LITERATURE- LIGHT AND DELIGHT
79. SCIENCE FICTION TO SCIENCE AS FICTION
Carlyle is said to have remarked that a liar begins by making falsehood appear like truth, and ends by making truth itself appear like falsehood. Often I have thought of the scientists in this vein. In the name of science, they called old insights into question, but now science itself cannot say, with certainty, what it is all about!
Scientists write for each other. What a scientist in one discipline writes is not intelligible to others. Specialisation has become so narrow now. It is wrong to call someone a scientist now: there is a physicist, botanist, biologist, zoologist, yes. Where is a complete scientist who can represent 'science' as such?
No biologist will dare to lecture on physics or chemistry. Yet he will boldly talk on religion- as if he has understood it! What arrogance!
Science is made popular by some great writers and fascinating literature. It is through their writing that the general reader gets some glimpse into the world of new discoveries and theories. Because of the halo attached to science and scientists, he comes to believe whatever they write. It has become the new gospel for him. Yet, most of what is written is speculation, theory, hypothetical. Nothing is final. We do not know what is "the truth" in science- any branch of science. We only know some one's view of what he considers truth! Like some gangs ruling some localities of cities, these scientists control some seats of learning and establish networks to perpetuate their hold. The opinion of the dominant group becomes the orthodoxy in the field.
It is simply impossible for the non-specialist to understand what they talk or write in the name of science. We simply cannot make sense out of it.
On 29 January,2015 , TOI, Bangalore carried the following item:
Now, how many "educated" people can understand what this means? How many non-asteroseismologists among scientists understand this? How many "scientists" from any other faculty can explain the implications of this new discovery?
Yet, we who are non-scientists but are aware of our traditional lore have been aware that our earth is not the only living planet, that our solar system is not the only one, that creation is a continuous process, etc. These scientists have been ridiculing us as superstitious and are now imposing a more absurd, more stupendous superstition on us in the name of "science" which few scientists themselves can understand, outside the system. How to believe that these scientists observed correctly? How to believe that they are telling the truth?
One thing is clear. Science is a serial story, or like the Mega serials we watch on our TVs. There is no finality: Science cannot discover the final truths! It can neither know the first cause! If you ignore these, you can ride the bandwagon of science! Scientists frown upon old dogmas, but merrily go on imposing new ones!
A generation ago, we had great scientists in the true sense, and they were more humble. I quote from one such scientist, a Nobel Laureate. The name is not important. Let us just read what he wrote, over 65 years ago:
Adapted from: 1000 Names of Vishnu by Sri Eknath Easwaran. Explanation of the name Bhuta-Bhavana.Indian Edition published by Jaico, 1997.
As modern science developed, it spread doubt about God and religion. Now it it spreading uncertainty about itself: nothing is final., no one is sure of anything any more!
The problem with scientists is not just that they are not humble but that they are not even honest: they do not openly admit the limitations and conditions to which their observations and theories are subject!
There used to be a class of literature called science fiction. Considering how science itself is developing, beyond all comprehension, of any but the one pursuing it, I wonder whether it is not itself a huge fiction- just someone's thought!
Note:
Update-1.
Just today (1 Feb 2015) there is a news item in TOI, Bangalore edition (p16) announcing: "SCIENTISTS OVERTURN BIG BANG CLAIM". It is an item reproduced from NYT. It says that scientists "have to wait a while longer to find out what kicked it off". I tried to give a gist here, but I can't. It is beyond my comprehension. All I can understand is that there are two groups of scientists, called Bicep and Planck groups, who have now agreed that what was thought to be the most ancient light in the universe has turned out to be interstellar dust, and that scientists "have been wandering in the wilderness for four decades looking for clues to the Beginning." So, the most famous theory in astrophysics is taught without the scientists knowing the beginning! Who knows it is Big Bang or as we say here,in colloquial, just 'bong'!
On 29 January,2015 , TOI, Bangalore carried the following item:
Scientists led by University of Birmingham astero-seismologists have discovered a .....Sun-like star (Kepler-444) hosting five planets with sizes between Mercury and Venus. Kepler-444 was formed 11.2 billion years ago, when the universe was 20% its current age.
Tiago Campante, from University of Birmingham said: " There are far-reaching implications for this discovery. We now know that Earth-sized planets have formed throughout most of the universe's 13.8 billion year history, which could provide scope for existence of ancient life in the galaxy."
Another Professor, Bill Chaplin,said that these discoveries have "fuelled efforts to find other worlds like Earth and other terrestrial planets outside our solar system."
Now, how many "educated" people can understand what this means? How many non-asteroseismologists among scientists understand this? How many "scientists" from any other faculty can explain the implications of this new discovery?
Yet, we who are non-scientists but are aware of our traditional lore have been aware that our earth is not the only living planet, that our solar system is not the only one, that creation is a continuous process, etc. These scientists have been ridiculing us as superstitious and are now imposing a more absurd, more stupendous superstition on us in the name of "science" which few scientists themselves can understand, outside the system. How to believe that these scientists observed correctly? How to believe that they are telling the truth?
One thing is clear. Science is a serial story, or like the Mega serials we watch on our TVs. There is no finality: Science cannot discover the final truths! It can neither know the first cause! If you ignore these, you can ride the bandwagon of science! Scientists frown upon old dogmas, but merrily go on imposing new ones!
A generation ago, we had great scientists in the true sense, and they were more humble. I quote from one such scientist, a Nobel Laureate. The name is not important. Let us just read what he wrote, over 65 years ago:
- no one scientist is capable of mastering all the techniques indispensable to the study of a single human being.
- Reality is not necessarily clear and simple.
- A phenomenon does not owe its importance to the facility with which scientific techniques can be applied to its study.
- Today there are many scientific workers but very few real scientists.
- the increased number of scientific workers their being split up into groups whose studies are limited to a small subject and over-specialisation have brought about a shrinking of intelligence.
- Modern life is opposed to the life of the mind.
- Human beings are not good subjects for scientific investigation.One does not easily find people with identical characteristics.
- The effects of a certain diet, of an intellectual or moral discipline, of political or social changes, are felt but slowly. It is only after a lapse of thirty or forty years that the value of an educational method can be estimated. Inventors of new systems of diet,physical culture, hygiene, education, morals,social economy, are always too early in publishing the success of their own inventions.
- Between the two sexes there are irrevocable differences. And it is imperative to take them into account in constructing the civilised world. The same intellectual and physical training, and the same ambitions should not be given to young girls as to boys.
- Females, at any rate among mammals, seem only to attain their full development after one or more pregnancies. Women who have no children are not so well balanced. The importance to her of her generative function has not been sufficiently recognised. Such function is indispensable to her optimum development. It is therefore absurd to turn women against maternity.
- Modern man has rejected all discipline of his appetites.
- Civilisation has not succeeded, so far,in creating an environment suitable to mental activities. The supremacy of matter and the dogmas of industrial religion have destroyed culture,beauty and morals. The small social groups, possessing their own individuality and traditions, have also been broken up.
- The intellectual classes have been debased by the immense spread of newspapers,cheap literature, radios and cinema. Unintelligence is becoming more and more general in spite of the excellence of the courses given in schools, colleges, and universities. School children and students form their minds on the silly programmes of public entertainments.
- It is not certain that the standardised habits of modern life lead to the optimum development of human beings. We have applied to man concepts belonging to the mechanical world.
- We must liberate ourselves from blind technology.
- We now possess such a large amount of information that its very immensity prevents us from using it properly. In order to be of service, our knowledge must be synthetic and concise.
Today, which of our scientists is capable of dealing with such matter? All they can do is attack religion, which they have neither studied properly, nor practised systematically.They do not understand either matter or the universe fully, and yet they have no humility or shame to talk against God, religion and all that!
Sri Eknath Easwaran, that great teacher, explained beautifully:
Light travels at about 1,86,000 miles per second. We know that fact, yet it is quite another thing to understand it.
Imagine ,as young Einstein did, that you travel at the speed of light. It would take only a second and a quarter to reach the moon.
In eight minutes you would reach the sun.You would take four years to reach the nearest star.
You would travel that way for one hundred thousand years and never get out of the Milky Way.Just imagine the expanse!
Then for two million more years (at the speed of light) it is just empty space, until you reach the nearest neighbouring galaxy. There are believed to be two hundred billion galaxies within the "observable universe", each of them containing perhaps a hundred billion suns.
We still do not get the whole picture- we just cannot absorb what these figures mean.Astronomers are so careful to say "the observable universe" because they never see the whole universe.
Worse still, we are seeing things not as they are but as they were.We are looking quite literally at the past. The Crab nebula represents the remains of a supernova explosion observed by the Chinese astronomers in 1054 AD. But the actual explosion took place about 3000BC! Space and time,bound together,inevitably limit and distort the validity of what we can say about the universe.
In the Hindu scriptures we find the provoking statement that this vast cosmos is one thought of the Lord.That is as long as our universe lasts:one thought!
Adapted from: 1000 Names of Vishnu by Sri Eknath Easwaran. Explanation of the name Bhuta-Bhavana.Indian Edition published by Jaico, 1997.
As modern science developed, it spread doubt about God and religion. Now it it spreading uncertainty about itself: nothing is final., no one is sure of anything any more!
The problem with scientists is not just that they are not humble but that they are not even honest: they do not openly admit the limitations and conditions to which their observations and theories are subject!
There used to be a class of literature called science fiction. Considering how science itself is developing, beyond all comprehension, of any but the one pursuing it, I wonder whether it is not itself a huge fiction- just someone's thought!
Note:
Update-1.
Just today (1 Feb 2015) there is a news item in TOI, Bangalore edition (p16) announcing: "SCIENTISTS OVERTURN BIG BANG CLAIM". It is an item reproduced from NYT. It says that scientists "have to wait a while longer to find out what kicked it off". I tried to give a gist here, but I can't. It is beyond my comprehension. All I can understand is that there are two groups of scientists, called Bicep and Planck groups, who have now agreed that what was thought to be the most ancient light in the universe has turned out to be interstellar dust, and that scientists "have been wandering in the wilderness for four decades looking for clues to the Beginning." So, the most famous theory in astrophysics is taught without the scientists knowing the beginning! Who knows it is Big Bang or as we say here,in colloquial, just 'bong'!
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