Future Physics – Will It Be Advaita-like? – Part 2
Both scientists and philosophers have been trying to find out for millennia of years the most basic building block of all matter – the fundamental unit that is impartite and cannot any further be subdivided into smaller components. There have been many false starts and dead ends in the investigations into this question both in the East and the West.
Modern day science is still groping for an answer to the problem. In contrast, advaita Vedanta shines with the unique and resplendent glory of finding out the fundamental substratum for all, way back in the ancient times. It just does not stop with the discovery. It has been able to clearly express what it found out convincingly based on logic alone. The advaita Vedanta does not, in this endeavor, hide behind supernatural concepts; it does not invoke mystical powers; nor does it take recourse to dogmatic beliefs.
As far as the postulates of other philosophies go, every one of them, irrespective of their school of thought, posits a God as the ultimate creator of the matter.
It bespeaks of the counter-intuitive ingenuity of the advaita Vedanta philosophers to be able to demolish the need for a separate creator-God and declare boldly the Oneness of the Creator and the matter. They hold that the Creator Himself becomes the matter for His creation, a – dvaita, in the true sense of Non – Duality. In other words, He Himself (Itself) manifests as matter, establishing the unicity of everything, erasing all dualities and multiplicities. Expressed differently, all things are only a modulation from moment to moment of brahman. Thus, they also establish the non-difference between ‘you’ and the creator-creation. They give the name ‘brahman’ to that inexplicable and ineffable Oneness. According to the Vedantins, the basic fundamental form of all things in the universe is the formless, attributeless and undimensional brahman.
The ancient Sages talked about three intrinsic qualities of brahman. They are:
Beingness = Existence = Presence = Amness = Isness ….. (1)
Consciousness = Knowingness = Awareness ….. (2)
Infiniteness = Happiness = Auspiciousness = Bliss ….. (3)
The above three qualities are not qualifiers for brahman as, for example, like the adjectives ‘good’ or ‘rich’ or ‘tall’ in the sentences : Rama is a good boy; Peter is rich; Joan is tall.
The qualities themselves are brahman. It is like saying the Sun is bright. The brightness itself is the Sun. The brightness cannot be separated or removed from the Sun. One cannot take away the effulgence and still retain a Sun there. Another example could be like the ‘saltiness’ of salt. The saltiness itself makes something to be called as the household salt.
So the ‘qualities’ described above are not adjectives – i.e. they are not ‘possessed’ by brahman. They are not even the components with which brahman is made up of. They themselves are brahman. This may be illustrated by the following example: It is said in chemistry that gold is shiny, malleable and chemically inert. These are its qualities and not its components. All these characteristics together are only one thing – gold. Another example is the oneness of the shape, light and heat of a candle flame – the shape, light and heat are one only, not three different things that can be separated out from one another.
Similarly, the three intrinsic qualities, Consciousness-Existence-Happiness, hyphenated as one word, is brahman.
The Greek philosopher-scientist Democritus (fourth century B.C.) in the West was perhaps the first who came up with a properly enunciated theory of atoms as the ultimate constituents of matter. He held “that everything is composed of ‘atoms’, which are physically, but not geometrically, indivisible; that empty space lies between atoms; and, that atoms are indestructible.” However, it was the English scientist, John Dalton who proposed a more acceptable atomic theory in the beginning of the 19th century. He stated that elements consisted of tiny particles called atoms and other substances formed from the combination of the atoms.
By the beginnings of the last century, it was recognized that an atom is not an indivisible unit and it is composed of still smaller subatomic particles – mainly protons, electrons and neutrons. Later on it is found that the protons and neutrons are made up of still more subtle particles which are called as ‘quarks.’ The strong nuclear force binds different types of quarks to form the protons and neutrons within the nucleus of the atom. The weak nuclear force is found to be responsible for the radio activity of certain elements. The discoveries of the past few decades showed that an atom, in addition, comprises certain invisible particles (virtual particles) too and a substantial mass of the atom is, in fact, derived from these virtual particles which constantly appear and disappear instantaneously.
As on date the Physicists are not sure if ‘quarks’ are the most fundamental particles or there could be further smaller components within them. The latest idea of some of the Physicists is that quarks may be composed of still subtler particles called ‘preons.’ Several other theoretical concepts based purely on mathematical arguments are proposed to say that vibrating strings and loops are the smallest possible matter, but there is no way to verify in a laboratory the veracity of these extra-ordinary claims.
Most of us read about the Periodic Table of Elements in our Chemistry class. It tells about how the different chemical elements come into existence starting with Hydrogen having one proton in its nucleus to Ununpentium having 115 protons (made in August, 2013) in the nucleus. Somewhat similarly, there is a theory in Physics to explain how matter forms. It goes by the name of Standard Model of Particle Physics. It has been in existence for over 50 years. According to this theory, there are16 subatomic particles — broadly speaking, matter particles called Fermions like the quarks and electrons, and force particles called Bosons like photon and gluon. The recently discovered Higgs particle adds one more to them bringing them up to 17. These 17 subatomic particles form the basis for matter and its interactions in the universe. However, the Standard Model is unable to explain how the gravitational force comes about and what particle carries the gravitational force when one object attracts another object.
The Standard Model also falls short in explaining another important factual observation. Our entire visible matter (including the billions of distant stars and galaxies) comprises less than five percent of our universe. The rest of the 95 percent of the universe is invisible to us and we can deduce its presence through indirect inferences. We know there exists some form of an energy which is pushing the huge galaxies away from one another and thus speedily expanding the universe. This energy constitutes over 68 percent of the universe and we do not know its exact nature. The remaining 27 percent of the universe consists of an unknown matter. We could infer the presence of this unknown matter because it adds to the weight of the galaxies affecting their rotation; but we do not know what sort of particles it is actually made up of. The Standard Model does not provide any clue to this unknown matter. So it is increasingly becoming necessary for scientists to look for new physics beyond the Standard Model, Quantum Physics and Relativity Theory.
Though we have used thus far the word ‘particle’ for the most fundamental entity described in Physics, the scientists themselves are not sure what exactly a particle is! Most of us imagine particles to be like miniscule-size billiard balls rebounding off one another. But they are anything but such bouncing balls. Sometimes they behave as if they are spread out everywhere like a wave. We have already pointed out to this peculiarity of atomic and subatomic particles in the Part 1 of this series.
So Physicists came up with the idea of fields. For example, if you place a magnet on a sheet of paper, its power of attracting small iron filings extends in all directions. You can see a circular pattern of the iron filings around the magnet. These circles define the ‘field’ of the magnet held by you. Physicists say that such fields exist for every type of quantum-size particle.
You can watch a two-minute talk on Fields by Dr. George Musser here.
But one has to admit that the idea of field also does not satisfactorily explain the behavior of these entities. Physicists do not really know what exact form these minute entities exist in. Sometimes their behavior can be modeled as if they are spherical balls and sometimes as if they are mutually interfering ripples in a pond.
All this tells us how wrong we are in our unexamined assumption of physicality to the ‘things’ and ‘matter’ that we interact with. You cannot get a ‘feel’ of what it actually is by, so to say, hoping to hold it in your hand nor can you ‘grasp’ its nature by using your imagination.
Before we speculate on what matter could be like, let us examine where the concepts of a ball-like particle or a field-like distribution fall short.
(To Continue ….)
