Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1

The Changed Scientific Outlook

THERE is, of course, more than one line of scientific outlook at the present day. It is well known that continental scientists generally and Marxist scientists in particular belong to a different category from Jeans and Eddington. But the important point is this: a considerable body of scientists frankly hold the "idealist" view, and these come from the very front rank qua scientists. Discussion arises when it is seriously put forward that Eddington and Jeans are not authorities in science equalling any other great names; as if it is contended that because a scientist holds the idealist view, ergo, he is a pseudo-scientist, a third-degree luminary, a back-bencher, a mediaevalist. The Marxists also declare, we may recall in this connection, that the bourgeois cannot be a true poet, in order to be a poet one must be a proletarian.

There is a scientific obscurantism, which is not less obscure because it is scientific, and one must guard against it with double care and watchfulness. It is the mentality of the no-changer whose motto seems to be: plus ça change, plus ça reste le même.. Let me explain. The scientist who prefers still to be called a materialist must remember that the (material) ground under his feet has shifted considerably since the time he first propounded his materialistic position: he does not stand in the same place (or plane?) as he did even twenty years ago. The change has been basic and fundamental – fundamental, because the very definitions and postulates with which we once started have been called in question, thrown overboard or into the melting-pot.

Shall we elucidate a little? We were once upon a time materialists, that is to say, we had very definite and fixed notions about Matter: to Matter we gave certain invariable

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characteristics, inalienable properties. How many of them stand today unscathed on their legs? Take the very first, the crucial property ascribed to Matter: "Matter is that which has extension." Well, an electric charge, a unit energy of it, the ultimate constituent of Matter as discovered by Science today, can it be said to occupy space? In the early days of Science, one Boscovich advanced a theory according to which the ultimate material particle (a molecule, in his time) does not occupy space, it is a mere mathematical point toward or from which certain forces act. The theory, naturally, was laughed out of consideration; but today we have come perilously near it. Again, another postulate describing Matter's dharma was: "two material particles cannot occupy the same place at the same time". Now what do you say of the neutron and proton that coalesce and form the unit of a modern atomic nucleus? Once more, the notion of the indestructibility of Matter has been considerably modified in view of the phenomenon of an electric particle (electron) being wholly transmuted ("dematerialised" as the scientists themselves say) into a light particle (photon). Lastly, the idea of the constancy of mass – a bed-rock of old-world physics – is considered today to be a superstition, an illusion. If after all these changes in the idea of Matter, a man still maintains that he is a materialist, as of old, well, I can only exclaim in the Shakespearean phrase: "Bottom, thou art translated"! What I want to say is that the changes that modern physics proposes to execute in its body are not mere amendments and emendations, but they mean a radical transfiguration, a subversion and a mutation. And more than the actual changes effected, the possibilities, the tendencies that have opened out, the lines along which further developments are proceeding do point not merely to a reformation, but a revolution.

Does this mean that Science after all is veering to the Idealist position? Because we have modified the meaning and connotation of Matter does it 'follow that we have perforce arrived at spirituality? Not quite so. As Jeans says, the correct scientific position would be to withhold one's judgment about the ultimate nature of matter, whether it is material or mental (spiritual, we would prefer to say): it is an attitude of non possumus. But such neutrality, is it truly possible and is it so

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very correct? We do see scientists lean .on one side or the other, according to the vision or predisposition that one carries.

From our standpoint, as we view the modern scientific developments, what we see is not that Matter has been spiritualised, but that it has been considerably dematerialised, even immaterialised, that it is in the process of further dematerialisation or immaterialisation. That opens a long and large vista. We say Science by itself cannot arrive at the spiritual, for there is a frontier bar which has to be overleaped, negotiated by something like a somersault. For the scientific view is after all limited by one scope and range of the physical eye. Still, this eye has begun to see things and in a manner to which it was not normally accustomed; it has been trained and educated, made keen and supple so that it seems to be getting more and more attuned even to other vibrations of light beyond and outside the normal sevenfold spectrum.

Science has not spiritualised (or idealised or mentalised) the world; it has not spiritualised itself. Agreed. But what it has done is remarkable. First, with its new outlook it has cut away the ground from where it was wont to give battle to religion and spirituality, it has abjured its cast-iron strait-jacket mentality which considered that senses and syllogism encompass all knowledge and objects of knowledge. It has learnt humility and admits of the possibility of more things there being in heaven and earth which are not amenable to its fixed co-ordinates. Secondly, it has gone at times even beyond this attitude of benevolent neutrality. For certain of its conclusions, certain ways of formulation seem to echo other truths, other manners. That is to say, if Science by itself is unable to reach or envisage the spiritual outlook, yet the position it has reached, the vistas it envisages seem to be not perhaps exactly one with, but in line with what our vision (of the scientific world) would be like if once we possess the spiritual eye. Matter, Science says today, is energy and forms of matter, objects, are various vibrations of this one energy. What is this energy? According to science, it is electrical, radiant, ethereal (Einstein replaces "ether" by "field") – biological science would venture to call it life energy. You have only to move one step farther and arrive at the greater

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and deeper generalisation – Matter is a mode of the energy of consciousness, all forms of Matter are vibrations of consciousness.

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