AN INTEGRATION OF THE SCIENCES

NATARAJA GURU

THE need for integrating the vast body of knowledge that men have been able to accumulate into a coherent whole is a subject that has begun to engage the serious attention of educators. Practical aspects of knowledge are now being stressed at the expense of the purer branches. Advanced studies now refer mostly to technological subjects. The universities turn out more and more experts or specialists. As a result, those aspects of higher knowledge which were covered by the term "humanities" have been by-passed and left behind.

Except in a few places such as the College de France, the Institute for Advanced Studies of Princeton, or perhaps also in the recently started Committee on Social Thought under the University of Chicago, attempts at any serious integration of courses seem inadequate and negligible.

There is however, at the present time, a growing feeling for a fresh synthesis of knowledge, so that the sterility of over-departmentalization and consequent lack of the human touch in education may be effectively stemmed. Specialization at least must not be for its own sake, but must serve some tangible end to produce a better educated man.

Besides the UNESCO which may be looked upon as an expression of the desire for a revised impetus to culture and science on a world-wide scale, there are at present many private foundations both in the East and in the West standing for the same ideal. They adhere to varied programmes, some being overtly scientific and others relying more on esoteric cultural values. A particular cosmology or a tacit dogmatic theology can be seen to be implied in many of them. Even the theory of evolution itself is being treated by some of them as an article of faith. They often become thus open to the objection that they tend to be dogmatic, sentimental or religiously pre-disposed. They would fall short of the requirement that any modern attempt at an integration of knowledge should be conceived on more positive or scientific lines.

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NO COMMON INTELLECTUAL FORMATION

Although senior professors of universities who may be in charge of admission of students for the higher courses may be heard to refer to what they call "intellectual formation" as a necessary pre-requisite for following a certain specialized course, this expression remains still a very vague one. What precisely the expression is intended to convey may not be clear even as between one professor of a certain department and another, who might belong to the same university. The expression as applied to inter-university standards generally becomes still more vague, because cultural backgrounds differ widely, not only between the universities of the Old and the New Worlds, but even between universities of the same continent or even country.

Eastern and Western cultural standards may be said still to lie poles apart. German universities have each an academic reputation and tradition all their own, and certain universities specialize only in select branches. Even in England, an Oxonian is expected to have a formation different from that of a graduate of Cambridge. In France, although the situation has been somewhat mitigated by the existence of the centuries old foundation of the College de France, the "intellectual formation" demanded by a certain professor even in the department of letters, may differ from the one required by another.

In India, which has no university tradition to call its own, but tries to graft oriental culture on to the stem of occidental classical tradition, the case for a preliminary intellectual formation for higher studies is in a sad state indeed. The influence, in itself not salubrious, of the non-idealistic and pragmatic tendency of the United States, that prevailes in the cultural world, as in many other departments of life at the present day, is tending further to lower standards in cultural education. Measurement is being given primacy, and everything that does not lend itself to a brass instrument experimentation or testing, is tending to be discredited.

This influence, which is itself enough to dampen intellectual and moral enthusiasm for culture, works hand in hand at the present day with that other tendency to be noticed in India, which gives primacy to localized cultural values. Linguistic preferences in the name of a pseudo-nationalism which encourage parochial loyalties and closed orthodoxies of different shades, are being allowed to compromise more or less completely the cause for an open and universal outlook in favour of any integrated education worth the name. In this connection it has been interesting to note that a group of Indian university vice-chancellors have recently been touring the United States of America seeking a formula for integrated education. From the report of their impressions, it would appear that nothing striking was discovered for adoption in India. In the United States themselves, we find a dissatisfaction which is expressing itself in the form of sporadic instances of revolt by youth....

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UNITIVE APPROACH NEEDED

Whether we are concerned with "basic" or "fundamental" education for the emancipation, social or cultural, of the masses of the world, or think in terms of higher cultural values of an idealistic non-utilitarian programme in education for the select few, it is highly necessary at the present time to visualize the scope and methods of integrated education more clearly than hitherto. We have to be able to think of common human values in the global context of one solid humanity.

There should no longer be cultural preserves or prerogatives which try to divide humanity into sheep or goats. The myth of the primitive or inferior man has to be abandoned. The orthodox and the heterodox, the conservative and the liberal, the rightist and the leftist, must be able to meet in the endeavour to preserve the best human heritage that belongs to all. A common cultural language which would enable these precious values to be referred to, irrespective of linguistic or traditional barriers, has to be evolved. Such a mathematically precise language would pave the way for the formulation of a regular science. Values preserved through humanistic studies could then be effectively cultivated without the arbitrary and sentimental barriers that history or geography might interpose between people. An open, dynamic and positive scientific attitude must invade the closed, static and private preserves in which higher human values have hitherto remained enclosed.

In other words, the challenge involved here is to bring back the humanities and human values involved therein, into the line with the other scientific values which, for no just reason, have in recent years tended to be considered as if divorced or disjunct from the former.

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THE SCIENCE OF SCIENCES

In the days of Aristotle all wisdom disciplines were more unitively understood than at the present day. The term "science" covered equally the whole range of subjects, starting from physics and natural history (or, rather, natural philosophy), to metaphysics, ethics, economics and politics. The Doctrine of the Mean which was Aristotle's contribution to thought, was a subtle underlying unitive principle which strung together branches of knowledge that have now come to be considered as different or disjunct from one another.

From the time when writers like Mill began to arrange cultural or economic notions on a less idealistic and more "utilitarian" basis, the firm hand of classical unitive thinking based on such bold dicta as "It is in ourselves that we are thus or thus," and the singleness of human end or purpose in life, gave way to the hesitant and wavering attitude implied in such expressions as "Not expecting more from life than it is capable of bestowing." Unitive values began to be confused with non-unitive ones. The right regulative or normative principle that related ends with means through deliberation, began to be compromised. Horizontal or "here-and-now" values of an ontological nature were stressed at the expense of idealistic, teleological or vertical ones. The intuitive understanding of the Doctrine of the Mean was lost forever, and thus cultural enthusiasm began to flag.

If we could again think of science as including both moral and physical sciences, the task of finding a basis for integrated education could be more easily accomplished. Knowledge can direct its search outward from the seat of the mind or soul within us. The "eye of the soul," to use Aristotle's expression, can look "positively" and "objectively" into the world of the "knowables" or subjectively or introspectively into values or virtues within the personality of man.

The latter has been known as the negative way which, by the eye of the soul directed inwardly, can still conduct "auto-experimentation" by comparing common human experience of the a priori order. While the positive sciences are a posteriori and actually objective, these negative sciences could still be "objective" in discipline in a virtual or conceptual sense. The strictness of scientific exactitude in thinking need not necessarily suffer in the latter case. When proper terms have been fixed to refer to aspects of knowledge, the whole range of knowledge can be made to come under one science which could be called the Science of sciences. In fact this is what the Science of the Absolute (or brahma-vidya as such is called in India) claims to be. "Knowledge" (jnanam) and "the knowable" (jneyam) are here to be distinguished, the first as negative and the second as positive. An epistemology and methodology based on a correct contemplative scale of values is here implied.

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DESCENDING DIALECTICS

Some recent attempts at integration of knowledge have proceeded from the variety of specialized analytic knowledge towards their synthesis. Thus there is the famous instance in which the top-ranking nuclear physicist Schroedinger makes a serious attempt to relate biology with chemistry and physics. In his booklet entitled What is Life? an attempt has been made to bridge the gap between inanimate and living matter. Later writers such as Andrew A. Cochran* have availed themselves of the quantum theory to establish a link between life and matter. Such attempts may be said to travel from the positive and overt aspects of reality towards the innate and subtle aspects, or from the positive pole to the negative.

DISTINCT VALUE WORLDS

Even while we speak in terms of poles, we have to distinguish two sets of poles as belonging to two distinct aspects of values or interests in life.

Reality, it must be remembered, is to be studied for the human interest in it rather than just for its own sake without reference to human interests or values. All attempts at integration are for man, and not for knowledge itself. When we visualize the world of values correctly, we will be able to see a vertical series of values in which the positive pole is the world of pure reason or that of the Platonic Intelligibles. The negative pole of vertical values will be in the prime means to the supreme end of attaining to the world of the Intelligibles when understood unitively and synthetically. Thus there is a vertical world of pure values, and a horizontal world of material values.


* Mr. Cochran writes a very interesting and well-documented article on "The Quantum Physical Basis of Life," postulating a basic hylozoism with the "wave" phenomena as the conscious aspect of matter, in the May 1957 issue of Main Currents in Modern Thought (journal of the Foundation for Integrated Education, 246 East 46th Street, New York 17, N. Y., U. S. A.). Mr. Cochran is attached to the U. S. Bureau of Mines.

The building up of a cultural life in a person means the recognition of both these sets, while the Doctrine of the Mean must constantly convert knowledge in favour of virtues. As we have elsewhere tried to develop it is possible to bring Gold, Goodness and God to be comprised within the amplitude of a personal scale of values between the poles of which the life of man may be said to oscillate. The science of things taken in themselves, and considered without their fundamental value-import for man, is like the magnetic field secondary to the main current along which life flows. This latter may be said to be along the vertical axis of pure deliberative values, by means of which man decides to affiliate himself to a good life. Actual physical life is of the nature merely of an epiphenomenon to the real life interests normal and legitimate to man as Man.

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THE KEY TO INTEGRATION

It is a recognized fact tacitly understood already in the East as well as in the West, that man himself is the subject of proper study. Atma-vidya (Self-knowledge) in India has been treated as the same as Brahma-vidya (Wisdom of the Absolute). Ananda (Happiness) as a Supreme End or Value in life, has also been treated as, in effect, the same as the Self or the Absolute. Thus the key for integration of knowledge of wisdom is to be found in the human personality itself, where the subtlest aspects of wisdom find a natural home. The Self is the most precious of values for man, and the mahavakyas (Great Dicta) such as "Thou art That" signify this supreme point of culmination of all integrated wisdom.

With such as the target before them, it is encouraging to note even physicists like Schroedinger have made some first efforts to bring these divergent aspects of human knowledge into integrated relationship. A contemplative Science of the Absolute conceived in terms of Self-knowledge could include the Chief End or the Final Good on the one hand, and the negative or prime counterparts of the same in actual life, within the range of an integrated Science of sciences combining ontological and teleological values. Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean could then be understood in terms of samya (sameness) which is the central doctrine of such Eastern texts as the Bhagavad Gita.

When both are properly grasped without prejudice, culture would tend to be integrated and understood in unitive and universal terms.

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