The Metaphysical Foundation of Buddhism and Modern Science

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the sole data originating reflective experience are impressions of
sensation, and also if we also admit with him the obvious fact that no one
such impression by its own individual nature discloses any information as
to another such impression, then on that hypothesis the direct evidence
for interconnectedness vanishes. Again, if we hold the Cartesian doctrine
of substantial souls with many adventures of experience, and of
substantial material bodies, then on that hypothesis the relations
between two occasions of experience qualifying one soul are no evidence
as to the connectedness of two such occasions respectively qualifying two
different souls, and are no evidence as the connectedness of a soul and a
material body, and are no evidence as to the connectedness of two
occasions of agitation of one material body, or of two such occasions
respectively belonging to different material bodies. But if we hold, as for
example in Process and Reality, that all final individual actualities have
the metaphysical character of occasions of experience, then on that
hypothesis the direct evidence as to the connectedness of one's
immediate present occasion of experience with one's immediately past
occasions, can be validly used to suggest categories applying to the
connectedness of all occasions in nature. A great deal of confused
philosophical thought has its origin in obliviousness to the fact that the
relevance of evidence is dictated by theory. For you cannot prove a
theory by evidence which that theory dismisses as irrelevant. This is also
the reason that in any science which has failed to produce any theory
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