Direct Sciences vs Inferential Sciences:\ Why Yoga is the most fundamental of all sciences

What if the most rigorous path to truth wasn't through telescopes and particle accelerators, but through the systematic study of the only instrument making all observations - your own body?

The Human Instrument

The human body is a complex organization of elaborate systems that operate concurrently at all scales of the physical dimension. For this discussion, let's focus on the abstract model of the mammalian nervous system, specifically the human nervous system, as this is the physical substrate of what distinguishes human beings.

There are two broad functions of the human nervous system: perception and action. Sensory neurons across the peripheral nervous system feed information into the central nervous system, where they undergo complex multi-layered processing. Instructions are then sent to the motor neurons in the peripheral nervous system to contract the muscles in the body. This change in behavior alters the inputs of the sensory system, which in turn changes the inputs to the central nervous system - our brains.

The entirety of what we are capable of as human beings operates in this unified, interconnected system. Our perception feeds into our internal processing, which you can view as action, just internal rather than external. Just as external action can cause changes in what we perceive, internal action can cause changes in the way we perceive our external perception.

A Framework for All Human Experience

We can construct a simple yet comprehensive framework: perception and action are the only two things human beings are capable of, and the object of perception or action may be either internal or external to the human body. This gives us four fundamental modes:

1. Perception of external phenomena - sensing the world around us
2. Perception of internal phenomena - sensing what occurs within us
3. Action on external phenomena - manipulating the world around us
4. Action on internal phenomena - manipulating our internal states

This framework encompasses all that is possible in human life.

The Internal-External Divide

What we call "objective science" is essentially the science of objects we perceive through our external sense organs. Western civilizations that have championed the manipulation of the external world have traditionally been poor in their ability to manipulate the internal world.

Here's why this matters: constructing a framework for effectively manipulating external phenomena is not something easily accomplished by just one individual. The building of frameworks for studying the perception and action of external phenomena can be a civilizational endeavor. One individual's understanding of external reality can be transferred to another, because external phenomena remain the same regardless of the frame of reference.

However, internal phenomena are internal to individuals and therefore cannot have any other direct frame of reference. What is internal to you is only available to you to perceive and act upon. Each of us has these two dimensions - internal and external. What's internal is unavailable for direct access by those outside of us.

This is what makes science of the internal difficult to build upon and communicate. You must essentially use external action to impact the internal perception and action of someone else.

Communication as Inference

Effective communication is essentially one individual's ability to engineer internal actions that lead to external actions, which then become available for other individuals to perceive. The internal actions of the communicator have to be engineered such that they create specific external perceptions in others, which then initiate specific internal actions in those observers.

Communication is fundamentally an inferential activity. You cannot have direct effect on someone's internal perception. It essentially relies on the assumed integrity of someone else's internal action - something that by definition you have no control over.

What makes human beings so susceptible to ignorance is that we are all essentially operating on the inferential plane. We infer extensively about what is both within and without. When we observe external phenomena, we are using internal perceptual mechanisms to construct representations. When we try to understand our internal phenomena, we often use inferential reasoning rather than direct observation.

Direct Sciences vs Inferential Sciences

This brings us to an important distinction in how we pursue knowledge.

Inferential science is the pursuit of the unknown through cycles of simulation and validation. We simulate likely possibilities through hypothesis creation, validate them, and construct actionable models of reality in our minds. All of these happen inside closed systems where rationality is heavily utilized to construct representations of reality and empiricism is used to safely discard all those parts of the representations are known to be wrong.

Direct sciences deal with directly studying the perception of reality, without aiming to arrive at static models. Direct sciences lead to actionable pursuit of one's own life. They don't deal with the hypothetical - they involve the systematic study of what is known directly, rather than inferentially.

Why the distinction matters

Inferential sciences are essential when our apparatus of perception is insufficient to perceive that which we wish to study. They allow us to manipulate static representations of reality that indirectly guide our actions. We can study distant galaxies, subatomic particles, and phenomena far outside the direct range of our senses.

Direct sciences, however, focus on what can be known truly through direct perception. They involve the systematic study of the internal, because that is what we have direct access to, unlike external phenomena that require inference.

Unlike inferential sciences, where others' knowledge may serve us (because they deal with creating static mental models that can be communicated between individuals), direct sciences require that each of us practice the study directly. That is the only way to pursue them. We can only share stories and guidance, not actionable knowledge transferred wholesale.

The Body as Instrument

We reside all of our lives within our bodies. This is not metaphor - it is literal fact. The human body is the instrument of perception and action. We perceive all that we perceive through our bodies, and we exhibit all of our behavior through our bodies. Action and perception form the entirety of what we are capable of doing in this life.

Even our most sophisticated scientific instruments - telescopes, microscopes, particle accelerators - still require human perception to interpret their readings. They extend the range of what we can observe, but they don't eliminate the need for perceptual clarity. The data from a space telescope is meaningless without a human mind to interpret it, and that interpretation is only as clear as the instrument of perception itself.

There has never been one moment in any of our lives where we experienced anything outside of our subjective experience. The objective cannot exist without the subject - the observer and observed are inseparable. You cannot produce one single instance in all of your life where you experienced an object without your subjective experience.

For the intellectually rigorous, purity of perception matters. It's like calibrating a space telescope precisely so that we can infer the most accurate information from what it shows us. The purity of the perception of the instrument is critical to our pursuit of discovery. If we cannot be sure of our ability to perceive reality as is, how can we be sure of anything at all?

Yoga as Science

Yoga is the systematic framework for perfecting the only instrument through which we can discover anything at all - our body.

Yoga (real yoga, not the studio yoga that aims to act as a body relaxant or is practiced for physical benefits) is essentially the distilled essence of how direct sciences can be pursued. It is a guidance framework to practice this science effectively and efficiently.

But why call it the most fundamental science rather than merely a valid approach? Because yoga operates at the root level of all perception and action - the body itself. It focuses only on what can be known truly through direct perception and doesn't involve inference. The intricacies of how the human mind and body ought to be honed for clear perception without distortion form the central thesis of yoga.

The process of purification

Yoga is the process of purification of the instrument of perception. By purification, I mean the systematic removal of cognitive biases, attentional limitations, and somatic noise that distort observation. The ultimate purpose of yoga is to purify the instrument sufficiently to let us see the truth as is and expand the boundaries of direct perception.

Being able to directly witness reality without distortion is essential to perceiving information without adulteration. One cannot realize the importance of this unless one realizes the extent to which our minds distort our perception of reality.

The approach

The approach to the study itself is fundamentally no different from that of inferential science. Rationality is still needed to truly dissect the mechanisms of perception and action through the study of the body. But it appears rationally incoherent to the uninitiated.

Here's the paradox: requiring a rational basis before pursuing the study of direct science can be counterproductive. The rational basis for its merit emerges to the practitioner through the practice, as they witness the mechanics of its functioning directly.

The understanding gained through the practice of direct sciences through yoga cannot be communicated or transferred to someone else. However, one can be guided towards the path to the starting point. Much like in conventional inferential sciences, how far you go depends on your caliber as a practicing scientist.

Why Both Sciences Matter

It is not a matter of which science is superior. Each has different approaches and different applications. The approach we take to learn something defines how we are able to use that knowledge.

The insights gained from direct sciences help us to directly manipulate the perception and action that we're studying. Inferential sciences allow us to manipulate the static representations of reality that then indirectly guide our actions. Inferential sciences are the only sciences we can practice when our apparatus of perception is insufficient to perceive that which we wish to study.

You cannot be proficient at the discovery of truth if you are not proficient in tuning your instrument of perception. If you want to systematically pursue a better experience of life, then you must systematically study action. Besides your perception, your action is all that defines your experience of life. For maximum impact on all aspects of our lives, we must systematically study both our perception and action.

Mastering the inferential often leads to the discovery of the relevance of the direct sciences, because we arrive at the shortcomings of strictly using inferential science for all discovery. The practice of direct science does not require anything other than one's own body, and so one can progress at one's own pace.

The Calibration

Like the space telescope that must be calibrated before it can reveal the cosmos, the human instrument must be refined before it can perceive reality clearly. The difference is that with the telescope, we calibrate from the outside. With yoga, we are both the instrument and the scientist performing the calibration.

My understanding of these mechanisms comes not from an advancement of perception of external phenomena but rather an advancement of internal perception. It takes perception of the internal mechanism to truly understand the human instrument. And the internal object is wholly responsible for how the perceptual and action mechanisms operate.

If this framework resonates as intellectually rigorous rather than mystical, you're ready to understand yoga as science rather than spiritual practice. The essence of why yoga is the most fundamental science for human beings becomes apparent only through practice - because it is the science of the very instrument through which all other sciences must operate.