Querying the Cosmos
The common sway of Euro-Philosophies , by convention, can be filed, in a brevity of convenience, in one of two , hoary , genres: idealism, and materialism.
The former ascribes primacy to consciousness, the latter to ‘existence’.
Loosely speaking , it is about the primacy of mind , or matter.
It is also about Origins.
In one view , we ‘begin’ with atoms, then ascend, howsoever inexplicably, to ‘consciousness’.
In the other, the origin is in some universal geist which then ‘ devolves’ into more mundane stuff.
At least since Newton, materialism (and its progeny, empiricism) has been the dominant spirit (!) of European , and Modernist , science.
By virtue of that, and for other reasons, it also became the vogue, via ‘physics-envy’ , of the so-called social sciences, and metaphysics.
Durkheim (consider ‘social facts’ as ‘things’, e.g.) and Marx (“it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness”) are but late-entrants into that ilk, that included the great Canonicals: Bacon, Smith, Hume, Mandeville, Locke, and Hobbes
Scientific and philosophical materialism was the dominant idiom at the level of the elite intelligentsia, whereas a more crass form of ‘materialism’ i..e , the glutinous embrace of greed and gluttony , became the mainstay of the governing classes, with the expansion of markets and the ‘profit motive’ (their conjunction giving birth to the pseudo-science of modern ‘Economics’) after the Crusades , and along the grand route (s) of global Colonisation.
The Church was fatefully dualistic: its theology was ineluctably ‘idealist, but its science ( and few would under-estimate the contribution of the Church of Rome to the study of the sciences, despite Galileo and all that) maintained a ‘relative autonomy’ from it - with the so-called ‘Reformation’ and the ‘Enlightenment’ further removing it from dependency on dogma, as in the work of Descartes or Kant ( which sustained the dualism , nonetheless).
However, the ‘essential tension’ between the two views remained, and still remains, extant throughout.
In the beginning was the Word, said One: in the beginning was the Deed, said the Other.
Each school, idealist or materialist , further segmented into multiple variants: monistic, dualistic, dialectical, and so on.
In the natural sciences, the advent of ‘field physics’ upset the notion of matter as ‘prima materia’.
Relativity ideas suggested that matter itself was ‘exchangeable’ with its dual: energy.
Thus ‘energy’ replaced ‘matter’, so to speak: but with further evolution , ‘quantum field theory’ overshadowed prior notions, with the ‘field’ as datum - and both matter and energy subsumed within it.
Bell’s Theorem seemed to defy the Classical notion of the Sovereign Absolute : the speed of light.
Quantum ideas, apparently, brought human subjectivity back to the center of things ( with their varied notions of the Observer effect, Heisenberg Uncertainties, Quantum indeterminacies, etc) after a long , historical, hiatus.
To quote Heisenberg:The ontology of materialism rested upon the illusion that the kind of existence, the direct 'actuality' of the world around us, can be extrapolated into the atomic range. This extrapolation, however, is impossible... atoms are not things.
In the ‘Copenhagen Interpretation’ , the objective perilously depended on the subjective, apparently confirming ancient Vedic ideas.
Of course, the religiously inclined saw in all this an opportunity for a ‘counter-Reformation’ , renewing a moribund theology on a nouvelle, quantum basis (par example, P.C.W Davies’ idea of a ’finite theism’; or, as with F.Capra, ‘for the modern physicist , then, Shiva’s dance is the dance of subatomic matter’)
A new , evangelical crusade (prominently ,in the US) erupted against Darwinian evolutionary ideas, and the idea of an empty, meaningless, universe (via Hawking’s suggestion of ‘God as the Edge of the Universe’ ).
But many scientists also felt ‘liberated’ from the ‘iron cage’ of scientific materialism, inspired by what appeared , at the sub-atomic level, as a ‘self-aware universe’ (A.Goswami, David Bohm, et.al.).
To quote Planck: As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.
There is even the suggestion, in this perceptual scheme, that ‘nature’ itself is only a construction of mind.
As Niels Bohr put it, “ There is no world of quantum, there is only a quantum mechanical description”.
So it could be that the ‘mind’ is the knot that joins consciousness to matter’.
Our current Orthodoxy, the ‘Lambda-CDM ‘ framework, of today, suggests that vey little (perhaps only 5%) of the universe is governed by our traditional matter-energy dyad, with the vast unknown being given dubious names such as ‘dark’ (meaning , of course, unknown) matter and energy.
But this new ‘data’, inherently, supports neither school - so that the Question of Origin remains unaffected by it.
(ii)
Now I have, thus far, made reference to European , or Modernist, Science - to the neglect of all else.
This should elicit no surprise: today, ALL of us, East and West, are Avid Consumers of the Euro-Modernist Version of Everything.
Their Hegemony is near-complete.
However, a trek backwards in time to Antiquity makes short work of the content of this present hegemony.
I am referring to the multi-faceted insights of Vedic science and philosophy that have left no field of knowledge untouched, though still largely unacknowledged ( a casual peruse of the literature reveals the egregious Omission(s): there is not one major idea in science or philosophy that does not originate in some, or other, text of Vedic antiquity: yet Modernist science – even when cursorily acknowledging lineage – stolidly begins with either the ‘Greeks’ , or with the ‘Enlightenment’ . Why should it matter, in other words, that the so-called ‘Pythagorean theorem’ preceded Pythagoras by centuries? Maybe it doesn’t: or does it? ).
The dating of this achievement, of course, remains problematic.
European accounts of Non-Europeans , generally articulated during their suzerainty over the Other as Imperial Powers, have to be heavily discounted (given the need to assert European priority in all matters), as with the concocted Myth of the ‘Aryan Invasions’ that, supposedly brought civilization (not to mention Europid traits) to the Sub-Continent (that was to be rudely , and tragically, rent , during/after grant of ‘independence’ , both by Colonial Design and by Nativist Infighting).Ditto, I suspect, with the feint that Sanskrit was preceded by some nameless ‘indo-european’ mother -ancestor.
There is a broad analogy there to the same worthies , high priests of academe no less, who once suggested that a Caucasian tribe occupied Egypt and built the Pyramids ( to deny Black Africa its own claim to high splendor).
Unfortunately, some Nativist extremes, in understandable reaction, are also somewhat intemperate , in this regard.
Suffice it to say, for the limited purposes here, that thousands of years before the European ‘Enlightenment’, Vedic scholars were debating such issues with a profundity rarely equalled since.
The noble Siddhartha himself was no mean scholar : and his legacy, much as that of Jainism , is still richly relevant today.
I want to introduce here the Sanskrit word Pratityasamutpada which is relevant to this quick précis of the Idea of Origins.
It may be translated as ‘co-dependent origination’, or ‘interdependent co-causation’.
Nagarjuna, the great Buddhist savant , codified many of the tenets of the Buddha: here, in desperate summary, is the notion (via Thich Nhat Hanh):
This is, because that is.
This is not, because that is not.
This ceases to be, because that ceases to be.
The implication for ideas about origins couldn’t be clearer.
Instead of the simple either/or of ‘idealism vs materialism’ , it is the notion of their ‘co-dependency’: the world, as it is - or the worlds as they are - has a multiplicity of causes.
Jain science, similarly, stresses, in extremis, our one-sided interpretive tendencies in the face of a universe gifted with the inscrutable ‘suchness’ of things (the ‘Blind Men and the Elephant’ is, not accidentally, a Jain tale).
The Buddha’s skepticism, similarly, refused answers - in eloquent reticence ! - to no less than Fourteen Questions about the ultimate nature of things.
In the Upanishads, the iteration of ‘neti, neti’ (Sanskrit for’ not this, not this’) , in similar vein, negates all (self-assured) descriptions about the Ultimate Reality, if not the Reality itself.
Even earlier than that was the equally irrefutable Vedic notion of ‘Maya’ or ‘dependent-reality’ (i.e., data contingent upon sense-perceptions).
Here, again, Nagarjuna , in his classic “Mulamadhyamakakarika” (or, Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way) argues: “Things do not arise out of themselves, they do not exist absolutely, their permanent being is not to be found, they are not independent , but they are dependently arising”.
It will be found that many schools of contemporary philosophy are negated in those few words.
And, despite the current reign of the ‘Big Bang’ theory , I predict that cosmic physics will , perhaps sooner than later, shedding its inescapable Modernist arrogance, arrive at this subtle, if ancient, and Vedic, quietus of realization.
A more pedestrian way of making this point is perhaps via the Jain story of a patient cured after eating a bunch of herbs , not knowing which herb was, actually, medicinal.
The moral : just as the patient was restored , despite ignorance as to which herb really ‘worked’ , so is there wisdom in supporting all traditions , given uncertainty as to the real distribution of their truth values.
Pascal’s wager?
No, millennia after Jain deliberations, Pascal was offering a utilitarian gamble only rather than scientific caution in the face of uncertainty in a pluralist world - which is the Buddhist-Jain message.
But , to extend matters even further: is this ‘plural world’ itself real, or a delusion (i.e. a world of appearances only)?
The Vedanta , to bring in another venerable Vedic tradition, is clear: we are deceived by Maya, the creative power of the universe , into believing in the Plural.
Its binding forces are Ahamkara (ego) and Karma (volitional action) which tie us to the Wheel of Samsara (the material world).
This Maya can be ‘seen through’ by Darsana (epiphany) .
So , it is Avidya (ignorance) that leads to Mithya (error) that can be overcome by Gnana (knowledge).
But, to what effect?
The realization that ‘experienced reality’ , much as the experiencing Self , is hollow and empty,(Sunya,) and lacks a Self-Nature (Svabhava).
The World, in other words, is Empty.
Modern-day Quantum scientists and Existential philosophers alike could , easily, perhaps, take cue from that.
As C.T. Kohl has it: There is a surprising parallelism between the philosophical concept of reality articulated by Nagarjuna and the physical concept of reality implied by quantum physics. For neither is there a fundamental core to reality, rather reality consists of systems of interacting objects. Such concepts of reality cannot be reconciled with the substantial, subjective, holistic or instrumentalistic concepts of reality which underlie modern modes of thought.
Surprising?
The real surprise is why Our European scholar is ‘surprised’ that, five thousand years apart, , our best minds see the world , bare, bleak , and beautiful, similarly.
Of course, one may have to set aside the Euromyth of ‘progress’ to glean such matters.
(iii)
The high priests of Modernist science , despite the quantum revolution, have been , and remain still, draped over with the patina of dogmatism and determinism, the very mirror image of the Church dogma it was once contending with.
And Modernist Science still overlords it over All (proscribing this – acupuncture, e.g., at one time – or ridiculing that , and partnering with the State in Dr Strangelove fashion) much the same way as the European titan of commerce, industry, or government , strides across the globe today ,altogether cocksure of his imperial mastery over it.
Let me sum up.
We live in the best of times, and the worst of times.
Best, because a panoramic penumbra of human possibilities is now become visible to the insightful, the world over: worst , because the old North Atlantic Hegemons are still preventing universal access to its gamut of gifts , based on their apparently incorrigible , if time-honored, practices of extortion, monopoly, and expropriation.
Be that as it may, it is become increasingly clear that the only certainty about the larger universe may well be uncertainty.
Neither materialism nor idealism, of the classic genre, - that so dominated Modernist social science and philosophy - can be sustained: they are both passé.
In the case of both social science and philosophy , such broad cosmologies - borrowed, admiringly, if unwisely, from physics - are neither of relevance nor meaning.
To understand our species-being , we have to know the real anthropology of our kind.
That has been made impossible by the Euro Modernist to the extent that all but unconscious Judeo-Christian premises have, for the most part, driven its ‘Protestant’ discourse: with ‘humans’ elevated’ above ‘animal traits ‘ and ‘instinctual drives’ , and with ‘progress’ being but a secular mirror image of the ‘pilgrim’s progress’ so dear to evangelism (unquestionably , Marxian visions of a communist utopia are but a ‘materialist’ rendering of that very Christian heaven, much as Marx’s early writings are a lyrical paean to Christian humanism).
EuroModernism adopts the astounding feint of assuming that we can, as a species, invent ourselves, willy-nilly, (via Universal Declarations, forsooth!) any way we wish , with no mind to our societal and natural drives .
Millions have paid, dearly, even with their lives, for the simpliste naivete of such ‘epistemic’ errors.
Regrettably, Darwinian ideas, albeit closer to reality, do not , by any stretch, amount to a fully specified anthropology (as evidenced in Herbert Spencer who adapted them valiantly, if quite uncritically, to his ‘synthetic ‘ philosophy).
I do provide such a non-Modernist anthropology , in my Festschrift Lectures, that centers on the differential roles of male and female (cited in the Youtube Reference below): it may ,or may not, be ‘preliminary’ - but it is a first attempt ,of sorts , to rectify one of the Great Elisions of Modernism.
As I have repeatedly suggested , it is many genres of matrilineal Tribal Societies that have largely domesticated, via the affective matrix of kinship, the otherwise inexorable ‘paradigm of masculinity’ whose predatorial proclivities have sundered the planet , repeatedly.
So, a realist, anthropic Utopia, as distinct from irrequitable Modernist fantasies, far from being futuristic, may already been achieved in human history.
At any rate, returning to cosmologial ephemera:‘God’ not only plays dice (so Einstein was being just a mite presumptuous ) but all manner of games, many of which we have no clue about.
Given that , what is most undeniable, perhaps, is our own, rather pathetic, fallibility.
True, we may know much more than what was known: but we also, ipso facto, learn, as we go - that there is even more now that we don’t know.
The ratio of the known to the unknown, thereby , appears to be an ever-diminishing one.
The proper scientific posture then, in the face of this ontic revelation of the limits of our epistemic quests, is modesty - nay, humility - itself undergirding a pluralist regard for the ‘multiplicity of causes’ that , en generale, confound our investigations.
Turns out hegemonic aptitudes and inclinations are as pernicious in High Science as they are in the mundane world.
It would appear the Buddhists and the Jains have , after millennia, still a lot to teach us – if only we let them: and not merely in the arts of knowing.
Stated differently, we may know more and more, over time, but still lag behind not merely in what is to be known, but, more importantly, in what needs to be known, if we lack an appropriate value structure guiding our researches.
Regrettably , it is the inherent misanthropy of EuroModernism that is the real crimp.
For knowledge maybe a necessary condition , for a meaningful existence, but it is, surely, far from sufficient.
For the latter , we have need of a higher-order condition: wisdom - and, in that area, Euroscience is, still, pitiably, a non-starter.
Until we do advance , and soon, in that rarefied realm, the Modernist armies of the wilfully ignorant will continue to lay waste, and irreparably ravage, this ruggedly bountiful planet , hurtling blindly as it is through an empty universe - be it, as the case may be, illusion or reality.
REFERENCES
R.KANTH, AGAINST EUROCENTRISM, 1997
---------, BREAKING WITH THE ENLIGHTENMENT, 1997
---------, Two Lectures on Eurocentrism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDwQrpfom9M<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DZDwQrpfom9M&k=AjZjj3dyY74kKL92lieHqQ%3D%3D%0A&r=Ul8alR2l08keT7LU6kfGk%2FLPjA2GeWA1tJYXAdjLdto%3D%0A&m=l80kmrQP5oD9Yn9GW3wVClP85XRBN%2FmCVzJs2Jxsw8M%3D%0A&s=86a419fc904ebbfcaf93be689bd47970ffd28239a7951a7b16c96396fd034db4
[© R.Kanth 2014, Harvard University]
The common sway of Euro-Philosophies , by convention, can be filed, in a brevity of convenience, in one of two , hoary , genres: idealism, and materialism.
The former ascribes primacy to consciousness, the latter to ‘existence’.
Loosely speaking , it is about the primacy of mind , or matter.
It is also about Origins.
In one view , we ‘begin’ with atoms, then ascend, howsoever inexplicably, to ‘consciousness’.
In the other, the origin is in some universal geist which then ‘ devolves’ into more mundane stuff.
At least since Newton, materialism (and its progeny, empiricism) has been the dominant spirit (!) of European , and Modernist , science.
By virtue of that, and for other reasons, it also became the vogue, via ‘physics-envy’ , of the so-called social sciences, and metaphysics.
Durkheim (consider ‘social facts’ as ‘things’, e.g.) and Marx (“it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness”) are but late-entrants into that ilk, that included the great Canonicals: Bacon, Smith, Hume, Mandeville, Locke, and Hobbes
Scientific and philosophical materialism was the dominant idiom at the level of the elite intelligentsia, whereas a more crass form of ‘materialism’ i..e , the glutinous embrace of greed and gluttony , became the mainstay of the governing classes, with the expansion of markets and the ‘profit motive’ (their conjunction giving birth to the pseudo-science of modern ‘Economics’) after the Crusades , and along the grand route (s) of global Colonisation.
The Church was fatefully dualistic: its theology was ineluctably ‘idealist, but its science ( and few would under-estimate the contribution of the Church of Rome to the study of the sciences, despite Galileo and all that) maintained a ‘relative autonomy’ from it - with the so-called ‘Reformation’ and the ‘Enlightenment’ further removing it from dependency on dogma, as in the work of Descartes or Kant ( which sustained the dualism , nonetheless).
However, the ‘essential tension’ between the two views remained, and still remains, extant throughout.
In the beginning was the Word, said One: in the beginning was the Deed, said the Other.
Each school, idealist or materialist , further segmented into multiple variants: monistic, dualistic, dialectical, and so on.
In the natural sciences, the advent of ‘field physics’ upset the notion of matter as ‘prima materia’.
Relativity ideas suggested that matter itself was ‘exchangeable’ with its dual: energy.
Thus ‘energy’ replaced ‘matter’, so to speak: but with further evolution , ‘quantum field theory’ overshadowed prior notions, with the ‘field’ as datum - and both matter and energy subsumed within it.
Bell’s Theorem seemed to defy the Classical notion of the Sovereign Absolute : the speed of light.
Quantum ideas, apparently, brought human subjectivity back to the center of things ( with their varied notions of the Observer effect, Heisenberg Uncertainties, Quantum indeterminacies, etc) after a long , historical, hiatus.
To quote Heisenberg:The ontology of materialism rested upon the illusion that the kind of existence, the direct 'actuality' of the world around us, can be extrapolated into the atomic range. This extrapolation, however, is impossible... atoms are not things.
In the ‘Copenhagen Interpretation’ , the objective perilously depended on the subjective, apparently confirming ancient Vedic ideas.
Of course, the religiously inclined saw in all this an opportunity for a ‘counter-Reformation’ , renewing a moribund theology on a nouvelle, quantum basis (par example, P.C.W Davies’ idea of a ’finite theism’; or, as with F.Capra, ‘for the modern physicist , then, Shiva’s dance is the dance of subatomic matter’)
A new , evangelical crusade (prominently ,in the US) erupted against Darwinian evolutionary ideas, and the idea of an empty, meaningless, universe (via Hawking’s suggestion of ‘God as the Edge of the Universe’ ).
But many scientists also felt ‘liberated’ from the ‘iron cage’ of scientific materialism, inspired by what appeared , at the sub-atomic level, as a ‘self-aware universe’ (A.Goswami, David Bohm, et.al.).
To quote Planck: As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.
There is even the suggestion, in this perceptual scheme, that ‘nature’ itself is only a construction of mind.
As Niels Bohr put it, “ There is no world of quantum, there is only a quantum mechanical description”.
So it could be that the ‘mind’ is the knot that joins consciousness to matter’.
Our current Orthodoxy, the ‘Lambda-CDM ‘ framework, of today, suggests that vey little (perhaps only 5%) of the universe is governed by our traditional matter-energy dyad, with the vast unknown being given dubious names such as ‘dark’ (meaning , of course, unknown) matter and energy.
But this new ‘data’, inherently, supports neither school - so that the Question of Origin remains unaffected by it.
(ii)
Now I have, thus far, made reference to European , or Modernist, Science - to the neglect of all else.
This should elicit no surprise: today, ALL of us, East and West, are Avid Consumers of the Euro-Modernist Version of Everything.
Their Hegemony is near-complete.
However, a trek backwards in time to Antiquity makes short work of the content of this present hegemony.
I am referring to the multi-faceted insights of Vedic science and philosophy that have left no field of knowledge untouched, though still largely unacknowledged ( a casual peruse of the literature reveals the egregious Omission(s): there is not one major idea in science or philosophy that does not originate in some, or other, text of Vedic antiquity: yet Modernist science – even when cursorily acknowledging lineage – stolidly begins with either the ‘Greeks’ , or with the ‘Enlightenment’ . Why should it matter, in other words, that the so-called ‘Pythagorean theorem’ preceded Pythagoras by centuries? Maybe it doesn’t: or does it? ).
The dating of this achievement, of course, remains problematic.
European accounts of Non-Europeans , generally articulated during their suzerainty over the Other as Imperial Powers, have to be heavily discounted (given the need to assert European priority in all matters), as with the concocted Myth of the ‘Aryan Invasions’ that, supposedly brought civilization (not to mention Europid traits) to the Sub-Continent (that was to be rudely , and tragically, rent , during/after grant of ‘independence’ , both by Colonial Design and by Nativist Infighting).Ditto, I suspect, with the feint that Sanskrit was preceded by some nameless ‘indo-european’ mother -ancestor.
There is a broad analogy there to the same worthies , high priests of academe no less, who once suggested that a Caucasian tribe occupied Egypt and built the Pyramids ( to deny Black Africa its own claim to high splendor).
Unfortunately, some Nativist extremes, in understandable reaction, are also somewhat intemperate , in this regard.
Suffice it to say, for the limited purposes here, that thousands of years before the European ‘Enlightenment’, Vedic scholars were debating such issues with a profundity rarely equalled since.
The noble Siddhartha himself was no mean scholar : and his legacy, much as that of Jainism , is still richly relevant today.
I want to introduce here the Sanskrit word Pratityasamutpada which is relevant to this quick précis of the Idea of Origins.
It may be translated as ‘co-dependent origination’, or ‘interdependent co-causation’.
Nagarjuna, the great Buddhist savant , codified many of the tenets of the Buddha: here, in desperate summary, is the notion (via Thich Nhat Hanh):
This is, because that is.
This is not, because that is not.
This ceases to be, because that ceases to be.
The implication for ideas about origins couldn’t be clearer.
Instead of the simple either/or of ‘idealism vs materialism’ , it is the notion of their ‘co-dependency’: the world, as it is - or the worlds as they are - has a multiplicity of causes.
Jain science, similarly, stresses, in extremis, our one-sided interpretive tendencies in the face of a universe gifted with the inscrutable ‘suchness’ of things (the ‘Blind Men and the Elephant’ is, not accidentally, a Jain tale).
The Buddha’s skepticism, similarly, refused answers - in eloquent reticence ! - to no less than Fourteen Questions about the ultimate nature of things.
In the Upanishads, the iteration of ‘neti, neti’ (Sanskrit for’ not this, not this’) , in similar vein, negates all (self-assured) descriptions about the Ultimate Reality, if not the Reality itself.
Even earlier than that was the equally irrefutable Vedic notion of ‘Maya’ or ‘dependent-reality’ (i.e., data contingent upon sense-perceptions).
Here, again, Nagarjuna , in his classic “Mulamadhyamakakarika” (or, Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way) argues: “Things do not arise out of themselves, they do not exist absolutely, their permanent being is not to be found, they are not independent , but they are dependently arising”.
It will be found that many schools of contemporary philosophy are negated in those few words.
And, despite the current reign of the ‘Big Bang’ theory , I predict that cosmic physics will , perhaps sooner than later, shedding its inescapable Modernist arrogance, arrive at this subtle, if ancient, and Vedic, quietus of realization.
A more pedestrian way of making this point is perhaps via the Jain story of a patient cured after eating a bunch of herbs , not knowing which herb was, actually, medicinal.
The moral : just as the patient was restored , despite ignorance as to which herb really ‘worked’ , so is there wisdom in supporting all traditions , given uncertainty as to the real distribution of their truth values.
Pascal’s wager?
No, millennia after Jain deliberations, Pascal was offering a utilitarian gamble only rather than scientific caution in the face of uncertainty in a pluralist world - which is the Buddhist-Jain message.
But , to extend matters even further: is this ‘plural world’ itself real, or a delusion (i.e. a world of appearances only)?
The Vedanta , to bring in another venerable Vedic tradition, is clear: we are deceived by Maya, the creative power of the universe , into believing in the Plural.
Its binding forces are Ahamkara (ego) and Karma (volitional action) which tie us to the Wheel of Samsara (the material world).
This Maya can be ‘seen through’ by Darsana (epiphany) .
So , it is Avidya (ignorance) that leads to Mithya (error) that can be overcome by Gnana (knowledge).
But, to what effect?
The realization that ‘experienced reality’ , much as the experiencing Self , is hollow and empty,(Sunya,) and lacks a Self-Nature (Svabhava).
The World, in other words, is Empty.
Modern-day Quantum scientists and Existential philosophers alike could , easily, perhaps, take cue from that.
As C.T. Kohl has it: There is a surprising parallelism between the philosophical concept of reality articulated by Nagarjuna and the physical concept of reality implied by quantum physics. For neither is there a fundamental core to reality, rather reality consists of systems of interacting objects. Such concepts of reality cannot be reconciled with the substantial, subjective, holistic or instrumentalistic concepts of reality which underlie modern modes of thought.
Surprising?
The real surprise is why Our European scholar is ‘surprised’ that, five thousand years apart, , our best minds see the world , bare, bleak , and beautiful, similarly.
Of course, one may have to set aside the Euromyth of ‘progress’ to glean such matters.
(iii)
The high priests of Modernist science , despite the quantum revolution, have been , and remain still, draped over with the patina of dogmatism and determinism, the very mirror image of the Church dogma it was once contending with.
And Modernist Science still overlords it over All (proscribing this – acupuncture, e.g., at one time – or ridiculing that , and partnering with the State in Dr Strangelove fashion) much the same way as the European titan of commerce, industry, or government , strides across the globe today ,altogether cocksure of his imperial mastery over it.
Let me sum up.
We live in the best of times, and the worst of times.
Best, because a panoramic penumbra of human possibilities is now become visible to the insightful, the world over: worst , because the old North Atlantic Hegemons are still preventing universal access to its gamut of gifts , based on their apparently incorrigible , if time-honored, practices of extortion, monopoly, and expropriation.
Be that as it may, it is become increasingly clear that the only certainty about the larger universe may well be uncertainty.
Neither materialism nor idealism, of the classic genre, - that so dominated Modernist social science and philosophy - can be sustained: they are both passé.
In the case of both social science and philosophy , such broad cosmologies - borrowed, admiringly, if unwisely, from physics - are neither of relevance nor meaning.
To understand our species-being , we have to know the real anthropology of our kind.
That has been made impossible by the Euro Modernist to the extent that all but unconscious Judeo-Christian premises have, for the most part, driven its ‘Protestant’ discourse: with ‘humans’ elevated’ above ‘animal traits ‘ and ‘instinctual drives’ , and with ‘progress’ being but a secular mirror image of the ‘pilgrim’s progress’ so dear to evangelism (unquestionably , Marxian visions of a communist utopia are but a ‘materialist’ rendering of that very Christian heaven, much as Marx’s early writings are a lyrical paean to Christian humanism).
EuroModernism adopts the astounding feint of assuming that we can, as a species, invent ourselves, willy-nilly, (via Universal Declarations, forsooth!) any way we wish , with no mind to our societal and natural drives .
Millions have paid, dearly, even with their lives, for the simpliste naivete of such ‘epistemic’ errors.
Regrettably, Darwinian ideas, albeit closer to reality, do not , by any stretch, amount to a fully specified anthropology (as evidenced in Herbert Spencer who adapted them valiantly, if quite uncritically, to his ‘synthetic ‘ philosophy).
I do provide such a non-Modernist anthropology , in my Festschrift Lectures, that centers on the differential roles of male and female (cited in the Youtube Reference below): it may ,or may not, be ‘preliminary’ - but it is a first attempt ,of sorts , to rectify one of the Great Elisions of Modernism.
As I have repeatedly suggested , it is many genres of matrilineal Tribal Societies that have largely domesticated, via the affective matrix of kinship, the otherwise inexorable ‘paradigm of masculinity’ whose predatorial proclivities have sundered the planet , repeatedly.
So, a realist, anthropic Utopia, as distinct from irrequitable Modernist fantasies, far from being futuristic, may already been achieved in human history.
At any rate, returning to cosmologial ephemera:‘God’ not only plays dice (so Einstein was being just a mite presumptuous ) but all manner of games, many of which we have no clue about.
Given that , what is most undeniable, perhaps, is our own, rather pathetic, fallibility.
True, we may know much more than what was known: but we also, ipso facto, learn, as we go - that there is even more now that we don’t know.
The ratio of the known to the unknown, thereby , appears to be an ever-diminishing one.
The proper scientific posture then, in the face of this ontic revelation of the limits of our epistemic quests, is modesty - nay, humility - itself undergirding a pluralist regard for the ‘multiplicity of causes’ that , en generale, confound our investigations.
Turns out hegemonic aptitudes and inclinations are as pernicious in High Science as they are in the mundane world.
It would appear the Buddhists and the Jains have , after millennia, still a lot to teach us – if only we let them: and not merely in the arts of knowing.
Stated differently, we may know more and more, over time, but still lag behind not merely in what is to be known, but, more importantly, in what needs to be known, if we lack an appropriate value structure guiding our researches.
Regrettably , it is the inherent misanthropy of EuroModernism that is the real crimp.
For knowledge maybe a necessary condition , for a meaningful existence, but it is, surely, far from sufficient.
For the latter , we have need of a higher-order condition: wisdom - and, in that area, Euroscience is, still, pitiably, a non-starter.
Until we do advance , and soon, in that rarefied realm, the Modernist armies of the wilfully ignorant will continue to lay waste, and irreparably ravage, this ruggedly bountiful planet , hurtling blindly as it is through an empty universe - be it, as the case may be, illusion or reality.
REFERENCES
R.KANTH, AGAINST EUROCENTRISM, 1997
---------, BREAKING WITH THE ENLIGHTENMENT, 1997
---------, Two Lectures on Eurocentrism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDwQrpfom9M<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DZDwQrpfom9M&k=AjZjj3dyY74kKL92lieHqQ%3D%3D%0A&r=Ul8alR2l08keT7LU6kfGk%2FLPjA2GeWA1tJYXAdjLdto%3D%0A&m=l80kmrQP5oD9Yn9GW3wVClP85XRBN%2FmCVzJs2Jxsw8M%3D%0A&s=86a419fc904ebbfcaf93be689bd47970ffd28239a7951a7b16c96396fd034db4
[© R.Kanth 2014, Harvard University]