("characteristics
noting") One of the six schools of traditional Hindu philosophy, and a
school devoted to the clarification of physics and metaphysics in particular.
The Vaisheshika examination of the universe's categories was
eventually united with the Nyayas' emphasis on logic to produce the Nyaya
Vaisheshika school, commonly referred to as the Naiyayikas.
The Vaisheshika school was atomistic, believing that
everything is made up of a few fundamental constituents, and this atomism was
at the heart of the school's metaphysics.
The Vaisheshikas were realists in philosophy, believing that
the universe was made up of many separate objects that were exactly as they
were seen, save in circumstances of perceptual mistake.
They thought that everything was made up of nine essential
sub-stances: the five elements, space, time, mind, and Selves, and that
everything that existed could be known and named.
The Vaisheshikas believed in the asatkaryavada causal model,
which said that when anything was generated, it was a wholly new aggregate,
distinct from its constituent components.
Because each act of creation creates a new object, this
causal model tends to increase the number of things in the universe.
It also acknowledges that human efforts and acts are one of
the factors determining these outcomes, implying that it is theoretically
possible to behave in a manner that leads to eventual soul liberation (moksha).
The objects of experience may be classified into six
categories, according to the Vaisheshika analysis: substances, qualities,
activity, universals, particulars, and inherence (samavaya); some later
Vaisheshikas add a seventh category, absences.
The first three categories are perceptible, whereas the
others must be inferred; yet, the notion of inherence is important to their
philosophy.
Inherence is the subtle glue that holds all of the pieces of
the universe together: wholes and parts, substances and qualities, movements
and the entities that move, generic traits with specific examples, and, most
importantly, pleasure and suffering to the Self.
The philosophical concerns with inherence, especially the
idea that it was a single principle rather than a collection of objects, gave
them tremendous trouble and led to the formation of the Navyanyaya school,
which sought to explain these links in a more nuanced manner.
Indian Philosophical Analysis, edited by Karl H. Potter and
Sibajiban Bhattacharyya, was published in 1992, and A Sourcebook in Indian
Philosophy, edited by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Charles A. Moore, was
published in 1957.
