Ask Good Questions
We have to look at the prospects of an Indian science in the spirit of its creativity. We have to ask good questions, worthwhile questions and not titillating or just utilitarian questions. We have to ask questions that come from deeper perceptions.

For instance, we do not know why at every stage of aggregation or disaggregation of matter newer properties appear. We have descriptions but not knowledge. Thus water is not simply the sum of hydrogen and oxygen. It is altogether a different new substance. In fact we should call it an atom because its properties cannot be derived from anything else. So also is the earth, so too the sun, and so and so forth. How do new properties appear? The answer is not available. Is it an aspect of the substratum that enters into it? Is that substratum a participative medium? If this should be true, then we would be entering into a wonderful domain where matter and space-time interact. Is that what the General Theory of Relativity trying to propose?

Similarly, if Matter, Life, and Mind are entities independent of each other, then they form irreducible dimensions, that is, one cannot be expressed in terms of the other. In that case how could Life arise out of or enter into Matter? And this will happen at every higher stage also. On the other hand, if Life is to be viewed as a product of Matter, how does it at all acquire the characteristics which are not there in the material state? In that eventuality, will not the proposition sound paradoxical? As we have seen, we do not know how the combination of hydrogen and oxygen gives rise to an altogether different substance with altogether different properties, it will be strange to think of Matter giving rise to Life by some mysterious process. Matter occasioning Life is one thing and producing it is another. It would be a creation out of vacuum, ex nihilo, as if the vacuum were seething with an intense activity. The mystery gets further confounded as we go up on the invisible ladder to higher propositions. To science it can prove very embarrassing and it should be its concern to resolve the issue.

But to the practising researcher these questions may appear rather intractable; they may even be called inanities. Such could be a sufficient reason to dismiss them immediately. On the contrary, perhaps such could be the reasons to set him on the inquiry. Indeed, if meaningful researches are to be pursued, we may have to invent altogether novel techniques of approach. Not only idea-tools but also much subtler physical apparatuses and probes for investigation. Only then we may be able to say that there is Indian science.

If the quality of a culture depends upon the kind of questions it asks, then we should ask questions worthy of that culture. Just when the questions are raised is there a good possibility of getting their answers. Instead of following the existing methods of analysis and deduction, approaches based on synthesis ought to be thought out and initiated. For this to happen new concepts of, and relationships in, space and time may have to be proposed and discovered. …   more »