The Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus c10.98

Language: English

c10.98.1

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.

c10.98.2

What is characteristic of the Hindu scientific mind is that, without being content with the general concepts of Science and a general Methodology, it elaborated the fundamental categories and concepts of such of the special sciences as it cultivated with assiduity, and systematically adapted the general principles of Scientific Method to the requirements of the subject-matter in each case. The most signal example of applied logic (or Scientific Method) worked out with systematic carefulness is the Logic of Therapeutics in Charaka, a Logic which adapts the general concepts of cause, effect, energy, operation, etc., and the general methodology of science, to the special problems presented in the study of diseases, their causes, symptoms, and remedies (*vide* Charaka, Vimánasthána, Chap. IV.; also Sutrasthána; *vide* my Paper on Hindu Logic). Here I will give an illustration of Applied Methodology from the science of Analytical and Descriptive Grammar. Patañjali, in the Mahábháshya (*circa* 150 B.C.), is very careful as regards Methodology. I take no note now of the philosophical presuppositions of his philology (*vide* my Paper on the Hindu Science of Language), but will confine myself to his presentation of the Applied Logic of Descriptive and Analytical Grammar. The sentence is the unit of speech, as every Hindu philologer contends, but the first business of Analytical Grammar is to analyse the sentence into its significant parts and their coherent relations to one another.

c10.98.3

Assuming that articulate sounds are significant, the question is: how is the sentence, which is the unit of articulate speech, broken up into significant words and their mutual relations? Patañjali answers that this is done by an instinctive use (*cf.* Váchaspati's भूयोदर्शनजनितसंस्कारम् इन्द्रियम्) of the Joint Method of Difference (combined Addition and Subtraction), fortified by the Joint Method of Agreement (अन्वयव्यतिरेकी). Patañjali starts with a simple case. Take the two sentence-units: Pathati (he reads) and Pachati (he cooks). Suppose you start with the assumption that these sounds are significant, and that *separate elements have separate meanings*. Then you hear Pathati, and, at the same time, a man reading is pointed at. Then the assemblage of sounds Pathati (*i.e.* Path + ati) stands for the assemblage "one reads" (*i.e.* the action reading + an individual agent). Similarly, by finger-pointing or other indication, you find that the assemblage Pachati (*i.e.* Pach + ati) stands for the assemblage "one cooks" (*i.e.* the action cooking + an individual agent, say the same agent as before).