Nay Science

The Nay Science offers a new perspective on the problem of scientific method in the human sciences. Taking German Indological scholarship on the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita as their example Adluri and Bagchee develop a critique of the modern valorization of method over truth in the humanities. The authors show how from its origins in eighteenth-century Neo-Protestantism onwards the critical method was used as a way of making theological claims against rival philosophical and/or religious traditions. Via discussions of German Romanticism the pantheism controversy scientific positivism and empiricism they show how theological concerns dominated German scholarship on the Indian texts. Indology functions as a test case for wider concerns: the rise of historicism the displacement of philosophical concerns from thinking and the belief in the ability of a technical method to produce truth.Based on the historical evidence of the first part of the book Adluri and Bagchee make a case in the second part for going beyond both the critical pretensions of modern academic scholarship and the objections of its post-structuralist or post-Orientalist critics. By contrasting German Indology with Plato''s concern for virtue and Gandhi''s focus on praxis the authors argue for a conception of the humanities as a dialogue between the ancients and moderns and between eastern and western cultures.