Documentos de Académico
Documentos de Profesional
Documentos de Cultura
TF
*
FPT leading to serious distortion of the spirit of the conveyed message in
any context), unequivocally expressed, in their respective ways, by all these travelers, called scientist (named after the
rules-book they follow) of both earlier and later period, verges on special kind of, what, in all reasonableness may perhaps
be called spiritual/mystic/religious feeling at personal level, before glimpses of the overwhelming, impenetrable
(i.e. impenetrable beyond gross forms) mystery, vastness a vastness without end surrounding the regions, they
could come in contact with at any given moment of time. This spiritual/mystic/religious feeling, as the travelers
themselves point out , has got nothing to do with organized religion per se of any denomination, no matter whether the
traveler concerned had formal allegiance (many had) to any of this denomination. One such expression, found in a letter:
The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein lies the
germ of all art and all true science. To know that what is impenetrable for us
really exists and manifests itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty,
whose gross forms alone are intelligible to our poor faculties this in this this sense
sense alone, I rank knowledge, this feeling that is the core of the true religious
sentiment. In, and myself among profoundly religious men.
Albert Einstein, letter to Hoffman and Dukas, 1946; fromT HTTUAlbert Einstein the Human SideUTH,, Helen Dukas
and Banesh Hoffman, eds., Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 198
A variant of the above, found in an article is as below :
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental
emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. .. It was the
experience of mysteryeven if mixed with fearthat engendered religion. A
knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of
the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most
primitive forms are accessible to our minds it is this knowledge and this emotion tlat
constitute true religiosity; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.
TP
*
PT In common parlance, unfortunately, the word modesty, which has got more to do with exemplary social behaviour than anything else, is
often (unknowingly) interchangeably used with the word humility, which (like, say, joy), has got nothing to do with social behaviour and is a
spontaneous felt state of mind, expressed or not, one cannot help having, while passing through some particular experience. In this sense,
humility is felt before presence of something, experienced as invitingly and intensely overwhelming. For example, it so happens that in the
persona of one of the pioneer travelers, Isaac Newton, this difference surfaced into bold relief. Newton, as the available contemporary records
(e.g., vide, TA_Brief_History_Of_TimeT by TStephen_Hawking_T) unmistakably show, was not particularly known for modesty! But the
few glimpses he gained during his travel into the kind of regions being alluded to in this note, generated that spontaneous feeling of humility,
expressed in the two fragments cited above (P.4) and below(P.7).
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Picker:Subhas Chandra Ganguly 7
Albert Einstein, The World as I See It, Ideas And Opinions , Page 11, Rupa& Co.,Kolkata,1989
Another expression from another traveler of the same community (scientist):
It is a great pleasure to contemplate the universe, beyond man, to contemplate
what it would be like without man, as it was in a great part of its long history .. . To
view life as part of this universal mystery of greatest depth is to sense an experience
which is very rare and very exciting . Well, these scientific views end in awe and
mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty Some will tell me that I have just
described a religious experience. Very well, you may call it what you will
T HTRichard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-ScientistH
A third, and again a partly borrowed, oft cited (beginning right from school textbooks) and very eloquent expression,
though, as another above, is often quoted for same wrong reason, viz., as an evidence of modesty:
..to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and
diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell
than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
T HTTIsaacTH Newton, as cited in Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac NewtonT T(1855) by Sir David
Brewster (Volume II. Ch. 27). Compare: "As children gath'ring pebbles on the shore",T HTTUJ ohn MiltonUTH,T TParadise Regained,
Book iv. Line 330. (H http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton)
These are very akin to what has been felt by travelers from altogether a different world, viz. poets and other
littrateur. For example, following are two such lines (in translation from original in Bengali) from one of Rabindranath
Tagores songs:
Amidst the vast universe, vast sky and the eternity
I, a mere mortal, roam around alone, roam in wonder
[Free English translation by S.C.Ganguly, the present Picker.For Original in Bengali, Vide:, 1. in End Note 1, ( P.26-28)]
A few more lines(in translation from original in Bengali), in the same spirit from the same Tagore:
The sky, studded with suns, and stars, the universe throbbing with life,
In its very midst I have found my song,
So, my songs swell up in wonder
[Free English translation by S.C.Ganguly, the present Picker.For Original in Bengali, Vide:, 2. in End Note 1, ( P.26-28)]
Below are two more passages ( again in translation from original in Bengali) this time in prose, of similar import
from a novel, Aparaajita (meaning, unvanquished) by a Bengali novelist (Bibhuti Bhusan Bandopadhyay) of earlier
era, i.e., in the earlier part of last century. He is known particularly for his deep feeling of kinship with nature, as reflected
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Picker:Subhas Chandra Ganguly 8
in, and scattered all over his writings. The passages contain the reveries of Apu, the central character of the novel
back for a short while to his ancestral village Nischindipur, decades after his family had left it during his early childhood.
His mind became filled up with an indescribable joy, hope, feeling, and mystery.
His hope is throbbing with life. That hope brings in the message of immortal and
eternal life through the bitter smell of sun-burnt branches of the wild creepers.
That hope is heard in the whistling sound from the flapping wings of the flying
teals in the blue emptiness. No body has the power to deprive him from the right
to that life . .He is the soul on travel from birth to birth. His move is along
the pathless path, from far to faraway and new everyday. This vast blue sky,
countless star world, great bear, milky way, the world of Andromeda, nebula
this centuries and millennia is the walking path from him . That great life,
untouched by death, is spread unaffected before all, as the great ocean was
before the Newton - let that motion along the path of limitless time remain
unobstructed for whole of human race across the ages.
[Free English translation by S.C.Ganguly, the present Picker.For Original in Bengali, Vide:, 3. in End Note 1 (P..26-28),]
These days, whenever he sits in solitariness, it appears to him that this earth has a
spiritual face. Because of being born amidst its fruits and flowers, its light and
shadow and because of close acquaintance with the same from the very
childhood, its this real face escapes our attention. No matter that it is made of
visible and audible stuff, the truth that it is totally unknown to us and of utmost
mystery and that its every grain is covered with endless complexity do not come
under our notice, just like that, all of a sudden.
[Free English translation by S.C.Ganguly, the present Picker. For Original in Bengali, Vide:, 4. in End Note 1 (P..26-28),]
Like in a few examples presented below, in many a fragment from these travelers there is direct reference to
their feeling of what they themselves designate as religious:
a third stage of religious experience .: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very
difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it ... it
can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology . In my view, it is the most
important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those
who are receptive to it. We thus arrive at a conception of the relation of science to
religion very different from the usual one I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is
the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research. Those whose acquaintance with
scientific research is derived chiefly from its practical results easily develop a completely
false notion.A contemporary has said, not unjustly, that in this materialistic age of
ours the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people..The
individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous
order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. Individual
existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he wants to experience the universe as a
single significant whole. The beginnings of cosmic religious feeling already appear at an
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Picker:Subhas Chandra Ganguly 9
early stage of development, e.g., in many of the Psalms of David and in some of the
Prophets. Buddhism, ..
The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling,
which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no
church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the
heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious
feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists,
sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and
Spinoza are closely akin to one another. Albert Einstein: Science
and Religion
For a parallel to the lesson of atomic theory . . . we must turn to those kinds of
epistemological problems with which already thinkers like the Buddha and Lao Tzu
have been confronted, when trying to harmonize our position as spectators and
actors in the great drama of existence. Niels Bohr, BIOLOGY AND ATOMIC PHYSICS 13. Address at the
Physical and Biological Congress in memory of Luigi Galvani, Bologna, October 1937.
The general notions about human understanding . . . which are illustrated by
discoveries in atomic physics are not in the nature of things wholly
unfamiliar, wholly unheard of, or new. Even in our own culture they have a
history, and in Buddhist and Hindu thought a more considerable and central
place. What we shall find is an exemplification, an encouragement, and a
refinement of old wisdom. Julius Robert Oppenheimer TU Science and the Common
Understanding (Simon And Schuster, Inc. New York, ,1954)Page 9-10
Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is
manifest in the laws of the Universe a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face
of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a
religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different of the religiosity of someone more
nave Albert Einstein: THE HUMAN SIDE, new glimpses from his
archives (HTUhttp://www.websophia.com/faces/einstein.htmlUTH)
In the history of science, ever since the famous trial of Galileo, it has repeatedly been claimed that
scientific truth cannot be reconciled with the religious interpretation of the world. Although I am now
convinced that scientific truth is unassailable in its own field, I have never found it possible to dismiss
the content of religious thinking as simply part of an outmoded phase in the consciousness of
mankind, a part we shall have to give up from now on, Thus in the course of my life I have repeatedly been
compelled to ponder on the relationship of these two regions of thought, for I have never been able to doubt
the reality of that to which they point.T T
HTUWerner HeisenbergUTHTU,UT TUScientific and Religious TruthUT (1973) (TUAcross the Frontiers, UTchapter 26-
page 213 -TU)UT
TU(UHUhttp://www.google.co.in/search?tbm=bks&hl=en&q=Scientific+and+Religious+Truth%2C+HEISENBE
RG&btnGUHU=])
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Picker:Subhas Chandra Ganguly 10
Widespread mind-set of many of us, the well meaning, devoted science-lovers, perhaps is, in its mildest form,
somewhat analogous to the claim, scientific truth cannot be reconciled with the religious interpretation, as
Heisenberg refers to, (and obviously does not share) in the fragment, cited just above. Actual expression of this mind-set
is many a time much harsher, and almost allergic to the very word religion. It may be noted that this mind-set, as the
fragments above (more can be found under two sections mentioned at the beginning) show, does not seem to tally with
perceptions, coming as they do, from some of those, looked upon among the pathfinders, heralding the scientific age. So,
these latter perceptions perhaps deserve some attention of us, the well meaning science-lovers TPF and , who can say
whether the same may even induce to some re-thinking on the issue.
*
It must be added in parenthesis, that there need not be any misunderstanding on this score that this possible or
proposed lack of irreconcilability between scientific and religious perception, as the fragments above allude to, by any
means be interpreted as any one of the two can be the substitute for other in this journey of exploration of the mysterious
regions of the unknown. Each has its own method, place and field of enquiry, and in their very nature are irreplaceable
by the other.
As perhaps is to be only expected that from this kind of journey by the travelers to grasp the ungraspable (in
Bengali, adharaake dharar chesta karaa), there are likely to be unmistakable differences in perceptions, with
respect to the particularities of shades, emphasis and glimpses from different traveler as reflected in different fragments
fragments, throbbing with live, intensely personalized experience allowing for no grey uniformity across the same.
And beyond that, there remain unresolved differences, some quite serious (mentioned above), some marginal, in
interpreting the apparent glimpses/insights arrived at relating to various aspects of the cosmos, of which we are a part.
The fragments here are not meant to reflect or cover these ongoing debates within the community of the travelers
except in the form of perhaps some brief/condensed references or vague allusion here and there.
Besides, there may sometimes be some mildly self-contradictory statements from same traveler, in terms of
generalities too. It needs to be reminded that, with respect to some specifics related to nature, replacing, on the basis of
later observations, ones earlier expressed understanding by newly arrived one(s) or re-adopting once rejected
understanding is, as pointed out by Schrdinger (Page 1 above & 11 below and) not self-contradiction. Also, there
are sometimes slips in historical allusion. These last two characteristics, with perhaps somewhat eyebrow raising look
about them are simply human and remind us the obvious, often missed, that travelers/explorers, however pioneering their
journey in their respective fields , are no more and no less than human beings, like any of us, and are not endowed with any
*
In the context of this paragraph, starting with Widespread mind-set and the related fragments above the paragraph, two End
Notes: 2 & 3 under the headings, Private, inner world of religion vs. institutionalized denominational religion (P.28)
& Group violence/persecution is not a monopoly of groups with a sense of religious identities(P.29), ,respectively,
can be seen below this Personal Note.
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Picker:Subhas Chandra Ganguly 11
god-like quality of omniscience, perfection, infallibility, and the like even in their respective field of journey and far from
claiming any such impossible non-human virtues, they were at pains to repeatedly emphasize the opposite, viz., their
limitations, as the fragments show .
But, notwithstanding all these variations, a common presence of some identifiable groups of perceptions/ideas
sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit cutting across all these fragments, can perhaps be hardly missed. Only some of
these commonalities (in broadest sense), the present picker felt to have perceived and is struck with so far, are sought
to be covered through the fragments presented together under two sections . A few among these commonalities are
being alluded to in this note, in a rather free flowing manner. The picker intends to present in future, an Appendix, giving
relatively more systematic summing up of the same (commonalities), as he understands it at present. But he is not sure of
acquiring the necessary drive for the same. It bears repetition that these fragments are aimed at presenting some
aspects of the general message emerging out of the insights and not insights in their specificities (in the form of
what are called laws/theories), except as contextual allusion, related to different regions of physical reality ventured
into by the explorers.
The, impression, as mentioned in the beginning and which bears repetition, these fragments/records seem to
convey (at least to the present picker) is one of repeated, unending journeys/attempts , figuratively speaking , to grasp
what is ever suggestive but ever eluding to the human mind and what is subject, as if, to play of light and shadow. This
inbuilt eluding character seems to have been felt, by the explorers, to be strongly alluring rather than frustrating and/or
discouraging. Nor this running after the same was felt to be in vain. On the contrary, the records are saturated with
profound sense of fascination with this eluding character, beckoning ever more powerfully the travelers in renewing
their journey again and again, stumbling, here and there, now and then , on ever fresh glimpses, felt by them to be the
shadow of the reality i.e. mystery, behind. The following fragments, alluding to these characteristics, does not contain
in the least, any tone of disappointment on such counts:
In the world of physics we watch a shadowgraph performance of familiar life. .. It is all symbolic, and as
a symbol the physicist leaves it. . . . The frank realizationion that physical science is concerned with a
world of shadows is one of the most significant of recent advances."
A. Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, Introduction (Macmillan, 1929) page. xiv-xv.
The essential fact is simply that all the pictures which science now draws of nature, and which alone seem
capable of according with observational fact, are mathematical pictures. . . . They are nothing more than
pictures-fictions if you like, if by fiction you mean that science is not yet in contact with ultimate reality. Many
would hold that, from the broad philosophical standpoint, the outstanding achievement of twentieth-century
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Picker:Subhas Chandra Ganguly 12
physics is B
* * * * * * *
B the general recognition that we are not yet in contact with ultimate reality. To speak in
terms of Plato's well-known simileTPF
FPT , we are still imprisoned in our cave, with our backs to the light, and can
only watch the shadows on the wall.
James Jeans, The Mysterious Universe (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2009 Page-111, First published 1930),
(HTUhttp://depositfiles.com/files/pydzv886zUTH)
The reality we can put into words is never reality itself. We have to remember that what we observe is
not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.T T
T HTTUWerner HeisenbergUTH,T HTTUPhysics and PhilosophyUTH
(HTUhttp://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/64309.Werner_HeisenbergUTH)
..not only are we free to drop a long-accepted principle when we think we have found something more
convenient from the viewpoint of physical research, but that we are also free to re-adopt the rejected
principle when we find we have made a mistake in laying it aside. This mistake may easily come to light with
the discovery of new facts. A developing empirical science need not and must not be afraid of being taunted
with a lack of consistency between its announcements at subsequent epochs.
TUErwin Schrdinger , Science And The Human Temperament, Page : :93-94)UT
"He who finds a thought that lets us penetrate even a little deeper into the eternal mystery of nature has been
granted great grace. .."
TUAlbert Einstein, 1925, response to the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society
"Suddenly Einstein looked upward at the clear skies and said, 'We know nothing about it all. All our knowledge is
but the knowledge of schoolchildren. The real nature of things that we shall never know, never.' "
TUTo Dr. Chaim Tschernowitz, one of Einstein's many visitors (1931)
UTI think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.
Albert Einstein, Atlantic Monthly, November 1945, (http://www.websophia.com/faces/einstein.html)
TP
PT Plato's Cave, or the Parable of the Caveis an allegory presented by the Greekphilosopher Plato in his work The Republic to illustrate "our
nature in its education and want of education" (514a). It is written as a dialogue between Plato's brother Glaucon and Plato's mentor Socrates
[469 to 399 B.C.] ..Plato[430 to 347 BC].. has Socrates [put to death, earlier for his heretic views, through self-administered poison by
Athenian state of the time] describe a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all (continued to footnote on next page)
(continued from footnote in previous page) of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing
in front of a fire behind them, and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows. According to Plato's Socrates, the shadows are as close as the
prisoners get to viewing reality. He then explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand
the shadows the wall do not make up reality at all, as he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the mere shadows seen by the
prisoners. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave).
But apparently, as the fragments indicate, latest realization of the freed prisoners, i.e., scientists, (appearing on 1900 A.C), themselves is
that their own vision is also incapable of going beyond shadows.
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Picker:Subhas Chandra Ganguly 13
Apparently, if not evidently, these travels according to the above rules-book, were/are aimed not at
demystification, a term often alluded to through widely prevalent misunderstanding, it appears - as the goal of
science, but at what is only humanly possible and richly rewarding, viz., going deeper and deeper into what all the
travelers, in their respective way, has depicted as eternal mystery. There is unmistakable, or so it seems to the current
picker, reverberation of the yearning spirit, as reflected above, in the following lines(in translation from original in
Bengali) coming from sources, sometimes supposed to be almost of contrary character:
No matter who of you say what, my brothers, I want the deer made of gold
Yes, I do want the gold deer with its restless dancing feet, and captivating demeanour
Oh! it startles, evades the eye and cant be tied,
If ever within reach, it dashes out, gives the slip, and confounds the eye,
I shall run behind in vain, no matter whether I get it or not,
Lost within myself, I vanish away in fields and forests
[Free English translation by S.C.Ganguly, the present Picker.For Original in Bengali, Vide:, 5. in End Note 1 (P.25-28),]
The lines are from the pen of a traveler of different credential, not bound by the rules-book, mentioned above.
These are from a Tagores song.
While on this, it surfaces to the pickers mind that perhaps this awareness can be of some help to us to become
more open-ended rather than close-ended towards possible breadth of human understanding on other fields and
possible wider variety of approaches from which many other understandings on these other fields may emerge. And this
open-endedness can help us to come out of having a blind, indiscriminate, advanced (i.e. before going deeper), all-
knowing, sneering, dismissive attitude towards all other claimed branches of human understanding, with no claim of
scientific method to back the same, even when we know nothing about these branches and the corresponding approaches,
beyond hearsay. In any such claimed branches, one happens to know nothing about; I dont know rather than offhand
dismissive attitude would perhaps be the more appropriate one.
In this context it is perhaps not out of place to remember one oft cited dialogue from the mouth of Hamlet in the
drama (Act 1, scene 5), named after the same character, by Shakespeare, ..There are more things in heaven and earth,
Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. It is redundant to emphasize that there is not the least hints, explicit or
implicit, here that even in cases these other claimed branches and/or approaches may have any validity (known or
unknown) in their respective field of knowledge, these can at all and under any circumstances be considered to be an
alternative/substitute to understanding, reached through scientific method. And in any case , the dazzling technology of
the day, from its very birth, is exclusively wedded to the approach called scientific method. These claimed other
approaches relate to fields, other than those addressed by purely scientific method
Again, citing the well-known and conscious fraudulent practices of some of the practitioners in such claimed
branches of understanding at the cost of gullible is no acceptable ground for such off hand dismissal beyond saying I
dont know, that is of such branches. Widely known practice of frauds indulged in many otherwise beneficial sub-
branches of scientific knowledge does not lead us, merely on that ground, to reject or shun those sub-branches as
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Picker:Subhas Chandra Ganguly 14
unfounded. For example, in the field of modern medicines, many a drug are released by multinational drug companies in
the market, suppressing or being vague about the possible adverse side-effects of these drugs. On rare occasions, when
they are caught, that becomes big news. These may cause justified public campaign against concerned companies but
usually not a general drug boycott call. One is likely get considerable materials on such like issues by searching in the
Internet.
In continuation of the pictures-fictions or shadowgraph aspect of the communicated insights, mentioned a
little earlier, glimpses, as expressed/communicated through words, are, as the travelers emphatically point out,
necessarily of approximate, provisional, uncertain as well as interactive (between the observed and the observer),
i.e. subjective, in contrast to widely presumed detached, objective character. For example, the few fragments
below reflect or hint at some of these feelings, perceptions and realizations:
I have approximate answers and possible beliefs in different degrees of certainty about different things, but
I'm not absolutely sure of anything, and of many things I don't know anything about, but I don't have to know
an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe
without having any purpose which is the way it really is as far as I can tell possibly. It doesn't frighten me.
RichardTU Feynman, during an interview in BBC's Horizon program (1981).
HTUhttp://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_FeynmanUTH
What we call scientific knowledge today is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty some
most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain.
TU RICHARD_FEYNMANUT, The Meaning of It All
Uncertainty being alluded to above, relates to all fields of insights in general and in that sense all pervading and so
perhaps may be termed as most basic and covering travels in all regions of deeper reality. But there is another category
of uncertainty, which, though equally basic, is specific to a particular realm of reality, which came into full focus only in
later phase i.e., 20th century, as mentioned earlier. This relates to the sub-atomic world, where the very statement about
something happening or not happening in that realm is always in terms of probability and never with any degree of
certainty and the very act of observation changes some aspect(s) of the reality, as the two fragments below seem to
convey:
In the experiments about atomic events we have to do with things and facts, with phenomena that are just as
real as any phenomena in daily life. But the atoms or the elementary particles themselves are not as' real;
they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or fact
T Werner Heisenberg, Physics & Philosophy,( ALLEN & UNWIN, LONDON, 1971) Page-160
Nothing is more important about the quantum principle than this, that it destroys the concept of the world as
sitting out there, with the observer safely separated from it B
* * * * *.
B It is up to him to decide whether he shall
measure position or momentum. To install the equipment to measure the one prevents and excludes his installing
the equipment to measure the other. Moreover, the measurement changes the state of the electron. The
A NOTE SCIENCE PICKED UP FRAGMENTS OF PERCEPTIONS
Picker:Subhas Chandra Ganguly 15
universe will never afterwards be the same. To describe what has happened, one has to cross out that old word
observer and put in its place the new word participator. In some strange sense the universe is a
participatory universe.
J. A. Wheeler, in J. Mehra (ed.), The Physicists Conception of Nature, p. 244[Quoted in Tao of Physics, by
F.Capra., Page 153, Chap. 10 :The Unity Of All Things,
What is more is that in case of quantum theory, which has provided us with many of the tools of modern
technology, there are, depending on the philosophical disposition, many a contending interpretations, without any overall
consensus among the scientists preoccupied with the theme, of the same mathematical formulation and experimental
observations ! The situation has been put in a very simple manner thus:
Nobody questions what the theory predicts, only what it means.
TU Paul Davies, - Introduction to Heisenberg,_Physics_and_philosophy(,Penguin edition,2000) Page:(viii-xi)
It may be reminded that both the approximation and the uncertainty in general about all basic insights and
quantum uncertainty in particular, reflected in the above fragments are, as the fragments unambiguously points out,
intrinsic or inherent to the very nature of things, and are not due to any current practical limits of human capacity,
which, with improvement of technology may perhaps be at least partially outgrown here and there in future.
But, a little and necessary diversion is called for here it needs to be kept in mind that, there is another kind
of uncertainty/approximation, which cannot be called intrinsic or inherent in nature in the above sense . This
uncertainty/approximation is related to practical steps to be taken on the basis of derived inferences from the basic
insights, and not directly related to those basic insights per se. This kind of uncertainty/approximation surfaces in the
form of practical (in contrast to innate) limitation in human capacity or technological limitation to gather all the
information relating to all the contributing factors or variables (including those which may sometimes be identified),
required to make exact prediction about any observed phenomenon. One such example is the well-known uncertainty in
weather forecast. Another example is prediction of stock prices in Stock market. There are others.
In continuation of the above diversion, there is still another kind of closely similar uncertainty or approximation,
originating from the same source as above, viz., practical or technological limitations. This relates to the situations when
under a well defined practical condition, in spite all clearly identifiable/controllable/observable/measurable contributing
factors, technically termed as assignable cause(s) being same, the resultant outcome is uncertain due to collective
intervention of innumerable ,what are technically termed as Chance causes. By Chance causes are meant those small
contributing factors, which, though guessable within a limit, cannot be, either at present or in future accounted for
separately . A well known, although trivial or playful, example of this kind is one of predicting the result of tossing an
unbiased coin by the same person in any particular throw. Here are two more examples, not so trivial or playful in
nature: 1)exact measurement of any measurable attribute (e.g. length, weight) of any object cannot be known for certain;
2) Confirmation or otherwise of guessed relationship between two (or more) phenomena or two or more aspects of same
phenomenon (represented by symbols, called variables), cannot be achieved with 100% certainty on the basis of their
respective quantifiable results. Under such situations there is no other alternative but to look for some course of action
A NOTE SCIENCE PICKED UP FRAGMENTS OF PERCEPTIONS
Picker:Subhas Chandra Ganguly 16
which can be of use, with reasonable degree of confidence, even if allowing, in the process, for some possibility of mistake
or error, however small. A separate, whole subject called Statistics, mainly speaking through mathematical language
and with very satisfactory record of performance, has grown to address these specific kind of situations, though the
general term Statistical , is used to cover all situations of uncertainty (including uncertainty of intrinsic or inherent
nature) as mentioned above
After these small diversions, it needs to be emphasized that this personal note and the fragments (under two
sections, mentioned at the beginning) this note relates to, are primarily about the inherent, basic uncertain and
approximate character of all human understanding at the most fundamental level, alluded to in this note, and not about
the kind of uncertainty/approximation mentioned in last two paragraphs.
Reverting back to where we left before this passing diversion, the limitation or inability of our day-to-day language
to directly communicate the hidden reality becomes particularly obvious in sub-atomic i.e. quantum world as the
following fragments from travelers in that region point out :
.the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which
can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.T TQuantum theory provides us with a striking
illustration of the fact that we can fully understand a connection though we can only speak of it in images
and parables.T T
T HTTUWerner HeisenbergUTH , PHYSICS AND BEYOND, ( Harper & Row,) Page- 210 (HTUhttp://bookos.org/dl/580697/ad7b39UTH ;
HTU http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/64309.Werner_HeisenbergUT )
We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry.T TThe poet, too, is not
nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections.
TUNiels_BohrUT In his first meeting withT HTTWerner HeisenbergTHT Tin early summer 1920, in response to
questions on the nature of language, as reported inT TDiscussions about LanguageT T(1933); quoted inT TDefense
Implications of International IndeterminacyT T(1972) by Robert J. Pranger, p. 11, andT TTheorizing Modernism : Essays in
Critical TheoryT T(1993) by Steve Giles, p. 28(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Niels_BohrH)
It is true that the whole scientific inquiry starts from the familiar world and in the end it must return to the
familiar world; but the part of the journey over which the physicist has charge is in foreign territory. Until recently
there was a much closer linkage; the physicist used to borrow the raw material of his world from the
familiar world, but he does so no longer. His raw materials are electrons, quanta, potentials, Hamiltonian
functions, etc., We do not even desire ..to "explain" the electron.
A. Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, Introduction p. xiii. (Macmillan, 1929)
Lest there should be any misapprehension born out of our widely held, conditioned, habitual, misleading view, which
A NOTE SCIENCE PICKED UP FRAGMENTS OF PERCEPTIONS
Picker:Subhas Chandra Ganguly 17
habitually value science , as contrasted to non-science , for formers supposedly objectivity, exactness and the like , it
needs to be clearly realized that this real, inevitably approximate, subjective/interactive, (as contrasted to
supposedly objective in absolute sense) aspects of the basic insights, when properly internalized is not likely to lessen
in the least the perceived immense worth and importance of science in shaping and transforming our life, though
whether inevitably or always for the better is a moot question .
The case, in all probability, is likely to turn just the opposite. Awareness about these aspects may provide the
much needed appropriate perspective and thus may help us to outgrow our acquired and somewhat habitual and
delusional mindset in this respect. And in the process, this awareness can open our eyes (which admittedly is better than
closed eyes!) in thousand and one ways and thus enrich us further through appreciation of the possible profoundly
transforming, indispensable role of science without any substitute for what it is really worth rather than for what it is
not. That is also likely to be of help to realize its proper place in the long march of mankind through millennia in search of
deeper and deeper understanding of the very universe, to which it belongs and of which it forms just a miniscule part .
Also, this may be of some help to us of to outgrow certain unhelpful unhelpful to ourselves, that is mind-set,
which misses the beauty of subjective as against the detached coldness of the objective, the kind of beauty which,
within a limit, can be compared with what is found in the world of art and literature. Yes, within a limit only, for, in the
arena of science, ultimate formulation of any fundamental insight, even with its subjective aspect, does not, unlike art and
literature, have the freedom to indulge in fantasy in a way which is deliberately meant to go beyond reality, as perceived
within the limits of human faculties.
This is so, notwithstanding the fact and which may sound somewhat paradoxical, that capacity to fantasize on the
way to arrive at the fundamental insights is of substantial importance as one fragment from among these travelers says:
When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant
more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.
TUEINSTEIN UT Atlantic Monthly, November 1945 (HTUhttp://www.websophia.com/faces/einstein.htmlH )
In fact, these fragments and some of the corresponding accounts helped the picker to strengthen his belief
gradually growing over decades that, contrary to his long back earlier acquired understanding, it is, as in the case of art
& literature, intuition, imagination, fantasy and the like and not analysis and logic, which play the pivotal role in
arriving at any humanly possible basic scientific insights. Primary role of analysis and logic (indispensably important in
their proper places) comes later in deriving the details inferences (much larger in volume), put to use in developing many
other branches and the technology, associated with the same, from these basic insights. But even in these latter sub-
fields, the other non-logical attributes and capacities of mind are, under many a situation, likely to play a very crucial role
in developing anything new in those sub-fields. Here are a few fragments communicating such perceptions:
A NOTE SCIENCE PICKED UP FRAGMENTS OF PERCEPTIONS
Picker:Subhas Chandra Ganguly 18
I think that only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts.
Albert Einstein, Michele Besso: Correspondance 1903-1955
There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is
helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.
Albert Einstein, Preface in: Max Planck, Where is science going?
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
Albert Einstein, The Saturday Evening Post, 26 October 1929
(http://www.websophia.com/faces/einstein.html) [For all the three above]
It will not perhaps be out of place to remind ourselves that this lack of objectivity, definitiveness (in the
fundamental insights) in absolute sense is not same as arbitrary/anarchy and that shadowgraph, though not
exactly the reality (as the travellers feels and say), imitates, (and with better and better closeness over time) so to say,
the reality behind the apparent.
And so, though interesting enough, it is perhaps not surprising that despite this necessarily approximate,
shadowgraph, provisional, uncertain character, interwoven with interactive/subjective aspect, of basic insights
into the bottomless depth (or changing the metaphor, borderless expanse) of the universe, inferences further down,
drawn from these starting insights do work in practice, with a surprising degree of definiteness and objectivity at
macro level. This is evident from the continuously expanding branches and sub-branches galore, of applied science, and
the resultant dazzling technology (both beneficial and destructive) , built on the basis of these inferences. It may be re-
emphasized that even in these branches and sub-branches, definiteness is of a surprising degree and is not absolute. A
well-known example within the experience of many of us is diagnostic uncertainty in medical treatment.
Perhaps it is this apparently definitive, certain ,objective character of the derived inferences as borne out by
the applied sciences and dazzling technology, based on these inferences, at macro level, which seem to have somewhat
blinkered the eyes of not only the lay persons, infected with the malady of flaunting their scientific temper, but also
(and even) those of the makers and implementers of the academic curricula (across the world) in sciences, as if ,
disabling the latter by and large, to let the learners become aware about the basically shadowy/approximate character,
interwoven with an element of subjectivity (considered earlier as an absolute domain of art and literature, having nothing
to do with science, considered an epitome of objectivity) of all basic human understanding about deeper reality of
nature/universe, arrived at through scientific method. And thus, fostering in the process, not only a unmistakably
misleading perspective to what they are learning but also considerably reducing the possibility to favour the
development of alert mind and sense of wonder, predisposed towards listening to the whispering, beckoning call from
the vast mysterious unknown, beyond the prefixed boundaries of routine learning and getting enriched in the
process by having, to the extent possible, a feel of the profoundly moving human background to the mass of details
they have to go through (or swallow) during learning.
A NOTE SCIENCE PICKED UP FRAGMENTS OF PERCEPTIONS
Picker:Subhas Chandra Ganguly 19
In the above context, some perceptions of one among these travellers - Albert Einstein about his own
experience as a young learner in the ongoing, from his time till today, system of academic science teaching, comes to
pickers mind:
It is nothing short of a miracle that modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy
curiosity of inquiry. ( Sometimes wrongly cited as I t i s a mi r ac l e t hat c ur i os i t y s ur vi ve s f or mal
e duc at i on)
Said on March 13, 1949 at EVANSTON,(USA), reported on March 13, 1949, the New York
(NY) Times under ASSAILS EDUCATION TODAY; Einstein Says It Is Miracle Inquiry Is Not Strangled
(http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/it_is_a_miracle_that_curiosity_survives_fo
rmal_education/
I soon learned to scent out that which was able to lead to fundamentals and to turn aside from everything else,
from the multitude of things which clutter up the mind and divert it from the essential. The hitch in this was, of
course, the fact that one had to cram all this stuff into ones mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or
not. This coercion had such a deterring effect [upon me] that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the
consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year. In justice I must add, moreover,
that in Switzerland we had to suffer far less under such coercion, which smothers every truly scientific impulse,
than is the case in many another locality.
Albert Einstein , AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES as included in A STUBBORNLY
PERSISTENT ILLUSION THE ESSENTIAL SCIENTIFIC WRITINGS OF ALBERT EINSTEIN, with an introduction
from Stephen Hawkins( RUNNING PRESS, PHILADELPHIA LONDON 2007 P. 345-346)
It needs to be added in this context, that mere inclusion of some routine, purely formula based unavoidable
reference to some of these basic insights, as is the current practice, does not basically alter the above picture, unless
the profound implication of these insights, in terms of our understanding of the universe, is brought into focus
appropriately and integrated into the whole curriculums. Now, this seems to call for a radical re-orientation of the whole
tradition. As an example, one such reference, part of all science curriculums across the planet at higher level, comes to
mind viz. Heisenbergs uncertainty principle and the corresponding mathematical presentation. A comment from a
physicist teacher, sounds appropriate in this context., students learn quantum mechanics prescriptivelyTPF
FPT
The present picker came across these fragments/travelogues by fits and starts, at different times over
decades, the most intense part of this growing familiarity occurring in last 4/5 years or so, i.e., rather late in life. In all
probability, he came across these, not purely by accident but through search, partly conscious, partly unconscious for
something which could address many of his doubts, growing gradually over decades about his strongly held earlier,
almost axiomatic, beliefs, related to what is termed as scientific view, once his life used to revolve around, or so it seems
to him.
TP