Christian Thomas Kohl The Metaphysical Foundations of Buddhism and Modern Science

accordance with his clear-cut intellectual subtlety to have done so. We
find in his dialogues the first explicit formulations of the science of
Logic. But his applications of the method are feeble in the extreme, from
the point of view of the advancement of natural science. Whereas
Aristotle in his life's work seized upon the general notion of
classification, he gave a masterly analysis of the complexities inherent in
the mutual relation of classes. He also applied his theoretical doctrine to
the immense material to be collected by direct observation in the field
of zoology, physics, sociology. Indeed we must trace to him nearly all our
special sciences, both the natural sciences, and those concerning the
activities of the spirit of mankind. He is the origin of the striving
towards an accurate analysis of each given situation which in the end has
created modern European Science. We can see in the labours of his life,
the first clear example of a philosophic intuition passing into a scientific
method.
Section III. This transition from philosophic intuition to scientific
methods is in fact the whole topic of this chapter. A philosophic system,
viewed as an attempt to coordinate all such intuitions, is rarely of any
direct importance for particular sciences. Each such science in tracing its
ideas backward to their basic notions stops at a half-way house. It finds
a resting place amid notions which for its immediate purposes and for its
immediate methods it need not analyse further. These basic notions are a
specialization from the philosophic intuitions which form the background