Sec.1.1 Eastern philosophy and Western philosophy
- Ethics and Realism -
This section introduces the texts of Nishida Kitaro's "Zen Studies"
(published in 1907) [3]. It will be helpful to know the philosophy of the
East.
To know and to love are usually thought to be different mental effects.
However, it is thought that these two mental effects are not another kind.
That is, those are originally the same mental action. What kind of mental
action is it? In a word, it is an action to unify the person to the target,i.e.selfless.
It needs to exhaust our delusions so-called subjective ones. To improve
understanding is the action which agrees with truth of things. For instance,
it is a subjective delusion that the rabbit exists in the dim place of
the new moon, and the earthquake is said that a big catfish in the underground
moves. However, we can throw away such subjective delusions in the study
of astronomy and geology, investigate according to the natural law which
becomes a pure objective station, and reach the truth of these phenomena
only here. When the more objective we become, the better we can get to
the bottom of things. Decades of academic progress have shown us the path
we humans have abandoned our subjectivity and followed the objectivity...
Subsequent Japanese history shows that the group of selfless had fell
into a cave prejudice. The Confucianism that has been accepted in East
Asia are discussed about "Ethics".
That tradition has remained today. We received very many of letters of
encouragement from U.S. children in areas that were severely damaged by
the Great East Japan Earthquake 10 years ago. So, I applied for translation
activities and I translated parts of them. A letter from a U.S. child was
expressed encouragement, saying, "May God bless you, after every boy
and girl give his or her name, introduce school, or family, and share experiences."
I considered the cultural differences between Japan and the United States.
Because children in Japan have not many chances to introduce themselves.
Although word is the symbol that represents thing, the meaning of words
are incorporated through experiences of expressing the real world by the
words. Ancient Greek philosophers were the first to discuss the language
used to express reality.It has become a culture that tell "Truth in the real world” and it has become a scientific civilization. What science needs is
“Principle and the facts of evidence”, and it has become a scientific civilization.
Sec. 1.2 First step of science
- Both uphill and downhill are the same. -
Heraclitus of Ephesus (540-480 BC) dedicated a book called "About
Nature" to the Temple of Artemis. "Cold things get hot, hot things
get cold. "The wet one dries, and the dry one moistens. Therefore,
it was written, "All things are exchanges of fire, and fire is exchanges
of all things.Although the sentence had not written indistinctly, with
no punctuation, but it tells us how to get scientific concepts. Remained
Heraclitus's words are, "Both uphill and downhill are the same."
If you write the altitude as "Both uphill and downhill are the same",
it will be understood. 
Later, the concept of "altitude" or "temperature" defined units, and the amount of change came to be numerically used.
The theory is at first in the process of learning, but observation precedes in the processes of creation. The creative work is carried out independently with emphasizing his own experience. The way we create science is different from the way to learn science. And it is important to consider things scientifically before calculations. Now, we can pull out necessary information from a huge amount of information, It became routine to use it, and I can learned a lot. But the pioneer which creates science, is required to develop itself.
[Resources] [3] Nishida kitaro, "Zen Studies", Kodokan, February
1911.
to index page -1.1-