Causality?

Despite my upbringing in the modern yogic paradise that is Los Angeles, my roots in yoga run shallow, and I have little of substance to add to Nicole’s comments. I want, however, to draw a comparison (and perhaps illustrate a contrast) between Hindu thought, early modern science, and early modern scientists and philosophers.

The doctrine of Satjartavada holds its own view on the notion of causality. Anything that we perceive as new, it argues, has already been existing – not ostensibly, but rather in some unmanifest or potential state. (This mindset aligns with later theories of scientists like Lavoisier and Leibniz, who advocated a system in which matter and energy could not be created or destroyed, a truth that later becomes virtually universally accepted in the scientific community.)

Such a mentality breaks with earlier Nyayan norms, by which tangible objects could be created and destroyed; in Nyayan thought, circumstances, events, and objects were never considered “potential,” but rather existent or nonexistent.

All this, at a basic level, begs the question of causality: where do things come from? What leads to what? The Satjartavada doctrine essentially shirks the idea of causality, opting more for a sort of constant, fluid existence. The Nyayan thought process seems to circumvent such an idea as well.

Nineteenth century philosopher David Hume argues that humans have no means to assuredly know causality. Instead, he proposes the notion of “constant conjunction,” which he argues is a far more logical sentiment than that of definite causality. Everything we know, from the time we plant a seed until the time it sprouts, is probable – none of it, he says, is definite. Do the Satjartavadan and Nyayan notions of causality, in fact, match Hume later thinking in blurring the lines of causality?