If science can’t answer some questions why is everyone progressing along scientific lines?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
You said the second question is that if there are certain things which cannot be defined by science, then why is all of society progressing in that direction? See, at the start of the age of science, which more or less started with Galileo and Newton, the whole idea was that science tried to observe nature and it divided nature because nature is so complex. It divided nature into primary and secondary qualities and science deemed that at that time the word science was not there.
The word science actually, as it is used now, it is the 18th century. That’s how scientists came up. But Newton himself called himself a natural philosopher.
But the point is this particular methodology that started, that focused on dividing nature into primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities are those which are measurable. So length, breadth, mass, like that.
And secondary qualities like beauty, taste, fragrance, these are non-quantifiable. So they were considered not important because they couldn’t be quantified through science. And through this quantification and the attempt to theoretically explain these quantifiable attributes, science made tremendous progress.
But the very nature of the human mind is that when attention focuses on one thing, attention gets lost from the other things. So as science focused more and more on the measurable aspects of reality, those which are non-measurable, they started becoming more and more neglected. And today technology is progressing at an incredible speed in terms of the way gadgets are coming.
And this is a result of significant advances in our capacity to process things, information processing capacity. At the same time, there are many scientists who are talking about, in the pure sciences, in the last almost 100 years, there has been no major breakthrough in pure science. Because as far as theoretical understanding of the world is concerned, science has two main models, there is quantum physics and there is relativity.
Now both of these don’t go together. They have two very different conceptions of what the nature of reality is. I won’t go into the technicalities here.
The point is, the two are not reconcilable. And many scientists have been trying for it, but no one has got anywhere near it. Stephen Hawking, around 2004, he said, I am happy to announce that humanity’s quest for knowledge will never end.
And the Guardian reported it. The Guardian saw through his sleeve of hand. Even he has given up.
Steven Weinberg is another famous novelist. He said, in the last 40 years, we have made tremendous progress in understanding both quantum physics and relativity. But the more we have understood them, the more the distance between the two has increased.
So basically, now, most scientists accept the fact that science does not tell us about the nature of reality. Science simply provides us models of reality. This model works for this purpose.
This model works for this purpose. The models are very valuable. It’s like, say, if I am travelling from here to, say, Detroit to meet a friend, and I have a map.
Now, a map is like a model of the territory. Now, if I take the map, and the map tells me, OK, on this street, turn left, and go over this bridge, then cross this expressway, take this turn. And as I keep following it, I find that whatever it is predicting is correct.
It’s correct. It’s correct. And my confidence in that map increases more and more.
And finally, I reach my friend’s house. And I ring the bell. My friend opens the door and says, Welcome! And I look at the map.
You don’t exist here. Therefore, you don’t exist. What nonsense! The map is not meant to show me.
No, but whatever the map showed was right. The map doesn’t show you. Therefore, you don’t exist.
You say, your brain doesn’t exist. So, a map is a very powerful tool. But if I use the map as a guide to the totality of reality, then I blunder erroneously.
I blunder grievously. So, similarly, science is progressing at an incredible speed. Not science.
Technology is progressing at an incredible speed today. And that is giving us more and more control over things which we did not have in terms of communication, telecommunication and other things. But right from its beginning, what happened was consciousness and the qualities which we observe associated with consciousness were left out by science.
It’s like a map does not show people. So, similarly, we ourselves, because our emotions and our consciousness is not quantifiable, is left out by science. And today, people are coming to the level where they are saying that, you know, you don’t exist.
So, science is progressing because science had a particular vision of reality. And it’s progressing very fast, but there are certain things which by design, by intention, were left out. When the original scientists, they left it out, that was simply a methodology for them.
And as a methodology, that is fine. But today, for many, that methodology is being made into an ideology. That methodology, we don’t bother about the non-quantifiable, the non-measurable.
We focus on the measurable, the quantifiable. That’s fine as a methodology. But today, it has become an ideology where anything that is non-measurable, anything that is non-quantifiable, some people say it doesn’t exist only.
And then, it becomes a problem. So, scientific progress is not the problem. The assumption, or technological progress is not the problem.
The assumption is that, the problem is when a methodology, no matter how powerful it is, when it is made into an ideology, when we think that this itself gives the total knowledge of reality, that’s when it becomes a problem. Does that answer your question?