The Metaphysical Foundation of Buddhism and Modern Science

its habitual ideas. It is a step by step process, achieving no triumphs of
finality. We cannot produce that final adjustment of well-defined
generalities which constitute a complete metaphysics. But we can produce
a variety of partial systems of limited generality. The concordance of
ideas within any one such system shows the scope and virility of the basic
notions of that scheme of thought. Also the discordance of system with
system, and success of each system as a partial mode of illumination,
warns us of the limitations within which our intuitions are hedged. These
undiscovered limitations are the topics for philosophic research.
This doctrine of the limitations to which our best ideas are subject is
illustrated by that very notion of material bodies which has just been
mentioned. That notion is so obvious that it has haunted language so far
as we can trace history backwards. Finally in the seventeenth century it
was given a new precision for the purposes of physical science. Also
physical science, thus re-conditioned, proved an overwhelming success
for three centuries. It has transformed thought, and has transformed
the physical activities of mankind. It seemed that at last mankind had
achieved the fundamental notion for all practical purposes, and that
beyond it in the way of generality there lay mere aimless speculation. But
in the twentieth century this great notion, as shaped for use by Galileo
and Newton, has completely collapsed so far as concerns its use as a
fundamental notion for physical science. In the modern science, it is a
limited notion confined to special purpose.