Idols of the Mind vs. True Reality - Paperback

by Bhakti Madhava Puri (Author)

The philosophy of Hegel and Bhagavat Vedanta offer a correction to modern science which has charted a course that has diverted from reality inclusive of consciousness.

Idols of the Mind vs. True Reality addresses our modern world's conception regarding the nature of the universe (and beyond). Sir Francis Bacon first coined the term "Idols of the Mind" in reference to mental abstractions which people accept as the actual experienced reality. Throughout this book, B.M. Puri, Ph.D., discusses how the generally accepted mechanistic view of a strictly material reality is one such "idol". With reference to the Bhagavat Vedanta philosophy and G.W.F. Hegel's Conceptual Realism, readers are guided through a subjective evolution of consciousness which reveals a glimpse of the self-determining Absolute Reality of which we are all part and parcel.

This book serves to promote the synthesis of science and religion. We trace the history of the development of ideas from Plato and Aristotle, through Francis Bacon, Galileo, and Descartes, into the modern thinking of Immanuel Kant and Hegel.

"One must therefore go back 300 years and reflect on how one could have proceeded differently at that time, and how the whole subsequent development would then be modified." - Schroedinger (part of a letter to Einstein in 1950)

The theme of the new book, Idols of the Mind vs True Reality by Bhakti Madhava Puri, Ph.D. is concerned with the clear exposition of the pivotal conceptions and misconceptions of Galileo's and others' ideas that produced the subsequent development of what would become modern mathematized science.

The confusions and almost complete ignorance that exist today regarding something so fundamental as consciousness is immediately cleared up when the obvious errors are seen in the ad hoc presumptions of the original founders of modern science who were blindsided by the metaphysical ontologies that held sway during their lives, but to which we no longer adhere, thanks to the development of philosophy beyond that period. We trace this progress out in a concise way in the book.

The modern mind, thanks to science education, is focused on the one-sided empirical approach to knowledge by sensuous perception, but this fails to account for the role of subjective cognition or conception - the role of consciousness in such perceptions. This artificial separation of the original unity-in-difference between conception and content has been rendered impossible to broach because of the historical metaphysical tradition of dualism firmly held by the fathers of modern science such as Galileo and Descartes.

The presumed impossible gap between subject and object is bridged once we realize that the object is what the subject knows it to be. This does not reduce the object to the subject as the abstract idealists (monists) naively are only too hasty to presume as an immediate identity (oneness). Mediation is involved; there are both difference and identity at play. It is merely lazy un-thinking that ignores the intricate dynamic in the mediating activity that is the heart and life of consciousness. The main purpose of the book is to restore the central importance of the conceptual moment that is integral to science and which makes it truly worthy of the name Science or scientific knowledge.