What is Progress?
Progress measured in terms of larger and
better accelerators or in terms of a pile of digital figures can hardly be
called progress. Improved accounts do not necessarily mean real prosperity. The
basic quality might get heightened but it may still remain at the same level
without undergoing any radical change. We have a material probe going into the
inscrutable depth of Matter; we also have an eye looking into the mystery of
Space. Yet reality seems to elude us all the while in all the directions.
Progress is to be more and more perceptive to subtler and finer things of this
creation, to be more and more intuitively perfect in our sensibilities. To be
alive to the greatness of material laws and force, to have the sight to see the
invisible that surrounds the visible, to possess power to exceed oneself,—in it
is man’s manhood.
At one time the arrival of physical science in
European life was a welcome event. It was a historical necessity. The
scriptural word had ceased to be a living experience. But in the swing of
science intuition and perception got displaced too far away. As a result, the
gain is proving to be unavailing. In fact there are signs of newer dangers.
What is artistic and appealing, beautifully truthful and acceptable to the
deeper sense is being dismissed. The possibilities of the leap of thought and
the scope for entry of the revelatory truths are receding from us. Were those
bygone civilizations, which thrived on these foundational principles, were a
crud waste in the process of history?
Let us go back for a while to Aristotle and
Plato. In Aristotle philosophy was love of knowledge which also laid out an
approach to the investigation of natural phenomena, to determine form by
systematic work. Thus would one arrive at the final causes. His logical method
of argument gave a framework for putting knowledge together and deducing new
results. He created what amounted to a full-fledged professional scientific
enterprise on a scale comparable to a modern university science department. Yet
we have to go beyond Aristotle,—to Plato. Plato felt that pure reason could
arrive at the truth with little outside help. He lived in a world where are
present Real-Ideas. If we have to appreciate this in the present-day context,
we see that Plato is well epitomized in Einstein with his assertion that, if a
mathematical theory is convincing, it must also be true and it is just the
crudeness of our mind that demands the proofs of experimental verification for
its validity. Niels Bohr refused to accept it in its totality and put empirical
criteria as the touchstone for an idea to enter into the scientific domain. But
for science to remain true to itself, observational stipulation must always
come first. It may have limitations, but certainly it is that which has given
to it an indisputable sturdiness. Soon Plato got pushed aside and Aristotle, in
the course of time much modified and corrected, became the guiding spirit of
the empiricist formulations. The authority of science has now acquired such
power that we tend to forget the possibility of what Plato was really trying to
hint at. We do not recognize that our world could be a projection of something
which already exists somewhere else in its genuine seed or idea state. Possibly
it could be a force of original form present in the conditions of matter. But
to us all this appears arcane if not suspect.
Victory of Science
The result is another extremism with its own
consequences that are not too welcome. Let us read Sri Aurobindo:
We live under the reign of Science, a reign
which from the mouth of its hierophants claims to be a tyranny or at least an
absolute monarchy. It makes this claim by right of the great things it has
done, of the immense utilities with which it has served, helped, strengthened,
liberated mankind, right knowledge of the world, an increasing and already
fabulous mastery of Nature, a clear and free intellectual vision of things and
masterful dealing with them, liberation from the fetters of ignorance, from
blind subjection to authority, from unquestioning political, social, religious
and cultural tradition with all their hindrance and their evil.
The triumphant domination, the all-shattering
and irresistible victory of Science in nineteenth-century Europe is explained
by the absolute perfection with which it at least seemed for a time to satisfy
these great psychological wants of the Western mind. Science seemed to it to
fulfil impeccably its search for the two supreme desiderata of an
individualistic age. Here at last was a truth of things which depended on no
doubtful Scripture or fallible human authority but which Mother Nature herself
had written in her eternal book for all to read who had patience to observe and
intellectual honesty to judge. Here were laws, principles, fundamental facts of
the world and of our being which all could verify at once for themselves and
which must therefore satisfy and guide the free individual judgment, delivering
it equally from alien compulsion and from erratic self-will. Here were laws and
truths which justified and yet controlled the claims and desires of the individual
human being; here a science which provided a standard, a norm of knowledge, a
rational basis for life, a clear outline and sovereign means for the progress
and perfection of the individual and the race. The attempt to govern and
organise human life by verifiable Science, by a law, a truth of things, an
order and principles which all can observe and verify in their ground and fact
and to which therefore all may freely and must rationally subscribe, is the
culminating movement of European civilisation. It has been the fulfilment and
triumph of the individualistic age of human society; it has seemed likely also
to be its end, the cause of the death of individualism and its putting away and
burial among the monuments of the past.
So the purpose of science is not just being
good to mankind: in its true sense it is θεωρια, theoria—god-show,
contemplation in some deep quiet bringing to us the knowledge of reality in its
multifold aspect. Our contemplation has to be with tools and notepads and the
associated paraphernalia including laptops. It is not retiring into a cave and
becoming oblivious of the material creation. It is the contemplation to find
the Eternal in Matter, discover and live richly in Annam Brahman. Another world
of wisdom and comprehension can then open out. This shall be the world beyond
the reach of analytical-inductive-deductive mind of the current day.
We may recall what Galileo has to convey to
his student Sarsi:
Well, Sarsi, that is not how things are.
Philosophy is written in this grand book of the universe, which stands
continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one
first learns to comprehend the language and to read the alphabet in which it is
composed. But this cannot be a language of mathematics and its characters
triangles, circles and other geometric figures, as if without it it is humanly
impossible to understand a single word of it, as if without these one would
wander in a dark labyrinth.
After
all, reality is too subtle to be geometrised. There has to be identification
with the object in which the object itself reveals to us its precious secrets,
rather than our trying to formulate its nature by the means at our disposal.
They are not governed by the principles of division, separation, antithesis,
but by the principles of unity, identity, mutuality, totality. There is a
strict discipline to be followed and it is that which alone can put us in
contact with the truth of things we are looking for. But in the unprepared mind
all this can be a hazardous proposition and the chances of being misled are
enormous. Which however does not mean that safe arbor paths cannot come into
our view.
In this connection we may recall Kuhn’s
remarkable view about the archetypal thought entering into scientific research.
In it the person and his upbringing, time and its operative dynamism, culture
with the shades of positive and negative temperaments and dispositions, milieu
and the working conditions providing a thousand pushes and pulls, paradigm
burdened with prejudices and possibilities become the determinative factors.
The result is that, in a strange way, “objectivity and subjectivity, truth and
falsehood, relative and absolute start living together.”
The
Purpose of Science
Bacon questions nature herself. He has a
masculine roughness in treating nature. Well, she yields. She also shrieks. Her
lyrical feminism is not recognised in approaching her. But the truth of things
has beauty and charm also which is altogether missing in him. The result is the
methodology of induction and deduction. In it is the “received view of
science.” It at once makes observation value-free, detached, objective. This is
a gain, but in it is also a serious and bigger loss. However, its claim of
objectivity of observation becomes suspect in the post-quantum mechanical
formulation. The data are theory-laden and objectivity is hardly the thing that
the physicists can hold. This is the nouveau scientia. To argue from the
point of view of Feyerabend:
The history of science, after all, does not
consist of facts and conclusions drawn from facts. It also contains ideas,
interpretations of facts, problems created by conflicting interpretations,
mistakes, and so on. On closer analysis, we find that science knows no ‘bare
facts’ at all but the ‘facts’ that enter our knowledge are already viewed in a
certain way and are, therefore, essentially ideational.
The problem of objectivity is further
compounded by the fact that, as brought out by W. J. Baker,
…we speak more about our observation of the
world rather than of the world, and we do this through less than fully adequate
language system.
But then there is also a power in
that language which produces results. Yet, possibly, the real world is not
independent of the observer. Fritjof Capra maintains that the human observer constitutes
the final link in the chain of observational process, and the properties of any
atomic object can only be understood in terms of the object’s interaction with
the observer.
Indeed, scientific rationality is a matter of consensus.
Objectivity and rationality now arrive at different conclusions. If there is a
subjective element present, are we then to say that the rationalist mind has
come to a dead end? And if it has come to such an end, are there any hopes for it?
Do we discard its methodology which has been so successful? If we go for
something else, then what is the guarantee that that something else will not
lead us to another gridlock, perhaps of a much direr nature? Are there definite
criteria to prejudge our approach, be they material or esoteric? Shall we be
chasing a black cat, as is generally said, in a dark room where it does not
exist? Plato spoke of the projection of reality on the wall of a cave, but what
shall assure us that there were no distortions in the full sequence or the wall
was flat and neutral, was not participating in the process of image-creation?
The
Rationalist’s Groping
The rationalist’s groping for the mystery with
the lantern of thought seems to be availing only partially. He traverses a
half-visible ground and moves only yard by yard. Rather he imposes a rigid
mental scheme on the material world. That makes our science an abstract cold
and brief, as Sri Aurobindo says in one of his sonnets. The question then
remains as to what exactly we mean by observation of the physical object.
Indeed, why does empirical rationalism go on the blink? What are its
limitations? Apart from the dilemma it faces today in defining an object or an
observation, its tools are too rigid to see the subtlety of even the physical
world. On a psychological level also limitations enter and the enterprise
becomes frustrating. Its mathematical language adds to its inadequacy.
The
Ancient Indian Approach
In this background let us have a hurried look
at the ancient Indian approach. To speak first in the context of atomic
theories we can go far back, at least to the formulations of Kashyapa in the
6th century B.C. Later he came to be known as Kanada—from kana, meaning
a tiny grain or particle. His atom or paramāņu is not only indivisible
but also indestructible. The material universe is built on it. But there are
different types of paramāņus arising from different mingling of the five
elemental states of Matter. Much older than this is the occult-physical knowledge
of the ancient Sankhya System reaching back in time the Vedic period. Its
fuller description as given by Sri Aurobindo is as follows:
The elementary state of material Force is, in
the view of the old Indian physicists, a condition of pure material extension
in Space of which the peculiar property is vibration typified to us by the
phenomenon of sound. But vibration in this state of ether is not sufficient to
create forms. There must first be some obstruction in the flow of the Force
ocean, some contraction and expansion, some interplay of vibrations, some
impinging of force upon force so as to create a beginning of fixed relations
and mutual effects. Material Force modifying its first ethereal status assumes
a second, called in the old language the aerial, of which the special property
is contact between force and force, contact that is the basis of all material
relations. Still we have not as yet real forms but only varying forces. A
sustaining principle is needed. This is provided by a third self-modification
of the primitive Force of which the principle of light, electricity, fire and
heat is for us the characteristic manifestation. Even then, we can have forms
of force preserving their own character and peculiar action, but not stable
forms of Matter. A fourth state characterised by diffusion and a first medium
of permanent attractions and repulsions, termed picturesquely water or the
liquid state, and a fifth of cohesion, termed earth or the solid state,
complete the necessary elements.
To these five elements are given five striking
names viz., Akash, Vayu, Teja, Ap and Prithwi,—or Ether, Air, Fire, Water and
Earth. Varying combinations of these elements give rise to all material things,
gross as well as subtle. Ether is the substratum of all material existence and,
though not presently detectable by the tools of our science, it presents the
possibility of an objective form. It is not just a static extension but is
participative also. The part played by Vayu is that of interactions and hence
what we call exchange particles or bosons or forces belong to its working. The
concept of valence has a connection with it and the more we will understand it
the better we will know about the formation of aggregates. Law of universal
gravitation is an aspect of it and Einstein’s notion of replacing it by
abstract ideas of geometry may have to be relooked into. The definiteness of
form comes because of the triple working of Agni or Fire. Electricity and
nuclear energy are its visible aspects.
However, the question is: Can these ideas come
in the purview of empirical rationalism as we understand it or as is current?
No, certainly not. But then do we take recourse to the impossibility theorem?
On the contrary, should not precisely for that reason this quick answer come as
a challenge to us to develop the needed state-of-the-art? If there is a truth
in a perception,—and we should be sensitive to perceptions,—the creative spirit
should be prompted to meet the requirement. After all, there is no prima facie
case against these ideas.
Some
Examples
In
Here is an example of mathematical precision
of the ancients. In a Yuga or a Cycle of Time as we have in the Puranas the
number of rotations of the earth are 1582237500; this makes the sidereal period
= 23h 56m 4.1s corresponding to the modern value of 23h 56m 4.091s, a most
remarkable accuracy! This is not just a stray calculation,—and there are any
number of such instances. One is simply amazed at these results.
Medicine could be taken as another example.
Jivaka belonging to the 5th c B.C. was a student at Takshashila. After
completing the seven-year tenure he was competent to do medical practice on his
own. But the teacher gave him an assignment. He was to find if in the huge
campus there were any herbs that did not have medical use. Jivaka failed to get
even one and the teacher passed him. He had now fully qualified himself to step
into life. Traditional Indian medicine uses 7000 plants. Sushruta Samhita
describes seven ways of purifying water. It also discusses 72 diseases of the
eye. Ayurveda or the science of life had another approach. In our quest we must
ask the question as to how this fund of knowledge was obtained by the ancients.
This is particularly so when they did not have gigantic pharmaceutical
establishments of the kind we boast of today.
The
Problem of Identity
It appears that
The good of science and technology is a must
for the commerce of life-forces in relationship with each other and it should
not be shunned; the good of speculative philosophies has a measure of
functionality that can make thought keener and swifter; the good of literature
and arts ought to be there to urge our higher sensibilities to nuances of the
rainbow-hued emotions; the good of the warrior strength and heroism has to be
there to conquer the dark regions present in the abysses of existence; the good
of the expressive spirit has to come forward to mould its instruments for
another dimension of working in the brightness of the joys of Nature and Soul
and God. All this can happen if
Ask
Good Questions
We have to look at the prospects of an Indian
science in this spirit of creativity. We have to ask good questions, worthwhile
questions and not titillating or just utilitarian questions. We have to ask
questions that come from deeper perceptions. In the physical sciences, for
instance, we ought to discover the causes which compel Life to live in
subjugation to Death. If we do that perhaps we might get answers to remove
those causes.
Then, we do not know why at every stage of
aggregation or disaggregation of matter newer properties appear. We have
descriptions but not knowledge. Thus water is not simply the sum of hydrogen
and oxygen. It is altogether a different new substance. In fact we should call
it an atom because its properties cannot be derived from anything else. So also
is the earth, so too the sun, and so and so forth. How do new properties
appear? The answer is not available. Is it an aspect of the substratum that
enters into it? Is that substratum a participative medium? If this should be
true, then we would be entering into a wonderful domain where matter and
space-time interact. Is that what the General Theory of Relativity trying to
propose?
Similarly, if Matter, Life, and Mind are
entities independent of each other, then they form irreducible dimensions, that
is, one cannot be expressed in terms of the other. In that case how could Life
arise out of or enter into Matter? And this will happen at every higher stage
also. On the other hand, if Life is to be viewed as a product of Matter, how
does it at all acquire the characteristics which are not there in the material
state? In that eventuality, will not the proposition sound paradoxical? As we
have seen, we do not know how the combination of hydrogen and oxygen gives rise
to an altogether different substance with altogether different properties, it
will be strange to think of Matter giving rise to Life by some mysterious
process. Matter occasioning Life is one thing and producing it is another. It
would be a creation out of vacuum, ex nihilo, as if the vacuum were
seething with an intense activity. The mystery gets further confounded as we go
up on the invisible ladder to higher propositions. To science it can prove very
embarrassing and it should be its concern to resolve the issue.
But to the practising researcher these
questions may appear rather intractable; they may even be called inanities.
Such could be a sufficient reason to dismiss them immediately. On the contrary,
perhaps such could be the reasons to set him on the inquiry. Indeed, if
meaningful researches are to be pursued, we may have to invent altogether novel
techniques of approach. Not only idea-tools but also much subtler physical
apparatuses and probes for investigation. Only then we may be able to say that
there is Indian science.
If the quality of a culture depends upon the
kind of questions it asks, then we should ask questions worthy of that culture.
Just when the questions are raised is there a possibility of getting their
answers. But let us see how to enter in an Indian way into the domain of the
current scientific research, how to be up-to-date, how to possess the
state-of-the-art. The intention should be, firstly, to bring to it a living
freshness by setting up our own priorities and then make pioneering contributions
to it.
Instead of following the existing methods of
analysis and deduction, approaches based on synthesis ought to be initiated.
For this to happen new concepts of, and relationships in, space and time may
have to be proposed and discovered. Their neutrality and aloofness from matter
surely is an assumption. The problems that are baffling us today in quantum
mechanics, for instance, could possibly be due to the strange hangover of the
ideas that may not necessarily be appropriate in its context.
Emergence
of Indian Science
Three aspects stand out in preparing ourselves
for the work we are expected to do. Firstly, of course, we must acquire various
skills of the current western science,—mathematical, theoretical,
observational, experimental, technological. This is the groundwork that must be
done in a comprehensive professional way. Then only can the spark of
originality blaze in its fuller nobility and dignity in our enterprises. After
all, that is a gain and we must profit from it.
It is unfortunate that presently we engage
ourselves in the follow-up researches only. We do not have our own basic
questions to set us on the quest. For instance, we take the laws of nature as
firm and infallible. But this is more a belief, a trust than a rationalist’s conclusion,—the
rationalist has not arrived at it after carrying out tests designed for the
purpose, viz., it is not something based on any specific observation. It is an
inference at the best. It makes him comfortable, and hence happy. That amounts
to laziness. Could it not be that what we call laws are after all habits of
nature? If this is true, then it should be possible to change habits though
that may prove pretty difficult. We are stuck with “brute matter” as Newton,
rather unkindly, dubbed it. We have imposed inertia on matter; we have
attributed laws of conservation to its behaviour; we ignore the possibility of
interactive awareness in it. This is a weight we have put on it. No wonder,
matter is proving stiff and stubborn. Instead, newer perceptions and methods of
investigation must be found. Perhaps, then, we will discover other modes of its
conduct. Other frontiers might open out for us.
We have been talking of wave-particle duality for decades
and yet it seems that we have resigned ourselves to the uncertainty. We do not
know if the duality is a fact in the physical world or is an artifact of
mathematics, a quaint bizarre helpless appearance emerging out of our own
formulations. We know that we cannot walk through two doors simultaneously and
yet we say that here is something which can do exactly that. We prefer to
blink. The two-slit experiment has still remained un-understood. Could it be
that in this domain of matter our usual ideas of space and time are not
applicable? The classical notion based on gross material things may not be
pertinent in the microscopic domain. If so, should we not relook into the
entire picture? There is perhaps a space-time configuration in which many doors
open out at once. Reformulation of quantum mechanics itself in that space-time
reality could then provide a better description. The quantum space-time could
be different from our space and time where space and time have not really yet
formed a single entity.
Then, can old mathematics really deal with new
observations? Possibly they demand mathematical tools matched well with them.
If we start with a wave equation for the particle’s description we should not
get surprised to find a wave solution, making us believe that we are dealing
with a wave. In the whole sequence we forgot that we were using an old
differential equation with old concepts of space and time. But in the case of
quantum particles or the infinitesimals where we are reaching the dimensional
limits the concept of the differential itself may not be strictly applicable.
Here an Indian insight is expected to provide a breakthrough.
Similarly, on the experimental side the thrust
should be on the quest of material reality. We have to pick up problems that
are meaningful. We will have to ask good questions, worthwhile questions. Take,
for example, diamond and graphite. As chemical entities they are the same
element, carbon. But both show altogether different properties. The chemical
formula C6H14O shows 26 different types of compounds with
altogether different properties. How does the same chemical stuff produce
different properties? It looks as though space has entered into the material
states and given rise to separate behaviours. Again, in terms of the chemical
constituents we do not see any difference between two isomers; but the
geometrical configurations and the left-handedness or right-handedness of a
system at once give rise to different properties. It will be interesting to
know the relationship between spatial arrangements and the physical properties.
In physics also we speak of symmetry and witness the phenomenon of parity.
Perhaps space is not a passive container for matter. It seems that the two do
interact with each other.
Long ago Bhaskara invented mathematical techniques to
describe celestial motion. In fact, he was the first to introduce the concept
of differential calculus which was, centuries later, discovered by
Recognizing every aspect and carrying out in
mutual concordance the things of the world is the sign of a mature culture and
it is that which we must persuasively advance. Emergence of Indian science
means the assertion of Indian spirit in our search of the truth of the material
world. In fact this should happen in respective ways in all the walks of
national life. Might be science will show the way. How wonderful it will be!
RY Deshpande