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Vol. XXII, No. 2
In fact the characteristic approach of the Indian social and philosophical thought to the problems of life and reality is quite different from the linear rational approach of the west. As Lannoy92 points out. "The non-linear cluster configuration of Indian thought does not proceed along a developmental line progressing to a climax, but is a spiral from a germinating point and swelling in value by return and repitition." He further observes that where the linear thought systems fail to meet the challenges of the non-Euclidian world of today, the Indian mind is at home in perceiving the multidimentional reality and its simultaneity all-at-once.
The multidimentional and Kaleidoscopic reality of the postmodern society of the world has proved to be greatly elusive for almost all varieties of liner models designed to comprehend it, whether it be the Marxist socialist variety or the functional utilitarian variety. And as John Rex has suggested, it requires a sociologist to take a moral stand now and demystify the “pseudo-scientific world of the ideologists" including the “ideology of revolution as well as the ideology of the status-quo."28
It is only through such a process of demystification by rejecting the value-neutral stance of sociology that a break-through in giving a new orientation to this discipline can be made and a new logicomeaningful” stance be achieved. For achieving such results we will have to start thinking, to use Feyeraband's24 phrase, "counter inductively," i.e., through questioning the very assumptions on which this discipline rests. This process of counter-inductivity" and "demys. tification" must accompany a positive search for alternative ways of perceiving social reality and reconstructing society. It is only through this process of "counter-inductivity" that the stalemate created by the heavy emphasis on positivist methodology may be eschewed.
The Indian traditional thought reformulated and rearranged. according to the emergent historical conditions of the present day world, by Mahatma Gandhi and Sri Aurobindo provides ample scope for a sociologist to extract some meaningful concepts of human reality from these systems of social thought and offer models of social development which have greater relevance for the present day dehumanizing world than the mechanomorphic linear concepts of the conventional econocentric variety. References 1. Jamas J. Degenais, Models of Man: A phenomenological
Critique of some Paradigms in the Human Science (The Hague :
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