Most people at present assume that religion is independent of logic. They insist that claims of religion must be “logical”—i.e., follow the principles of identity, non-contradiction, and excluded middle. This attitude is predominantly Western because alternative logical systems have either been formalized (e.g., in Buddhism and Jainism) or used informally (e.g., in Zen and Taoism) in Eastern philosophy. Nyāya, as one...
Many people believe modern science is reductionist and an alternative anti-reductionist science must replace it. This post discusses why Sāńkhya is reductionist—because it reduces everything to only three modes of nature (sattva, rajas, and tamas). It also discusses why Sāńkhya is anti-reductionist—because the first mode of nature in this reductionist theory (sattva) represents the whole, which precedes the contradictory parts (rajas and...
The world around us is filled with dualities or oppositions. There are two main resolutions of this duality as we have seen earlier—(1) finding the relation between the opposing ideas and the next “higher level” idea from which these oppositions were created, and (2) finding a quantitative balance between the opposing ideas at the “same level” such that the opposing ideas...
This post discusses how points in a conceptual space are defined differently than in a physical space. The difference is that a physical space defines locations in relation to an origin, whereas a conceptual space defines locations in relation to a boundary. In a physical space, points are constructed through absolute proximity to a single origin. In a conceptual space, points...
