ABSTRACT
Modern science began with great acts of doubt. Copernicus doubted that the sun went round the earth, Galileo that heavy body's fall faster than light ones, Harvey that the blood flowed into the tissues through the veins. The planets do not go round the sun in circles as Copernicus thought; gravitation is a more complex affair than Galileo or even Newton believed. The method of science, which involves doubt, has been conspicuously successful over a certain field. But there are many who affirm that that field is strictly limited. 'In the realm of religion and ethics,' they assert, 'we have reached finality. A merely negative doubt is like freedom of speech divorced from political responsibility. This was the condition of affairs in India in the ten years before 1919, when the Indian politicians were permitted to talk indefinitely, but possessed no effective share in the government.
