Science and consciousness

MIND, MATTER AND MYSTERY — Questions in Science and Philosophy: Ranjit Nair — Editor; Published by the Centre for Philosophy and Foundations of Science, Darshan Sadan, E36, Panchshila Park, New Delhi-110017, in association with Srishti Publishers and Distributors, 64-A, Adhchini, Sri Aurobindo Marg, New Delhi-110017. Rs. 195.

THERE ARE five essays and two interviews in this compilation that address certain fundamental but profound queries, which, as the editor says, have been with us since the beginnings of systematic thought. Four of the essays are lectures delivered in New Delhi at the invitation of the Centre of Philosophy and Foundations of Science while the fifth one is the editor's own contribution. A brief overview of the queries raised and discussed in these essays as well as the two interviews the editor had with Roger Penrose and Ilya Prigogine are presented here. The contributors are Penrose, Sudarshan, Michel Bitbol, Wilhelm Halbfass and the editor himself.

Can we credit a computer with the capacity to stimulate the human quality of understanding? Penrose argues that if the nature of mathematical understanding can be encapsulated by rules, then those rules cannot be computational. In a related context he further states that the general quality of understanding (in the case of humans) would have been of a distinct and obvious selective advantage in the evolutionary process. According to him the conscious phenomenon of understanding will find no proper explanation within the present day picture of the material universe.

The Quantum Theory of irreversibility forms the core of another essay where we are reminded that we have a notion of time going forward where all things age with us and we accumulate memories and experience. But this is a limited case where time goes forward; for the universe as a whole there is no direction of time. Another case brought up for discussion is Schrodinger's attitude towards particles and quantum jumps. According to him quantum mechanics is not just a theory of motion of subatomic particles and "particle" is not what it so strongly suggests.

The last two essays deal with science and how it relates to consciousness, and the quintessence, ether or "aakaasa", the fifth element. In the Upanishads "aakaasa" is treated as a symbolic device that prepares us for the realisation of "Brahman" itself. Regardless of whether it is empty or ubiquitous, "aakaasa" is a form and expression of the Omnipresence of God or the Absolute.

Penrose's work on black holes (he is a major contributor to the theory on black holes) comes up during the conversation with the editor. Penrose's research revealed many of the properties of black holes.

Stephen Hawking and Penrose proved that a space-time singularity (a point having infinite mass but no dimension) arises at the centre of a black hole. This concept of infinite mass and no dimension is something where classical physics fails. Hawking and Penrose argued in 1970 that the universe must have begun as a singularity from which the Big Bang developed.

In his conversation with the editor Penrose talks about the three models of the universe, closed, flat and open and mentions his preference for the open universe, which expands rapidly. He also points to the need of a new physics to cope with what was going on at the Big Bang and to find a union between quantum mechanics and the general theory of relativity, adding for good measure that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are excellent approximations to some theory that we do not yet have.

After reading the book one is bound to ask one whither science and philosophy are heading today and what mysteries may be lying ahead.

C.V. SUBRAMANIAM

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