moreover whether it does not include the knowledge of universals. For to know things divine through the divine part in us, and mortal things