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Resource name: /E-Library/Disciples/Amal Kiran (K D Sethna)/English/Science Materialism Mysticism/The Scientific Mind and the Mystical Outlook.htm
The Scientific Mind and the Mystical Outlook
The scientific mind and the mystical outlook figure in the
popular imagination as eternal enemies. Both are felt to be
important but somehow irreconcilable in ultimate matters. It
is worth inquiring whether the supposed irreconcilableness
is anything other than a superficial impression.
We may remark at the very beginning that, historically,
science and religion have not always stood in stark opposition. And most significantly the absence of stark opposition
has been with regard to the science that is the very foundation of all sciences: physics. What is called classical or
Newtonian physics was
Resource name: /E-Library/Disciples/Amal Kiran (K D Sethna)/English/Science Materialism Mysticism/Did Classical Physics Bear Out Materialism.htm
Science
Materialism Mysticism
by
Amal
Kiran (K. D. Sethna)
Foreword
to the second Edition
The
Clear Ray Trust, Pondicherry, is happy to publish the second
Edition of Amal Kiran's book "Science Materialism,
Mysticism".
The
Issue Materialism versus Mysticism now seems to be an important
point of intellectual debate and this book throws a considerable
amount of light on the subject and helps to clarity many concepts
relating to the subject.
Did
Classical Physics Bear Out Materialism?
One of the
distinguishing marks of the present century is the revolution in
physics. This revolution has swept away many of the old
Resource name: /E-Library/Disciples/Amal Kiran (K D Sethna)/English/Science Materialism Mysticism/Matter Life Mind.htm
Matter, Life,
Mind
1
Our
scrutiny of scientific opinions has deals so far with the
problem of matter and mind and the problem of with the life. We
have examined these problems in indent" and each other, thus
giving the fullest scope possible
scientific features
peculiar to either of them and not subduing them in the interests
of a theory derived from outside? field concerned. Both our
surveys have reached a corn conclusion which is all the stronger
because reached along two independent lines: namely, that
matter is not the basic reality. We have discovered, on strictly
scientific grounds, that mind cannot be reduced to matter and
that matter can
Resource name: /E-Library/Disciples/Amal Kiran (K D Sethna)/English/Science Materialism Mysticism/Mysticism and Einstein^s Relativity Physics .htm
Mysticism and
Einstein's Relativity Physics
I
When Archbishop
Davidson, in the early days of relativity theory, asked Einstein
what effect his theory would have on religion, Einstein answered:
"None. Relativity is a purely scientific theory and has
nothing to do with religion." This answer seems to give
short shrift to any attempt at aligning with a mystical view of
the universe the revolution in scientific thought which Einstein
brought about. But Eddington suggests that Einstein's remark must
be under- stood in the context of the times in which it was made.
In those days, Eddington, explains, one had to become expert in
dodging p
Resource name: /E-Library/Disciples/Amal Kiran (K D Sethna)/English/Science Materialism Mysticism/Matter and Mind.htm
Matter and Mind
"advance"
hits were scored in stringently conditioned experiments so
greatly in excess of chance expectations that the odds against
their being in fact due to chance were, on the most conservative
estimate, of the order of 1032 (i.e. 1 followed by 32 zeros) to
1.
She
takes it upon herself to return a clear answer to the four most
important criticisms about such astonishing results. She writes:
"First, the successes could not have been due to inadequate
shuffling of the cards. No use was made of such relatively crude
methods as hand shuffling: the order of presentation of the cards
was systematically 'randomized', by methods which are familiar to
stat
Title:
dimensional continuum that figures in our immediate measurements as spatial and temporal quantities changing in a joint interd
View All Highlighted Matches
Resource name: /E-Library/Disciples/Amal Kiran (K D Sethna)/English/Science Materialism Mysticism/The Originality of Einstein.htm
The
Originality of Einstein
A
"Close-Up" of the World's Greatest Scientist
On
April 18, 1955, died Albert Einstein who had been born on March
14, 1879. To have lived in the time of a man like him has been a
rare privilege. For, there is not the slightest doubt that he is
the most original thinker in the whole history of science. }.W.N.
Sullivan perhaps hits the mark when he says that while we can
imagine Galileo's and Newton's work done by other geniuses we
find it extremely difficult to believe anyone would have
discovered relativity theory if Einste
Resource name: /E-Library/Disciples/Amal Kiran (K D Sethna)/English/Science Materialism Mysticism/LSD and Mind of the Future.htm
LSD and the Mind
of the Future
1
Extraordinary
experiences by the use of drugs: this issue has been growing ever
livelier since 1954 when Aldous Huxley conducted experiments on
himself and wrote on the consciousness-changing effects of
Mescaline. With the many- sided study of a drug 7000 times as
potent - LSD, after the German Lyserg
Saiire Diethylamide (=Lysergic
Acid in common English) - we have reached the peak-point of
controversy. For, with a pill weighing 1/200,000 of an ounce, LSD
not only releases the human consciousness from its common bounds
but also expands it to an extent which seems infinite. We thus
pass beyond medi
Resource name: /E-Library/Disciples/Amal Kiran (K D Sethna)/English/Science Materialism Mysticism/Matter and Life.htm
Matter and Life
The question before
us is: "What conclusions are to be drawn from the findings
of science on what is called organic nature as commonly
distinguished from inorganic? In other words, science point
towards the validity of the common distinction or does it
indicate life to be merely a certain state of complex matter and
ultimately reducible to physico chemical terms?" We need not
accept science as the final arbiter, but it would be illuminating
to see whether a branch of inquiry which has great influence on
philosophic thought today
and which at one time was almost
unanimously taken to "debunk" all non-materialism does
actually offer an
Probability in
Microphysics:
Its Implications
and Consequences
Einstein brought
about in 1905 a tremendous revolution in physics when he
dethroned Newton's concept of a universal static space and a time
flowing uniformly everywhere - an absolute space and an absolute
time in terms of which there could be a measurement of absolute
motion. The principle on which this revolution was based may be
stated as follows: "None
but observable factors - that is, factors definable by means of
physical processes, factors distinguishable by experimental
operations - can be considered to be in causal dependence."
Einstein showed that scientific apparatus, e
Resource name: /E-Library/Disciples/Amal Kiran (K D Sethna)/English/Science Materialism Mysticism/Einstein^s Four-dimensional Continuum.htm
Einstein's
Four-dimensional Continuum
1
On April 18, 1955,
passed away the most original scientific thinker the world has
seen. A host of exceptionally revolutionary ideas were let loose
by him from the beginning of his scientific career in the early
years of this century up to the very end of his life: it is not
more than a couple of years since he propounded his last version
of what he called the Unified Field Theory, the fullest expansion
of the relativity theory with which his name burst on us in 1904.
Perhaps the most notable contribution by his work to the world of
thought is the concept of a four-dimensional continuum of
spac