The Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus c10.26

c10.26

Now, this being premised to be the exact meaning of the inseparableness or non-disjunction in the case of cause and effect, we come to the question with which we started—how is this relation to be ascertained or established between two phenomena or assemblages of phenomena? Obviously, mere observation of their agreement in presence (अन्वय) and their agreement in absence (व्यतिरेक) is no help in the matter. Take a concrete example. The ass is customarily employed to bring the fuel with which fire is lighted. In a hundred cases you have observed the ass among the antecedents of smoke. In a hundred cases you may have observed that when there is no ass there is no smoke. This is no warrant for concluding a relation of cause and effect between an ass and smoke. It may be that you happen to have never observed smoke without an antecedent ass, or an ass without smoke following. Even this is of no avail. It is not agreement (unbroken and uniform though it be) in presence or in absence, or in both, that can settle the matter. There is one and only one way of ascertaining the causal relation. Suppose *A* with certain accompaniments is found to precede *B* immediately. Now, if *A* disappearing *B* disappears, even though all other antecedents remain and there is no other change in the case, then and then only can the causal relation be ascertained. It is not a mere table of positive instances or negative instances (अदर्शनान्न न दर्शनात्); it is this Method, which we may term the Method of Subtraction (the Method of Difference in its negative aspect), that is the only exact and rigorous scientific Method. Such was the statement of the earlier Buddhists (*cf.* Udyotakara's and Váchaspati's report of the Buddhist doctrine of Inference—स हि प्रतिबन्धो न दर्शनमात्रावसेयः).