Nyaya-Vaishesika one of the orthodox schools of Hinduism. It holds that earth, air, fire, and water are the four types of atoms. Space is a substance and a container of atoms. The atoms are everlasting and eternal, though their combinations are neither. Properties of complexes are explained in terms of the properties of their components. There are emergent properties the causation of which does not require that something come from nothing; one need only grant brute causal connections. Nyaya is a monotheistic perspective and Nyaya philosopher Udana wrote a text – Kusmañjali (‘The Handful of Flowers’) – in natural theology; this tenth-century work is an Indian classic on the subject. In addition to material things composed of atoms, there are immaterial persons. Each person is an enduring, substantial self whose nature is to be conscious and who is capable of love and aversion, of feeling pleasure and pain, and of making choices; selves differ from one another even when not embodied by virtue of being different centers of consciousness, not merely in terms of having had diverse transmigratory biographies. Nyaya-Vaishesika is the Hindu school most like Anglo-American philosophy, as evidenced in its studies of inference and perception. See also HINDUIS. K.E.Y.