These 5 Facts Show That Even Stalwart Scientists Appreciate Upanishads and Puranas
And why every genuine scientist stands to learn from the Vedic scriptures.
Hare Krishna! Western education system nurtures us so that we develop a bias against Indian spirituality.
Around the time when I came in touch with Krishna consciousness, many of my friends also got curious. They were also pursuing a Master’s degree in one of the sciences along with a B.E. degree.
I remember having a lot of discussions around Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and the Big Bang theory of the origin of creation. Their main apprehension about KC was that it requires faith to understand. They would argue that there is no place in science for religion.
Creationism, intelligent design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life or species are not science because they are not testable by the methods of science.
My starting argument used to be that death is the only truth we all agree upon, and we are discussing to find a purpose of life, our identity should go beyond this body, and there must be a source of our soul like our body has a basis.
Though such discussions convinced nobody, I got more interested. I could see that what I was saying was suggestive of something, and I started reading more and more to find out the facts.
Even now, there are many Noble Laureates and volumes of research published, but no one writes on this subject as convincingly as Srila Prabhupada. For lack of my articulation, I beg forgiveness, but whatever he has said or written is recorded by his disciples, and everything is put forward in quotes like the judgments passed at the courts. And everything is perfect!
You can read it and see for yourself there is a difference. Prabhupada brings out that we, with our imperfect senses and natural tendency to cheat others, will not be able to make conclusive statements about anything of life, its source, and purpose.
We have to resort to learning from the authorized Vedic texts like Bhagavad Gita and Srimad Bhagawatam, which he has so kindly translated into English.
The statements of prominent physicists who have been pioneers in this field like Schrödinger, Heisenberg, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Tesla, and other physicists are covered here.
They claim to draw heavy inspiration from the Upanishads too. Many Nobel Laureates have also presented a solid logical case for concluding that there must be some intelligence behind the creation, which is not entirely by accident but by design.
Let us try to appreciate the intelligent design of Krishna through their works.
1. A Universe That Breeds Life
George Wald, Nobel Laureate in Physiology and Medicine, Harvard University, puts forth this argument in his article “The Cosmology of Life and Mind.” George Wald quotes the British physicist, Arthur Eddington, to explain how this vast universe has an incredibly massive number of stars — one hundred billion stars make a galaxy, and one hundred billion galaxies make a universe.
With the smallest estimate of one percent to consider the fraction of stars that should support life, there should be at least a billion such places in our galaxy. With a billion such galaxies in the already observed universe, there should be at least 1016 such places that can support life.
In a historical universe in which stars, galaxies, and even living organisms are born, they become mature, they become old, and finally die, George Wald finds good reason to believe that life permeates the universe. Life arises with time in all places with favorable conditions.
There are innumerable physical properties in this universe, both minor and significant, making life possible. One example Wald gives is that of the atom. For each particle, the mass of the proton or neutron is almost 2000 times the mass of an electron. The charges of the proton and electron are exactly equal and opposite.
Suppose the difference in the masses was slight. In that case, the atom’s nucleus could not have maintained its position, resulting in a universe that cannot have solid structures or definite shapes, with all matter in a fluid state with the protons, neutrons, and electrons rotating around one another all the time.
If the charges were not equal and opposite, all atoms would repel each other due to their net positive or negative direction resulting from a constantly expanding universe. Hence, Wald states, there would be no galaxies, no stars or planets, and worst of all, no physicists.
Another case is that of water. Water has the unique property of contracting upon cooling until 4°C. From 4°C to 0°C, water expands with the result that when water freezes at 0°C, the ice so formed is lighter than water, and it floats. Nothing else behaves in this manner.
If water did not possess this property, then when it would freeze, it would start forming ice from the bottom where it would be most dense, with the entire mass of water becoming solid ice. Such a solid mass of ice would take longer to melt. In reality, a thin layer of ice is formed on top of the water, making it possible for life to continue existing in the water beneath it.
If a freeze were to occur at any point in time — even if it were to be once in millions of years — it would eliminate any extant life and prevent the further rise of life. So, this unique property of water makes life possible.
Going from micro to macro, Wald finally looks at the cosmic principle of the forces of expansion and aggregation. The Big Bang and the force of aggregation by gravity powers the force of expansion. At the time of the Big Bang, if the force of expansion had dominated, then all matter would have flown apart, and nothing could have come into existence.
On the other hand, if the force of gravity had been more, then the initial expansion created by the Big Bang would have slowed up and come to an end, resulting in a Big Crunch, with no time available for life to be formed.
However, we have a situation where there is an exact balance between the steady expansion of the universe as a whole and local stability within clusters such as our Milky Way galaxy due to gravity that gives enormous time and numerous locations for life to become manifest.
Wald concludes that this narration indicates that we find ourselves in a universe that breeds life and possesses exact specific properties that make life possible. Wald acknowledges that he has sampled only a few properties described above, which non-scientists can appreciate. However, the deeper one studies this subject, the more one enjoys the fine suitability of this universe for life.
There are countless obstacles for life to appear. Without an intelligent intervention, it is impractical to overcome them. Considering the subtle manner in the particular choice of values of critical characteristics — which could have taken any other constant value which would have made life impossible — It appears as if the universe pursued an intent to breed life.
According to George Wald, this is one of the things that points unmistakably to the idea of a pervasive mind which is intertwined and inseparable from the universe, which intended life to appear in this world.
According to Wald, this is a world of chance, but not one of the accidents.
2. The Problem of Consciousness
George Wald faced the problem of consciousness during his study of the mechanisms of vision. Wald compares the similarity in the build of human and frog eyes. The rods and cones for light receptors in dim and bright light are similar in both frogs and humans. Vitamin A-based visual pigments and retinas with three nerve layers having parallel connections to the brain are common to both.
Despite the similarity, although we as humans know that we see, how do we know whether the frog sees?
Of course, the frog reacts to light, but so does a photoelectric sensor activating a garage door.
Wald states that a scientist cannot answer whether the frog knows that it is reacting to light and whether it is self-aware.
We know that we are conscious. We also know that other humans are aware, as evidenced by our oral and written communications. Similarly, Wald says that all mammals are conscious in all probability, and so are birds that sing at dawn and dusk. But with invertebrates and fish, it is not so obvious.
Wald gives the example of scallops with eighty blue eyes, which are most likely anatomically the most complex in the animal kingdom. Yet, Wald never found any evidence of scallops using their eyes.
Similarly, warm-sea marine worms called Alciopids have great bulging eyes which yield electrical responses to light, but Wald could not elicit responses to light from the worms themselves. Wald states that it is scientifically impossible to establish anything about animal consciousness.
Wald then extends this problem to non-living devices and asks whether the garage door resents the shining of the headlights of the car on it or does a computer feels elated when it beats a human chess player.
Probably No, right?
Science cannot answer these questions.
The limitation comes because consciousness does not give out measurable signals. There is no way to identify the presence or absence of consciousness or speak of its constitution.
Wald further raises the question of the location of consciousness. He quotes a Canadian brain surgeon, Wilder Penfield, his acquaintance.
Penfield had several opportunities to explore the brains of unanaesthetized patients since the brain can be touched and probed without discomfort to the patient once it is exposed.
Penfield hoped to find the location of consciousness in the brain. After a few years, Penfield reportedly told Wald that consciousness was not in the cerebral cortex.
Wald concludes that this problem of consciousness not having a specific location and a universe that intended breeding life (referred to in the earlier section) indicated the presence of an all-pervading consciousness, which guided the universe in surmounting all the obstacles for life to become possible in this world.
3. Intelligence as the Bridge
BD Josephson, a Nobel Laureate in Physics from Cavendish Research Laboratories of Cambridge University, gave this proposition. Josephson feels that God’s most closely connected feature with science is His primary feature, which is God’s intelligence.
Josephson surmises that God as a supreme being is perhaps a little like humans, only God is at a much higher level of intelligence. Josephson invokes an old theological argument about the precise manner in which the universe functions as pointing to the existence of God, as a designer Who made the universe the way it is.
Scientists attempt to refute this theological argument by demonstrating that everything that religious people explained with the help of God could be explained in scientific terms — one example being the theory of evolution to explain the existence of humans.
Josephson questions whether this kind of explanation of phenomena does explain the facts, like the existence of humans. For example, Josephson cites the hypothetical situation where a scientist observes someone building a house from Mars through a powerful telescope. The scientist can very well explain how the process of construction. The brains of humans are sending signals through the nervous system, causing the muscles to contract, resulting in the bricks being lifted and kept in position. The movement of the bricks conforms in exact detail to the laws of mechanics, the laws governing the nerve impulse transmission, muscle contraction, etc.
So, we can explain the construction through the laws of physics without the need for an explanation based on intelligence.
However, such an explanation is incomplete and misleading. Although the description of the construction phenomena may be correct, there is a precondition for the house getting built: the human’s intelligence and knowledge on how to move the bricks and place them in the correct sequence, without which one cannot make the house.
Moreover, first, an architect must be behind the plan of the house. Only then would the masons know where to place the bricks.
Similarly, the theory of evolution may be a correct explanation, but it may be incomplete because a pre-existing intelligence may have made several choices that caused development.
Josephson states that it is a perfectly logical and consistent possibility that God’s plan blended with the phenomena already studied by science and directed the process of evolution.
Josephson concludes by saying that we cannot decide on the existence of intelligence just by studying the adherence of observed phenomena to laws of physics.
Josephson states that intelligence manifests itself via the existence of or the creation of states that are a priori improbable. For example, the possibility of all the bricks fitting together correctly to form a lovely house all on their own is fantastic.
By making it happen, intelligence is manifest. In this manner, Josephson concludes that this kind of approach to studying certain principles functioning and then perceiving the possibility of the existence of intelligence to make it happen could probably lead us to understand what God is about at some level.
4. Where is Life?
Albert Szent Gyorgyi was a Nobel Laureate in Physiology from Cambridge University. The quest to find out where life has come from inspired him. The obvious choice, to begin with, was from studying simple organisms. He started with the assumption that life must have evolved naturally from simple to complex organisms, as explained by the theory of evolution. Going deeper, Gyorgyi switched to studying cells.
After spending sufficient time studying cells, he decided to change to something more fundamental than cells — proteins. After studying proteins, he decided that the answer to his quest about life must lie in even more fundamental particles — electrons.
Towards the end of his life, he confessed,
“In my search for the secret of life, I ended up with atoms and electrons, which have no life at all. Somewhere along the line, life ran out through my fingers. So, in my old age, I am retracing my steps.”
5. Self-duplicating units
Eugene Wigner, another Nobel Laureate in Physics, postulated that the possibility of a self- duplicating unit emerging on its own is zero. Yet we find that every life form duplicates itself in this universe without the need for external intervention.
Once the creation comes into motion, it runs and sustains itself independently. This propositon makes it hard to accept that creation happened by accident.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we can summarise these arguments as under:
1. The universe seems to have possessed an intent for breeding life, and that creation was not an accident.
2. Consciousness cannot be measured or located, which indicates it to be all-pervasive, causing the universe to breed life
3. The occurrence of events a priori improbable indicates the existence of an intelligence behind the creation
4. The answer to the creation of life does not lie in fundamental particles or simple organisms.
5. The probability of a self-duplicating unit (such as all living entities in this world) emerging on its own is zero.
Just like every idea has an origin, everything has an origin. We can appreciate the brain of a scientist, but who has created that brain? Just like a child appreciates how a motorcar is running. But his father appreciates how the driver is running nicely. So, we should not be surprised by the creation. We should appreciate who is conducting and the background of this material nature. Bhagavad gīta 9.10 states:
mayādhyakṣeṇa prakṛtiḥ
sūyate sa-carācaram
hetunānena kaunteya
jagad viparivartate
“Under My direction,” Kṛṣṇa says, “prakṛti, this material nature, is working.” Mayādhyakṣeṇa. This scientific study reiterates my natural inclination to understand myself, my source, and my purpose. I am looking for people like me who are interested in knowing how Krishna, being a person, is different from us and how no one has ever claimed so boldly to be the source of everything.
Now you may wonder whom to accept as a spiritual master?
We see so many self-acclaimed ‘gurus’ professing to help you achieve your highest potential in life. Whom do we trust?
I will talk about the qualifications of the spiritual master in my next article. Until then, Hare Krishna!
The importance of spiritual life and the step-by-step procedure to realize is it yourself is described very elaborately in the book Srimad Bhagavatam, based on Bhagavad Gita, the timeless jewel from the Indian Vedic texts. This book gives a complete understanding of this subject.
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