ABSTRACT
Metaphysics and science are closely connected with language. The scientific traditions that flourished in the Indian subcontinent for more than a thousand years, and whose roots lie in the third millennium B.C. A vision of reality based on universal concepts where the human and the abiotic environment form one whole resulted not just in sophisticated scientific theories in the field of ecology, but in unified theories for seemingly disconnected phenomena. In a nutshell, precolonial China built a successful civilisation making use of a scientific approach but deliberately staying within limits. It is in Russia that the mind and consciousness were first introduced as bona fide subjects of inquiry within the framework of European science. That science would evolve powerfully in a context where learning and nature played a central role is unsurprising, but one school stands apart on more than one count, the Mohist school, or rather its physics section which emerged some two hundred years after its foundation.
