Science as Spirituality...

[Bhaskara Narasimhaiah]

Today the science, especially physics, is completely going off the wall; talking about things which don’t sound like science; things that sound so much like science fiction. Men of science are talking about different dimensions of reality existing right here, which are not in their perception. One big manifestation of this today are the two most dominant theories acting as guiding principles behind almost all the fundamental research that’s going on in physics: the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. One describes the ways of the cosmos; another describes or defines the ways of the atomic and the subatomic. But what is really freaking out the scientists is that the general theory of relativity and the quantum theory do not agree with each other - ever. They are diametrically opposed to each other. Or in other words, your conception is that the atomic is working against the cosmic, or the cosmic is working against the atomic. Now this is just absurd, because they are not different and what you call the ‘atomic’ is the building block for the ‘cosmic’. There is no way they can work against each other. But now we have the two theories, and that’s exactly what they suggest. And scientists are aware that this cannot be true. So few spend a lot of time propounding some theories, and it takes fifty years, or a hundred years for others to disprove it. The cycle has been this way forever.

Does reality is beyond comprehension of human mind?
Does our sensory and its supplementary information;our belief system and our sense of logic are just insufficient to understand the ways of the reality?

I request the wise to shed some light on this.......

Bhaskara

[simex]

A chimpanzee is physiologically precluded from understanding something as complex and abstract as calculus. Yet, to the physicist, calculus is a tiny part of the model. Clearly, organisms are limited in their ability to comprehend and , as organisms, it stands to reason that we are limited as well. No matter how much you feel that you could know anything, you would have to know the things you can't know, in order to know that you don't know them.

Luckily, the map is not the terrain. It's possible that the universe is fundamentally simple, and the model is an overly complex abstraction. Einstein believed this, and called physics a "world of shadows" which could only point to the inexplicable.

For instance, an archaeologist might find several bowls during a dig. Seeing that the bowls are a variety of sizes, the archaeologist arranges the bowls in to 3 categories: small, medium, and large. Another organism, with a mind too feeble to hold the three categories, would be seen by the archaeologist as ignorant of the bowl sizing. And yet, this lesser organism may still be able to see the size of the bowls in a single continuum of size; a simpler way of looking at the same thing.

It is a habit of the mind to divide and categorize, and it is this division and categorization that we call knowledge. Yet, knowledge is not necessary to experience. The wolf directly experiences the season's ebb and flow, but he has no knowledge of Fahrenheit or Celsius. Who has the better understanding of temperature, you or the wolf?

So while we may not be able to model everything that occurs in the universe, we may not be able to codify it all, we are still able to experience it. If you believe that things can be known through experience, then reality is well within our grasp, as it is the only object of experience.

Now, as for quantum theory, I wouldn't get too worried. My guess is that we still do not understand the implications of these experiments. Things like the observer effect and waveform collapse are still highly theoretical. The macroscopic and microscopic models don't necessarily have to match, but they need to be describing the same object. A discrepancy is more likely a hole in our knowledge than a hole in reality.