A TALK IN ANEKANTA SERIES VADODARA 06.12.2002 By Y.S. RAJAN

1. A TALK IN ANEKANTA SERIES VADODARA 06.12.2002 By Y.S. RAJAN

2. Werner Heisenberg's Limit of Uncertainty Principle Speed of Light

3. GROWTH OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE AND MULTIPLES OF SUBJECTS………EVER EXPLODING SUPERSPECIALIATIES….CONTINUAL FUSION OF KNOWLEDGE-SKILL BASES……..ARE THEY ALL PART OF REALITY?…….OR AN ILLUSORY TRANSITION IN SEARCH OF A “REALITY”?

4. WHAT ABOUT OTHER ASPECTS OF LIFE?…. FEELINGS FOR OTHERS IN HUMANITY, etc.- UTTER POVERTY, DISEASES ….. POSSIBILITIES OF ALLEVIATION THROUGH SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ECONOMIC AND ORGANISATION ….. IS IT ILLUSORY ‘MAYA’, NOT WORTH ?

5. OUR HERITAGE 1 May we see for hundred years 2 May we live for hundred years 3 May we acquire knowledge for hundred years 4 May we go prospering and progressing for hundred years 5 May we go on being nourished for hundred years 6 May we remain strong and sturdy for hundred years 7 May we retain our prestige and influence for hundred years 8 May we retain all these powers for sight etc. for greater number of years than hundred.”

6. ‘TRUTH’ IN NATURE PHYSICS, BIOLOGY ……. DETAILS OF DATA ……MATHEMATICALLY WRITTEN “LAWS”? SOFTWARE …….

7. Nirmal Verma - “Concept of ‘Truth’ in Art” “This does not mean, as is often assumed that the reality of the world of art is closed to the world outside. It only means that it creates an alternate reality, which would remain strange and unknown to us, till we come into contact with it…. It is this inarticulate feeling of beyond, which connects the work of art with the spirit of the sacred…… All works of art in this sense are an attempt to recover the memory of divine. ‘Beyond’ in art is not something what is to be attained, but to remember that which has been forgotten……. Hence the crucial role of memory in art which is to recover in art what has been lost in life. To be able to do that art makes us return inwards, towards the depth of our own self. But it also makes jus move in the opposite direction, towards the world outside…”

8. HOW DID ALL THE “KNOWLEDGE” COME FROM? …. ANIMALS HAVE KNOWLEDGE BASES TOO. BUT ONLY AFTER HUMAN BEING CAME TO EXIST,THE PRESENT FORMS OF KNOWLEDGE HAVE COME ABOUT. “MIND FROM MATTER?” MAX DELBRIICK (1986)

9. HUMAN KNOWLEDGEA QUOTE FROM DELBUCK 1.How is it possible that mind came into being in an initially lifeless and mindless, universe? 2. If by way of answer to the first question, we envisage that mind arose from mindless matter by a Darwinian evolutionary process of natural selection favoring caveman’s reproductive success, then how did this process give rise to a mind capable of elaborating the most profound insights into mathematics, the structure of matter, and the nature of life itself, which were scarcely needed in the cave? 3. Indeed how can the capacity for understanding and knowing the truth arise from dead matter?

10. “His ancestors diverged from apes about 15 million years ago. ……. Homo erectus appeared 1.5 million years ago…… Homo sapiens several hundred thousand years ago. Only as recently as 40,000 years ago did one race of Homo sapiens namely our own kind, H.sapiens, managed to exterminate the other type of its species, such as H. sapiens neanderthalensis”.

11. “what we perceive are not raw sensory data but intrinsic (i.e. viewer-independent) qualities of objects abstracted from the raw data …the abstraction process is preconscious and hence cannot be introspected, a point that “ is overlooked when (naive realist) physicists discuss the nature of reality since they tend to equate sensation in the sensory organs with what is presented to the consciousness. The consciousness has no access to raw data; it obtains only a highly processed portion of the input. Such a processing makes a evolutionary sense, since the rate of visual input into our eyes is so enormous that without a preconscious filtering of raw data our minds would be overwhelmed by sensory overload.”

12. AN “infinite series” (LET US NOT BE TOO MATHEMATICAL ABOUT THIS EXPRESSION) OF PERCEPTIONS, KNOWLEDGE etc. ARE THE RESULT OF THESE FACTS ABOUT HUMAN BRAIN AND CONSCIOUSNESS

13. IT IS THE PARSIMONY OF THE NUMBER OF ELEMENTS SINGLED OUT FOR ATTENTION THAT MAKES THE NOTION OF DUALITY OF OBSERVER AND OBSERVED SO SUCCESSFUL AND GIVES THE ILLUSION IN PHYSICS THAT THE OBJECT IS TOTALLY DISTINCT FROM THE OBSERVER.

14. To summarize, the Cartesian cut between observer and observed, between inner and external reality, between mind and body, is based on the illusion that the physical world has no subjective component This illusion arises from the high degree of quantitative reliability of scientific statements about the outer, physical world. Their quantitative reliability makes us forget that these statements are as related to subjective experiences as statements about the inner, mental world. In experiencing the physical world, we limit our attention to a narrowly circumscribed set of perceptions, such as those resulting from the reading of dials of instruments that measure such quantities as time, distance, or force.

15. But in experiencing the mental world we include a wider repertoire of perceptions, not only primitive perceptions such as color, sound, and smell, but also higher level, complex perceptions of visual space in general and of gestures made by other human beings – their smiles, vocal or facial expressions of threat or fear or affection – in particular. While these higher level perceptions about mental states are less easily quantified than perceptions about physical states, they nevertheless fit into the same kind of cybernetic network of interactions.

16. “.. there is a two-way traffic between conscious and unconscious. One traffic stream continually moves in a downward direction: we concentrate on new experiences, arrange them into patterns, develop new observational skills, muscular dexterities, verbal aptitudes; and when these have been mastered by continued practice, the controls are handed over to a kind of automation, and the whole assembly is dispatched, along with the gradients of awareness, out of sight. The upward traffic stream moves in the small fluctuating pulses from the unconscious which sustain the dynamic balance of the mind – and in the rare, sudden surges of creativity, which, may lead to re-structuring of the whole mental landscape”. The Act of Creation’ by Arthur Koestler (1964)

17. WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN? IS THE WORLD THEN TOO CONFUSING? I BELIEVE IT IS NOT SO! WE WILL LIVE IN TE REALITY OF NAÏVE REALISM MOST OF THE TIME (AS OUR SENSES FEEL, TOUCH, SMELL ETC.) – AN EVOLUTIONARY IMPRINT ON US. ALSO LIVE IN DIFFERENT STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS: AS A SCIENTIST, TECHNOLOGIST, PROJECT MANAGER, AN ARTIST, A POET, POLITICAL THINKER, SOCIAL ACTIVIST ETC.

18. JUST AS IT IS WRONG NOT TO ACCEPT THE BIODIVERSITY WHICH THROWS SURPRISES AT US ALL THE TIME, IT IS ALSO WRONG NOT TO ASSUME “perception diversity” – THE KNOWLEDGE – SKILL DIVERSITY

19. THEN NO COMPETITIVENESS OF THOUGHTS, IDEAS etc.?! IS EVERYTHING RIGHT? CORRECT? TOTALLY RELATIVIST ETHICS ?? NOT EXACTLY……. ALL OF US HAVE TO ATTEMPT TOWARDS SOME BROAD FRAMEWORK OF COLLECTIVE ACTIONS, SUBMERGING (OR SUBSUMING) OUR OWN SELVES……………

20. ACCEPT THE BASIC MASLOW NEEDS OF EVERYBODY SELF-ACTUALISATION ESTEEM LOVE SAFETY BASIC PHYSICAL NEEDS HIGHER THE LEVEL, THE COMPLEXITY IS MORE

21. USE MASLOW NEEDS BUT ALSO ATTEMPT TO CONTROL THE NEEDS! (ANOTHER DIALECTICS IN ACTION!!) UNIVERSAL COMPASSION – DELIBERATELY TRY TO CULTIVATE TRY TO REMOVE HUMAN DEFILEMENTS THREE HUMAN DEFILEMENTS Craving - Conceit - Views tanha - maana - ditthi (Physical needs(Love & Self esteem)And safety)

22. THE LATTER TWO DEFILEMENTS ARE MOST DANGEROUS ANDOFTEN USED BY THE MOST POWERFUL DIVERSITY……DIVERSITY…….PLURALISM Is THE MANTRA TO SAVE US…… IT CAN HELP REMOVE ‘I’ AND ‘ME’

23. “Bediththu Nammai Valarththeduththa Peywalaithan Padaththiran Padi Aadelor Empavai”