The complete seeking the complete
Science has relentlessly diversified into various established and emerging modalities to seek answers for the hows whats whens and wheres of this phenomenal creation.These questions are yielding answers, which keep evolving and refining as do our investigative tools The answers paradoxically seem to generate further questions and the plot keeps thickening. Scientific researchand technological progress amplify the range of our sensory perception to investigate the realm of the micro, and also open a window into the vast universe. These advances give the impression of getting tantalisingly close to the truth .
This euphoria is aborted by realising that what seemed like the ultimate answer is actually a new set of questions. " Fractals" discovered by Mandelbrot, are similar patterns repeating themselves at higher orders of dimension. If you magnify a fine area of fractal structure, you get increased information in proportion to the new scale. Thus, the world not only looks different to the observers at different scales, it also measures differently. In every day language, this means that the deeper your understanding of a complex picture, the more meaningful nuances you can notice in it.
Science has sharpened the tools of reductionism and permitted deeper access into the microcosm. It is hyper fractioning the tangible to the point of intangibility.
The monochromatic reductionist approach of scientific enquiry may eventually have to metamorphose into a spectrum to throw light on the "why " of this phenomenal creation.The ultimate solution and understanding of the "what and how" make the "why "more pertinent and inevitable. The anthropic principle suggests that intelligent consciousness which could comprehend the universe was the objective of creation. Quantum physics underlined the importance of the observer to validate the observed. It has to widen it's scope to authenticate the observer in this game of hide and seek where any phenomenon ceases to exist in the absence of the observer. A strictly epistemological approach may explain the modus operandi of creation but it will fall despicably short of providing a rationale for creation. The "why" coerces scientific endeavour to introspect and realise the worthlessness of it's fangs of enquiry if the venom of how, what where and when is replaced by a hypnotic potion of why.
Science is too egoistic to question it's own existence. It is too preoccupied in preening it's feathers and marvelling at their splendour. It has the arrogance of " my way or the highway". The conceit of tangibility blinds scientific thought ; a veritable train of intelligence chugging along on the track of logic blissfully unaware why it began the journey in the very first place.
Often times, rationalist reductionism gives the illusion of uncovering the truth. But this truth is relative to the system attempting to uncover it. The absolute truth includes the seeker. This unbroken wholeness in which, and through which we exist was brillantly captured by Gödel in the proof of his celebrated Theorem: it is possible to make true statements within a particular system that cannot be proved by use of the elements and logic of that system. This is simply because the system under consideration is organically interconnected with some larger system, which by itself is dissolved into another greater than it, and so on.. The part can never understand the whole.The search for the elusive Higgs Boson is in effect the search for what gives matter its tangibility and this is perceived by the intangible consciousness. As the adage goes, beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, tangibility may lie in perception and not be an apriori measurable attribute of the perceived.
Chaos and Complexity entirely deniy the idea of analyzability of the world into separated parts. Parts simply do not exist.the Whole consists of Wholes.
purnamadah purnamidam 'That is complete, this is complete'.
purnat purna mudachyate - 'From that completeness comes this completeness'
purnasya purnamadaya - If we take away this completeness from that completeness'
purnameva vashishyate: 'Only completeness remains.'
This is a quote from Upanishads.
The ultimate truth may be a state of oneness (Advaita - Nonduality) , an assimilative philosophy that realises the wholeness of the part while scientific enquiry will persist with reductionism of the whole into smaller wholes.
Dr Deepak M. Ranade
(The author a Consultant Neurosurgeon, is the co-organiser of the first national conference on Non-duality held by World Peace Center, Alandi, MAEER'S ,MIT Pune on the 30th and 31 Jan 2012.) Details on www.neuroconsciousness.blogspot.com
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