The volumes of the PROJECT ON THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY AND CULTURE IN INDIAN CIVILIZATION aim at discovering the main aspects of India's heritage and present them in an interrelated way These volumes, in spite of their unitary look, recognize the difference between the areas of material civilization and those of ideational culture. The Project is not being executed by a single group of thinkers and writers who are methodologically uniform or ideologically identical in their commitments. In fact contributions are made by different scholars with different ideological persuasions and methodological approaches. The Project is marked by what may be called methodological pluralism'. In spite of its primary historical character, this Project, both in its conceptualization and execution, has been shaped by many scholars drawn from different disciplines. It is for the first time that an endeavour of such a unique and comprehensive character has been undertaken to study critically a major world civilization like India.

It would appear when one looks at the growth and development in science and scientific knowledge that these are based on something foundational. This volume on the general theme of foundations of sciences suggests that there is no single monolithic foundation that is the basis for all sciences. Though the sciences are interconnected, they each have roots of their own. The volume brings together essays of over thirty scientists, philosophers, engineers, psychologists, neuro-scientists and neuro-surgeons, who reflect on this theme.

The volume though on the overall background of foundational aspects of science, projects much larger perspectives on historical, current and future aspects of science as perceived by experts in the field. The epistemological, methodological and ontological aspects have been given due importance. The influence of philosophical, ethical, sociological and aesthetic aspects on the foundations of sciences figure in some of the articles. The volume brings out how in the final analysis present day science while leading to the concept of a grand unification of matter, energy, and forces and their origin, points to a philosophy of 'oneness', still in a sense faces the dilemma between living and non-living mind and body. etc. In this connection the search for life elsewhere in the universe is extremely relevant.

D. P. CHATTOPADHYAYA, M.A. LL.B., Ph.D. (Calcutta and London School of Economics), D. Litt. (Honoris Causa) studied and researched on law, philosophy and history, and taught at various universities in India, Asia, Europe and USA from 1954 to 1994. Founder Chairman of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research (1981-1990) and President-cum-Chairman of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla (1984-1991), Chattopadhyaya is currently the Project Director of the Project of History of Indian Science, Philosophy and Culture (PHISPC) and Chairman of the Centre for Studies in Civilizations (CSC). Among his 37 publications, of which he has authored 19 and edited or co-edited 18, are Individuals and Societies (1967); Individuals and Worlds (1976); Sri Aurobindo and Karl Marx (1988); Anthropology and Historiography of Science (1990); Induction, Probability and Skepticism (1991); Sociology, Ideology and Utopia (1997); Societies, Cultures and Ideologies (2000); Interdisciplinary Studies in Science, Society, Value and Civilizational Dialogue (2002); Philosophy of Science, Phenomenology and Other Essays (2003); Philosophical Consciousness and Scientific Knowledge: Conceptual Linkages and Civilizational Background (2004); Self, Society and Science: Theoretical and Historical Perspectives (2004); Religion, Philosophy and Science (2006); Aesthetic Theories and Forms in Indian Tradition (2008) and Love, Life and Death (2010). He has also held high public offices, namely, of Union cabinet minister and state governor. He is a Life Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a Member of the International Institute of Philosophy, Paris. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1998 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2009 by the Government of India.

B. V. Sreekantan is a well known scientist in the field of cosmic rays, high energy physics and astronomy. The former director of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, he is currently a visiting professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore and also the chairman of the Bhavan's Gandhi Centre for Science and Human Values.

This is a book with the general theme "Foundations of Sciences". The plurals-'foundations' and 'sciences', imply that there is no single monolithic foundation T that is the basis for all sciences. Though historically and even now there may be some evidence for hierarchy of sciences, and some later sciences are off-shoots of carlier ones, these various fields have become so large and so interdependent and entwined that to sustain and grow they have to have roots of their own as well. Because of these complications some have taken the view that the sciences have no rock-bottom roots at all, and the whole structure of the sciences is like a suspension bridge with each science supporting the other. Under these circumstances, the search for foundations in terms of the conventional sense of a single base on which the superstructure is built is not a meaningful exercise. The best one can do is to figure out the basic constituents and forces operating at various levels for explaining the observations in a particular domain of science, take into account the environmental influences and then recognize the organizational principles that control the collective behaviour and emergent properties. As will become apparent from the various articles in this volume this exercise is more easily stated than done. While technology has helped a great deal in pursing the reductionstic method of identifying the basic constituents and forces, it has not helped in deciphering the organizational principles in all cases and at all levels. This perhaps is the place where the role of geniuses come into play, reminding us of the saying in Bhagavad Gita: उपदेक्ष्यन्ति ते ज्ञानं ज्ञानिनस्तत्त्वदर्शिनः (Those learned ones who have seen the TRUTH will impart us knowledge).

The subject matter of the book was suggested by Professor D.P. Chattopadhyaya, The General Editor of the series under PHISPC. The material for the book was mostly garnered by holding two workshops on the topic of Foundations of Sciences-one in February 2004, and the other in February 2006-at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore. Forty participants presented their papers at the two workshops and 36 gave written versions of their papers. The participants included scientists, philosophers, engineers, psychologists and neuroscientists and neurosurgeons. While an attempt has been made to include as many topics in science as possible, it cannot be claimed that it is an exhaustive coverage. One could get a general flavour of the different fields of science in a historical perspective and as they exist today. While the participants were aware of the general theme, neither at the time of presentation nor while giving their written versions was any particular emphasis made to stick to the foundational aspects only, to avoid constraining them to a specialized viewpoint. We have also reproduced several articles relevant to the theme of the book from other publications with the approval of the editors. Thus the book, in an overall background of foundational aspects of science, projects a much larger perspective on historical, current and futuristic aspects of science as perceived by experts in the various fields.

The epistemological, methodological and ontological aspects have been given due importance. The influence of philosophical, ethical, sociological, and aesthetic aspects on the foundations of sciences also figure in some of the articles.

I am highly indebted to Professor D.P. Chattopadhyaya for suggesting this topic and for giving me the editorial responsibility for bringing out this volume. I am grateful to Professor B. V. Subbarayappa who has been a long standing colleague for encouraging me to take on this assignment. I would like to thank all the contributors to the volume some of whom participated in the two workshops held at NIAS in February 2004 and 2006. Though I have been a researcher in the field of physics for the past 60 years, this assignment gave me the opportunity to look at science in a totally new perspective.

I am thankful to the three successive Directors of NIAS, Dr Raja Ramanna, Professor Roddam Narasimha and Dr K. Kasturirangan for providing the necessary facilities at NIAS for carrying at this work as part of my Hon. visiting professorship at the Institute.

I have benefited considerably from discussions with Professor Sundar Sarukkai, particularly while organizing the two workshops and defining their scope and identifying the participants.

Smt. V. B. Mariyammal has helped in various ways, at the time of the workshops and also in bringing this volume electronically to its present stage. She deserves my special thanks.

This is understandable that man, shaped by Nature, would like to know Nature. The human ways of knowing Nature are evidently diverse, theoretical and practical, scientific and technological, artistic and spiritual. This diversity has, on scrutiny, been found to be neither exhaustive nor exclusive. The complexity of physical nature. life-world and, particularly, human mind is so enormous that it is futile to follow a single method for comprehending all the aspects of the world in which we are situated.

One need not feel bewildered by the variety and complexity of the worldly phenomena. After all, both from traditional wisdom and our daily experience, we know that our own nature is not quite alien to the structure of the world. Positively speaking, the elements and forces that are out there in the world are also present in our body-mind complex, enabling us to adjust ourselves to our environment. Not only the natural conditions but also the social conditions of life have instructive similarities between them. This is not to underrate in any way the difference between the human ways of life all over the world. It is partly due to the variation in climatic conditions and partly due to the distinctness of production-related tradition, history and culture.

Three broad approaches are discernible in the works on historiography of civilization, comprising science and technology, art and architecture, social sciences and institutions. Firstly, some writers are primarily interested in discovering the general laws which govern all civilizations spread over different continents. They tend to underplay what they call the noisy local events of the external world and peculiarities of different languages, literatures and histories. Their accent is on the unity of Nature, the unity of science and the unity of mankind. The second group of writers, unlike the generalist or transcendentalist ones, attach primary importance to the distinctiveness of every culture. To these writers human freedom and creativity are extremely important and basic in character. Social institutions and the cultural articulations of human consciousness, they argue, are bound to be expressive of the concerned people's consciousness. By implication they tend to reject concepts like archetypal consciousness, universal mind and providential history. There is a third group of writers who offer a composite picture of civilizations, drawing elements both from their local and common characteristics. Every culture has its local roots and peculiarities. At the same time, it is pointed out that due to demographic migration and immigration over the centuries an element of compositeness emerges almost in every culture. When, due to a natural calamity or political exigencies people move from one part of the world to another, they carry with them, among other things, their language, cultural inheritance and their ways of living.