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ancient Hindus. Some inferences were drawn on the basis of a
systematic method: facts were observed, instances were subjected
to careful analysis and classification, and their results were verified
by empirical means. This method was particularly the source of the
Hindu physico-chemical theories and certain astronomical
generalizations, which reached a remarkable degree of approximation
to the figures of Laplace's table. Their similarity can only
be justified by the fact that results were obtained by a process of
verification and correction by comparison of the computed with
the observed. There were exceptions to this systematic approach,
especially when quasi-empirical explanations were sought.
In early times, philosophical doctrines were blended with
scientific theories: as a consequence, many scientific pronouncements
were based on intuitive insight. A sudden impression or a
fleeting imagery of subliminal experience may emerge into the
conscious mind; uniquely personal as they may appear, these
impressions are correlated to objective facts before any systematic
empirical investigation can take place. Thus, for instance,
according to Manu (c. 300 BC), 'Trees and plants are conscious and
feel pleasure and pain' (VII); later this attitude was exemplified by
Udayana as well as by Gunaratna, in his declaration (c. AD 1350)
that plant-life, apart from its infancy, youth and age, or regular
growth, is characterized by various kinds of movement or action
connected with sleep, waking, expansion and contraction in
response to touch, special food favourable to its impregnation, and
so on. These statements were taken as 'occult fantasy' or myth until
scientifically proved by the physicist, J. C. Bose, in his discovery of
the sensitive reactions and physiological processes of the living
plant. Using the crescograph, an instrument devised by him to
measure the reaction of plants to stimuli, he was able to detect that
plants have a sensitive nervous system, and that they 'feel' pleasure
and pain.
Instances such as this one indicate that there are other ways of
knowing qualitatively different from the scientific method. Like
science, the intuitive experiential method postulates certain facts;
but, unlike science, it relies on spontaneous supernormal
conditions, the result of which may be applied universally though
the method be tested in individual cases. Further, discovery may
also be recognized as a process of inference which is not subject to
any precise rules.
From the tantric point of view, the efficacy of scientific norms
does not rest mainly on empirical verification but on the basis of
psychological experimentation, by working on one's self. The