History of Chemistry in Ancient and Medieval India, Incorporating the History of Hindu Chemistry by Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray c39.s2: The Doctrine Of Causation, A Corollary From The Conservation And Transformation Of Energy—The Principle Of Collocation—The Storing Up And The Liberation Of Energy
History of Chemistry in Ancient and Medieval India, Incorporating the History of Hindu Chemistry by Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray c39.s2
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The Doctrine Of Causation, A Corollary From The Conservation And Transformation Of Energy—The Principle Of Collocation—The Storing Up And The Liberation Of Energy
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The Samkhya view of causation follows at once as a corollary from this doctrine of the conservation and transformation of Energy. As the total Energy remains the same, while the world is constantly evolving, cause and effect are only more or less evolved forms of the same ultimate Energy. The sum of effects exists in the sum of causes in a potential (or unevolved) form. The grouping or collocation alone changes, and this brings on the manifestation of the latent powers of the *gunas* but without creation of anything new. What is called the (material) cause, or sum of material causes, is only the power, which is efficient in the production, or rather the vehicle of the power. This power is the unmanifested (potential) form of the Energy set free in the effect. But the concomitant conditions are necessary to call forth the so-called material cause into activity. When the favourable combination or co-operation of concomitants is wanting, there is no manifestation of the effect The question is—what is the aid which the concomitant conditions render in the determination (and production) of the effect, existing in potency in the material cause ? First, there is the merely mechanical view as illustrated by some commonplace examples, e.g., the manifestation of the figure of the statue in the marble block by the causal efficiency of the sculptor's art, or of the oil in the sesamum by pressing, or of the grain of rice out of the paddy by the process of husking. In these cases the manifestation of an effect is only its passage from potentiality to actuality, a stadium in the process of evolution from possible (future) existence to actual (present) existence; and the concomitant condition or efficient cause, the sculptor's chiselling, the pressing, the husking, is a sort of mechanical or instrumental help to this passage or transition.
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These mechanical examples of the Kapila-Samkhya have the merit of simplicity, but the Patanjali-Samkhya explains causation on the basis of the conservation and transformation of Energy, advancing it as the liberation of potential Energy, existing stored up in a *guṇa* collocation (the sum of material causes). The liberation follows on the action of the proximate efficient cause or concomitant condition.
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The causal operation of concomitant conditions (efficient causes) lies only in this that they supply a physical stimulus, which liberates the potential Energy stored up in a given collocation Everything in the phenomenal world is but a special collocation of the ultimate Reals (Energy, Mass and Essence). The sum of (material) causes potentially contains the Energy manifested in the sum of effects ; and in the passage from potency to actualisation, the effectuating condition (the concomitant cause), when it is itself accomplished, is only a step in the evolutionary series, which adds a specific stimulus, and renders determinate that which was previously indeterminate. When the effectuating condition is added to the sum of material conditions in a given collocation, all that happens is that a stimulus is imparted, which removes the arrest, disturbs the relatively stable equilibrium, and brings on a liberation of Energy together with a fresh collocation
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Describing the production of bodies (organic vehicles) for individual souls, out of matter of *Prakṛti*, under the influence of their merit and demerit, as concomitant conditions, Patañjali points out that non-material concomitants like merit and demerit do not supply any moving force of Energy to the sum of material conditions, but only remove the arrest (the state of relatively stable equilibrium) in a given collocation, even as the owner of a field removes the barrier in *flooding* his field from a reservoir of water. This description is intended to represent the superphysical influence of non-material concomitants (or causes) like volition, merit, demerit, etc., but the causal operation of a material concomitant condition is essentially the same ;—there is the same reservoir of stored-up Energy in a given collocation—the same condition of arrest or relatively stable equilibrium—the same liberation of the stored-up potential Energy which flows along the line of least resistance;—the only difference being that in the case of material concomitants the stimulus which removes the arrest is physical, instead of being transcendental as in the case of non-material causes like will, merit, demerit, etc
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The Vyasa-bhashya helps us to a clear mental representation of the details of this process. As the owner of many fields can irrigate, from a field which is already flooded, others of the same or lower level, without forcing the water thereto with his hands, and merely by making an opening in the barrier or dyke, on which the waters rush in by their own force;—or further, as the same person cannot force these waters, or the earthy matters held in solution therein, into the roots of the rice plants, but only removes the obstructive grasses and weeds, on which the fluids of their own power enter the roots;—such is the action of an effectuating condition added to a sum of material causes or conditions.
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CHAIN OF CAUSATION—FIXED ORDER
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The order of Evolution with the transformation of the Energy follows a definite law. The unalterable chain of causes and effects in the phenomenal world illustrates this fixed order But though the cosmic order is one and fixed, it comprehends diverse series arising from different combinations of the original *gunas*, which constitute sub-orders or particular laws of cause and effect.
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What we call the qualities of things are only modes of Energy acting in those collocations And these various energies are sometimes actual (kinetic), sometimes potential, rising to actuality, and sometimes sublatent, subsiding from actuality into sublatency. In fact, the original Energy is one and ubiquitous and everything, therefore, exists in everything else potentially, without prejudice to the generic and specific differences of things. Inorganic matter, vegetable organisms, and animal organisms are essentially and ultimately one so far as and Energy are concerned; but the varied forms of Energy and the generic and specific qualities (or properties) of things, which are but modes of Energy, follow a definite unalterable law in the order of their appearance and succession, under conditions of space, time, mode and causality, and hence all effects do not manifest themselves at once.
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TIME, SPACE AND THE CAUSAL SERIES
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A *Tanmatra* (infra-atomic particle of subtile matter) is conceived by our understanding to stand in three relations :— (1) position in space, (2) position in the time series and (3) position in the causal series.
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These three relations are the work of the intuitive stage of knowledge as opposed to the conceptual. But this is not the pure relationless intuition of Reality which may be termed intellectual intuition, but the intuition that imposes its forms on the Real substrate, or, in other words, empirical intuition.
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Infinite Time is a non-entity objectively considered, being only a construction of the Understanding based on the relation of antecedence and sequence in which the members of the phenomenal series are intuited to stand to one another. These phenomenal changes, as intuited by us in the empirical consciousness, fall into a series, which the Understanding conceives as order in Time. The Time-series, then, is a *schema* of the Understanding for representing the course of Evolution. The *schema* of the Understanding supervenes on the phenomenal world as order in time, and hence in the empirical consciousness the Time-series appears to have an objective reality, and to form a continuum. As there is an ultimate and irreducible unit of extensive quantity in the *gunas* or infinitesimal Reals of *Prakriti*, which are without constituent parts, so the moment may be conceived as the ultimate and irreducible unit of this time-continuum as represented in the empirical consciousness. A moment, therefore, cannot be thought of as containing any parts standing in the relation of antecedence and sequence. If change is represented by the Time-series, a moment as the unit of time may be supposed to represent the unit of change. Now all physical changes may be reduced to the motion of atoms in space ; we may therefore define the moment as representing the ultimate unit of such change—viz, the (instantaneous) transit of an atom (or rather a *tanmatra*) from one point in Space to the next succeeding point. Even an atom has constituent parts (the *tanmatras*), and hence an atom must take more than one moment to change its position. The motion of that which is absolutely simple and without parts from one point in Space to the next must be instantaneous, and conceived as the absolute unit of change (and, therefore, of time). If this is held to be an irreducible absolute unit, it will follow that what we represent as the time continuum is really discrete. Time is of one dimension. Two moments cannot co-exist. Neither does any series of moments exist in reality. Order in Time is nothing but the relation of antecedence and sequence, between the moment that is, and the moment that went just before. But only one moment, the present, exists. The future and the past have no meaning, apart from potential and sublatent phenomena. One kind of transformation, to which a thing is subject, is that it changes from the potential to the actual, and from the actual to the sublatent. This may be called the change of mark, as opposed to change of quality and the change due to duration or lapse of time. The present is the mark of actuality,—the future, the mark of potentiality,—and the past of sublatency,—in a phenomenon. Only one single moment is actual, and the whole Universe evolves in that one single moment. The rest is but potential or sublatent.
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Vijnana-bhikshu points out that this does not amount to a denial of Time. It means that Time has no real (or objective) existence apart from the ‘moment’. But the latter is real, being identical with the unit of change in phenomena. But even this is real only for our empirical (relative) consciousness, which intuits the relation of antecedence and sequence into the evolving Reals (*gunas*), in the stage of ‘empirical intuition’. The ‘intellectual’ intuition, on the other hand, apprehends the Reals as they are, without the empirical imported relations of Space, Time and Causality.
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SPACE AS EXTENSION AND SPACE AS POSITION
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Space must be distinguished as *desa* (locus or rather extension) and *dik* (relative position). Space (*dik*), as the totality of position, or as an order of co-existent points, is wholly relative to the understanding, like order in time, being constructed on the basis of relations of position intuited by our empirical (or relative) consciousness. But there is this difference between the Space-order and Time-order.—there is no unit of Space as position (*dik*), though we may conceive a unit of Time, viz, the moment regarded as the unit of change in the phenomenal or causal series Spatial position (*dik*) results only from the different relations in which the all-pervasive *akasa* stands to the various finite (or bounded) objects On the other hand, Space as extension or locus of a finite body, *desa*, has an ultimate unit, being analysable into the infinitesimal extensive quantity inherent in the Reals (*gunas*) of *Prakriti*
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THE CAUSAL SERIES
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The relation of Cause and Effect has been already explained. It only remains to add that the category of causality is mediated through the schema of order in Time. The Empirical Intuition first superimposes relations of antecedence and sequence on changing phenomena (the evolving *gunas* or Reals), and the Understanding out of these relations creates order in Time. The Empirical Intuition then intuits the phenomenal series of transformations of Energy in this Time-order and, in so doing, imports the relation of cause and effect into the course of Nature.