If all equations including those of quantum physics are thoughts of God, why does quantum physics not make sense?

From Pancha Pandava P

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Sri Prabhupada. Hare Krishna, question from Pancha Panda Prabhu.
If all equations are thoughts of God, including the equations of quantum physics, then why doesn’t quantum physics make sense? Why is it so incomprehensible? Answer is a complex question. First let me explain the question and I will explain the answer. So I often quote Srinivasa Ramanujan who has said that an equation for me has no meaning unless it represents a thought of God.
So the point is that these scientific equations are actually scientist discoveries of what are originally the thoughts of God and Newton also as well as this quotation is attributed to Newton as well as to other thinkers that oh God I think thy thoughts after thee. So the idea is when scientists discover something about the universe, develop some insights, at that time they are actually discovering the reality that is there within nature and which has been put there by God. So the equation, the equality that is there in nature which is represented by the equation, that equality was made by God.
So now when we come to quantum physics, the equations do work and that’s why we have so many devices today which are widely used which are all based on quantum physics which would not be possible without quantum physics and yet quantum physics doesn’t make sense in terms of giving us a conceivable picture of the universe. Quantum physics reduces everything down to waves and even Einstein said that, Einstein couldn’t accept quantum physics because as he famously said that I would like to believe that the moon continues to exist even when I am not looking at it. What he meant was that according to quantum physics the waves collapse basically it’s a complex point but simply that actually objects are something which we perceive when there is an observer to perceive them otherwise everything exists as waves.
This is of course oversimplification of the implications of quantum physics but essentially so if quantum physics does not make sense then how do the equations work and do these equations also represent the thought of God? So that is the question. So now within science there have been two schools of thought. Of course there have been many but rather these two are based on two fundamental approaches to science.
We as devotees generally rely on shabda pramana and then we consider pratyakshana anuman as subordinate and then we say science is based on pratyakshana anuman that is now in western philosophy these are called as empiricism and rationalism. Now we lump both of these together and say this is the scientific method relies on empiricism and rationalism. However empiricism and rationalism that means that which is observed which is considered with a fundamental reality that is empiricism and rationalism means that which is inferred that which makes intellectual rational sense that is to be considered to be the highest.
So now these two thoughts themselves had conflicts within the history of science and originally science started off as moving from observation to theory and the observed world was considered to be the real world to be the actual tangible reality and then to explain the events in the outer world theories were proposed. So in that sense traditional traditional atheists have always challenged God’s existence by saying that you know can you show me God. So the idea is the scene reality is the primary reality in science and based on the scene certain things can be inferred.
So theories were to be rooted originally in the observation that were there in the outer world. Now as the theories were developed and as the theories started being phrased in the mathematical language that means in terms of mathematics basically equations and we have calculus we have differential equations. Now it is still now a great mystery within science as to why nature outside and the natural things outside should behave according to mathematical equations when those equations are actually nothing but a set of something which we have conceived in the concepts like calculus and differential equations and all these the concepts which we have conceived in our mind why should they correlate with the external behavior, external world and the interaction of objects in that external world.
So of course this is a big subject in itself and there are Nobel laureates Eugene Wigner and others who have written papers on this very important papers. Anyway the point here is that as the equations were developed more and more it was found that means the development of equations was within rationalism and it was found that rationalism had its own inner coherence that means when one equation makes sense and relates to another equation that also makes sense and then the various equations come together to form a as scientists would call it an elegant theory. So then scientists started feeling that these theories are so important that theory should be beautiful.
They should be, they should have their own inner coherence and so Einstein himself during his long and illustrious career vacillated between empiricism and rationalism. So vacillated means was indecisive about. So for example there are quotes now Suhotra Maharaj has written a book called Substance and Shadow where he talks about this quite a bit and of course this is a subject in mainstream scientific research also and mainstream scientific intellectual discourse also.
So Einstein has one quote of Einstein says that actually the observation is what is important. All theorizing should be to explain the observation. I am paraphrasing his quotes over here.
Now another set of quote, another quote he says is that the theory is elegant, the theory works then even if it doesn’t make, even if it doesn’t tally with the outer world it doesn’t matter. So the point which I am making through all this coming to our discussion on quantum physics is that quantum Newtonian physics brought about you could say marriage between empiricism and rationalism. That what was observed in the outer world say objects fall when they are allowed to they are left free without any support.
So that empirical observation of freely falling bodies was explained using the rational theory of gravity. So in gravity there was a marriage of empiricism and rationalism. But in one sense the subsequent discoveries of this in the 20th century black body radiation and other such discoveries the idea of expanding universe and various discoveries that’s a big field itself.
But they led to fracture and you could say even a divorce between empiricism and rationalism not a complete divorce. But it was uneasy tension and that tension expressed itself even more strongly in the theories of relativity and quantum physics. Now of course it’s not that relativity so relativity focused more on the world as we observe it.
Of course relativity has its equations and those equations are very important. So it’s not that relativity does not have a rational side to it. There are equations but then relativity is not able to explain the complete world, complete reality.
It explains the behavior of macroscopic bodies but it cannot explain the behavior of microscopic particles. So anyway the point was that quantum physics moved more towards the side of rationalism and it proposed equations and those equations made their coherent sense and they worked in terms of the predictive results that were expected according to theory. But the theory made no sense in terms of giving us a conceivable picture of the universe.
So as I quoted in a Gita Delhi article there is a physicist who said the universe is not only queerer than we can imagine but it is also queerer than what we can imagine. So that means that his point was that actually the universe is, the quantum physics does describe the universe in some way but that description cannot be visually depicted nor can it be understood intellectually by us as some kind of picture. We cannot picturize it.
So the point here is now this is the overall historical background. So how do we see this from a spiritual perspective? Are the equations of quantum physics also the thoughts of God? Now when we say thought of God we also have to understand that God is infinite and his thoughts are also many. So just like we have the six blind men and the elephant the famous parable where different people are holding on to different parts of the elephant and are thinking that they have got the they have come to know the elephant.
So like that the different theories that are developed in science they are like different ways of holding on to the elephant and in the past for example when Newtonian physics was developed it was thought that actually the Newtonian physics described the full elephant. The elephant here represents nature but then as science developed then they realized that actually there is much that Newtonian physics doesn’t develop and then so that’s why quantum physics and relativity developed and now the problem is these are not just blind men holding on to a part of the elephant. They are holding on to a part of elephant but they also know that there is another big part that we are not able to hold on to.
That means say quantum physics knows that it explains some part of reality but the rest of the reality our observed world it just gives us no way to make sense of that in terms of quantum terms and same with relativity also it also has limitations. That means now we could say that we have developed from the six blind men and the elephant to the stage of say that there are blind men who know that they are holding on to elephant and somebody else says I am holding on to a different part of the elephant but how the two parts of the elephant come together to make a whole that no one is able to make sense and that is something which is almost impossible. In fact this is what trying to conceive the whole elephant was what scientists have been trying to do through their theory of everything or grand unified theory and Stephen Hawking after decades and decades of theorizing and conceptualizing finally gave it up and he tried to mask his defeat in victorious terms by saying that I am happy to announce that humanity’s quest for knowledge will never end but the point again is that yes these equations to the extent they work to that extent they describe some part of reality and to that extent that order we can understand has been put there by the arrangement of God whatever order is being perceived no the order has not come by in and of itself the order is there because there has been a orderly mind who is overseeing the whole thing so yes we could say that the equations even the equations of quantum physics are the thought of God but we understand that God thoughts are far greater than our thoughts and our thoughts have become fragmented in the sense that we have been able to without with our thoughts whether we those thoughts of quantum theory or of relativity theory been able to hold on to one fragment of reality but the whole of reality eludes us and that’s why though the equations of quantum physics work but still the theory as a whole does not make sense in terms of reconciling it with the world that we experience some scientists some extreme devotees of quantum physics extremist devotees of quantum physics try to argue that the world as we know doesn’t exist only they call this dismiss this idea naive realism and they say actually there are no tables no chairs no computers no cameras this world as we know doesn’t exist only and in that way they try to reconcile it triumphalist about quantum theory but even if we grant for argument say that the world as we know doesn’t exist still the question comes up okay where does the illusion that the world exists come from what is it so quantum physics is by no means a theory of everything it doesn’t work explain the world as we experience it but it gives us a remarkably accurate picture of a fragment of reality and to that extent it can be said that it the equation of quantum physics represent a thought of God but if you want a complete picture not just complete picture in terms of understanding exhaustively every single material detail in the world which is impossible for any human being but understanding the complete picture in the sense of understanding the purpose of the universe and understanding our place within the universe our purpose in the universe for that we can turn more towards scripture and scripture does give us some material knowledge but more than material knowledge it gives us spiritual knowledge it gives us knowledge about the purpose of knowledge and that knowledge is what is most important the Bhagavad Gita 15.15 states that that by the word Veda can mean now Vedic literature or it can add a generic sense mean knowledge also by all knowledge I am to be known so the purpose of all knowledge is ultimately to know the Supreme Lord and to devote ourselves to the Supreme Lord so the inconceivability the incomprehensibility of quantum physics can give us glimpses of the incomprehensibility and inconceivability of the intelligence and the glory of the Supreme Lord and thereby we can use quantum physics wherever it provides us divine devices that we can use in Krishna service if we are into quantum physics we can do research as per our profession and try to get a more clear picture of the universe as is depicted by quantum physics but for the rest of us whatever little we know about quantum physics we can see that as a testimony to the infinite glory of Krishna.
Thank you. Hare Krishna.