VIDYA AND WESTERN SCIENCES

Experimental Science versus Metaphysics

If Western Philosophy is from its very beginning denoted by the principle according to which statements -enunciates- have to be proved in order to be accepted, modern science commences at the end of the XVI Century with the introduction of the empirical testing procedure by Galileo Galilei. Galileo purported to attain knowledge of nature -the world, reality- and its laws "provando e riprovando", that is, "by testing and re-testing".
Up to Galileo, questions about nature used to be handled in a metaphysical manner (please refer to Glossary for the meaning of 'metaphysical') and mainly by speculations on the basis of Aristotle's philosophy.

Most readers will be acquainted with the anecdote of Galileo dropping objects of different weights from the slanting Tower of Pisa.

"At the University of Pisa, Galileo had learnt the 'physics' (a 'physics' that has little if anything to do with what we now know as 'physics') of Aristotle. Well, Galileo questioned the Aristotelian approach to physics. Aristotelians believed that heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones. Galileo rejected that commonly held conviction by asserting that all objects, regardless of their density, fall at the same rate in a vacuum. To determine this, Galileo performed various experiments in which he dropped objects from a certain height, and saw that they all fell with the same velocity.

“In one of his early experiments, he rolled balls down a gently inclined plane and then determined their positions after equal time intervals. He wrote down his discoveries about motion in his book, De Motu, to wit, On Motion. Over the next two decades he refined his experiments (notably and above all realising that the medium -air- through which the dropped bodies fall delays their falling depending on their shape, size and specific weight), and in the end he arrived at the law of falling bodies which states that in a vacuum all bodies, regardless of their weight, shape, or specific gravity, are uniformly accelerated in exactly the same way, and that the distance fallen is proportional to the square of the elapsed time." (Quoted from The Galileo Project Development Team, Rice University).

This performance by Galileo constitutes a true revolution in the method for the search of truth and not a mere improvement nor an evolution of the pre-existing, traditional, logical-intuitive and methaphysical method. Indeed, beside inventing a new method and making thanks to it important discoveries, Galileo disproved the logical-intuitive, metaphysical methods as unable to connect with reality.

Galileo's experimental method entails some significant and for the metaphysical mind challenging consequences.

The first of them is the inherently provisory character of scientific knowledge, and is due to the fact that every bit of scientific knowledge is based on a number of repeated experiments, and the outcome of any future repetition of the experiment or, more exactly and broadly, of a future experimental research may contradict and be different from the previous, and thus disprove and invalidate the knowledge based on the same. In other words, we can never rule out the possibility that future research may yield an evidence that demonstrates any current scientific knowledge to be wrong, i. e.  falsifies it.

The second consequence is the approximate character of scientific knowledge: by experimenting and refining experiments the scientist strives for an ever more accurate description or mathematical formalisation of reality and the laws of nature, knowing that perfection cannot be attained. Thus, Galileo himself arrived to his final theorem of the uniformly accelerated velocity of falling bodies only through a progressive refinement of his experimental settings, that originally did not take into account the resistance offered by the medium (air), a resistance that affects (broadly speaking) bodies with lower specific weight more than it affects bodies with higher specific weight, thus causing the latter to fall faster than the former and suggesting the false idea that the velocity of falling bodies depends on their density. More generally, we could say with Einstein: "So far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and so far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."

These two implications may be disappointing for most of the seekers of eternal and absolute truths, but all of us have to live with them. Disappointment is no sound reason for the suppression of matters of fact nor for the contempt of experimental sciences. One has to accept that there is this kind of relative, provisory, empirically founded knowledge, that will not furnish the final response to man's questions, but, unlike other loftier kinds of knowledge, can produce things like the Internet and an aircraft that carries you from Europe to India in less than nine hours for a very affordable fare. It also can, even more outrageously, expose as arbitrary and false many tenets of those religiously founded doctrines. Thus, Galileo discovered that the Bible and the Church were wrong believing that the Sun revolves around the Earth.
 
 

The Limits of a Revolution

Deep and structural though it was, Galileo's rebellion to metaphysic was nonetheless far from being complete, in that it retained the metaphysic implicit in common sense. It retained, in other words, that framework or paradigm of reality that we have outlined above:
There is a world or reality outside the mind consisting of other minds and, unlike mind, of matter, that has precise properties other than mind's; matter is structured in objects and energies that are distributed in space and undergo changes in the course of time; changes are brought about by causation, i.e. interaction (relation) of objects and energies affecting each other; matter and energy affect also our minds so that we perceive reality; matter and mind are otherwise alien to one another, and in particular mind cannot affect matter, which exists independently from mind but impresses it through the sense organs thus providing us with the knowledge of the real world.

This framework, plus Euclid's geometry and idea of space, was retained unquestioningly by the various branches of sciences until the beginning of the XX Century, when the second revolution in science began, notably in nuclear physics and astrophysics, with the Quantum and Relativity Theories respectively. As we will expound through this chapter, this second revolution demonstrated that the categories of reality highlighted above -time, space, matter, causation, relation and more- are mere abstraction that can appear accurate (although they are never accurate) so far as they are used for describing facts occurring within a limited range of dimensions and energy levels. They can be used for describing phenomena involving bodies from the size of a molecule up to the size of the Earth, and for energies of common life. They have proved false or untenable whenever applied to cosmic sizes, nuclear forces and velocities close to that of light.
 

An Epitome of Modern Physical Research

According to the older theories of classical or Newtonian physics, energy is treated solely as a continuous phenomenon, while matter (every material thing) is assumed to occupy a very specific region of space and to move in a continuous manner. "According to the quantum theory, energy is held to be emitted and absorbed in tiny, discrete amounts. An individual bundle or packet of energy, called a quantum (pl. quanta), thus behaves in some situations much like particles of matter; particles are found to exhibit certain wavelike properties when in motion and are no longer viewed as localized in a given region but rather as spread out to some degree.
"For example, the light or other radiation given off or absorbed by an atom has only certain frequencies (or wavelengths), as can be seen from the line spectrum <http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/s1/spectrum.asp> associated with the chemical element represented by that atom. The quantum theory shows that those frequencies correspond to definite energies of the light quanta, or photons, and result from the fact that the electrons of the atom can have only certain allowed energy values, or levels; when an electron changes from one allowed level to another, a quantum of energy is emitted or absorbed, whose frequency is directly proportional to the energy difference between the two levels.

"The restriction of the energy levels of the electrons is explained in terms of the wavelike properties of their motions: electrons occupy only those orbits for which their associated wave is a standing wave (i.e., the circumference of the orbit is exactly equal to a whole number of wavelengths) and thus can have only those energies that correspond to such orbits. Moreover, the electrons are no longer thought of as being at a particular point in the orbit but rather as being spread out over the entire orbit. Just as the results of relativity approximate those of Newtonian physics when ordinary speeds are involved, the results of the quantum theory agree with those of classical physics when very large “quantum numbers” are involved, i.e., on the ordinary large scale of events; this agreement in the classical limit is required by the correspondence principle <http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/c1/correspo.asp> of Niels Bohr. The quantum theory thus proposes a dual nature for both waves and particles, one aspect predominating in some situations, the other predominating in other situations.

    "While the theory of relativity was largely the work of one man, Albert Einstein, the quantum theory was developed principally over a period of thirty years through the efforts of many scientists. The first contribution was the explanation of black body <http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/b1/blackbod.asp> radiation in 1900 by Max Planck, who proposed that the energies of any harmonic oscillator, such as the atoms of a black body radiator, are restricted to certain values, each of which is an integral (whole number) multiple of a basic, minimum value. The energy E of this basic quantum is directly proportional to the frequency of the oscillator, or E = h, where h is a constant, now called Planck's constant, having the value 6.63×10 -34 joule-second. In 1905, Einstein proposed that the radiation itself is also quantized according to this same formula, and he used the new theory to explain the photoelectric effect <http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/p1/photelef.asp>. Following the discovery of the nuclear atom by Rutherford (1911), Bohr used the quantum theory in 1913 to explain both atomic structure and atomic spectra, showing the connection between the electrons' energy levels and the frequencies of light given off and absorbed." (Quoted from The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th edition).

"Quantum mechanics, the final mathematical formulation of the quantum theory, was developed during the 1920s. In 1924, Louis de Broglie proposed that not only do light waves sometimes exhibit particlelike properties, as in the photoelectric effect and atomic spectra, but particles may also exhibit wavelike properties. This hypothesis was confirmed experimentally in 1927 by C. J. Davisson and L. H. Germer, who observed diffraction of a beam of electrons analogous to the diffraction of a beam of light. Two different formulations of quantum mechanics were presented following de Broglie's suggestion. The wave mechanics of Erwin Schrödinger (1926) involves the use of a mathematical entity, the wave function, which is related to the probability of finding a particle at a given point in space. The matrix mechanics of Werner Heisenberg (1925) makes no mention of wave functions or similar concepts but was shown to be mathematically equivalent to Schrödinger's theory.

    “Quantum mechanics was combined with the theory of relativity in the formulation of P. A. M. Dirac (1928), which, in addition, predicted the existence of antiparticles <http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/a1/antipart.asp>. A particularly important discovery of the quantum theory is the uncertainty principle, enunciated by Heisenberg in 1927, which places an absolute theoretical limit on the accuracy of certain measurements; as a result, the assumption by earlier scientists that the physical state of a system could be measured exactly and used to predict future states had to be abandoned. It places an absolute, theoretical limit on the combined accuracy of certain pairs of simultaneous, related measurements. The accuracy of a measurement is given by the uncertainty in the result; if the measurement is exact, the uncertainty is zero. According to the uncertainty principle, the mathematical product of the combined uncertainties of simultaneous measurements of position and momentum in a given direction cannot be less than Planck's constant <http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/P/Plancksc.asp> h divided by 4? [that is, the product of the degree of uncertainty of the particle’s position by the degree of the uncertainty of the particle’s momentum can never be lesser than h divided by 4?, because what you do to increase the accuracy of the position measurement affects the momentum, and vice versa]. The principle also limits the accuracies of simultaneous measurements of energy and of the time required to make the energy measurement. The value of Planck's constant is extremely small, so that the effect of the limitations imposed by the uncertainty principle are not noticeable on the large scale of ordinary measurements; nonetheless, on the scale of atoms and elementary particles the effect of the uncertainty principle is very important. Because of the uncertainties existing at this level, a picture of the submicroscopic world emerges as one of statistical probabilities rather than measurable certainties. On the large scale, it is still possible to speak of causality in a framework described in terms of space and time; on the atomic scale, this is not possible. Such a description would require exact measurements of such quantities as position, speed, energy, and time; and these quantities cannot be measured exactly because of the uncertainty principle. The latter does not limit the accuracy of single measurements, of nonsimultaneous measurements, or of simultaneous measurements of pairs of quantities other than those specifically restricted by the principle. Even so, its restrictions are sufficient to prevent scientists from being able to make absolute predictions about future states of the system being studied. The uncertainty principle has been elevated by some thinkers to the status of a philosophical principle, called the principle of indeterminacy, which has been taken by some to limit causality in general. Other developments of the theory include quantum statistics, presented in one form by Einstein and S. N. Bose (the Bose-Einstein statistics <http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/B/BoseE1ins.asp>) and in another by Dirac and Enrico Fermi (the Fermi-Dirac statistics <http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/F/FermiD1ir.asp>); quantum electrodynamics, concerned with interactions between charged particles and electromagnetic fields <http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/f1/field-ph.asp>; its generalization, quantum field theory <http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/q1/quantumf.asp>; and quantum electronics." (The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th edition).
 
 

The Breakdown of the Materialistic World through Modern Physics

Modern and contemporary physicists have thus shattered the traditional idea of world and reality that traditional physics used to share with common sense. Indeed, all its basic tenets -its axioms- have been disproven.

Matter, to begin with, is no longer found. There is no such a thing like tiny solid bricks that make up objects. The atom is empty: its volume is almost completely void. The electrons revolving around the nucleus have actually a minimal mass. The nucleus occupies only a negligible space. The rest, the space between the electrons' orbit or orbits and the nucleus, is void. Even the particles constituting the nucleus are themselves not solid: they are ultimately (so far as we currently know) waves of energy, or more exactly processes.

Energy, as opposite to, or essentially other than, matter, does not exist. It can turn into mass, and issue of mass. Energy interactions between subnuclear particles occur in the form of the exchange of mesons and photons (Capra, The Tao of Physics, p. 240), which are themselves particles.

The act of perceiving is discovered to be quite different from the neutral, 'unaffecting' observation by the subject that we all hold it to be. Observation always and inherently affects the object or process being observed, thus making it inherently impossible to separate the knower from the known.

Time is subjective or relative, can be altered and curved by speed and mass and can be reverted. This appears both in the relativistic, cosmic-scale phenomena and in the subnuclear experiments. There is plenty of evidence of instantaneous connections between events involving distant or very distant 'particles' (such as the jump of electrons from an orbit to another or the decay of subnuclear particles) and that often cannot be predicted because they happen spontaneously, yet not arbitrarily, "but in connection to a non-local whole" (Capra, The Tao of Physics, p. 342).  "They transcend our notion of information transfer" (ibidem, 346).

Space is also subjective and relative as it can be altered and curved by speed and mass. Some phenomena, like the odd behaviour of electrons in the Aspect's experiment (see below), imply that the common idea of space, distance and time must be wrong. Both space and time do not exist as entities separated from their 'content', as assumed by traditional physics and common sense.
Relation itself -or interaction between entities- and a fortiori causation, appear to be an abstraction in the light of subnuclear mechanics, being based on the basic principle of otherness and separateness of entities. Protons, neutrons, positrons, neutrini, photons and so on, do not interact according to the common interaction model, whereby -say- billiard balls hit each other and roll off. What happens among subnuclear particles is that we observe interactions whereby particles of one type turn into one or more particles of other types, and vice versa. It is said that each particle contains all other particles; but that statement ought to be understood that every particle is potentially any other particle.

And because the transformation of a given particle appears to be affected by all other particles, even if very distant in the space (as shown by the Aspect's experiments), the very principle of the separateness of entities must be relinquished. Reality appears and behaves as a whole whose parts cannot possibly be kept separated from one another. They keep on interacting whatever you do.
To say the truth, the Scottish philosopher and epistemologist David Hume had long before, in the XVIII Century, demonstrated that the idea of causation is completely unwarranted in that neither do we happen to observe causation, nor might causation be observed. It is a product of the mind. Causation means that the event A (white billiard ball hitting red billiard ball) caused the event B (white ball stopping, red ball starting motion on same course as white ball). But all we can observe is the white ball moving, stopping upon touching the red ball, and the red ball starting to roll on. We observe no ‘causation’, just a sequence of events. This simple remark has dramatic effect on scientific and philosophic theorising, for it rules out one of the cardinal principles of the interpretation of reality and science. Causation is known, since Hume, to be a mere a surmise, the outcome of an inference, an interpretation, an idea - a belief, due to habit - the habit issuing from the repetition of the experience. After observing on a large number of occasion how the event A is followed by the event B, we infer that the latter is produced by the event A. Because A does not logically entail B (B cannot be deduced from A), we cannot pre-dict that B will succeed on the basis of reason, that is, we cannot a priori say that ‘if A, then B’. We can only believe, expect it on the basis of previous repeated observation. But we tend to be unaware of all this and carry on thinking of causation as something commonly and directly perceived.

The logical consequence of the above is the Western scientific method’s aiming no longer at the discovery of causative mechanisms, but at the calculation of statistical chance  (that A is succeeded by B, e.g. that the administration of a given drug is succeeded by a rise of the blood pressure) through extensive observation, chiefly through experiments.

Such a belief, indeed, cannot even be proven in an indirect way, that is, by proving that the red ball would never have started rolling on, had it not be hit by the white ball. The reason why it cannot be proven in this manner, is that this same manner would require the possibility for us to observe the selfsame red ball in two different but simultaneous situations: a) being hit by the white ball; b) not being hit by the white ball. Only thus could we ascertain whether being hit by the white ball be or be not a condition necessary and sufficient for the red ball to start rolling on in that fashion.

An a priori knowledge, not derived from experience, can only be that, which does not refer to reality but to the relations between ideas, such as between numbers, where the notion of the subjects can include that or the predicates (e.g., the notion of 5 + 7 includes the notion of 12; hence we do not need experience to state 5 + 7 = 12 (Severino, La Filosofia Moderna, 142).

In Chapter Six we shall see that also space and time are contradictory and unwarranted mental constructs.

The confutation of the classical, 'materialistic' framework of physics and reality brought about by the quantic-relativistic scientific revolution has removed the main and theoretical barrier to a dialogue between physics, philosophy and mystic research.

If there is no (solid) matter, no (absolute) time, no (absolute) space, no (objective) perception, no separateness of  entities - then, what remains of the distinction between thought and 'world'? The objective world is eventually assimilated to the subjective, in that it loses all distinctive properties that it used to be credited with. In other words, if the 'outer' domain turns out not to have those properties, on account of which it was distinguished from the inner realm of reality, there is no reason left to maintain that there are two realms instead of one.

But if the separateness of inner and outer world dissolves, the basic claim of western method or science must dissolve too. Western science strives for objectivity, and in this strife it paradoxically ends up discovering that there is no objective reality (let alone objective knowledge), that the world itself seems to be of the same nature as the subject, that solid matter is unreal.

By the way, please notice that, as we are accustomed to define and intend, say, 'matter' by rapport to 'energy' or 'thought', and 'here' by rapport 'to there', and 'before' by rapport to 'afterwards', a serious problem of definition arises from the discoveries mentioned above.
 
 

Hologram Metaphor or Holographic Reality?

Two age-marking books can lead us to an understanding of this revolution. Albeit far from explaining the mathematical apparatus and experimental fundaments of contemporary physics, they can disclose to us its core ideas with an accuracy that is sufficient to the specific purposes of our subject. These books are The Tao of Physics (third edition) by Fritjof Capra and The Holographic Mind by Michael Talbot.

Some scientists go so far as to view the universe as a hologram.

Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them, in that -to put it grossly- what one does, the other too does, at the same time.
"It doesn't matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles apart.  Somehow, each particle always seems to know what the other is doing. The problem with this feat is that it violates Einstein's long-held tenet that no communication can travel faster than the speed of light. Since travelling faster than the speed of light is tantamount to breaking the time barrier, this daunting prospect has caused some physicists to try to come up with elaborate ways to explain away Aspect's findings. But it has inspired others to offer even more radical explanations.
"University of London physicist David Bohm, for example, believes Aspect's findings imply that objective reality does not exist, that despite its apparent solidity the universe is at heart a phantasm, a gigantic and splendidly detailed hologram.

"To understand why Bohm makes this startling assertion, one must first understand a little about holograms. A hologram is a three-dimensional photograph made with the aid of a laser. To make a hologram, the object to be photographed is first bathed in the light of a laser beam. Then a second laser beam is bounced off the reflected light of the first and the resulting interference pattern (the area where the two laser beams commingle) is captured on film. When the film is developed, it looks like a meaningless swirl of light and dark lines. But as soon as the developed film is illuminated by another laser beam, a three-dimensional image of the original object appears. The three-dimensionality of such images is not the only remarkable characteristic of holograms. If a hologram of a rose is cut in half and then illuminated by a laser, each half will still be found to contain the entire image of the rose. Indeed, even if the halves are divided again, each snippet of film will always be found to contain a smaller but intact version of the original image. Unlike normal photographs, every part of a hologram contains all the information possessed by the whole. The "whole in every part" nature of a hologram provides us with an entirely new way of understanding organization and order. For most of its history, Western science has laboured under the bias that the best way to understand a physical phenomenon, whether a frog or an atom, is to dissect it and study its respective parts.

"A hologram teaches us that some things in the universe may not lend themselves to this approach. If we try to take apart something constructed holographically, we will not get the pieces of which it is made, we will only get smaller wholes. This insight suggested to Bohm another way of understanding Aspect's discovery. Bohm believes the reason subatomic particles are able to remain in contact with one another regardless of the distance separating them is not because they are sending some sort of mysterious signal back and forth, but because their separateness is an illusion. He argues that at some deeper level of reality such particles are not individual entities, but are actually extensions of the same fundamental something.

"To enable people to better visualize what he means, Bohm offers the following illustration. Imagine an aquarium containing a fish. Imagine also that you are unable to see the aquarium directly and your knowledge about it and what it contains comes from two television cameras, one directed at the aquarium's front and the other directed at its side. As you stare at the two television monitors, you might assume that the fish on each of the screens are separate entities. After all, because the cameras are set at different angles, each of the images will be slightly different. But as you continue to watch the two fish, you will eventually become aware that there is a certain relation between them. When one turns, the other also makes a slightly different but corresponding turn; when one faces the front, the other always faces toward the side. If you remain unaware of the full scope of the situation, you might even conclude that the fish must be instantaneously communicating with one another, but this is clearly not the case.

"This, says Bohm, is precisely what is going on between the subatomic particles in Aspect's experiment. According to Bohm, the apparent faster-than-light connection between subatomic particles is really telling us that there is a deeper level of reality we are not privy to, a more complex dimension beyond our own that is analogous to the aquarium. And, he adds, we view objects such as subatomic particles as separate from one another because we are seeing only a portion of their reality.

"Such particles are not separate "parts", but facets of a deeper and more underlying unity that is ultimately as holographic and indivisible as the previously mentioned rose. And since everything in physical reality is comprised of these "eidolons", the universe is itself a projection, a hologram.

"In addition to its phantomlike nature, such a universe would possess other rather startling features. If the apparent separateness of subatomic particles is illusory, it means that at a deeper level of reality all things in the universe are infinitely interconnected. The electrons in a carbon atom in the human brain are connected to the subatomic particles that comprise every salmon that swims, every heart that beats, and every star that shimmers in the sky. Everything interpenetrates everything, and although human nature may seek to categorize and pigeonhole and subdivide the various phenomena of the universe, all apportionments are of necessity artificial and all of nature is ultimately a seamless web.

"In a holographic universe, even time and space could no longer be viewed as fundamentals. Because concepts such as location break down in a universe in which nothing is truly separate from anything else, time and three-dimensional space, like the images of the fish on the TV monitors, would also have to be viewed as projections of this deeper order. At its deeper level reality is a sort of superhologram in which the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously. This suggests that given the proper tools it might even be possible to someday reach into the superholographic level of reality and pluck out scenes from the long-forgotten past. What else the superhologram contains is an open-ended question. Allowing, for the sake of argument, that the superhologram is the matrix that has given birth to everything in our universe, at the very least, it contains every subatomic particle that has been or will be -- every configuration of matter and energy that is possible, from snowflakes to quasars, from blue whales to gamma rays. It must be seen as a sort of cosmic storehouse of "All That Is."

"Although Bohm concedes that we have no way of knowing what else might lie hidden in the superhologram, he does venture to say that we have no reason to assume it does not contain more. Or, as he puts it, perhaps the superholographic level of reality is a "mere stage" beyond which lies "an infinity of further development".

“Indeed, even our most fundamental notions about reality become suspect, for in a holographic universe, as Pribram has pointed out, even random events would have to be seen as based on holographic principles and therefore determined. Synchronicities or meaningful coincidences suddenly make sense, and everything in reality would have to be seen as a metaphor, for even the most haphazard events would express some underlying symmetry.

“Whether Bohm and Pribram's holographic paradigm becomes accepted in science or dies an ignoble death, remains to be seen; but it is safe to say that it has already had an influence on the thinking of many scientists. And even if it is found that the holographic model does not provide the best explanation for the instantaneous communications that seem to be passing back and forth between subatomic particles, at the very least, as noted by Basil Hiley, a physicist at Birbeck College in London, Aspect's findings "indicate that we must be prepared to consider radically new views of reality".  (Author unknown).

Fritjof Capra, Ph.D. in Physics, classifies the nature of knowledge that the human mind is capable of into two kinds, namely the rational and the intuitive.

"Rational knowledge is derived from the experience we have with objects and events in our everyday environment. It belongs to the realm of intellect whose function is to discriminate, divide, compare, measure and categorize. Science, as we know of it, belongs to the realm of rational knowledge.” The author points out that the limitations of any knowledge attained by these methods are becoming increasingly apparent in modern science. On the other hand, the intuitive knowledge is not mathematically formalised nor experimentally proved. The eastern mystics maintains that the ultimate reality can never be an object of reasoning or of demonstrable knowledge due to its lying beyond the realms of the senses and of the intellect from which our words and concepts are derived.
 
The author warns that the study of the world of atoms “forced physicists to realize that our common language is not only inaccurate, but totally inadequate to describe the atomic and subatomic reality. Quantum theory and relativity theory, the two bases of modern physics, have made it clear that this reality transcends classical logic and that we cannot talk about it in ordinary language.

``The problems of language here are really serious. We wish to speak in some way about the structure of the atoms... But we cannot speak about atoms in ordinary language''  (W. Heisenberg). "
As Capra says it, "Modern physics, too, has come to conceive of the universe as such a web of relations and, like Eastern mysticism, has recognised that this web is intrinsically dynamic. The dynamic aspect of matter arises in quantum theory as a consequence of the wave-nature of subatomic particles, and is even more essential in relativity theory, where the unification of space and time implies that the being of matter cannot be separated from its activity. The properties of subatomic particles can therefore only be understood in a dynamic context; in terms of movement, interaction and transformation.” (Capra, 213).

"The central aim of Eastern mysticism is to experience all the phenomena in the world as manifestations of the same ultimate reality. This reality is seen as the essence of the universe, underlying and unifying the multitude of things and events we observe. The Hindus call it Brahman, the Buddhists Dharmakaya (The Body of Being) or Tathata (Suchness) and the Taoists Tao; each affirming that it transcends our intellectual concepts and defies further explanation. This ultimate essence, however, cannot be separated from its multiple manifestations. It is central to the very nature to manifest itself in a myriad of forms, which come into being and disintegrate, transforming themselves into one another without end. In its phenomenal aspect, the cosmic One is thus intrinsically dynamic, and the apprehension of its dynamic nature is basic to all schools of Eastern mysticism." (Capra, 210).

"In Indian philosophy, the main terms used by Hindus and Buddhists have dynamic connotations. The word Brahman is derived from the Sanskrit root brih - to grow- and thus suggests a reality, which is dynamic and alive. In the words of S. Radhakrishnan, “The word Brahman means growth and is suggestive of life, motion, progress.” The Upanishads refer to Brahman as ‘this uniformed, immortal, moving’, thus associating it with motion even though it transcends all forms.’

"The Rig Veda uses another term to express the dynamic character of the universe, the term Rita. This word comes from the root ri- to move; its original meaning in the Rig Veda being ‘the course of all things’, ‘the order of nature’. The order of nature was conceived by the Vedic seers, not as a static divine law, but as a dynamic principle, which is inherent in the universe. This idea is not unlike the Chinese conception of the Tao - ‘the Way’- as the way in which the Universe works, i.e. the order of Nature. Like the Vedic seers, the Chinese sages saw the world in terms of flow and change. Both concepts, Rita and Tao, were later brought down from their original cosmic level to the human and interpreted in a moral sense; Rita as the universal law which all gods and humans must obey and Tao as the right way of life." (Capra, 210).

"The Vedic concept of Rita anticipates the idea of karma which was developed later to express the dynamic interplay of all things and events. The word karma means ‘action’ and denotes the ‘active’, or dynamic, interrelation of all phenomena. In the words of the Baghavad Gita, “All actions take place in time by the interweaving of the forces of nature. In Hinduism, Shiva the Cosmic Dancer, is perhaps the most perfect personification of the dynamic universe. Through his dance, Shiva sustains the manifold phenomena in the world, unifying all things by immersing them in his rhythm and making them participate in the dance- a magnificent image of the dynamic unity of the Universe." (Capra, 211).

"The impermanence of all forms is the starting point of Buddhism. The Buddha taught that ‘all compounded things are impermanent’, and that all suffering in the world arises from our trying to cling to fixed forms- objects, people or ideas- instead of accepting the world as it moves and changes." (Capra, 211).

"The Eastern mystics see the universe as an inseparable web, whose interconnections are dynamic and not static. The cosmic web is alive; it moves and grows and changes continually. Modern physics, too, has come to conceive of the universe as such a web of relations and, like Eastern mysticism, has recognised that this web is intrinsically dynamic. The dynamic aspect of matter arises in quantum theory as a consequence of the wave-nature of subatomic particles, and is even more essential in relativity theory, where the unification of space and time implies that the being of matter cannot be separated from its activity. The properties of subatomic particles can therefore only be understood in a dynamic context; in terms of movement, interaction and transformation." (Capra, 213).

"According to quantum theory, matter is thus never quiescent, but always in a state of motion. " (Capra, 215).

"Modern physics then, pictures matter not at all as passive and inert, but being in a continuous dancing and vibrating motion whose rhythmic patterns are determined by the molecular, atomic and nuclear structures. This is also the way in which the Eastern mystics see the material world. They all emphasise that the universe has to be grasped dynamically, as it moves, vibrates and dances; that nature is not a static but dynamic equilibrium." (Capra, 216).

Now a third revolution is underway that might eventually integrate consciousness and the subject itself into physics. There are hints that the transformations of the subatomic particles, their 'behavioural patterns', and consequently the basis of the 'physical' world, "are ultimately determined by the way in which we look at this world. Any fundamental change in our observational methods would imply a modification of the general principles which would lead to a different structure of the S matrix [the transformational/interactional matrix of subatomic particles], and would thus imply a different structure of the hadrons [a group of nuclear particles including neutrons and protons]. Such a theory of subatomic particles reflects the impossibility of separating the scientific observer from the observed phenomena... ... It implies, ultimately, that the structures and phenomena we observe in nature are nothing but creation of our measuring and categorizing mind. That this is so, is one of the fundamental tenets of Eastern philosophy. The Eastern mystics tell us again and again that all things we perceive are creations of the mind arising from a particular state of consciousness and dissolving again if the state is transcended." (Capra, 306).

But this is not all. Even the idea of laws of nature seems to be affected by logical contradiction and to be disproven of by observation.

Western science is based on axioms - that is, it presupposes an unquestioned framework - or rather it is based on the fact that a given framework or reality is currently unquestioned and held as self-evident and therefore works as the set of axioms.

Logics and the branch of logic that is called mathematics are only insofar significant -that is, not merely hypothetical and analytical- as they  are applied to an assumed or posited reality outside them. Every logical or mathematical theorem only expresses an organism of hypothetical relations such as "If  x, then y", but can state nothing positively about the existence or non-existence of beings and their features.

As Gödel demonstrated, no theory can be based on itself, that is, no theory can comprise in itself its own ultimate demonstration and fundaments or axioms. He precisely showed that, either the system is inconsistent, or there are true propositions, which cannot be reached from the system’s axioms by applying the derivation rules. Any system is thus incomplete, and the truth of those propositions is undecidable (within that system). Such undecidable propositions are known as Gödel propositions or Gödel sentences.

Well, the bootstrap idea -the idea of a scientific, all-comprehensive theory that is not based on axioms and that can, so to say, lift itself up by its own bootstraps- comes blatantly at variance with these commonly accepted principles, in that it views nature and universe as a reality "in which all phenomena... ... are uniquely determined by mutual self-consistency." Physical constants (such as the Plank constant, the spin of a proton, the energy levels in an atom's orbitals and so on) and laws of nature, far from being maintained as a pure and ultimate 'givenness', should eventually "be explained one by one" in a scientific progress moving towards a 'perfection' where the theory contains "no fundamental constants" Capra, the Tao of Physics, p. 318).
Even because a theory so fashioned, that purports to encompass all of reality, requires that no elements, essential to its consistency, are left outside it, the same theory requires that the reality's being observed -thus the observer of reality, the consciousness- be factored in.
And once a bootstrap theory of nature should manage to achieve complete self-consistency, analysing away all fundamental constants and laws, then it will no longer be "a bootstrap theory of nature, it will become a bootstrap vision of nature, transcending the realms of thought and language, leading out of science and into the world of acyntia, the unthinkable" (Capra, 333).
 
 

Some Sound Criticism

Beside marking and bearing in mind that the ideas, which Capra and others borrow from the contemporary physics, are hitherto all disputable interpretations, speculations, and no clear and substantiated conclusions, upon venturing into the field of the physical sciences we ought to be extremely cautious and aware of a number of facts.
Firstly, that the reports of 'mystics' and nuclear physicists have many features that are not in common.
Secondly, that, unless we have devoted a large part of our life to the study of  quantic and relativistic physics, we cannot penetrate the fundaments of its theorems and we have to content ourselves with attempting to follow the explanations that divulgators like Capra dispense to us.
Thirdly, that, albeit some contemporary physical views display a striking likeliness to the insights of Eastern mystics, this does not legitimate hurrying to conclusions such as "western sciences discovers the truths of the vedic sages".
That would be very naive. Indeed, similarities in conclusions are of scanty significance whenever the methods are, as in this case, so different that they cannot be compared. And many Eastern (as well as Western) sages had and maintained views that are pretty different from, and sometimes opposite to, the 'holistic' ones celebrated by F. Capra - views of absolute, transcendent, ontological division as in the dualistic system of Madva, for an instance, not to speak of Christian mystics; or stances of absolute monism, like Shankaracarya. This fact suffices to disprove the proposition "(Eastern) mysticism is all holistic". Eastern and Western mysticism are actually manifold.
Fourthly, that every fact ought to be explained in the most simple way that is consistent with it, according to Ockham 'razor principle': principia explicandi non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, to wit, the principles introduced for explaining something ought not to be multiplied beyond necessity. According to this rule, when we read that a number of fellows commonly labelled as 'mystics' (whatever this word may mean) have all described recurrent intrasubjective experiences (Erlebnisse) having certain general features in common (for an instance, that every entity or being is interacting with all other entities or beings across both time and space thus behaving as though it contained potentially every other entity or being), we are legitimated to in infer that the subjective (mental) and/or neural structures of all those fellows have likely something in common, that warrants further investigation; but we are not legitimated to draw the conclusion that they all, by means of their practices, have broken through to the observation of an objective, universal reality or truth itself, rather than experiencing something like lucid dreams, which present many similarities even because they are directed by similar, common expectations and suggestions.

On the contrary, if the descriptions of the visions of those fellows happen to have similarities with the outcomes of experimental observations or speculative hypotheses made by western scientists on the structure of reality, we are not legitimated to infer anything, because, unlike the first case -where we were comparing the reports of fellows all describing intrasubjective experiences- we are now confronted with a first group of fellows that describe intrasubjective experiences and a second group of fellows that describe the outcomes of objectively conducted research and mathematically construed hypotheses. We are especially not legitimated to deduce that, because there are general similarities between both groups’ reports, then both groups must be observing the same reality. Arguing so, would amount to state that, if two travellers independently describe similar exotic landscapes, they therefore must have travelled to the same place.

The suggestive similarities, which apparently enthralled F. Capra, between the reports of 'mystics' and the reports of nuclear physicists are of little logical significance; but we should not feel disappointed nor let us sway by this conclusion, because what actually matters we have already found elsewhere, that is, in the partial or total dissolution of the difference of properties between what we habitually distinguish as the subjective and objective realms, mind and matter, that we have described above as brought about by the objective approach of western physics.

In other words: on the one hand it is not correct to argue that the intrasubjective path of  'mystics' and the objective method of physicists lead to the discovery of the same reality, which therefore must be the truth; but on the other hand it is a matter of fact that western physicists have gathered evidence that the commonly held differences between mind and world, subjective and objective -differences on which rests the mind-world dualism- are unreal, delusory, and therefore there is no valid reason for further maintaining a qualitative, absolute 'alienity', a separation between a subjective experience and an objective experiment and two realms of reality, the mental and the physical.

But, again, the fact that Western science has ascertained that the reasons on account of which the two phenomenal realms -mind and matter, subjective and objective experience- were deemed to be separated and regulated by different systems of laws are, or appear to be, ultimately unreal, does not entail that there cannot be other, different reasons for that same or some other partition and that there is positively only one realm of reality.

Please mark that this conceptual revolution also sheds a completely new light on the otherwise meaningless or marginal similarities between the discovery of physics and those of the inward explorations of both the mystics and the psychologists. In that very light the possibility dawns, that those similarities are not merely accidental but due to ontological oneness.

The investigation of this topic -that is, the eventual demonstration that not only no evidence of such separateness factually exists, but that no such evidence and no such separateness may exist- lies in the field of philosophy and will therefore be discussed in another chapter.

One very important remark should be added for the completion of the current chapter. The dissolution of the apparent difference between the two realms above, or rather the now apparent homogeneity of the phenomena observed in the 'two' realms, subjective and objective, does not upgrade or validate 'scientifically' the 'discoveries' of the mystics who explore and chart the subjective realm - it does not confer upon those 'discoveries' the status and the 'dignity' of objective science nor does it confer upon the subjective, ‘private’ experiences of the many ‘mystics’ the value of scientific observation of a positively single (and therefore objective and for everybody valid) reality. It rather does the reversal: it exposes the inherent, unescapable subjectivity of any form of knowledge, included the reputedly 'objective' sciences, thus stripping it of their traditional, supercilious contempt of the subjective path.

Indeed, the epistemological legitimation of this contempt or discrimination is, or was, even the conviction, the axiom, that there are two different realms of experience and that in one of them objective knowledge, independent from the researcher's subjectivity and based on likewise objective if not immutable laws, could be attained. Because this is not the case, we recognise that ultimately there is no superiority, no qualitative difference between the two sources of knowledge - that ultimately the source of knowledge is one - save in the different capability of either of them to effect a self-criticism recognising its limits.

This conclusion, at any rate, concerns the outer rapport between the two kinds of knowledge, it does not make either of them any nearer to truth or less delusory than it was before, nor sets new methods or criteria for defining what truth is.