part and whole

[Guest guest]

ombhurbhuva <ombhurbhuva wrote:

 

Accepting the argument of Swamiji leads one down the primrose path to

other fallacies and paradoxes such as how motion is impossible, how

there is no such thing as past and future (momentariness), how

self-identity is impossible etc. I'm not saying that such was his

intention just that an innocent example can be loaded.

 

Venkat - M

 

Could you please explain a little more to me on how the example of the

flower leads to other fallacies like impossibility of Motion,

self-identity etc.

 

Many thanks and regards,

 

Venkat - M

 

 

Namaste Venkatji,

My idea was the holistic one that the whole is greater

than the sum of its parts and that their reality becomes operative in

the whole thing. This is the idea which gave birth to ecology. For the

sake of science the artificial consideration of things as composed of

parts which is a purely abstract concept is accepted. If we apply this

thinking to time we may split it up into an infinite number of moments

each of which has to be got through before we can go on to the next.

Each of those moments can be similarily divided etc. Thus you have the

paradox of Zeno and the story of the tortoise and the hare. It may be

easily rebutted by asking 'how fast is the hare going' eg. 1/2 ml. a

minute, then at the end of a minute he will have travelled 1/2 mile.

Time can be divided into past present and future but the notion of the

present abstracted from the triad leads to to paradox that there is no

such thing as past and future because we are always in the present. The

answer to that is to stroke your beard.

 

Allied to this one is the momentariness of the states of a person. One

hardly knows how to put this idea it is so radically incoherent. Again

you have the idea of a series of conscious states. Underlying this way

of putting the problem is the belief that that is all there is to the

person. 'How then does a series of conscious states become conscious of

itself as a series? (David Hume & Buddhist Annica) The Madhyamika would

say that there is only interdependent arising and a reading into of the

phenomena which really have no commonality. An elegant rebuttal is to

be found in B.S.B. II.ii.25.

 

Chaos theory in so far as I understand it would hold that even the

narrow selection of legally bound factors that make up scientific laws

is an abstraction.

 

Best Wishes, Michael.