And then I got an education and these reveries disappeared only to come back of late as I begin to pay as much attention to unlearning as I do to learning.
One of the primary aims of modern education is to inculcate rational thinking. And quite rightly. The modern world runs on rationality. Like they say you cannot eat spirituality.
But is it an either or world when it comes to the rational and the spiritual?
Lets compare this dichotomy to the dichotomy between classical and quantum physics.
Classical physics, at whose core are the three laws of Newton, is sufficient to explain the world that we directly observe and underpins most of the rational domains of science and engineering that create the modern reality that we all live in.
Einstein's theory of relativity takes classical physics to the extremes of the observable universe in terms of speed and distance and give us a glimpse of the what lies at the edges of commonplace rationality.
But it is quantum physics, the physics that tries to penetrate the deepest of nature's mysteries to get to the very core fundamentals of reality, that everyday rationality goes only thus far and no further.
I believe quantum physics is the deepest manifestation yet of human thought. Roger Penrose's book "The Road to Reality" will give you a comprehensive introduction of what it is. It is the most entertaining read especially if you give up trying to understand what he is saying and just flow along that mighty river of mathematical genius that has been the evolution of quantum physics (I love reading books written by physicists and cosmologists that explore, for lay readers like me, the deeper reaches of modern physics. Perhaps they are the pleasurable adult counterparts of my childhood reveries).
Sample this from quantum physics. It is the act of observation of a reality that makes reality happens. That is reality is a wave function of probabilities that collapses to particular version of reality upon the act of observation! And why does the probability function collapse to a particular reality? Because it is entangled (or as the quantum physicists call it, quantangled) with another reality that has already been observed in some other part of the space-time. Delicious isn't it?
It is my contention that even a hard-core, stick-in-the-mud rationalist muggle upon reading a well-written account of quantum physics will experience a fleeting glimpse of the spiritual and the untold delights it has to offer. It is because the rationalist cannot deny the strong mathematical and scientific credentials of quantum physics and thus leaves his mind open for the first intimations of the spiritual world to sneak in.
Einstein spent the last years of life struggling and failing to arrive at the Grand Unified Theory that would combine classical and relativistic physics with quantum physics. The struggle continues till date.
Similarly humanity is yet to reconcile fully rationality and spirituality.
However, to my mind, Roger Penrose in "The Road to Reality" shows us a way to reconcile the two (though the reconciliation of the spiritual and rational is not a concern of the book). I had written about this in a post on this blog dated February 1, 2010.
The post is reproduced below:
http://www.hardrainindia.com/2010/02/road-to-reality.html
The Road to Reality
Roger Penrose is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford.
That he is one of the world’s greatest scientists, does not stop him from being a skilled writer who has to his credit lucid books that take the lay person into the fascinating realms of high physics and metaphysics.
His book “The Road to Reality : A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe” lives up to the title while being within the reach of the intelligent and interested lay reader.
His two earlier books:”The Emperor’s New Mind” and “Shadows of the Mind” vividly bring alive the road that Penrose traveled before he could bring himself to write the complete guide to the laws of the universe.
There is a concept in “The Road to Reality” that continues to fascinate me and I go back to it often.
Penrose calls the concept “Three worlds and three deep mysteries”.
The concept is that mathematical existence is different not only from physical existence but also from an existence that is assigned by our mental perceptions.
And yet there are deep and mysterious connections between the three worlds.
Only a small part of mathematics has relevance to the physical world.
The vast preponderance of the activities of mathematicians today has no connection to physics or to any other science.
Implied, I think, in Penrose’s visualization of this connection as reproduced in this post is that the world of mathematics can explain the whole of the physical world.
The second mysterious connection is that the Mental World comes about in certain physical structures that are a small-subset of the physical world (most specifically, healthy, wakeful human brains- and to smaller extent the “brains” of other living things).
Think about the above two mysteries in conjunction with the third mystery which is that the Mathematics World is only a small sub-set of the Mental World and you get a cycle that folds on to itself and gives me, when I meditate on it, a deeper glimpse of reality.
If you don’t hate thinking, take the time to think about it. It could be worth your while. That he is one of the world’s greatest scientists, does not stop him from being a skilled writer who has to his credit lucid books that take the lay person into the fascinating realms of high physics and metaphysics.
His book “The Road to Reality : A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe” lives up to the title while being within the reach of the intelligent and interested lay reader.
His two earlier books:”The Emperor’s New Mind” and “Shadows of the Mind” vividly bring alive the road that Penrose traveled before he could bring himself to write the complete guide to the laws of the universe.
There is a concept in “The Road to Reality” that continues to fascinate me and I go back to it often.
Penrose calls the concept “Three worlds and three deep mysteries”.
And yet there are deep and mysterious connections between the three worlds.
Only a small part of mathematics has relevance to the physical world.
The vast preponderance of the activities of mathematicians today has no connection to physics or to any other science.
Implied, I think, in Penrose’s visualization of this connection as reproduced in this post is that the world of mathematics can explain the whole of the physical world.
The second mysterious connection is that the Mental World comes about in certain physical structures that are a small-subset of the physical world (most specifically, healthy, wakeful human brains- and to smaller extent the “brains” of other living things).
Think about the above two mysteries in conjunction with the third mystery which is that the Mathematics World is only a small sub-set of the Mental World and you get a cycle that folds on to itself and gives me, when I meditate on it, a deeper glimpse of reality.
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