Lecture Preparation, Class 5

Conclusion

Let’s sum up.

Both the Roman and the Arab descendants of the monotheistic civilization, that is, both its Christian and Muslim halves, have been tremendously expansionist and aggressive, incomparably more so than either the Chinese or the Indian civilizations, and, wherever they could, they imposed their rule – by force – on others. India has a very long experience of this rapaciousness and continues to suffer from its effects.

The millennium-long subjugation by Islam, in particular, has cut deep into the very flesh of the Indian people and the territory of the subcontinent, leaving festering wounds not only in the partition and the existence of a powerful hostile Muslim state of Pakistan in the immediate neighborhood of independent India, but also in the huge Muslim minority in India, driving an alien wedge into the Indian civilizational space. Most of India’s political problems, external and internal, of the past three quarters of a century result from the unfortunate legacy of this Muslim encroachment.

British Raj, much shorter in duration, left few material traces in the population and territory (though it undoubtedly contributed to the partition of the subcontinent). It left, however, an indelible trace in India’s consciousness, adding nationalism to India’s civilizational identity. It also opened India’s mind to the contributions of the West to humanity in general. The preeminent of these contributions, undoubtedly, was science. Pure science – physics and biology – added enormously to our understanding of material reality and life, while applied science – engineering and medicine – made the physical existence of the common man much easier, improved general health, decreased mortality, and prolonged human life. We all learned to trust science.

Unfortunately, the understanding of the third layer of our experiential reality – humanity itself – was not improved. The new institution for the training of scientists, the American research university, announced the division of sciences responsible for improving this understanding – “social sciences” – but substituted for science in this case ideology directed at promoting the political and social interests of particular social classes. And since we all trusted in science, and trusted in the United States of America as a leading Western nation, the whole world followed the example of American universities.

Billions of dollars were wasted by numerous governments and their taxpayers on the promotion of these private ideological agenda, and numerous generations of honest but misled scholars dedicated their careers to it. In the United States, in particular, it was near impossible to survive in academia without participating in this fraud. But the United States is no longer the cultural leader of the world. The monotheistic civilization, in general, is tearing itself apart and rapidly losing its creativity.

This means that it is up to the scholars of India and China to understand the fraudulent nature of the social sciences, reject them, and develop the genuine science of humanity. You can do it. Please, do it.

When the science of humanity at last comes into being, it will make use of the information collected in the social sciences but will not be a social science itself. Its subject matter, whichever aspects of human life it explores, will be the symbolic process on its multiple levels—the individual level of the mind and the collective levels of institutions, nations, and civilizations -- and the multitude of specific processes of which it consists. The science of humanity will be the science of culture, and its subdisciplines will be cultural sciences.

Certain subdisciplines of the science of humanity will make the cultural process on the individual level of the mind their special subject. One possible branch, analogous to cellular biology, might study the interrelations between different symbolic components of the human mental process. Another, analogous to biochemistry or biophysics, might study the interrelations between the symbolic and the organic components of the mental process—that is, the interrelations between the mind and the brain. The formation, transmission, changes, and pathologies of identity, will, and the thinking self will be central subjects in these subdisciplines, which will necessarily inform, and be informed by, the study of the cultural process on the collective level, just as cellular biology, biochemistry, and biophysics are interconnected with the focused study of particular forms of life, from kingdoms to species (e.g., entomology, primatology) and with subdisciplines such as genetics, ecology, and evolutionary biology, which focus on macro-level life processes.

Indian scholars – you – will contribute to the development of these subdisciplines. You will have much fun doing that, discover many new things, and enrich all of humanity by your work. I wish you luck.

Thank you for taking this course.