The Metaphysical Foundation of Buddhism and Modern Science

notions, has done almost as much harm as good for the advancement of
science. We can never get away from the quotations: - How much, - In
what proportions, - and In what pattern of arrangement with other
things. The exact laws of chemical proportions make all the difference:
CO will kill you, when CO 2 will only give you a headache. Also CO 2 is a
necessary element for the dilution of oxygen in the atmosphere; but too
much or too little is equally harmful. Arsenic deals out either health or
death, according to its proportions amid a pattern of circumstances. Also
when the health-giving proportion of CO 2 to free oxygen has been
obtained, a re-arrangement of these proportional quantities of carbon
and oxygen into carbon monoxide and free oxygen will provide a poisonous
mixture. In Political Economy, the Law of Diminishing Returns points to
the conditions for the maximum efficiency of a dose of capital. In fact,
there is hardly a question to be asked which should not be fenced round
with qualifications as how much, and as to what pattern of circumstances.
Aristotelian Logic, apart from the guardianship of mathematics, is the
fertile matrix of fallacies. It deals with propositional forms only adapted
for the expression of high abstractions, the sort of abstractions usual in
current conversation where the presupposed background is ignored.
But it is evident that even the appeal to mathematics is too narrow, at
least if mathematics is taken to mean those branches hitherto developed.
The general science of mathematics is concerned with the investigation
of patterns of connectedness, in abstraction from the particular relata
and the particular modes of connection. It is only in some special