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BURCH
Defining the indefinite is a logical problem. To elaborate traditional logic, which deals only with the definite, into a more complete system which has in it a place for the indefinite is the purpose of the article "Place of the Indefinite in Logic" in the Calcutta University Silver Jubilee Volume of 1916, the most important work of the first phase. It might seem to be merely a three-valued logic, with the indefinite "a third category side by side with affirmation" and negation" (II 232), like the three-valued logics developed by Reichenbach and others to handle the data of nuclear physics, but it is rather different. The purpose of Reichenbach's logic is to save the appearances; that of Bhattacharyya's is to save the reality. It is a dynamic dialectic, differing from Aristotle's logic not like Reichenbach's but like Hegel's, by which in part it was inspired.
A preliminary approach to the problem is made in the paper "Some Aspects of Negation" (1914). In all phases Bhattacharyya identifies reason with negation: affirmation is a dead form useless for deduction; negation is a living form by which something is drawn from something else; negative attention "is the very heart of all mental process" (II 211). This paper endeavors to show that "there are certain ultimate modes of logical thought" embodying incommensurable types of negation: (1) mere negation leaves the negated as rejected. without any relations and so indefinite; (2) the negated as coordinate with the affirmed is equally definite; (3) affirmation is defined by negation, since each affirmation is "constituted by an infinity of differences, by infinite negation" (II 209); (4) since any particular may spring "from the vortex of negation," particulars must be "accepted as they come," with their ground inexplicable. In these four views being "is progressively reduced to negation;" in the last, "being is abolished and absolute negation alone remains, not only as inexplicably definite but also as "inexplicably self-related or self-negating, i.e., as a free function or activity" (II 210). The abstract types of negation are interpreted concretely as modes of illusion: (1) illusion, understood through its own negation as illusion of illusion, is subjectively opposed to self-identity; (2) the subjective idea, while not objective, still has its own definiteness and relations, distinct from the system of objects; (3) the illusion is taken as identity of objective given and subjective explanation "the last thinkable affirmation which alternates with negation" (II 216); (4) the synthesis of mutual negations produces only uncertainty as to whether all par
17 I am indebted to Mrs. James H. Woods for the suggestion that I systematically substitute the synonym affirmation for Bhattacharyya's word position.
