Is Science valid? Either the world, and the entire universe, is as real as the word 'real' itself asserts, or it is phenomenal (appearance) only, and appears to exist conceptually (in mind).
There is, therefore, a solution of continuity between the findings of empirical science and those of dialectic metaphysics. The former is entirely dependent on the phenomenon of sense-perception, the limitations of which are known and obvious, demonstrable in experimental science itself, and variable in kind, character and efficiency among different species of sentient beings.
Sensorially-based knowledge of a universe has thereby become a colossal structure of conceptuality, overwhelmingly convincing despite continual reversals of theory, to those who can accept the validity of what sense-perceptions report. But the validity of sense-perceptions as accurate records of realities objectively existing in their own right is, and remains, philosophically untenable. Moreover the whole conceptual edifice is extended in a spatial concept, on the validity of which it entirely depends, and also on sequential, or repetitive, duration in a time-concept whose 'real'-ness as opposed to its phenomenality, is necessary to the initial existence of such a scientific universe - for by means of these that universe is perceived and measured and the relation of its parts is ascertained.
The metaphysical development of philosophy, however, not only questions but categorically denies, and dialectically disproves, the validity of concepts as possessing objective reality. The Madhyamika of Nagarjuna, Candrakirti, etc. may be cited as an example. So that thereby the ground is cut from under the feet of experimental science, and its vast structure is exposed as a colossal fabrication of mind, devoid of existence in its own right, the deduced 'laws' of which are based on invalid assumptions according to its own system of logic, as well as upon intuitive apperception.
To an open mind the question thus posed must be: does the metaphysical extension of philosophy provide an alternative explanation of the apparent universe as sensorially perceived, and as interpreted and measured collectively, individually, rationally or instinctively, by different categories of sentient beings, from human to insectival? If it does not, then the claim may be justifiable that scientific methods are our only hope of understanding our relation to the phenomenal universe, and of knowing what that universe is. But if, on the contrary, it does satisfactorily explain what these are and their relation - which is the essential factor - and if we can clearly see that what it reveals must indeed be true - then the structure of Science stands revealed as a purely conceptual creation of the dualistic mind of man, with no validity that is not relative to spatial and temporal concepts.
Science, recognised as a conceptual structure, built on the shifting sands of sense-perception, can only exist in a frame-work of theoretical space-time, the assumed reality of which it makes no effort either to justify or to explain. As a conceptual interpretation of phenomenality Science is, and must remain, of immense interest to those who are themselves fully identified with the phenomenal, but it is entirely unreliable - because basically fictitious - as an explanation of our relation to the universe which appears to surround us and to which we appear to belong.
The metaphysical development of philosophy alone can reveal - even though it may never be able to state in dualistic terms - what ultimately we are and what is our relation to our phenomenal universe, inseparable from ourselves, a revelation which the most optimistic could hardly anticipate from the empirical methods of Science.
