The Metaphysical Foundation of Buddhism and Modern Science

observation beyond the boundaries of its delusive completeness, and to
urge the doctrines of science beyond their delusive air of finality.
We can now briefly characterize the history of the transformation of
mediaeval cosmology into our modern standpoint. The effective agency in
this transformation has a history of about eighteen hundred years
entirely divorced from physical observation. It is a history of abstract
thought, namely of the development of mathematics. The interest, which
was the motive in its development, was the interest in the coordination of
theoretical notions and in the theoretical constructions arising from the
domination of such notions. Yet, if many modern philosophers and men of
science could have had their way, they would have been dissuading
Greeks, Jews, and Muslims from such useless studies, from such pure
abstractions for which no foresight could divine the ghost of an
application. Luckily they could not get at their ancestors.
Section VII. The services to mankind rendered by the Newtonian System
of Nature are incalculable. It combines ideas derived from Plato,
Aristotle, and Epicurus, into a consistent scheme of thought which
elucidates an incredible number of observed facts. Thereby it has
enabled men to obtain a new command over Nature. Where we formerly
obeyed, we now direct. But at last the Newton cosmology has broken
down.