Silent Thunder

SELF

IN THE NEW BACKGROUND OF SCIENCE.

It is a general misconception among most of the educated youth and uneducated, that both Science and religion are at logger- heads and both cannot be practiced at one and the same time. The uneducated classes of people are deeply involved in ritual way of religion running deep through their veins, more perceptibly than their skin, deeper feelings and even blood, from time immemorial through genetic transformation and evolution. Unfortunately we have come to identify the term ‘Religion’ with stony edifices of Temples, Mosques, Churches, Synagogues, Pagodas and Gurudwaras, and with different  sacred books, giving endless and varying interpretations, confusing rituals  and in their name entering into painful mutual quarrels resulting in hatred and violence. Every Indian is now well aware of this epidemic of hatred and violence; blasts in Hyderabad, Bombay, Gujarat, U.P, everywhere without any exception. This is often the result of colossal ignorance of what true religion is.  Sri Swami Chinmayananda says:*1

“Religion has to be understood essentially as a

Science of living, so that we may cull out of it a set of desirable values of life, upon which we can rebuild wisely our day to day existence. If the existing religion is too old, outmoded and obsolete and if the funda-mental values of life preached by it can not solve our present problems, we shall without regret discard the whole lot and strive to discover the new Principles and laws of right living. If Religion is but a dictatorial declaration of a scheme of living which has no relevance to all our day today existence and can not solve our pressing problems, we shall banish the old religion and take to a new culture and a more desirable cult; for, man is and  should be concerned primarily with his life here rather than hereafter.”

“On the other hand, the indifference to Religion, of the superficially educated man of today, is not as such due to the futility or hollowness of science of Religion, but due to his own incapacity to understand the text books of Religion. This is not only true of the Hindu but of men of every faith. This difficulty in understanding and accommodating the old ideas to the new ways of thinking is felt by the followers of  all the established Religions  all over the Globe, and hence the general decadence of all religions. All true religions must spring from life, exist in life, and find their fulfillment in life. Hinduism recognized this fact and so, in spite of its disastrous decadence, we can still say that Hinduism still holds on to its place in the field of religion, Its vital truths are so beautifully intertwined with a way of living that true followers of Hinduism can, carve out a greater share of happiness and deeper joy of perfection not only in the spiritual but also in the material day to day life.”

Physicists of nineteenth century held simple materialistic views of natural science. Since these views had not only been intrinsically connected with natural science of the period, but had also found a systematic analysis in some philosophic systems and had penetrated deeply into the mind even of the common man on the street, it can be well understood that many attempts have been made to identify classical physics as materialistic philosophy.

However with rapid advances made in the field of atomic energy and advent of quantum theory, the contemporary physics of twentieth century brought out an important revision in man’s conception which has pierced the basis of man’s fate and freedom, affecting even his conception of his capacity to control his own destiny. Nineteenth century Scientists thought of nature as an assemblage of objects located in space and continually changing with passage of time. 20th century theory of relativity and quanta, have changed this perspective completely The transition from classical to modern science based on Theory of relativity and Quantum theory is a complete break and not a smooth one.

Professor Werner Heisenberg of Leipzig University, Germany, discoverer of the principle of indeterminacy of quantum mechanics, which in fact bears his name, described:

*2 “With the advent of Einstein’s relativity theory, it was necessary for the first time to recognize that the physical world differed from the ideal world conceived in terms of everyday experience…. The experimental material resulting from modern refinements in experimental technique necessitated the revision of old ideas and acquirement of new ones, but as the mind is always slow to adjust itself to an extended range of experience and concepts, the relativity theory seemed at first repellently abstract. None the less, the simplicity of its solution for a vexatious problem has gained its universal acceptance. As is clear from what has been said, the resolution of paradoxes of atomic physics can be accomplished only by further renunciation of old and cherished ideas…….”                             “To mould our thoughts and language to agree with the observed facts of atomic physics is a very difficult task, as it was in the case of the relativity theory. In the case of later, it proved advantageous to return to the older philosophical discussions of the problems of space and time. In the same way now it is profitable to review the fundamental discussions, of the difficulty of separating the subjective and objective aspects of the world. Many of the abstractions that are characteristic of modern theoretical physics are to be found discussed in the Philosophy of the past centuries.  At that time, these abstractions could be disregarded as mere mental exercises by those scientists whose only concern was with reality, but to day we are compelled by the refinements of experimental science to consider them seriously.” … “Cartesian and common sense concepts of body and mind stand and fall together. These notions are merely convenient stepladders which should be thrown away.”

“It starts from the division of the world into ‘Object’ and rest of the world and from the fact that at least for the rest of world we use the classified concepts in our description. This division is arbitrary and historically a direct consequence of our scientific method; the use of classical concepts is finally a consequence of the general human way of things. (Or human prejudice in thinking) But this is already a reference to our selves and in so far our description is not completely objective. Nature is earlier than Man but man is earlier than natural science. What we observe is not nature in itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning”. Bohr, the famous German atomic physicist and a colleague of Einstein, has put it, of the old wisdom, that when searching for harmony in Life, one must never forget that in drama of our existence, we are ourselves both players and spectators.”

When one speaks of modern physics, the first thought is of atomic weapons. The influence of physics on the general situation is greater than it ever has been before. The spirit of modern physics will penetrate in to the minds of people and will connect itself in different ways with the older tradition. The enormous and extremely complicated experimental equipment needed for research in Nuclear physics shows other very impressive aspects of this part of modern science. Change in the concept of reality manifesting itself in quantum theory is not simply a continuation of the past; it seems to be a real break in the structure of modern science

“In classical physics Science started from a belief; (or should one say from the illusion?)that we could describe the world or at least parts of the world without any reference to ourselves. This is actually possible to a large extent. We know that the city of London exists whether we see it or not. It may be said classical physics is just that idealization, in which we can speak about parts of the world without any reference to ourselves. Its success has lead to the general idea of an objective description of the world. Objectivity has become first criterion for the value of any scientific result. One may perhaps say that quantum theory corresponds to this ideal as far as possible”

The concept of the atom has its origin in the ancient Greek philosophy of the seventh century as taught by Leucippus and Democritus. As per Indian philosophers Kanada Maharshi, who lived before Christ and  before Plato was the first to talk of Atom as the basic element in the evolutionary history of world. . The modern interpretation of atomic physics, later than the year 1930 A.D., has turned Science away from the materialistic trend. In the sixth century B.C. atom was supposed to be smallest, indivisible ultimate building blocks of matter. Thales, (6th century B.C.) stated that all the transient forms originated from fundamental substances. Aristotle ascribes to Thales also the statement: “All things are full of Gods.” Student of Thales, Anaximander taught that the primary substance was infinite, eternal and ageless and that it encompassed the world. This primary substance is transformed into the various substances with which we are familiar. Theophrastus quotes from Anaximander: “Into that from which things take their rise, they pass away once more, as is ordained”. (Please note that this is the exact definition of Brahman, the ultimate Truth of ancient Hinduism as per Brahma sutras). The primary substance, infinite and ageless, the undifferentiated Being, degenerates into various, which lead to endless struggles. The process of becoming is a sort of debasement of the infinite Being. It may not be out of place to consider the views of Plato, the most renowned Greek Philosopher (427-347 B.C.)    He wrote*2 “Even before the birth of heaven, there were these several three——–being, space, becoming. Hence as the foster mother of becoming, space was liquefied and ignited and received the shapes of earth and air and underwent further affections consequent on this, she took on many motley guises. And since the forces with which she was filled were neither alike nor equipoise, there was no equipoise in any region of her, she was swayed and agitated  with utter irregularity by these her contents, and agitated them in turn by her motion”.  How relevant it is in the knowledge of our present day cosmology and atomic physics and how relevant it is more so in our practical day to day life and the present scenario of the present day world!  Plato anticipated Einstein in evolving the whole of nature out of the metrical texture of space.

According to Anaximander there is eternal motion, “The creation and passing away of worlds from infinity to infinity. This is what is being proved by latest advances in cosmology: From Big bang to black holes and to baby Universes and to Big Bang again.

The physicists today try to find fundamental equation of motion mathematically. This may refer either to waves of known type, to proton and meson waves, or all different elementary particles could be reduced to some universal substance which may be called as Energy or matter, or energy matter.

Heraclites of Ephesus regarded that which moves, ‘the fire’, as a basic element. (In Rig-Veda, the first mantra is, “Salutation to fire, i.e. Agni. It starts as Agnim Ele…..) For Heraclites, the world is at once one and many. He says “We must know that war is common to all and strife is justice and that all things come into being and pass away through strife. For our senses, the world consists of an infinite variety of things and events, colors and sounds.” But in order to understand it we have to introduce some kind of order, and order means to recognize what is equal, it means some sort of unity. From this springs the belief that there is one fundamental principle. Here Heraclites says that change itself is the fundamental principle, the imperishable change that renovates the world.

In the views of modern physicists Energy is in fact the substance from which all elementary particles, all atoms and therefore all things are made and energy is that which moves. Energy is a substance, since its total amount does not change, and elementary particles can actually be made from this substance as is seen in many experiments on the creation of elementary particles. Energy can be changed into motion, into heat, into light and into tension. Energy may be called the fundamental cause for all change in the world.

Let us recall the words of the greatest scientist of the millennium, Einstein. “There are particles and field (Field of energy). Both can not be true. Field alone is true”. Field here in his view is Energy field. Since mass and energy are, according to the theory of relativity, essentially of the same concept, we may say that all elementary particles consist of energy. Hence energy is the primary substance of the world.

Democritus says “Being is not only One, it can be repeated an infinite number of times. This is the atom, the indivisible smallest unit of matter. (According to their view) The atom is eternal and indestructible, but it has a finite size. Elementary particles are the fundamental building blocks of matter. Democritus is quoted to have said “A thing merely appears to have color; it merely appears to be sweet or bitter. Only atoms and empty space have a real existence”.

The greatest development of natural science since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was preceded and accompanied by development of philosophical ideas which were closely connected with the fundamental concepts of Science. Rene Descartes of 17th century is famous for his saying “Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I exist”. He argues “I cannot doubt my existence since I am thinking.” After establishing the existence of ‘I’ he proceeds to prove the existence of God essentially on the scholastic philosophy. Finally the existence of world follows from the fact that“God has given me a strong inclination to believe in the existence of world.” God is separated both from the ‘I’ and from the world. Werner Heisenberg says” While ancient Greek philosophy had tried to find order in the infinite variety of things and events by looking for some fundamental unifying principle, Descartes tries to establish the order through some fundamental  division. If one uses the fundamental concepts of Descartes at all, it is essential that God is in the world and in the ‘I’ and it is essential that ‘I’ can not be really separated from the world. (This is the crux of Advaita system of philosophy which we discussed in the earlier chapter.) The influence of the Cartesian division on human thought in the following centuries can hardly be overestimated.

With the advent of Sir Isaac Newton, classical physics started from the assumption that one can describe the world without speaking about God or ourselves. The situation has changed completely through the arrival of Quantum theory in the early 20th century. In the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum theory we can proceed without mentioning ourselves as individuals, but we can not disregard the fact that natural science is found by men. Natural science is a part of interplay between nature and ourselves; it describes nature as exposed to our method of questioning. Cartesian division or partition, has penetrated deeply into the human mind during the three centuries following Descartes in the western hemisphere and more than six thousand years as per Hindu tradition and it will take a long time for it to be replaced by a really different attitude towards the problem of Reality. This can well be understood from the famous saying of Einstein that “God does not play dice.” while communicating his displeasure to Sir Stephen Hawking, the greatest and most highly regarded living Scientist of “A brief history of Time and space” fame. “Classical physics can be considered as an idealization in which we speak about the world as entirely separated from ourselves. In the Quantum theory, man as the subject of science, is brought in through the questions which are put to nature in the priori terms of human science. Quantum theory does not allow a completely objective description of nature”.  The world thus appears as a complicated tissue of events, in which connections of different kinds alternate or overlap or combine and thereby determine the texture of the whole.

Within the field of modern physics the theory of relativity has always played a very important role. The decisive change was in the structure of space and time. In classical theory we assume that future and past are separated by an infinitely short time interval which we may call the present moment. In theory of relativity, future and past are separated by a finite time interval the length of which depends on the distance from the observer. An observer can at a given instant neither know of nor influence any event at a distant point which takes place between two characteristic times. The whole finite time interval between these two instants may be said to belong to the “present time” for the observer at the instant of observation. This has lead to the formation of law of conservation of energy or mass, which in turn helped us to understand transmutation from energy into mass and vice versa. In our times we see in many experiments how elementary particles can be created from kinetic energy, and how such particles are annihilated to form radiation. The enormous release of energy in an atomic explosion is a spectacular proof of Einstein’s equation. The hypothetical substance “ether” which was supposed to have occupied the entire space before 19th century, has been abolished by the theory of relativity. Instead of traditional three dimensional concept of the world in space only, the four dimensional manifold (world) consisting of space and time has come up. Consequently, very old philosophical problems were taken up that had occupied the mind of man since the earliest phases of philosophy and science. Is space finite or infinite? What was there before the beginning of time? Or is there no beginning and no end? In the philosophy of Aristotle, the total space of the universe was finite. Space was due to the extension of bodies. The universe consisted of the earth and the sun and the stars. In the confessions of St. Augustine, the question takes the form: What was God doing before He created the world? (Some answered this question jokingly that God was preparing Hell for those who ask such foolish questions.). But God is not in time. Time has been created together with the world. Again the word “created” means that something has come into being that has not been there and in this sense it presupposes concept of time. Therefore, the term ‘created’can not be defined in rational terms

With respect to time, there seems to be something like a beginning. Many observations point to an origin of the universe about ten billion years ago; all mater of the universe was concentrated in a much smaller space, and has expanded ever since. The term ‘second” was coined to indicate the second event next only to the Big Bang. In the present state of astronomical observations the questions about the space-time geometry on a large scale can not yet be answered with any degree of certainty. The structure of space and time as defined by Newton as mathematical description of nature was simple and consistent and corresponded very closely to the use of the concepts “ space and time” in daily life. Before the theory of relativity, events could be ordered in time independent of their location in space. This is due to velocity of light is so much higher than any other velocity occurring in practical experience.             

 As per the philosophy of Kant, the concepts of space and time belong to our relation to nature, not to nature itself; we could not describe nature without using these concepts. Consequently these concepts are “a priori”; they are the condition for and not primarily the result of experience. Scientists learned for the first time how cautious they had to be in applying the concepts of daily life to the refined experience of modern experimental science.

Natural science of the nineteenth century prevailed on materialistic views of the world and life. Classical physics is identified as materialistic philosophy, which prefers an objective real world whose smallest parts exist objectively in the same sense as stones or trees exist, independently of whether or not we observe them. It is like” The city of London exists whether we see it or not.” This, however, is impossible or at least not entirely possible because of the nature of the atomic phenomena, since we can not see electron at all and its position and momentum can not be measured correctly at one and the same time.

Let us  consider the views of  Blochinzev and Werner Heisenberg .Blochinzev  writes that we have to do not with science alone  but with a confession of faith, with adherence to a certain creed. He quotes Lenin, the greatest and most popular leader of Soviet Russia., : “However marvelous, from the point of view of the common human intellect, the transformation of the un weighable ether into weighable material, however strange the lack of any but electromagnetic mass, and so on, all this is but another confirmation of dialectic materialism.”  Werner Heisenberg   in his “Physics and Philosophy” discusses in general about the attitude of the scientist towards philosophy and particularly to a special creed, religious or political. The general feeling is that scientist should never rely on special doctrines, never confine his method of thinking to a special philosophy. He should always be prepared to have the foundations of his knowledge changed by new experience. The structure of our thinking is determined in our youth by ideas which we meet at that time, or by getting into contact with strong personalities from whom we learn. This structure will make it difficult for us to adapt ourselves to entirely different ideas later on. The second reason is that we belong to a community or a society. This community is kept together by common ideas, by a common scale of ethical values, or by a common language in which one speaks about the general problems of life. The common ideas may be supported by the authority of church, a party or the state, and it may be difficult to go away from the common ideas without getting into conflict with the community. Yet the results of scientific thinking may contradict some of the common ideas. At this point we come back to the old problem of the “two fold truth” that has filled the history of Christian religion throughout the later Middle Ages. There is a very disputable doctrine that “positive religion is an indispensable need for the mass of the people, while man of science seeks the real truth back of religion and seeks it only there.” “Science is esoteric” so it is said “it is only for the few.” Political doctrines and social activities take the part of positive religion in some countries; the problem is still essentially the same. The Scientists first claim will always be intellectual honesty, while the community will frequently ask of the scientist that-in view of the variability of science- he at least waits a few decades before expressing in public his dissenting opinions.” ———“We can say that physics is a part of science and as such aims at a description and understanding of nature. Any kind of understanding, scientific or not, depends on our language, on the communication of ideas. Every description of phenomena, of experiments and their results, rests upon language as the only means of communication. The words of this language represent the concepts of daily life, which in the scientific language of physics may be refined to the concepts of classical physics. Concept of matter has undergone a great number of changes in the history of human thinking. Werner Heisenberg writes “The early Greek philosophy from Thales to Atomists, in seeking the unifying principle in the universal mutability of all things, had formed the concept of cosmic matter, a world substance which experiences all these transformations from which all individual things arise and into which they become again transformed. This matter was partly identified with some specific matter like water or air or fire.(Five primordial elements, Pancha bhutas.); only partly, because it had no other attribute but to the material from which all things are made.”

Aristotle considered the relation between form and matter. All that we perceive in the world of phenomena around us is formed of matter. Matter is in itself not a reality but only a possibility; a “potentia”It exists only by means of form. Due to biological processes matter is formed to become the living organism, and the building and forming activity of man. The statue is potentially in the marble before it is cut out by the sculptor. Then, much later Descartes, thought of the “matter” as opposed to “mind”. Matter could be considered as a reality of its own independent of the mind and of any supernatural powers. Natural science of nineteenth century created dualism between matter and force. Matter is that on which forces can act; or matter can produce forces. Matter, for instance, produces the force of gravity, and this force acts on matter. Matter and force are two distinctly different aspects of the corporeal world. On the other hand, in the most recent development of modern physics this distinction between matter and force is completely lost, since every field of force contains energy and in so far constitutes matter. To every field of force there belongs a specific kind of elementary particles with essentially the same properties as all other atomic units of matter.

Since the time of Galileo the fundamental method of natural science had been the experiment. This method made it possible to single out characteristic events in nature from which laws could be studied. In the early days of modern natural science this concept belongs to Chemistry and about one hundred new chemical elements were discovered. The concept of conservation of mass in the chemical process was discovered next. However, the nuclear model of the atom, could not explain the stability of the atom. Bohr could explain most of the nuclear phenomena through the application of quantum theory. The chemical and other properties of the atoms could be accounted for by applying the mathematical scheme of quantum theory to the electronic shells. The forces between neighboring atoms are primarily electric forces, the attraction of opposite and repulsion of equal charges; the electrons are attracted by the nuclei and repelled from each other. These forces in turn cause the formation of various groupings of atoms and seem to be ultimately responsible for all the complicated structures of matter. The formation of crystals is due to the arrangement of the atoms in regular lattices. Metals are formed when the atoms are so tightly packed that their outer electrons can leave their shells and wander through the whole crystal. Magnetism is due to the spinning motion of the electron. In all these cases the dualism between matter and force can still be retained, since one may consider nuclei and electrons as the fragments of matter that are kept together by means of the electro-magnetic forces.The laws of quantum theory play an important role in the biological phenomena. The experiments on biological mutations produced by radiation show the relevance of the statistical quantum-theoretical laws. The close analogy between the working of our nervous system and functioning of modern electronic computers stresses again the importance of single elementary processes in the living organism. Still all this does not prove that physics and chemistry will, together with the concept of evolution, someday offer a complete description of the living organism. Bohr has described this situation by saying that in Biology we are concerned with manifestations of possibilities in that nature to which we belong rather than the outcomes of the experiments which we can ourselves perform. Turning our attention from the outer part of the atom to the inner parts and from nucleus to the elementary particles, we can come to an understanding of the unity of matter.

The experimental analysis of the atomic nucleus requires artificial acceleration of protons by means of high-tension equipment to energies sufficient to cause nuclear transmutation. Cocksfoot and Walton succeeded in transmuting nuclei of the element lithium into those of helium. The atomic nucleus consists of proton, which is at the same time simply hydrogen nucleus; and neutron, a particle with the mass equivalent of proton, but is electrically neutral. All the matter consists of atoms constructed from three fundamental building stones, the proton, the neutron and electrons.

But the fundamental problem is the unity of matter. Are these fundamental building stones without any relation except for the forces that act between them or are they just different forms of the same kind of matter? Can they again be transmuted into each other and possibly into other forms of matter as well? Experiments on cosmic radiation solved these problems to some extent. The electromagnetic fields on the surface of stars extending over huge spaces are under certain circumstances able to accelerate charged atomic particles, and finally they fill the space between the stars with what is known as cosmic radiation,. (Casino space craft was able to map the cosmic radiation of our Galaxy) which can be experimentally measured by latest space crafts. Further, big accelerating machines like Cyclotron were constructed in early thirties. Through the co-operation of twelve European countries, Japan and India, a very big machine of this type was constructed (The large Hadron collider which  stopped  and started again due to some technical problem) The experiments carried out by means of cosmic radiation revealed that, besides the three fundamental building blocks; proton, neutron and electron, new elementary particles have been found which can be created in these processes and they disappear again in short time. At the present time about twenty five different new elementary particles are known which include negative proton. All the elementary particles can, at sufficiently high energies, be transmuted into other particles; or they can simply be created from kinetic energy and can be annihilated into energy, for instance into radiation. Therefore we have the final experimental scientific proof for the unity of matter. All the elementary particles are made of the same substance, which we may call energy or universal matter: they are different forms in which matter can appear.                                             This is the language of Upanishads and other scriptures of Prasthanatraya; Bhagavad-Gita and Brahma sutras.

“ SARVAM HETAT BRAHMA.  AYAM ATMA  BRAHMA ”

All this is Brahman. This Atman is Brahman.

“Wacharanbhanam Vikaro, Nama rupena; Mrittikeva Satyam”      Names and forms are different modifications of the same truth.

“Om. Poornamadah; poornamidam, Poornat poornam Udachyate;

Poornasya  Poorna madaya, Poornameva avasishyate.”

That is Whole; this is Whole; From the Whole the Whole becomes manifest. From the Whole when the Whole is negated, what remains is again the Whole. (In scientific terminology it can be said that everything is infinite. From infinite, infinite becomes manifest. From infinite when infinite is negated, what remains is again infinite.)

To sharpen our knowledge of self and the ultimate truth, in order to answer our fundamental questions as ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Who is God?’ in the background of modern science of late twentieth century, let us critically examine the views of Sir James Jeans, noble laureate and the author of many scientific books like, The universe around us; The Mysterious Universe; and The new background of Science. I have already pointed out that this is a serious subject and meant only for those who want to find out the ultimate truth, Truth beyond time and space, truth conducive for the welfare of all, irrespective of sect, creed, color, race, caste, religion, free from all disputes and not opposed to any school of thought.

*2“We may properly approach this world by imagining the entry into the life of a child endowed with consciousness, with a mind capable of experiencing sensations and desires, and with a capacity for thought. From simple experiences, such as desire for food and warmth, sucking sugar or running a pin into its hands, child infers the existence of an external world which is not a part of it and discovers the principle of uniformity of nature- like causes produce like effects. Throughout its whole life the child will assume that an external world exists and will make conjectures with a view to understanding its workings. When it does this in a logical and systematic manner we call it a scientist. The child’s sensations reach its mind through five channels, five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, through eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin.These sensations are transmitted along a complicated nervous system to the brain. Up to this stage, the impression has been conveyed by atomic changes, but it now crosses what we may describe as the “mind – body” bridge and when it appears on the other side, it is as a mental sensation, accompanied by such mental attributes as pleasure or pain, satisfaction or irritation, ecstasy or  despair. A mind which is directly acquainted only with thoughts and sensations may be as little able to form a picture of outer world as a blind man is able to understand the beauty of sunset.  Nevertheless, from the fragmentary messages which his senses send to him over his nerves, he may attempt to form a consistent picture of the external world for himself, in terms of the concepts with which his mind is familiar. Science merely attempts to build up such a picture in a systematic organized way. The first messages the child receives with regard to the external world are collection of objects which have continuity in time. He distinguishes human beings similar to itself except for differences in age, size and other characteristics. There are also animals, birds, fishes and insects, then plants and trees, and finally objects which consist of inanimate matter.”

All sense impressions which come to us from the external world originate in ‘matter’. A mental impression may be produced either by the activities of the mind itself, as when I dream, or by external events which operate in matter and subsequently operate on my mind through my senses. Thus matter may be defined as that which is capable of originating objective sensations. For practical purposes the test of photographic plate is taken to be final. A hundred people may say they see a man climbing up a rope into heaven, (Called as an Indian rope magic famous in ancient times in India) but if a suitably exposed photographic plate shows no image of the man on the rope, we refuse to classify these as material. Matter, and events, effect on our senses, travel along our nerves, passage over the mind- body bridge, before it reaches our minds. Bishop Berkeley (1685-1753) and his school of thought maintained that an object was nothing more than the sum of impressions it made on our minds, so that it had no existence at all except in so far as it was perceived by a mind or existed in a mind; nothing has more substance than the things we see in a dream. All matter, as ordinarily understood, is an illusion; nothing exists in reality except mind. Many Greek Philosophers, from Democritus onward, had imagined matter to consist, of hard indivisible pellets, first called as atoms (Incapable of being divided), but are now called as molecules. The atoms themselves are built up of still simpler units known as protons and electrons, charged with electricity.(Nucleus). These electrified protons and electrons form basic units of which all material objects are built.  The physical properties of a particular substance are determined by the way in which these units or their combinations are arranged. The sense of smell and taste are affected by direct contact-being absorbed by membranes, affecting certain nerves which transmit the messages to brain. Sounds are transmitted through waves of sound. The vibrations of a bell set up vibrations in the surrounding air, and these set ear drums into vibrations. Sight,  through light which operates directly and through waves. Light acts both wave like and particle like. If, then, we regard light as consisting of particles, we may say we see the Sun because it is firing shots at us. However Sun shoots  neither protons, nor electrons, nor atoms, there is further constituent to all matter, which we call energy, either associated with matter, or as “free” energy not attached to matter. Energy may pass from one piece of matter to another, but it may also break loose and travel through space as free energy, which is called as radiation. These particles of freely traveling energy or bullets of radiation are known as ‘photons’. Thus seeing is similar to smelling except the distance is traversed by photons, which are bullets of energy, instead of by molecules, which are bullets of matter. In general we experience the outer world through small samples of it coming into contact with our sense organs. The outer world consists of matter and energy. Samples of this outer world consist of molecules and photons. Yet not all samples of outer world affect our sense organs.

While philosophy is reflecting how different the world would appear to beings with eyes which could see the vibrations (that can not be ordinarily seen by eyes) Science sets to work to devise such eyes-they are our ordinary wireless sets-. Science has extended the range and amplified the powers of our other senses in similar ways in quality as well as in quantity.

From the time of Galileo, science turned from cosmology to mechanics, and from speculation to experiment. Newton (1687) explained motions of comets by mechanical concepts and wished that the whole of nature might in time be explained on similar lines, the concept of “The uniformity of nature”. Science admitted no exception to this uniformity: alleged violations of it were adjudged to be miracles, frauds, or self deceptions. Closed system of nature provides no opening for the activities of Gods and Goddesses. The physiologists tell us that the brain is a part of, and continuous with, the body; apart from reflexes, the atoms of our brains direct the motions of our bodies.                                                In the Newtonian age scientists had proceeded on the lines as the child and unreflective savage. Out of the impressions, registered through their senses, they had built an inferential world of objects, which they believed to be real. They described this as the “common sense” views of science and defined Science as “organized common sense” Later the improvements in experimental techniques, brought new observational knowledge, which showed that working of nature could not be explained in terms of the familiar concepts of every day life. The age of common sense science had passed. Science, mainly under the guidance of Poincare, Einstein, and Heisenberg, came to recognize that the primary objects of study were the sensations that the objects of the external universe produced in our minds; before we could study the objective nature, we must study the relation between nature and ourselves. Dirac (1930) quotes: “In a given state the result will not in general be determinate. Several different results may be obtained if the experiment is repeated several times under identical conditions, but there is a definite probability.

Sir James Jeans defines Science as an organized knowledge. Nature appears to be governed by immutable laws. The aim of science is to discover and interpret these laws. Einstein writes: “the object of science is to co-ordinate our experiences and brings them into a logical system.” Science in brief is concerned with what happens, not with what is. …… Events can be arranged in time and objects in space. Thus space and time form a sort of frame work for the sense impressions. Our individual consciousness first apprehends time and space. Plato, the most famous Greek philosopher for all the ages; past, present and future, describes space as “that which receives all bodies. It must be called ever self same, for it never departs from its own quality…..  Were it like anything that enters into it, when things of opposite or wholly different character came into it and received, it would reproduce them amiss, as its own features would shine through. Therefore also that which would receive all kinds in itself must be bare of all forms, just as in the manufacture of fragment ointments the artist first contrives the same initial advantage; he makes fluids which are to receive his perfumes as scentless as he can. …Space never perishes but provided an emplacement for all that is born; it is itself apprehended without any sensations, by a sort of bastard inference, and so is hard to believe in…’It is with reference to it, in fact, that we dream with our eyes open when we say that all that is must be in some place and occupy some space, and that what is neither on earth, nor yet in the heavens is nothing.” Descartes introduced dualism according to which all substance fell into the non-overlapping and non interacting categories of mind and matter, the essence of mind being thought, which did not occupy, and was not arranged in space, while the essence of matter was occupancy of space and extension in space. The all pervading substance of Descartes was called as “luminous ether”.                                          Einstein (1905) gave a new and quite revolutionary turn to the whole problem. According to him “Nature is such that it is impossible to measure absolute velocity by any means whatever. Nature is concerned with only relative velocity. There is no fixed background of points in space against which motion can be measured in absolute terms. Similarly there is no absolute flow of time against which intervals between two events can be measured. Space means nothing apart from our perception of objects, and time means nothing apart from our experience of events. Space begins to appear merely as fiction created by our own minds, while time appears as a second fiction for the arrangements of events which happen to us.” This is of course in striking contrast with the earlier views of Kant, which had dominated metaphysics until the advent of the theory of relativity. In brief, for Kant, as also for Descartes and Newton, objects can not exist without space; for Einstein, space can not exist without objects.

Please pause, think and contemplate. These are the words expressed by great scientists who have given you Television sets, mobile phones and computers which you can not ignore even for a moment except when you are sleeping. These are not the words spoken by any distant mystic meditating on the heights of Himalayan Mountains. You must have belief in your own science and scientists, if you don’t believe in your own scriptures or advises/instructions, given by your own ancestors, nay not even advice from your own father. You can not survive without any belief. Have belief at least in yourselves and try to find out who you are.

Nature knows nothing of space and time separately; space and time are welded inseparably into Space time continuum.  Our human spectacle divides these into space and time. On a mechanistic view of Nature, just as a loom (equipment to weave a cloth) had been set to work according to certain unalterable laws, so that the complete pattern was potentially existent from the outset and evolution became a mere synonym for the disclosing of predetermined changes, the tapping out of a pattern already designed. (This is what we see in our present day evolution biologically. The entire tree is present in the seed itself, the entire characteristics and behavioral patterns of human beings, whether Mahatma Gandhi or Adolph Hitler, are present in the seed itself!). On a non-mechanistic view, the loom was guided no one knew how, and might produce no one knew what.

From the time of Plato onwards philosophic thought has repeatedly returned to the idea that temporal changes and flux of the events belong to the world of appearances only and do not form part of reality. The reality must be endowed with permanency. Otherwise it would not be real.  For this kind of reason, philosophers have insisted that reality must be timeless, and time merely, in Plato’s phrase, “a moving image of eternity” Bradley for instance, writes: “Change, as we saw, must be relative to a permanent. Change demands some permanence within which succession happens” This is the view advocated by all our ancient Rishis, Sages, and Saints and all our scriptures like Upanishads, Gita and Brahma Sutras.

Let us turn back our attention to the views of Sir James Jeans. Primitive man saw nature as a collection of objects which acted on one another, by direct contact; he was familiar with the pressure of wind and water on his body, the fall of rain drops on his skin, the thrust by his enemy, but action at a distance was somewhat of a rarity in his scheme of things. Early science has pictured matter as consisting of hard objects, no two of which occupy the same space because one invariably pushed the other out of the way by direct contact. Science of a later era found that magnetic poles of earth induce magnetism and magnets attract iron fillings. Magnets attract more forcibly in a perfect vacuum than in air. Two electrified bodies attract or repel one another across the intervening space. The Sun attracts planets across a space which is practically void of matter. At a still later period, matter was found to be wholly electrical in its structure, consisting of particles which carried electrical charges and of nothing else. Roughly a ton of bricks occupies a cubic yard, while the millions of particles which form this ton of bricks occupy only about a cubic inch; all the rest is empty space. In the interiors of the densest stars the particles are packed as closely as this; the electrical repulsions are not actually abolished, but they count for nothing against the immense pressure of the star itself. In every day life, however, these electrical forces maintain their supremacy against all others. When the wind blows on my face, the molecules of air come to within about a thousand-millionth part of an inch of my skin, but no nearer. At this distance the molecules of my skin repel them so violently that they turn back the way they came. It is the same throughout nature. When we look at it through sufficiently powerful mental microscope, we find no instant of actual contact; nature appears to have only one mechanism, which is action at a distance-action across the intervening space. Space appeared to be entirely empty except in the isolated regions which were occupied by objects. We have an intuitive belief that space is flat or Euclidean. Three hundred years before Christ, Euclid had defined a straight line as the shortest distance between two points, and announced that light traveled in straight lines. Aristotelian doctrine had asserted that substance tended to rise or sink, according to their weight; every object moved so as to find its own place in the ordained scheme of things.

However recent experimental data in the field of Nuclear physics revealed that, when an electron appears to be compelled to describe a curved orbit by electrical forces, it also is finding the shortest possible path through a curved continuum. Einstein’s recent “Unified field theory” attempts to specify the exact kind of continuum necessary for such an explanation. It is usually the totally unexpected that happens in science-the unaided human mind can seldom penetrate far into the darkness which lies beyond the small circle of light formed by direct observational knowledge. Space is the one whose essential nature is least likely to be understood by human mind, since it is hardly probable that which is completely external to the mind, and without effect on the mind, will admit of being pictured in terms of familiar concepts inside the mind. Bradley, writing twenty years before the General theory of relativity, describes space “Empty space –without some quality which in itself more than spatial is an unreal abstraction. It can not be said to exist, for the reason that it can not by itself have any meaning. A space limited, and yet without space that is outside, is a self contradiction. ….Space to be space, must have space outside itself. It forever disappears into a whole, which proves never to be more than one side of a relation to something beyond.”

We have seen the atomic concept of matter gradually gaining scientific recognition. The ultimate ingredients of matter were of the nature of small particles carrying highly concentrated charges of electricity. Our whole knowledge of the external world of physics may be pictured as arising from the impact of photons of energy either on our sense organs or on our physical instruments. The waves which we describe as light- waves, and those other waves which we interpret as the waves of electron and a proton, also consists of knowledge-knowledge about photons, electrons and protons respectively. We can not foretell the future because nature herself does not know what is going to happen. Each sense-impression is caused by a transfer of energy from the external world to the nerve terminals of our bodies. We find that the photons which cause our sense impressions originate in events. Schopenhauer writes: “Man can do what he wills, but can not will what he wills” Modern science admits that its subject of study is primarily our observation of nature, and not nature itself. The new picture of nature must then inevitably involve mind as well as matter- (observer and observed) the mind which perceives and the matter which is perceived- and so must be only mental in character. To quote Bertrand Russell, “The world presented to our belief by a philosophy based upon modern science is in many ways less alien to us than the world of matter as conceived in former centuries.”

Concluding his arguments Sir James Jeans writes: “Our last impressions of nature, before we began to take our human spectacles off, was an ocean of mechanism surrounding us on all sides. As we gradually discard our spectacles, we see mechanical concepts continually giving place to mental……the total disappearance of matter and mechanism, mind reigning supreme and alone. …. possibly all, that was not mental has disappeared, and nothing new has come in, that is not mental.”

Note

*1 Vedanta the Science of Life by Swami Chinmayananda.

*2 Physics and Philosophy by Werner Heisenberg.

Published by Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York  14228-2197.

*3The New Background of Science by Sir James Jeans.

New York: The Macmillan Company.