Christian Thomas Kohl The Metaphysical Foundations of Buddhism and Modern Science

the contemporaries of Pope Silvester the antipodes were inconceivable,
and his reputed belief in them did not credit to the old wizard of a Pope.
Again we view the sky at noon on a fine day. It is blue, flooded by the
light of the Sun. The direct fact of observation is the sun as the sole
origin of light, and the bare heavens. Conceive the myth of Adam and Eve
in the Garden on the first day of human life. They watch the sunset, the
stars appear: -'And, Lo!, creation widened to man's view'.
The excess of light discloses facts and also conceals them. It distorts
the facts for human observation. It is one task of speculation to urge
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