​How can a devotee pursue a PhD in science without getting carried away by science?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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I am going to do a PhD in science how can I approach science in such a way that I don’t get carried away by it while pursuing my scientific studies answer science is a valid and a valuable tool for acquiring knowledge about this world at a particular scale of observation and it doesn’t necessarily have to challenge or trouble our bhakti but when we start the mistaken attitude to extend science beyond its valid scope science can answer certain kind of questions and science does not really have much to say about other kinds of questions so there is science and there is scientism scientism is actually a system of thought which claims that science can answer all questions which puts omniscience around science scientism itself is not scientific there is no scientific theory that can prove that science has all the answers that is a philosophical claim that whatever is not answered by science that is all wrong, that is all invalid that is that is not a scientific claim so what exactly is science in general basically currently the way science works is that science observes nature, that nature may be the universe that nature may be matter that nature may be atoms, whatever it is it looks at matter and it tries to study its behavior and explain that behavior in terms of natural causes so as an operational principle most of the science today says that we are non-natural, non-natural or supernatural in today’s science soul or god, the idea is that in the past people believed that when the black plague was there, that was because of some evil spirits and if we continue to believe that then we would not have found the cure, the vaccine and other cure. If we look for natural causes for natural phenomena we can analyze those causes, we can control them the science, not the negative science but science attitude is, if we look for natural causes and find natural causes we can progress in our understanding and our ability to, by looking for supernatural causes science does not bring in anything non-natural into its method. This means that the non-natural doesn’t exist, just as an example that if a person is playing a ball is hit into a hole I can explain this in two ways one is that hit this ball at this velocity from this angle with this momentum and then that causes change because of which this ball went into the hole in terms of laws of physics, it’s correct at the same time I could give another explanation he is an expert player and he hit the ball at such an angle that by his expertise the ball went into the hole.
These two are not contradictory the laws of physics are also true the skill of the billiards player is also true science in that in a broad sense, specific theories we have to discuss much more in detail about them but in a broad sense the science focus on natural explanations is fine but when the natural explanations are considered to be the final explanation, then it is assumed that once you have natural explanations, you don’t need anything more so as long as we recognize that science can answer some questions and some questions it can answer phenomenally well, but at the same time science cannot answer all questions what are the kind of questions that science can’t answer they fall broadly in four questions about origin. Science talks about nature and the order of nature but where did this order come from science can’t answer because the origin is not something that science can observe and experiment with and replicate, it can’t do that. Now there are theories about origins, but although we may say the theories about origins are scientific theories, they are not of the same level of authority as theories about the current structure of matter so for example, theories about origins made big bang theory or theory of evolution or whatever, cannot say that they are of the same level as say Newton’s law or Einstein’s equations because these are demonstrable repeatable, testable theories about origins, they are not testable they are not making the point whether they are right or wrong right now, I am simply making the point here, everything that is called science is not of the same level of authority so I have a full class on this I will give you a link of that afterwards but suffice it to say that when science goes into the past, it has to use very different methodologies than what it uses for studying the present and that’s why the ideas it comes about in the past, they are very speculative, so origin is something and that also, science can answer only about the past, it cannot answer about the beginning or before the beginning so origin is something science can’t answer about, second thing that science can’t answer about is, value means what is right and what is wrong why something right, why something wrong science can tell us how to abort a child but whether abortion is right or wrong science can tell if you use a machine gun you can kill a person, but killing whom is right killing whom is wrong is actually science in that sense is value neutral it is not science itself is not bad, but it doesn’t tell us what is good or bad that knowledge has to come from somewhere else scientists may also be good people but it is not their science that has made them good their sense of goodness their sense of rightness and wrongness that has come from their moral framework which has not come from science so science doesn’t tell us about values what is right, what is wrong so Einstein himself said that we can have, what is the word he used we can have the ethical foundation of science, but we can’t have the scientific foundation of ethics ethical foundation of science, science should be ethical we can have that, but we can’t have scientific foundation of ethics ethics are, they have come from a different source, it doesn’t come from science the third is quality quality means, not in terms of I am not talking about virtues, like honesty, truthfulness now according to science, this table is simply made of atoms so it’s mostly space or if you look at relativity theory, it’s just views so from either model that model, either you take of atoms or views, relativity or or quantum physics from that level how does the world as we observe it emerge normally if I say, I take a pack of cards, and I can build a castle out of it but atoms themselves and the fundamental particles that make the atoms they have no colour, they have no fragrance they have none of the sensory perceptions that we have so if something is beautiful I may say, this has a red colour that has a red colour because there is a particular red pigment put in that, that’s fine but what makes that pigment red? that pigment is ultimately made of the same atoms and molecules as a colourless element might be made of the only difference might be in the kind of bonding that is happening between the elements so from that world from the world revealed by science to the world that we come up to how does this world emerge from that world? it is not explainable I’ll send you a link to a PPT, there is a famous Nobel laureate, Arvind Schrodinger so he Schrodinger, he said that science cannot answer questions about whether sweet or bitter beautiful or ugly science is, science provides us tremendous knowledge in terms of analysing our experiences in this world analysing our factual observations in this world and putting them in an array but in terms of qualitative analysis science provides no answer, science does not answer these questions but he is a Nobel laureate scientist, he says these answers are so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously so in terms of quality, science cannot provide the answers we need to look elsewhere for answers and ultimately, purpose every scientist may have a particular purpose that purpose has not come from science because the idea of science is that nature works according to natural phenomena and natural phenomena they don’t have consciousness, they don’t have intentions, they can’t have purpose origin, value, quality purpose, these things are something science can’t answer so broadly I can provide you some of my lectures and I can provide you some of some books by devotees if you are interested further, some books by devotees scholars, books by scientists also in general especially the things which I talked about they all fall in a field called the philosophy of science there is broad philosophy and then there is philosophy of science so there are many issues which when we study science we never come to know, which are very important they come in the philosophy of science depending on your interest level and depending on your time you can do that in general, most devotees unless they have a very great passion for science itself, most devotees when they study science, even if they are doing advanced degrees that is more for functional purposes, would have a good career and a stable position and of course, they may have interest in science but science is not necessarily a life passion, so if it is not a life passion then it is unlikely that just a scientific education is going to erode our faith what might happen is, during the course of scientific education we get exposed to a certain culture and that culture may create some problems that is a danger in whichever branch of knowledge we are going so if you face intellectual challenges if I have the capacity I can provide help, I can connect you with devotee scientists who may also be able to help but broadly understanding the scope of science deals with a lot of problems that may come up the way we are educated often subconsciously, we get the idea that science is almost like omniscient this is not a criticism of science it’s like if I say that the president of America is a very powerful person but the president of America is not the king of the world so this is not an insult to the president of America this is a statement of fact like that science is a very powerful source of knowledge but science is not the source of complete knowledge about everything if you just understand this, then you will see that the way I simply say this, science helps us improve things in some ways but it is spirituality that helps us improve people, improve ourselves so if I have anger if I have lust, if I have greed if I have depression, science may give me some pills but those pills offer only superficial cure if it’s a neurological problem that’s a different issue but if it’s more of an emotional problem it’s difficult to deal with that so I feel overall, study some of the literature so I can just go to thespiritualscientist.com and search there for science and spirituality there are 3-4 lectures, one is are science and spirituality at war? that is one thing which you can hear before I came here, I gave one lecture to IIT students spirituality in the age of science yeah, if you just search for these two names spirituality in the age of science and are science and spirituality at war? there are powerpoints also for both these talks that itself will give a fair understanding and if you have further questions if you would like to read something further then I can give you further links or further material depending on your interest because this is also a big universe and it depends on what you would like to focus