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THE CLAIMS OF SCIENCE
crimes of which Socrates was accused, and for which he had to drain the deadly cup, was a lack of faith in the established religion, that of the local tutelary deitics of Athens. While from the days of Bruno and Galilco on, our modern sciences and philosophy have arrived at their present maturity only by battling at every step the doctrines of man and nature that were the tradition and established treasure of the Church. Nothing comparable, or at least nothing of such a revolutionizing and explosive magnitude, has ever shown itself in the traditional East.
Western philosophy has become the guardian angel of right (i.e., unprejudiced, critical) thinking. It has earned this position through its repeated contacts with, and unwavering loyalty to, the progressive methods of thought in the sciences. And it will support its champion even though the end may be the destruction of all traditional values whatsoever, in society, religion, and philosophy. The nineteenth-century thinkers who declined to accept Indian philosophy on the par level did so because thev felt responsible to the truth of the modern sciences. This had been established by experiment and criticism. And philosophy, as they conceived it, was to expound the methods of such rational progress, while safeguarding them against dilettantism, wishful thinking, and the ingrained prepossessions of any undisciplined speculation conducted along the discredited lines of archaic man.
There is, on the other hand, an attitude of hallowed traditionalism conspicuous in most of the great documents of Fastern thought, a readiness to submit to the authoritative utterances of inspired teachers claiming direct contact with transcendental truth. This would seem to indicate an incorrigible preference for vision, intuition, and metaphysical experience rather than experiment, laboratory work, and the reduction of the exact data of the senses to mathematical formulae. There was never in India any such close affinity between natural science and philosophy as to bring about a significant cross-fertilization. Nothing in
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| SR No. | 007309 |
| Book Title | Philosophies of India |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell |
| Publisher | Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd |
| Publication Year | 1953 |
| Total Pages | 709 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 34 MB |