The Metaphysical Foundation of Buddhism and Modern Science

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with a sufficient scope of application, progress is necessarily very slow.
It is impossible to know what to look for, and how to connect the
sporadic observations. Philosophical discussion in the absence of a theory
has no criterion of the validity of evidence. For example, Hume assumes
that his doctrine of association holds for all types of impressions of
sensation and of ideas of them indiscriminately. This assumption is part
of his theory. In divorce from the theory, a separate appeal to
experience is required for each type of impression, for example, tastes,
sounds, sights, etc., and likewise, not only for the association of tastes
inter se and of sounds inter se, but for the associations of tastes with
sounds, and so on for every possible type, and for every possible
conjunction of types.
To sum up this preface, every method is a happy simplification. But only
truths of a congenial type can be investigated by any one method, or
stated in the terms dictated by the method. For every simplification is
an over-simplification. Thus the criticism of a theory does not start from
the question, True or false? It consists in noting its scope of useful
application and its failure beyond that scope. It is an unguarded
statement of a partial truth. Some of its terms embody a general notion
with a mistaken specialization, and others of its terms are too general
and require discrimination of their possibilities of specialization.
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