A History of Hindu Chemistry from the Earliest Times to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century A.D. v2.c35.105.1

v2.c35.105.1

I have explained the principles of the Hindu doctrine of Scientific Method, avoiding the technicalities of Logic as far as possible; and I cannot here enter upon the logical terminology or the logical apparatus and machinery, which would require a separate volume to themselves. For these, I would refer the reader to my paper on Hindu Logic,—as also for an account of the later Nyáya (नव्यन्याय), which, in spite of its arid dialectics, possesses a three-fold significance in the history of thought: (1) logical, in its conceptions of Avachchhedaka and Pratiyogi, being an attempt to introduce quantification on a connotative basis, in other words, to introduce quantitative notions of Universal and Particular, in both an affirmative and a negative aspect, into the Hindu theory of Inference and Proposition regarded connotatively as the establishment of relations among attributes or marks; (2) scientific, in its investigation of the varieties of Vyápti and Upádhi, (and of अन्यथासिद्धि) being an elaboration of Scientific Method, in the attempt to eliminate the irrelevant; and (3) ontological and epistemological, in its classification and precise determinations of the various relations of Knowledge and Being, with even greater rigidity and minuteness than in Hegel's Logic of Being and Essence. I will conclude with a few observations on Applied Logic, *i.e.*, the logic of the special sciences, which is such a characteristic feature of Hindu scientific investigation.