Intellectual invertebratism
by Nalin de Silva
Part IV , Part III , Part II , Part I
(August 06, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) I have to digress somewhat to respond to Mr. R. M. B. Senanayake’s letter to the editor that appeared on 28th July 2008. However the response is not outside the theme of the present series of articles as I would have had to come back to the Sri Lankan identity as defined by me at present and hopefully accepted by those who can think, and not as defined by most of the elite intellectuals of the country, in the final stages. After all, I am referring to history, as it is from history relative to us and not to the west that we would be able to learn how we would define Sri Lankan identity. Let us first listen to RMBS.
"I refer to Mr. Rohan R. Wasala’s extended article in reply to my simple comments on Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism as a social and cultural force which has more or less destroyed the Sri Lankan identity. But while faulting me, he has ignored the articles by Dr Nalin de Silva, who says Sri Lankan identity was still born. I understand his reluctance to take him on that issue since the latter is a champion of Sinhala-Buddhist identity.
Dr Nalin de Silva engages in a type of intellectual terrorism. Although he may not attempt to destroy buildings, he concentrates instead on seeking to destroy the foundations of modern knowledge, which to him is not universal but western only. He denies an objective real world which to him is only a creation of the mind. So he doesn’t accept any objective truth either. Truth is subjective and relative. There is no such thing as objective truth let alone ‘absolute truth’. So Buddhist truth is different from the Judeo-Christian truth. Reason is not what it is generally accepted to be. So what is truth to you and I may not be truth to him.
If you point out that on his own argument, if truth is relative then his statements are also relative he will say western logic is not acceptable to him. If truth is relative then it is like personal opinions which may differ from person to person. So how does one decide between the personal opinions of different persons? I suppose it is the power of numbers and since the Buddhists are 70% of the population, it is their opinion that must prevail and not that of any western influenced sociologists or political scientists. Whatever argument you suggest, he will come up with an answer calculated to appeal to some prejudice the majority readers may have. So I will refrain from replying Dr Nalin de Silva."
It is not only Mr. Wasala who has not referred to me. They may have their reasons for not referring to my views but RMBS appears to be of the view that I have said that Sri Lankan identity is stillborn. If he had read carefully the very first paragraph of Part I of the series he would have not uttered that in my view Sri Lankan identity is stillborn. What I have said is the following. "He (RMBS) seems to be very much worried that the artificial Sri Lankan identity he has in mind is dead as the fate of Prabhakaran in whom the anti Sinhala Buddhists had high hopes is now sealed. I would say that the concept of Sri Lankan identity that RMBS and his ilk have is not dead but was stillborn. I must add that there are other concepts of Sri Lankan identity that would eventually emerge in spite of the spite of RMBS towards the Sinhala Buddhists."
RMBS referring to the article by Mr. Wasala says he would refrain from replying to me, but not before mentioning that I engage in a type of intellectual terrorism. I would not have discussed relativity of knowledge at present if not for RMBS resorting to what I would call intellectual invertebratism. The intellectual backbones of most of the western educated people in Asia, Africa and South America have been crushed by the education that they have received, and they have no choice other than to engage in intellectual invertebratism.
What is stillborn is the artificial Sri Lankan identity that RMBS and others of his ilk have in their minds, and I have specifically said that there are other concepts of Sri Lankan identity, and I would describe at least one of them later comparing it with the artificial stillborn Sri Lankan identity of RMBS. He who believes in absolute truth thinks that there is only one Sri Lankan identity as pontificated by him and the western social scientists. I am not sure what RMBS means when he says that I am a champion of Sinhala Buddhist identity. Sinhala Buddhist identity is not permanent like everything else, and just as much Yakshas, Nagas, the Ardha Vedics who came from Dambadiva and other tribes collectively became the Sinhalas, the Sinhala Buddhists will be named a different entity in the course of history. However I can state that it is not going to be the Sri Lankan nation that RMBS has in his mind. This artificial concept that RMBS and others have in their minds is nothing but what the western intellectuals, especially the social scientists, the western politicians and the western media people have injected to the intellectual invertebrates in Sri Lanka and elsewhere.
I do not subscribe to western Christian modernity nor to the knowledge created by western Christian modernity. It is based on a different Chinthanaya, (not the episteme of Foucault nor the worldview of the Germans, but something deeper than the paradigm of Kuhn) and a different culture, and simply because I do not conform with this particular system of knowledge, RMBS cannot say that I am engaged in a type of intellectual terrorism. It merely reflects the attitude of RMBS that has been transplanted in him by his education, culture and of course the Chinthanaya that all the rest in the world have to meekly accept what the west has to say. Mr. Senanayake can rest assured that even if I were to lose my job again (which I did more than fifteen years ago for ten long years, when the state media at that time headed by a well known personality in journalism now residing in Australia, went all out on a vituperative campaign against me, and once those so called journalists published the non availability of coca cola in the Science Faculty canteen of the University of Colombo as the lead news of the week!) and my life I will never succumb to western cultural colonialism which is just one component of western colonialism. However, that does not mean that I will throw out everything coming from the west as some intellectual invertebrates appear to think, but I will try to absorb what is relevant to us into our culture, though not the culture of RMBS, and produce something new without imitating the west.
If the absence of coca cola in the science faculty canteen of the University of Colombo disturbed the English educated Colombo elite so much I can understand why RMBS thinks that I am engaged in some type of intellectual terrorism. If some of these intellectual invertebrates attend my lectures in Mathematical Physics at the University of Kelaniya they would have to be taken to a western medicine practitioner as they would claim that "intellectual bullets" have been fired through their malfunctioning brains. However, unlike the University of Colombo which was then a well known paradise for various types of intellectual invertebrates, (Vidyalankara) University of Kelaniya has a tradition in Buddhist studies going back to 1875 and of course to Mahavihara, and I would not be accused of intellectual terrorism.
I am epistemologically a relativist and I must hasten to add that it has nothing to do with the Relativity of Einstein. In fact though it is mistakenly called the theory of relativity it is in effect a theory of invariants. When Einstein said that laws of Physics take the same form in all inertial frames of reference, in Special Theory of Relativity, he was talking of absolutes. In the General Theory of Relativity he denied any special status to inertial frames of reference and claimed that there is no phenomenon called gravitation. Though RMBS has said that he would refrain from replying to me I cannot refrain from asking him or any objective realist whether gravitation or curvature of space-time is an objective reality. I know that western knowledge is not universal and it is only a conventional truth (sammuthi sathya) at best, and I want to explode the myth that the western knowledge is objective or absolute. Do I become an intellectual terrorist merely because I want to explode a myth created by the western knowledge? In whose name is RMBS asking others to accept western knowledge as absolute or objective? It is only another system of knowledge and is relative to the Judaic Christian vulture. Even if it is assumed that there is an absolute or objective truth how does one identify THAT with the western knowledge as RMBS seems to have done?
I have not said that truth is relative, though RMBS claims to be so. All that I have said is knowledge is relative and that there is no absolute truth (Parama Sathya) or objective truth independent of the mind. Truth is not relative but knowledge is relative. Truth is only conventional (sammuthi) in my scheme, which is the Sinhala Buddhist scheme according to me. Could anybody demonstrate the existence of an objective world or absolute truth without using concepts created by the mind, or in other words independent of the mind? Though knowledge is relative to the sense organs, culture and mind it does not mean that any body can say anything on any mater and claim it to be knowledge. It also does not mean that the conventional truths created by societies are like personal opinions. I can have a personal opinion on something but that does not have to be consistent with other opinions on other matters. RMBS attempts to be sarcastic when he questions as to whether it is the power of numbers that is going to decide between opinions. It is clear that he is worried about the number of Buddhists who constitute 70% of the population of the country and thinks that their opinion would prevail over that of the western social scientists. He is thinking of western democracy which is a numbers game where the opinions of the majority as decided through ballot at elections though they do not form a fair system whether in Sri Lanka or in the west, is considered as correct. The western democracy knows ways of manipulating public opinion, though western knowledge has been imposed on us first through political component of western colonialism. It is not the objective truth that the westerners claim to possess but their guns that have made us to accept their knowledge as the objective knowledge.
Systems of Knowledge or knowledges (though the word is not acceptable to the dictionary) are not opinions, and have to be consistent as a whole, or as one of my former students who is working as a Physicist in USA having obtained a Ph. D. in Physics in that country tells me in a cyclic manner. There are the consistency tests that any knowledge has to pass and the inconsistent theories have to be discarded. The knowledges are not accepted by a majority decision and even if all the Buddhists of the country agree on something it will not be accepted as a knowledge if it fails the consistency tests. However, in the west the consistency tests are not applied, as has been demonstrated by Feyeraband in his "Against Method". Newtonian theory of gravitation was and is still accepted by many though it is inconsistent with the motion of the planets. If that is the case with Newtonian Gravitation what could one think of the theories of western social scientists who cannot claim to be as objective as Newton? It can be demonstrated that Newton’s theories are relative to his western Judaic Christian culture (please refer Vidya Kathandara and Ape Pravada) and the western social scientists cannot even think of surpassing Newton in so-called objectivity.
The concept of artificial Sri Lankan identity that they have created for us is not acceptable to me, and even if I am in a minority of one (forget the 70% of Buddhists) I will say so as I can easily show the biasness of their concept, and that it is inconsistent with the national identity that they practise in their countries. I do not think most of the English educated Buddhists agree with me as they are still influenced by the western Christian education that they have received. At least some of them would think that the Sri Lankan identity as formulated by the western social scientists is not dead and that it is not artificial, and they would not agree with RMBS for claiming it to be dead, whereas I reject completely the western concept of artificial Sri Lankan identity that is formulated in order to demean the Sinhala Buddhists. I am still trying to convince the educated Sinhala Buddhists, especially the English educated, of their folly of following the concepts of western social scientists. Thus it is wrong to say that whatever argument one may suggest, I will come up with an answer calculated to appeal to some prejudice the majority readers may have. If RMBS finds it difficult if not impossible to reply to me it is because I am consistent in my concepts, theories, facts and other paraphernalia, whereas most including the western social scientists are not, and also because their knowledge is not relevant to us. I have no hesitation to state that the relativity (constructive relativism – nirmanathmaka sapekshthavadaya) I am promoting is itself relative to my culture and is created in a Sinhala Buddhist Chinthanaya, and not objective and absolute as such. The only criterion I am interested is consistency as a whole.
(To be continued)
- Sri Lanka Guardian
by Nalin de Silva
Part IV , Part III , Part II , Part I
(August 06, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) I have to digress somewhat to respond to Mr. R. M. B. Senanayake’s letter to the editor that appeared on 28th July 2008. However the response is not outside the theme of the present series of articles as I would have had to come back to the Sri Lankan identity as defined by me at present and hopefully accepted by those who can think, and not as defined by most of the elite intellectuals of the country, in the final stages. After all, I am referring to history, as it is from history relative to us and not to the west that we would be able to learn how we would define Sri Lankan identity. Let us first listen to RMBS.
"I refer to Mr. Rohan R. Wasala’s extended article in reply to my simple comments on Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism as a social and cultural force which has more or less destroyed the Sri Lankan identity. But while faulting me, he has ignored the articles by Dr Nalin de Silva, who says Sri Lankan identity was still born. I understand his reluctance to take him on that issue since the latter is a champion of Sinhala-Buddhist identity.
Dr Nalin de Silva engages in a type of intellectual terrorism. Although he may not attempt to destroy buildings, he concentrates instead on seeking to destroy the foundations of modern knowledge, which to him is not universal but western only. He denies an objective real world which to him is only a creation of the mind. So he doesn’t accept any objective truth either. Truth is subjective and relative. There is no such thing as objective truth let alone ‘absolute truth’. So Buddhist truth is different from the Judeo-Christian truth. Reason is not what it is generally accepted to be. So what is truth to you and I may not be truth to him.
If you point out that on his own argument, if truth is relative then his statements are also relative he will say western logic is not acceptable to him. If truth is relative then it is like personal opinions which may differ from person to person. So how does one decide between the personal opinions of different persons? I suppose it is the power of numbers and since the Buddhists are 70% of the population, it is their opinion that must prevail and not that of any western influenced sociologists or political scientists. Whatever argument you suggest, he will come up with an answer calculated to appeal to some prejudice the majority readers may have. So I will refrain from replying Dr Nalin de Silva."
It is not only Mr. Wasala who has not referred to me. They may have their reasons for not referring to my views but RMBS appears to be of the view that I have said that Sri Lankan identity is stillborn. If he had read carefully the very first paragraph of Part I of the series he would have not uttered that in my view Sri Lankan identity is stillborn. What I have said is the following. "He (RMBS) seems to be very much worried that the artificial Sri Lankan identity he has in mind is dead as the fate of Prabhakaran in whom the anti Sinhala Buddhists had high hopes is now sealed. I would say that the concept of Sri Lankan identity that RMBS and his ilk have is not dead but was stillborn. I must add that there are other concepts of Sri Lankan identity that would eventually emerge in spite of the spite of RMBS towards the Sinhala Buddhists."
RMBS referring to the article by Mr. Wasala says he would refrain from replying to me, but not before mentioning that I engage in a type of intellectual terrorism. I would not have discussed relativity of knowledge at present if not for RMBS resorting to what I would call intellectual invertebratism. The intellectual backbones of most of the western educated people in Asia, Africa and South America have been crushed by the education that they have received, and they have no choice other than to engage in intellectual invertebratism.
What is stillborn is the artificial Sri Lankan identity that RMBS and others of his ilk have in their minds, and I have specifically said that there are other concepts of Sri Lankan identity, and I would describe at least one of them later comparing it with the artificial stillborn Sri Lankan identity of RMBS. He who believes in absolute truth thinks that there is only one Sri Lankan identity as pontificated by him and the western social scientists. I am not sure what RMBS means when he says that I am a champion of Sinhala Buddhist identity. Sinhala Buddhist identity is not permanent like everything else, and just as much Yakshas, Nagas, the Ardha Vedics who came from Dambadiva and other tribes collectively became the Sinhalas, the Sinhala Buddhists will be named a different entity in the course of history. However I can state that it is not going to be the Sri Lankan nation that RMBS has in his mind. This artificial concept that RMBS and others have in their minds is nothing but what the western intellectuals, especially the social scientists, the western politicians and the western media people have injected to the intellectual invertebrates in Sri Lanka and elsewhere.
I do not subscribe to western Christian modernity nor to the knowledge created by western Christian modernity. It is based on a different Chinthanaya, (not the episteme of Foucault nor the worldview of the Germans, but something deeper than the paradigm of Kuhn) and a different culture, and simply because I do not conform with this particular system of knowledge, RMBS cannot say that I am engaged in a type of intellectual terrorism. It merely reflects the attitude of RMBS that has been transplanted in him by his education, culture and of course the Chinthanaya that all the rest in the world have to meekly accept what the west has to say. Mr. Senanayake can rest assured that even if I were to lose my job again (which I did more than fifteen years ago for ten long years, when the state media at that time headed by a well known personality in journalism now residing in Australia, went all out on a vituperative campaign against me, and once those so called journalists published the non availability of coca cola in the Science Faculty canteen of the University of Colombo as the lead news of the week!) and my life I will never succumb to western cultural colonialism which is just one component of western colonialism. However, that does not mean that I will throw out everything coming from the west as some intellectual invertebrates appear to think, but I will try to absorb what is relevant to us into our culture, though not the culture of RMBS, and produce something new without imitating the west.
If the absence of coca cola in the science faculty canteen of the University of Colombo disturbed the English educated Colombo elite so much I can understand why RMBS thinks that I am engaged in some type of intellectual terrorism. If some of these intellectual invertebrates attend my lectures in Mathematical Physics at the University of Kelaniya they would have to be taken to a western medicine practitioner as they would claim that "intellectual bullets" have been fired through their malfunctioning brains. However, unlike the University of Colombo which was then a well known paradise for various types of intellectual invertebrates, (Vidyalankara) University of Kelaniya has a tradition in Buddhist studies going back to 1875 and of course to Mahavihara, and I would not be accused of intellectual terrorism.
I am epistemologically a relativist and I must hasten to add that it has nothing to do with the Relativity of Einstein. In fact though it is mistakenly called the theory of relativity it is in effect a theory of invariants. When Einstein said that laws of Physics take the same form in all inertial frames of reference, in Special Theory of Relativity, he was talking of absolutes. In the General Theory of Relativity he denied any special status to inertial frames of reference and claimed that there is no phenomenon called gravitation. Though RMBS has said that he would refrain from replying to me I cannot refrain from asking him or any objective realist whether gravitation or curvature of space-time is an objective reality. I know that western knowledge is not universal and it is only a conventional truth (sammuthi sathya) at best, and I want to explode the myth that the western knowledge is objective or absolute. Do I become an intellectual terrorist merely because I want to explode a myth created by the western knowledge? In whose name is RMBS asking others to accept western knowledge as absolute or objective? It is only another system of knowledge and is relative to the Judaic Christian vulture. Even if it is assumed that there is an absolute or objective truth how does one identify THAT with the western knowledge as RMBS seems to have done?
I have not said that truth is relative, though RMBS claims to be so. All that I have said is knowledge is relative and that there is no absolute truth (Parama Sathya) or objective truth independent of the mind. Truth is not relative but knowledge is relative. Truth is only conventional (sammuthi) in my scheme, which is the Sinhala Buddhist scheme according to me. Could anybody demonstrate the existence of an objective world or absolute truth without using concepts created by the mind, or in other words independent of the mind? Though knowledge is relative to the sense organs, culture and mind it does not mean that any body can say anything on any mater and claim it to be knowledge. It also does not mean that the conventional truths created by societies are like personal opinions. I can have a personal opinion on something but that does not have to be consistent with other opinions on other matters. RMBS attempts to be sarcastic when he questions as to whether it is the power of numbers that is going to decide between opinions. It is clear that he is worried about the number of Buddhists who constitute 70% of the population of the country and thinks that their opinion would prevail over that of the western social scientists. He is thinking of western democracy which is a numbers game where the opinions of the majority as decided through ballot at elections though they do not form a fair system whether in Sri Lanka or in the west, is considered as correct. The western democracy knows ways of manipulating public opinion, though western knowledge has been imposed on us first through political component of western colonialism. It is not the objective truth that the westerners claim to possess but their guns that have made us to accept their knowledge as the objective knowledge.
Systems of Knowledge or knowledges (though the word is not acceptable to the dictionary) are not opinions, and have to be consistent as a whole, or as one of my former students who is working as a Physicist in USA having obtained a Ph. D. in Physics in that country tells me in a cyclic manner. There are the consistency tests that any knowledge has to pass and the inconsistent theories have to be discarded. The knowledges are not accepted by a majority decision and even if all the Buddhists of the country agree on something it will not be accepted as a knowledge if it fails the consistency tests. However, in the west the consistency tests are not applied, as has been demonstrated by Feyeraband in his "Against Method". Newtonian theory of gravitation was and is still accepted by many though it is inconsistent with the motion of the planets. If that is the case with Newtonian Gravitation what could one think of the theories of western social scientists who cannot claim to be as objective as Newton? It can be demonstrated that Newton’s theories are relative to his western Judaic Christian culture (please refer Vidya Kathandara and Ape Pravada) and the western social scientists cannot even think of surpassing Newton in so-called objectivity.
The concept of artificial Sri Lankan identity that they have created for us is not acceptable to me, and even if I am in a minority of one (forget the 70% of Buddhists) I will say so as I can easily show the biasness of their concept, and that it is inconsistent with the national identity that they practise in their countries. I do not think most of the English educated Buddhists agree with me as they are still influenced by the western Christian education that they have received. At least some of them would think that the Sri Lankan identity as formulated by the western social scientists is not dead and that it is not artificial, and they would not agree with RMBS for claiming it to be dead, whereas I reject completely the western concept of artificial Sri Lankan identity that is formulated in order to demean the Sinhala Buddhists. I am still trying to convince the educated Sinhala Buddhists, especially the English educated, of their folly of following the concepts of western social scientists. Thus it is wrong to say that whatever argument one may suggest, I will come up with an answer calculated to appeal to some prejudice the majority readers may have. If RMBS finds it difficult if not impossible to reply to me it is because I am consistent in my concepts, theories, facts and other paraphernalia, whereas most including the western social scientists are not, and also because their knowledge is not relevant to us. I have no hesitation to state that the relativity (constructive relativism – nirmanathmaka sapekshthavadaya) I am promoting is itself relative to my culture and is created in a Sinhala Buddhist Chinthanaya, and not objective and absolute as such. The only criterion I am interested is consistency as a whole.
(To be continued)
- Sri Lanka Guardian
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