I of course had a special reason for not being regular on my blog ;-) but will leave it that. Well, this is something I wanted to write months back but have been putting it off for one or the other reason.
But as pored over it this belief of mine was broken. In spite of being a book on parallels between Modern physics eastern mysticism nowhere you can find it to be cryptic or throwing some undecipherable jargon at you. It simply takes you to some other world by breaking your fundamental beliefs about nature formed over years while learning science and hence about physics. Given below are some points made in the book which intrigued me the most.
Early scientists in Europe put too much emphasis on rational thinking. They imposed a geometric restriction on everything in nature saying planets revolve around sun in elliptical orbits, they are spherical in shape etc they went to an extent of saying that “God is a Geometer” -Plato.
But the same laws of geometry are not applicable everywhere. Consider a square drawn on a plane. We start by drawing equal length lines in 90 degrees to each other they will meet to form a square. But if we try to do the same on a sphere they will never meet.
Newton's classical mechanics which we will all swear by is the ultimate truth. But, they have a limited range of application. It is applicable to solid moving bodies at speed less than that of light.
Thus for all mathematical models theories are formed by isolating some natural phenomena and taking in to consideration only a few important things. But no model can ever describe natural phenomena completely as they are approximations of reality. Hence Einstein says "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality".
As scientific development progressed we came to know about more and more things about nature which invalidated some of our old theories.
for e.g. :-
The belief that we earlier had that time is absolute is not valid today. It may applicable for us most of the times as we don’t see objects travelling by light of speed everyday :-)
Time is relative to every observer. The impact of this statement is very huge on our concepts but it’s hard to imagine and think about it. If time is realtive, what are past future and present? Are these just concepts in our mind ?
Similar to time space is also relative. (This very queer to imagine)
Also earlier scientist thought everything in universe is made of some basic building block i.e. Atoms protons neutrons, electrons (Yes I remember I learned this) which is also not true as we know mass and energy are interconvertible.
Then we have wave particle duality. So the electron in an atom show tendencies to exist at certain places with a probability but we can t be sure of it. So the solids which we think are full of some material are actually having atoms with large gaps of space in them and all mass in the centre with the electrons showing tendencies to exist somewhere in their orbits.(How does this sound?)
All of these are enough to make the ground below us break.
He used a very nice analogy to relieve us from the concept of opposites to show that they are different sides of same coin as below
If we have a pendulum moving in a circular path and we project this on a line we get its image to be moving from extreme to another. Whereas if we see the same thing with respect to a circle, there is no extreme as such.
Or If we cut a circular disk (3-Dimensional) by a plane (2 Dimensional) we get two pieces on extreme ends where in reality they were the parts of the same disk.
If this is true what are good/ bad, sorrow/ joy poverty/richness etc? They must be the same things, right?
And just like projecting a 3-dimensional thing on 2 dimensions makes it look entirely different , what we see are projections of reality in time-space (and god knows how many dimensions) in to our 3 dimensional world which don’t give us exact picture of reality.
And then he says in the book that while doing any scientific experiment we as observer participate in the experiment and have an effect on the results. It is impossible to isolate any experiment. And hence universe is a complicated web of interconnected things where we can’t cannot separate and analyze things. That way we only form maps of territory and later on may confuse it for the real territory.
The Indian mystics had already realized this and hence they did not put too much emphasis on analytical / rational thinking like in the west. They also considered the intuitive knowledge.
Even scientists know the value of intuitive knowledge that comes to us in flash of a second and not after careful and analytical thinking.
For e.g
Watson and Crick’s DNA helix model- They were not able to find this structure even after hours of thinking and got it when they left it there and went out for a stroll.
OR Archimedes who got his famous law while taking a dip in his bath-tub.
Although Indian mystics did not over emphasize rational thinking they did not neglect it either. They had achieved great heights in these sciences too. (Like chemistry,pharmacy,architecture etc)
But whenever they spoke of this ultimate reality they use lots of paradoxes use myths or many times frankly pronounce that reality is simple indescribable in any language and one has to experience it personally.
In the words of the Upanishads,
“What is soundless, touchless, formless, imperishable, likewise tasteless, constant, odourless, without beginning, without end, higher than the great, stable- By discerning That, one is liberated from the mouth of death. “
Knowledge which comes from such an experience is called ‘absolute knowledge’
Well, now I will stop here. More on this in a later post may be. Hope you enjoy reading just as I did writing it:-)
Note :- All images are taken from the book
