10.01.08

Science, religion, and the archaeology of Samkhya

Posted in Science & Religion at 3:24 pm by nemo

J.G.Bennett and Samkhya
Much of the science/religion debate is fundamentally impoverished, and beside the point. Scientists have a flawed critique of religion, and religionists, that is, Occidental monotheists at least, are in a state that can only be called, ‘metaphysical basket case’.
It wasn’t always like that! The link above is to a discussion of a little known writer, J.G. Bennett, whose ‘The Dramatic Universe’ contained, among other things, an attempt to reconstruct the classic Samkhya legacy. I am entirely critical of that effort, and would like to expose the dishonesty here (Samkhya is NOT a theistic/Christian theological legacy) for various reasons, and am a known ‘dog at the heels’ for Mr. Bennett. But his gesture remains significant, such a pity he didn’t do it right, in a classic pilfering of something of substance to try and beef up the vacuous dementia of Christian theology. Between shaking my fist, “you won’t get away with it”, and a number of severe reservations about his methodology, the fact remains that I have an outstanding interest in this for the sheer audacity of what he attempted to do, stretching between General Relativity and the long lost triadic evolutionism of the mysterious Samkhya. This system, as it boots up into its complex set of triadic levels, gives us a distorted glimpse at just how powerful the original system was, and shows at a glance where most psychologies, spiritual or scientific, are completely lacking in the core insights needed for an understanding of human evolutionary psychology. Read down the material at the link to the series of levels: three, six, twelve, twenty-four, forty-eight, etc…, go a long way to unifying the fragments western thought has been dealt.
These diagrams, understood, might scare the daylights out of naive scientists determined to reduce man to mechanical explanation, and explain why religionists will never submit to a reductionist substitute. But religion as we know it knows nothing of this, and secularists, armed with Samkhya, might be better equipped to challenge the infelicities of their theological laggards.

The hidden resemblance to Kant, and especially Schopenhauer, is one possible insight.

It is of course a foolish hope to expect such an ancient and lost legacy could be revived or address our contemporary mindset, but at least it might help, as an archaeological exercise, to see the sophistication of ancient religious thought, religionists to see the limits of their religion, and scientists to see that they are at risk of asphyxiating the patient.

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