Neither India nor the Pythagoreans practiced modern science, and to isolate, where they are concerned, the elements of rational technique reminiscent of our science from the metaphysical elements which bear no resemblance to it, is an arbitrary and violent operation contrary to real objectivity. When Plato is decanted in this way he retains no more than an anecdotal interest, whereas the whole doctrine aims at establishing man in the supratemporal and supradiscursive life of thought of which both mathematics and the sensory world can be symbols. If, then, peoples have been able to do without our autonomous science for thousand of years and in every climate, it is because this science is not necessary; if it has appeared as a phenomenon of civilization suddenly and in a single place, that is to show its essentially contingent nature. --Fernard Brunner: Science et Realite, Paris, 1954 (appears as a footnote in Frithjof Schuons book Understanding Islam).
Posted on: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 07:56:54 +0000
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