Substance and Shadow

Substance and Shadow -Suhotra Swami

DedicationPrefacePurpose and PrinciplesIntroduction1. Perception (Pratyakña)2. Reason (Anumäna)3. Verbal Testimony (Çabda)4. A Discussion on the Means to Knowledge5. The Ethics of Sacrifice

Suhotra SwamiSubstance and ShadowThe Vedic Method of Knowledge

A masterpiece! With clarity and humor, the author shows us what Vedicknowledge is. I especially appreciate the abundant references. The glossary of philosophical names and terms is about the best I have ever seen. Substance andShadow well deserves the attention of those curious to know more about Vedicthought, and also of members of the scholarly world. Suhotra Swami has reallysucceeded in making difficult concepts understandable.Ronny Sjöblom, MADepartment of Comparative Religion,Abo Academy, Turku (Finland)

Dedication

I offer my humble obeisances in the dust of the lotus feet of my spiritual master,His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupäda, who said:"Cultivate this knowledge, Kåñëa consciousness, and you'll be happy. Your lifewill be successful. That is all. And the method is simple—chant Hare Kåñëa:Hare Kåñëa Hare Kåñëa Kåñëa Kåñëa Hare HareHare Räma Hare Räma Räma Räma Hare HareIf you simply chant, that is sufficient for your self-realization. But if you want tostudy this philosophy, or the science of God, through your philosophy andargument, logic, we have got enough stock of books. Don't think that we are allsentimentalists, simply dancing. No. There is a background."—Suhotra Swamion Çré Nåsiàha-caturdaçé (May 2, 1996)

at ISKCON's Mayapur Chandrodaya Mandirin Çrédham Mayapur, W.B., IndiaPreface to the Second Edition

Preface

Seeing his book reprinted, an author likely feels a sense of accomplishment, evenvanity. With the second printing of Substance and Shadow, I simply feel greatrelief. The first edition was rushed to the printer along with numerous errata soas to be offered during Çréla Prabhupäda's Centennial year (1996). Still, in themain, the reaction to the book was favorable. Brisk sales prompted me to revisethe manuscript for a second edition. And this is the result a polished text in anew size under a new cover. Not that I claim it perfect; but I am relieved to sayI've done all that I could to make it better. Most of the corrections are minormatters of spelling and punctuation. But there are some revisions of content too.Several of these deal with science. At least one reader with a scientificbackground was unsatisfied by how the first edition handled certain scientificissues. I've done what I can to show sensitivity to his complaint. But I won't besurprised if this edition also attracts criticism, since I have no formal training in,for example, quantum mechanics though in Substance and Shadow I dare makecomments about it. What are my intentions (or pretensions) towards science? Inanswering that question, I offer six points here.

The narrow basis of science

First, the main purpose of Substance and Shadow is to distinguish the Vedicmethod of knowledge from other methods. Humanity has different methods of knowledge available to it. I hold that only through Vedic knowledge can we gradethe validity of these methods. Substance and Shadow examines four suchmethods: empiricism, scepticism, rationalism and authoritative testimony. I holdthat Western science isn't capable of comparing and contrasting the validity of one method of knowledge against others. Why? Because its own basis is toonarrow. That basis was summed up by Albert Einstein in Out of My Late Years(1936):Out of the multitude of our sense experiences we take, mentally and arbitrarily,certain repeatedly occuring complexes of sense impression ... and we attribute tothem a meaning the meaning of bodily objects.Einstein admitted that this method cannot even prove the existence of theexternal world. So how can we be sure that the bodily objects scientists study arereal things? Aren't such objects just mental interpretations of a jumble of sensedata that, with a nonhuman mind, or even with a human mind culturallydifferent than ours, could be interpreted in a very different way? Wouldn't adifferent interpretation of sense data reveal a very different world? Whichinterpretation is the right one? And how, by this method Einstein described, canwe ever know whether there is a reality outside the range of our senseexperiences? These questions are not for science to answer. They are for

philosophy. There is a difference between the scientific approach and thephilosophical approach. Substance and Shadow takes the latter; it is thereforenot remarkable that a scientifically-minded person could have a problem with mybook. Of course, science began in philosophy. But it cut its ties to the parent as itaccelerated down the narrow path of the study of bodily objects. Professor LewisWolpert, erudite biologist at London's University College, writes that mostscientists today are ignorant of philosophical issues. Though at the beginning of the twentieth century a professional scientist normally had a background inphilosophy,Today things are quite different, and the stars of modern science are more likelyto have been brought up on science fiction ... the physicist who is a quantummechanic has no more knowledge of philosophy than the average car mechanic.*Wolpert admits that the fundamental assumptions of science may not beacceptable as philosophy, but speaking as a scientist, he finds that irrelevant. If scientists don't care about the concerns of philosophy, then why, my readersmight ask, should a philosophical book like Substance and Shadow be at allconcerned with what scientists say specially if the author admits he is not verywell-versed in what they say? I offer this, from a noted journalist in the field of cyber technology, as an answer:Science, as we have already discovered, is outrageously demanding. It demandsthat it is not simply a way of explaining certain bits of the world, or even thelocal quarter of the universe within telescopic range. It demands that it explainsabsolutely everything.*

Science is not philosophy

This leads us to the second point: today's scientists are not shy about tacklingphilosophical questions yet they are not trained in philosophy and, as Wolpertadmits, they follow a rule that all scientific ideas are contrary to common sense.*Here's an example. Wolpert puts forward the oft-heard argument that a scientifictheory ultimately counts for nothing if it does not measure up to what can beobserved in nature.* Yet he approvingly quotes Albert Einstein as saying that atheory is significant not to the degree it is confirmed by facts observed in nature,but to the degree it is simple and logical; and he quotes Arthur Eddington assaying that observations are not to be given much confidence unless they areconfirmed by theory.* Common sense tells us there's a contradiction here.Wolpert admits it: Scientists have to face at least two problems that drive themin opposite directions.* The first problem is that science postulates causalmechanisms to explain why the world appears as it does to us. The second is thatsince a fundamental cause is always before its visible effect in the form of thebodily objects of this world, the cause cannot be perceived as a bodily object canbe. In other words, the objectivity of a scientist is restricted by his material body.Thus from his embodied standpoint, he has a difficult task proving that hispostulated fundamental cause is real. But prove it he will try, starting with whatEinstein termed free fantasy.* Thus fundamental causes (or to be precise,