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Synopsis The Volumes of the Project on the History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization aim at discovering the main aspects of India's heritage and present them in an interrelated way. In spite of their unitary look, these volumes recognize the difference between the areas of material civilization and those of ideational culture. The project is not being executed by a single group of thinkers and writers who are methodologically uniform or ideologically identical in their commitments. The project is marked by what may be called 'methodological pluralism'. Inspite of its primarily historical character, this project, both in its conceptualization and execution, has been shaped by scholars drawn from different disciplines. It is the first time that an endeavour of such unique and comprehensive character has been undertaken to study critically a major world civilization.

Materialism and immaterialism with their implications for the nature of reality have been two contending world views that have dominated metaphysics since the dawn of civilization. In the 20 century Rabindranath Tagore, a quintessential philosopher-poet and Albert Einstein, a quintessential philosopher scientist, had a long conversation on this very issue. The debate remains unresolved to this day, and this volume is an effort to bring under a single title its varying vistas both in India and the west, across the centuries, against the backdrop of the Tagore-Einstein conversation. The histories of this debate in India and the west have their own twists and turns and their own flavours, epistemology dominating over ontology in India and ontology over epistemology in the west.  Nevertheless, there are many common concerns which have been addressed with characteristic differences in India and the west, and these differences may be brought to bear new insight into the problems. Modern science has brought with it new knowledge of the universe and its philosophical implications are being studied across the globe. However, these studies have so far been dominated by the west. The time has come when many of the outstanding issues need to be reexamined from the Indian point of view. It is with this in mind that the volume has been designed to bridge the gap between the east and the west between philosophers and volumes, the articles in this volume are non-technical but rigorous expositions, and should be accessible to a wide class of readers.