History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c94.374.2

v7.c94.374.2

Rationalism accepts the postulates which science finds convenient and useful. Though these postulates work well up to certain limits, it must be said that those limits are very narrow. Science aims at establishing general rules or laws. From those laws we know only the behaviour of nature and how man can utilize natural forces for realizing human aims, but science does not tell us what those aims should be, it is amoral and not concerned with morals or spirituality. Rationalism appears to smother many experiences of the human mind which are beyond the present machinery of science. When the scientific method is adopted in social studies, there is little to show that it leads to increased wisdom about the values that should be pursued. Rationalism insists that all our beliefs ought ultimately to be based on tangible and definite grounds and that modern scientific method is the only reliable method for acquiring knowledge of all kinds. But there are sub-conscious and non-rational impulses, beliefs and intuitions in men that are held by men to be truer or of a higher order than what is on the rationalistic level (vide W. James' 'Varieties of religious experience' p. 74, ed. of 1920).