The Metaphysical Foundation of Buddhism and Modern Science
The Metaphysical Foundations of Buddhism and Modern Science: Nagarjuna and Alfred North Whitehead
The Metaphysical Foundations of Buddhism and Modern Science: Nagarjuna and Alfred North Whitehead
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species. Thus its use as though it conveyed one definite meaning in<br />
diverse illustrations is entirely sophistical. Every meaning <strong>of</strong> 'together' is<br />
to be found in various stages <strong>of</strong> analysis <strong>of</strong> occasions <strong>of</strong> experience. No<br />
things are 'together' except in experience; <strong>and</strong> no things 'are', except as<br />
components in experience or as immediacies <strong>of</strong> process which are<br />
occasions in self-creation.<br />
Section XVI. Thus to arrive at the philosophic generalization which is the<br />
notion <strong>of</strong> a final actuality conceived in the guise <strong>of</strong> a generalization <strong>of</strong> an<br />
act <strong>of</strong> experience, an apparent redundancy <strong>of</strong> terms is required. <strong>The</strong><br />
words correct each other. We require 'together', 'creativity',<br />
'concrescence', 'prehension', 'feeling', 'subjective form', 'data',<br />
'actuality', 'becoming', 'process'.<br />
Section XVII. At this stage <strong>of</strong> the generalization a new train <strong>of</strong> thought<br />
arises. Events become <strong>and</strong> perish. In their becoming they are immediate<br />
<strong>and</strong> then vanish into the past. <strong>The</strong>y are gone; they have perished; they<br />
are no more <strong>and</strong> have passed into not-being. Plato terms [Cf. Timaeus]<br />
them things that are 'always becoming <strong>and</strong> never really are'. But before<br />
he wrote this phrase, Plato had made his great metaphysical<br />
generalization, a discovery which forms the basis <strong>of</strong> his present<br />
discussion. He wrote in the Sophist, not-being is itself a form <strong>of</strong> being.<br />
He only applied the same doctrine to his eternal forms. He should have<br />
applied the same doctrine to the things that perish. He would then have<br />
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