The Metaphysical Foundation of Buddhism and Modern Science

within which the course of history is set, in abstraction from all the
particular historical facts. I have directed attention to Plato’s doctrine
of the Receptacle because, at the present moment, physical science is
nearer to it than at any period since Plato’s death. The space-time of
modern mathematical physics, conceived in abstraction from the
particular mathematical formulae which applies to the happenings in it, is
almost exactly Plato’s Receptacle. It is to be noted that mathematical
physicists are extremely uncertain as to what these formulae are
exactly, nor do they believe that any such formulae can be derived from
the mere notion of space-time. Thus, as Plato declares, space-time in
itself is bare of all forms.
Section V. In the preceding sketch only one incidental generalization,
selected from one topic comprised in the enormous labours of Aristotle’s
life, has brought forward. Aristotle was at once a man of science, a
philosopher, a literary critic, and a student of political theory. This
particular classification of the things constitutive of the visible universe
has been dwelt upon because it is an almost perfect example of a
scientific induction satisfying all the conditions insisted on by the
modern philosophy of science. It was a generalization from observed
fact, and could be confirmed by repeated observation.. In its day – and
its day lasted for eighteen hundred years – it was extremely useful; and
now that it is dead, it is stone-dead, an archaeological curiosity. This is
the fate of scientific generalizations, so long as they are considered