Faith
and Science - Dr. Anil Neelakantan
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Hi folks,
KKV,
I could not help laughing listening to the simile
of atheist to the hard disks in MI2 with a suicidal
tendency!!! I didn't mean that they would be destroyed
soon. I was trying to put the message across. I meant
that there would be a moment for such individuals
when they are fed up of such self-indulgence. That's
all. I do agree that science is the best chance that
we have on this matter. But the idea that I would
like to convey is that science may not be good enough
though it is the best we have. For example, an ant
can communicate with its fellow beings using endogenously
produced chemicals and that would suffice their day
to day needs. They cannot even imagine that there
is a form of communication called language and it
can be spread to the remotest part of the globe with
cutting edge technology simply because they don’t
have well formed Broca's and Wernicke's areas with
neural networks linked by the three fasciculi along
the length of the brain. Similarly, it would logical
to think that there would be some better way of doing
things than what we call science and we can't think
of them until we have the potential provided by nature
to decipher it. Can you explain how acupuncture cures
patients? Nature cannot provide a being with all the
26 dimensions of string theory (I use this as the
reference point as this is the best known theory now).
Because if he gets such a capacity he would just take
over the world and can rule all the known forces that
would have controlled him otherwise. Man is now living
in a three dimensional world and every attempt to
make it four by being able to travel along the time
axis to the past/future (time travel) has been a fiasco.
Hope you got my argument now. And we are currently
attempting to decipher the laws of 26 dimensions though
we are limited by the constraints of three. Let me
add a note to this. University of Princeton (Dept
of Anatomy and Neuroscience) has studied the brain
structure of Albert Einstein. He had donated it to
the University where he worked. The results were astonishing.
He had a very short lateral sulcus. That gave him
more grey matter in the occipital and posterior temporal
area. Hence his deeper layers of visual cortex had
connections that a normal individual do not possess.
Hence, he could literally see in multi dimensions
that we could not decipher. It is said that hence
Relativity was only commonsense to him and not the
extra ordinary result of years of toil. And he could
visualize what he said. All his students were able
to follow his classes because he could explain this
in simple terms since he knew it inside out. So biologically
Einstein was smarter than all of us. Similarly last
year f-MRI (functional MRI) scanning of selected few
geniuses at Dept of Neurology, Johns Hopkins University
Hospital showed that they had immense activity and
increased grey matter in their frontal lobe. Though
their abilities would be same as that of any other
individual, the capacity to call for those functions
quickly and the ability to shut the other parts of
their brain out so that the baseline noise would be
low, enabled them to concentrate on their work and
bring out results faster than their peers. So we would
have to evolve into a biologically smart organism
to decipher nature's laws to its fullest extent. Moreover,
it is very likely that such evolution would remain
a mirage because it would be more hazardous to the
environment to have such creatures of immense capacity.
The nature would lose its balance (like what we see
now- the powerful bombs and uncontrolled manipulation
of the environment leading to disruption of the ecosystem).
Hope you got my point now.
It
is often true that scientists are more ardent believers
than the common man is. This is so because they know
that science has always been far from a perfect technique
of logical analysis of the milieu. It has always based
itself on the assumptions of someone or a group of
individuals who are generally regarded as well informed.
Often wildest fantasies of certain individuals have
become reality later on. This may result in thwarting
some of the beliefs that were previously considered
scientific. The belief of the ancient civilizations
that earth was the center of the solar system and
the attempts of the alchemists to produce gold from
other metals were science then. Nevertheless, later
these were jeopardized by the so-called new era of
scientists. Then came those who believed that all
could be explained by dividing the things around into
two forms namely matter and energy. Then they found
that matter of infinitesimally small size did not
obey the laws that they were supposed to! Then came
the quantum theory that explained that matter and
energy were two ends of the same spectra and beautifully
dealt with properties of matter of subatomic size.
To make things even worse Einstein explained that
there are more than three axes in geometry (the fourth
being time axis- and he was considered insane by his
contemporaries). And now it has come to the stage
where we explain things with the vibration of strings
that are of the length of Plank's Constant (h) - The
string theory or the so called unified quantum and
relativity theory which explains things in 26 dimensions
(we started at the 3 dimensions of conventional geometry).
Same is the case with any scientific field. So science
is never static. It is in a state of dynamic equilibrium.
So how can we say that what we call science today
would be real. There is every chance that 200 yrs
from now, we may be considered akin to an exorcist
of the 18th century. The basic question is that are
we smart enough to detect the law of nature. We are
trying to analyse something from within. It would
be like attempting to find the impressions on the
surface of an urn when we are imprisoned inside it.
We would never be able to sort things out until we
detach ourselves from nature and its laws and then
look upon it from a higher paradigm, which is impossible.
We are just not smart enough to decipher the laws
to its fullest extent. Let me state a simple example
- can a monkey learn what an atom is? No… never.
Similarly, we are not intelligent enough to learn
what nature is all about. Hence, an element of uncertainty
would always be in our minds. And we would take refuge
to solve our mysteries by believing in God who could
control nature. I would like to quote Dr Hawking here
,"If God exists and if he lives inside us and
everywhere, is it not true that He should also be
bound by those same laws that pose constraint on us?"
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