Sri Mahanet History, Originate Solely from the Fact That Spirit, in Order to Understand and Comprehend Itself

Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

One who is fully in Krsna consciousness is always a renouncer because he feels neither hatred nor desire for the results of his actions. Such a renouncer, dedicated to the transcendental loving upakramamrtan caiva, sri-sastra-vacanamrtam service of the Lord, is fully qualified in knowledge because he knows his bhakta-vakyamrtan ca sri-, bhagavad-vacanamrtam constitutional position in his relationship with Krsna. He avasesamrtan ceti pancamrtam mahaphalam knows fully well that Krsna is the whole and that he is bhakta-pranapradam hrdyam, granthe 'smin parivesitam part and parcel of Krsna. Such knowledge is perfect because it is qualitatively and quantitatively correct. The concept of oneness with Krsna is incorrect because the part cannot be equal to the whole. Knowledge that one is one SSSS SSS in quality yet different in SS quantity is correct transcendental knowledge S leading one to become full S in himself, having nothing to aspire to or lament over. There is no duality in his mind because whatever he does, he does for Krsna. Being thus freed from the platform of dualities, he is liberated--even in this material world. SIS

SS I S

Srila Sridhar Maharaja : " This is a very peculiar thing. How can the original guru of our sampradaya become bewildered about Krsna? It is acintya, inconceivable. Still, everything is intelligible through the philosophy of acintya- bhedabheda-tattva, -- inconceivable oneness and difference. This is lila.." I II

SS I I SS

S I I I S I SS ISI S

(

S I I I S I I II S Srila BhaktIsundara Govinda Maharaja I S

I S IS

S S SS

S I S S I I S

ISIS

SISI

3. (Mon) Krishna-ekadasi. Fast of Viyay Ekadasi. Disappearance of Sripad Krishna Govinda das Adhikari.

4. (Tue) Krishna-dvadasi. Paran by 9:52 a.m. 6. (Thu) Krishna-chaturdasi. Sri Sri Shivaratri. (Optional fast.)

7. (Fri) Amavasya. Paran by 9:51 a.m. for those who fasted. Anniversary Festival of the installation of Sri Sadasiva Gangadhara, Sri Govinda Kunda, Nabadwip.

8. (Sat) Gaura-pratipad. Disappearance of Vaishnava Sarvabhauma Srila Jagannath das Babaji Maharaj, Srila Rasikananda Dev Goswami and Tridandi Swami Srimad Bhakti Dayita Madhava Maharaj.

10. (Mon) Gaura-tritiya. Sri Sri Guru-Gauranga-Radha-Ramanasundarjiu installation anniversary festival, at Sree Chaitanya Saraswata Krishnanushilana Sangha, Kaikhali, Kolkata.

11. (Tue) Gaura-chaturthi. Appearance of Srila Purusottama Thakur. Disappearance of Sripad Tulasidas Dasadhikari Prabhu.

12. (Wed) Gaura-panchami. Disappearance of Srimati Tarangini Devi.

16. (Sun) Gaura-dasami. Adhivas Festival of Sri Nabadwip Dham Parikrama. Beginning of annual seven day festival.

17. (Mon) Gaura-ekadasi. Amlaki Ekadasi. Fast. Sri Nabadwip Dham Parikrama begins. Parikrama of Sri Ishodyan, Sri Yogapitha (Sriman Mahaprabhu's Appearance Place), Srivas Angan, Sri Nrisimha Mandir, Sri Advaita Bhavan, Murari Gupta Bhavan, Sri Chaitanya Math, Acharyya Chatustya Samanita, Sri Sri Gandharvika Giridhari and Sri Mahaprabhu Mandir, Srila Prabhupad's Samadhi Mandir, Srila Gaura Kishora das Babaji Maharaj's Samadhi Prabriti, Sri Kazi Samadhi, Sharadanga Sri Jagannath Mandir, Sridhar Angan and Sri Simantadvip, Sri Rudradvip, Sri Antardvip.

18. (Tue) Gaura-dvadasi. Paran between 6:34 and 9:45 a.m. Disappearance of Srila Madhavendra Puri. Parikrama of Praudhamaya, Briddha Shiva, Sri Vishnupriya's own Deity of Sri Gauranga, Sri Jagannath das Babaji Maharaj's Samadhi Mandir, Koladvip, etc.

19. (Wed) Gaura-trayodasi. Parikrama of Sri Godruma and Madhyadvip, Sri Surabhikunj, Suvarna Bihar Math, Sri Nrisimha Palli, Sri Harihara Ksetra, and other places.

20. (Thu) Gaura-chaturdasi. Adhivas observance ceremony of the Appearance of Sri Gauranga. Parikrama of Sri Koladvip, Sri Ritudvip, Sri Jahnudvip, Sri Modadrumadvip, etc., Old Sri Gaura- Gadadhar Mandir, Vidyanagar Sarvabhauma Gaudiya Math, Sri Vrindavan das Thakur's Appearance Place, and the Deity served by Sri Saranga Murari and Vasudeva Datta Thakur.

21. (Fri) Sri Gauravirbhava Paurnamasi. Sri Gaura-Purnima. Divine Appearance of Sri Gauranga. Total fast until moonrise, then no grains. Grand Festival at Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math. Vasantotsav and Dolyatra of Sri Sri Radha-Govinda. Special offering of worship and arati. Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita reading and Maha-Sankirttana. Start of 523 Gaurabda year.

22. (Sat) Krishna-pratipada. Paran by 9:43 a.m. Anandotsav of Sri Jagannath Misra. Last gathering of the week-long yearly meeting at Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math and yearly festival.

26. (Wed) Krishna-panchami. Festival at the Appearance Place of Srila Bhakti Raksak Sridhar Dev- Goswami Maharaj, Sripat Hapaniya: Grand Appearance of the Holy Deities of Sripat Hapaniya, Sri Sri Guru Gauranga Radha Gopinathjiu at Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Ashram.

Appearance of Tridandi Swami Srimad Bhakti Saran Shanta Maharaj.

ISI Is modern science destroying itself Home page of Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math, Navadwip Dham http://www.scsmath.com Pictorial updates of projects, news, programs http://scsmath.com/new.htm Audio Index of talks by Srila Govinda Maharaja http://www.scsmath.org/audio/ List of SCSMath International Centers http://www.scsmath.com/centers.html Credit card contributions to the Math http://scsmath.com/events/creditcarddontations.html ------California Math Web page in honor of Srila Govinda Maharaja http://california.scsmath.org ------Veranda Views - Topical photos from the Math http://verandaviews.com from Srimati Jamuna Priya devi dasi ------Sri Guru Vandana http://www.vaisnava.com/ SCSMath Bookstore/purchase with credit card http://vaisnava.com/bookstore from Sripad Premavatar Prabhu ------Sri Chaitanya Shridhara Govinda Mission http://krsna.cc Audio Discourses by Srila Govinda Maharaja from Spd. Madhusudana Prabhu, Hawaii ------Sri Vaishnava Tosani http://www.toshani.com

from Spd. Srutasrava Prabhu ------Weblog of an Itinerant Monk http://www.imonk.net "Philosophy in general has, as from H.H. Bhakti Lalita Akinchan Maharaja philosophy, other categories than those of the ordinary ------consciousness: all education Sacred Cybertemple of The Beautiful Goldenlord http://www.mahaprabhu.net (Bildung) reduces to the distinction from H.H. Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja of categories. All revolutions, in the ------sciences no less than in world New Subscribers to Sri Mahanet history, originate solely from the fact that Spirit, in order to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mahanet/join understand and comprehend itself

with a view to possessing itself, has changed its categories, comprehending itself more truly, more deeply, more intimately, and more in unity with itself."

G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831)

SSS

SCIENCE AND METAPHYSICS BEFORE NATURE

EVANDRO AGAZZI (From Person and Nature , ed. George F. McLean)

One of the most widely accepted commonplaces of `western culture' is that science is the only proper instrument with which to `know' nature. An equally widely accepted idea is that science has acquired Seven Nobel Laureates on this exclusive right to speak about nature by progressively expelling metaphysics from the field. This is Science and Spirituality confirmed by the fact that, whenever a statement is qualified by scientists as `metaphysical' it invariably means that such a statement must be rejected as naive, incorrect and misleading.

THE EXCLUSION OF METAPHYSICS

This raises the important question of whether science alone is responsible for such an attitude, or whether philosophy itself h as something to do with this underestimation of metaphysics. Clearly, the most effective reasons for the crisis of the reliability of metaphysics lie within philosophy. In fact, one of the most characteristic features of contemporary western philosophy is that it has more or less explicitly given up every pretense of `knowing', leaving the entire area of knowledge to science. This does not mean that contemporary philosophy has ceased to consider itself as a `rational' activity, or that its performances show less intellectual strength, ingenuity and rigor than those of earlier philosophies. It means simply that the aims of this rational investigation are oriented towards different goals, as, for example, human actions, the existential analysis of man's situation in life, or the Essays on Science and Religion

phenomenological description of different kinds of human activities or conditions, including investigations concerning language and inquiries about the structure of science. The intellectual attitude shared by all these philosophical positions might be qualified as ànalytic', inasmuch as the task of rational inquiry is conceived to be that of ànalyzing', describing, decomposing or bringing to evidence what is in a way empirically given or detectable in the different fields. In this analysis one must not àdd' anything which could come from our reason and thus appear as a possible intrusion upon the genuine structure of reality. In this sense, it could be maintained that contemporary philosophy shows a general mistrust towards any `synthetic' use of our reason, i.e., towards its work of building up something by its own powers without the permanent assistance of empirical control.

If such be the most general feature of philosophy in our days, it is no wonder that metaphysics appears now to be less esteemed than at most any other point in its long history, for metaphysics is structurally based upon such a synthetic use of pure reason. It is essential that it be allowed to surpass experience Science, Spirituality and and proceed to constructions founded upon the `mediation of experience'. From what has been said, the Nature of Reality philosophy would appear to bear the major responsibility for the decrease in the estimation of the power of reason which led to the rejection of metaphysics. On the other hand, this fact cannot be explained in a satisfactory manner without calling upon science; in fact, metaphysics was held for such a long series of centuries to be the core of every philosophical system that one cannot reasonably believe that philosophers have changed their mind on this crucial point simply because of an internal evolution of their discipline. In reality, they were induced to modify their conception of what philosophical knowledge ought to be by the impression made upon western culture by the enormous success of scientific knowledge.

This impression was so great that it radically changed the `paradigm' of knowledge itself. Certainly, Kant was correct in qualifying as a `Copernican revolution' his famous substitution of the subject for the object as the barycenter of the theory of knowledge. A still more profound revolution, however, was implied when he proposed that the main task to be fulfilled by his Critique of Pure Reason was to investigate whether metaphysics `as a science' was possible. The very fact of asking this question indicates that science-- more precisely natural science as it was exemplified by Newtonian mechanics--had already become the model or paradigm of the knowledge on the basis of which the theoretical claims of metaphysics were to be Life, Matter and Their judged. If this was alre ady true with Kant, it has increasingly emerged as the standard viewpoint of the Interactions majority of philosophers during the past century, and more particularly in this century.

In this way there emerged a philosophical attitude which may be outlined as follows. Science has provided Bhaktivedanta Institute Publications http://www.binstitute.org

the only example of a sound knowledge. It has been able to do so, not only without any need of transcending or mediating experience, but by explicitly forbidding such a mediation. It follows that philosophy, too, may hope to become a sound discourse only by discarding this mediation and, hence, by recognizing as illusory every metaphysics which adopts the mediation of experience as its crucial instrument.

SCIENCE AND THE MEDIATION OF EXPERIENCE

What must now be investigated briefly is whether such reasoning is actually correct. This can be done by asking first whether the sciences really do avoid every mediation of experience. On this point, much has been done during the last decades. Contemporary philosophy of science has left far behind the basic tenets which characterized the conception of science defended by E. Mach towards the end of the past century and was advocated by logical empiricists during the first decades of our century. They claimed that in science the content of genuine knowledge is confined to empirical statements. Theoretical constructs do not state any knowledge in the proper sense because they simply result from `tautological' transformations of the empirical statements and as such cannot add any new information of their own. At best, by means of suitable logical analysis, they can be `reduced' to empirical statements. Their task, therefore, is simply pragmatic; it amounts to offering the possibility of an `economic' organization of empirical truths for the sake of their better employment in making predictions, realizing applications, etc. In principle they could be dropped without any loss of knowledge; hence, they could be eliminated from pure science as such.

Historical developments in the inquiry concerning the structure of science, however, have shown how illusory were such viewpoints. Without entering here into details, it is sufficient to stress the two main results concerning empirical sciences, namely, the essential indispensability of the theoretical components and the impossibility of clearly distinguishing the empirical from the theoretical impossibility.

Why did the elimination of the theoretical side prove impossible? It is not just a matter of fact, but has a deeper philosophical reason. If science were simply a pragmatic enterprise undoubtedly it could dispense with theory construction, because empirical evidence suffices for handling things. The fact that theory could not be eliminated from science is evidence that science has another task to fulfill, namely, ùnderstanding' reality. By ùnderstand' is meant something more than purely àscertain', for which pure experience might perhaps be sufficient. Certainly, as a starting point the process of understanding requires that evidential data be àscertaine d'. But it then proceeds by introducing further statements or hypotheses by means of which it is possible to 'give a reason' for what was already èvident'. This structure of rational understanding shows that in order to reach its goal empirical evidence is not sufficient and that nonempirical elements must be employed.

This implies the following consequences: (i) science necessarily contains nonempirical concepts and statements; (ii) to reach these science needs some mediation of experience; (iii) this is due to the fact that, even in the case of science, the immediate does not appear as the original; and (iv) the process for reaching the understanding of the immediate employs two principles: experience and logos, which is a creative and synthetic use of pure reason.

The four requirements just mentioned can easily be recognized as the cornerstone for the construction of a metaphysics. It can be concluded, therefore, that no objection against metaphysics can be derived from a methodological analysis of science.

This conclusion may sound a bit too optimistic and hasty; an objection of the following type seems natural. It is true that science cannot help employing a mediation of experience, but the all-important point is to remain constantly within a `faithful mediation'; this means not venturing beyond any possible control of what is said during the course of this mediation. Science has always felt this duty of remaining faithful to experience as its categorical imperative. This can be seen from the fact that even the most abstract and theoretical statements must be connected with other fully empirical statements by logical and mathematical links which, though complicated, are always open to investigation. This is the deepest sense of the `principle of verific ation'; it cannot be circumvented, even when one is aware of the shortcomings which affected this principle in the first stages of its too pretentious formulation.

Metaphysics, on the contrary, has unfortunately forgotten this fundamental obligation, allowing itself every type of freedom in mediating experience. This is the main reason for its failure in the attempt to produce acceptable knowledge. This objection appears at first to be quite strong, but further analysis will enable one to accept the truth it contains, without it constituting a difficulty against metaphysics. The way out of the impasse is offered by the fact that we are not concerned here with a problem of `faithful mediation' proper, but rather with a question of selecting a specific thematic domain, framework of questioning, or viewpoint for inquiry, etc. A full explanation of all this would need a rather detailed analysis of the structure of scientific objectivity. The present author has developed that elsewhere, but the most relevant points of this analysis can be restated succinctly.

SCIENCE AND METAPHYSICS:

`THE WHOLE OF EXPERIENCE' AND THE `WHOLE'

A science is never concerned with the entire domain of `reality'; rather, from this it designates its specific domain of `objects' by resorting to some `predicates' which can be thought of as representing its `viewpoint' on reality. Mechanics, for example, investigates reality only by means of predicates such as mass, length, time and force, as well as some other predicates which

can be obtained from these primitive ones by means of explicit definitions; electrodynamics characterizes its objects by means of primitive predicates such as time, length, charge and other explicitly defined concepts, etc. This procedure is quite universal and can be verified in every exact science. It can be maintained, therefore, that every science characterizes its objects or determines its proper `domain of objects' by means of its specific predicates. It follows that whatever is not characterized by these predicates falls outside the competence of this science while, on the other hand, everything which can be characterized by them falls within its competence. Every such set of specific predicates determines `the whole' of physics. By adjoining to this the whole of chemistry, the whole of biology, etc., one obtains the whole of natural science. In a kind of limit considerations, by considering the complex of all possible scientific `wholes' one obtains the `whole of science', which may be considered as characterized by the totality of all possible empirically definable predicates. For this reason, we could say that the specific domain of science is 'the whole of experience.' This is because the 'objects' of science in general are built up by means of primitive empir ical predicates, which fact automatically limits the competence of science to what can be described by such predicates.

The `choice' of each set of primitive predicates is itself contingent. While this determines the whole of a certain science, it cannot prevent other sciences from being both different and equally legitimate `viewpoints' upon reality. The choice of such viewpoints is in fact a matter of `decision' and `interest', for no intrinsic necessity could compel one to consider a dog, e.g., from the viewpoint of mechanics rather than of biology or psychology. On the contrary, one would be perfectly right in deciding to consider the dog from all such different viewpoints, and additional ones as well. If we apply this remark to science, we must say that adopting a scientific attitude towards reality amounts to taking the decision to place oneself from the viewpoint of the `whole of experience', as we have already discussed. This decision is certainly fully legitimate. It does not, however, state a necessity, but is contingent; nor can it exclude other decisions and viewpoints from being equally legitimate.

In particular, one could be interested in investigating reality from the viewpoint, not of the `whole of experience', but of the `whole' without furt her specification. In this case, he would not be obliged to limit himself to statements which could be traced back to experience. Such a condition is compulsory for science only because the `whole of experience' constitutes its specific domain of inquiry, but this cannot be the condition for admitting statements which are concerned with the `whole' without limitation. If now we qualify metaphysics as the effort to investigate reality from the viewpoint of the `whole', which is different from investigating `the whole of experience,' the verification principle cannot constitute an objection because it is simply a `demarcation' criterion which circumscribes only the domain of science (i.e., the domain of the `whole of experience'). What does not fulfill this principle can be said to fall outside science, but not outside all meaningful inquiry.

Something more should be noted. Not only is science unable to exclude the questioning of the `whole' as such, but there are moments when the viewpoint of the `whole' comes into play within scientific discourse itself. Each specialized field of scientific research suffers a kind of `contingency', as mentioned above. This implies the well-known characteristic of `refutability' for scientific statements: one can never be sure that nature can be described fully by means of those precise predicates which are selected in order to establish a certain domain of inquiry. Hence, one must always expect to be confronted with aspects of reality which fall outside the possibility of bein g treated by means of the accepted tools of inquiry. When such cases appear, one is faced with the problem of the `whole', in relation to which he must measure the inadequacy of his previous viewpoints. Speaking more generally, whenever one is concerned with the problems of the `foundations' of science--and this happens not only in the philosophy of science, but at times also in science itself--one cannot help being involved with the viewpoint of the `whole'.

These clarifications make possible a clear eval uation of the philosophical position which reproaches metaphysics for neglecting in its statements the continuous control of experience. In order to be correct, that is, in order not to confuse the `contingent' choice of the viewpoint of the `whole of experience' that characterizes science with a `necessary' requirement for every meaningful discourse, those advocating that position must prove that the `whole' coincides with the `whole of experience.' Surely, there is no such proof in the entire history of philosophy, and such a claim must be held to be purely dogmatic. What is more, if such a proof were ever to be proposed it would necessarily be metaphysical, for in order to show that the `whole' coincides with the `whole of experience' one cannot help taking `the viewpoint of the whole' which means adopting a metaphysical attitude.

What has been said thus far is fair not only to metaphysics, but to science, because it does not claim that science contains at least some metaphysical elements, as some philosophers today seem to maintain. In fact, when we established that science is obliged to admit mediation of experience, to accept nonempirical elements in its theoretical apparatus and to resort to a synthetic use of reason, one might have felt inclined to consider all that as a claim that these are unavoidable metaphysical components of any scientific knowledge. But this is not true because all these elements always concern the `whole of experience.' How this can happen may be exemplified quite easily. A concept like that of an electron in physics is obtained by a mediation of the empirical evidence because it is not directly observable; it is a theoretical construct and, as such, nonempirical. Despite all that, this concept should not be classified as `metaphysical' because the `predicates' through which it is characterized are still the usual predicates adopted to circumscribe the `whole of physics,' like mass, charge, etc. In this way one can see how it is possible to `mediate' experience, which means to transcend the field of immediate evidence, without leaving the `whole of experience' as a thematic domain of inquiry. On the contrary, when a metaphysician says, e.g., that God exists, he does not intend that this entity be definable through the same predicates as the usually experienced things, but, quite the contrary, that it belongs to a different `whole' with respect to the `whole of experience.'

Till now we have discussed the legitimacy of holding the viewpoint of the `whole' along with the viewpoint of science and have found a sound foundation for this. We shall now proceed to see whether such a viewpoint, besides being legitimate, is somehow required. We shall see that this is actually the case.

[To be continued.]