Philosophy Science Articles

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Dark Matter and Dark Energy: A Vedanta Perspective

The concept of dark matter and dark energy emerged over seven decades ago but it is still a pressing problem for both physics and cosmology. Physics is faced with the basic question as to what is the physical nature of these and cosmology has to deal with their role in the evolution and fate of the universe. Whatever we know about them at present is mere speculation and the term 'dark' may as well stand for unknown. There is any number of things about the universe that we do not know and can perhaps never know. At some point man has to face the fact that rational knowledge has a limit beyond which it cannot go and there is still more knowledge out there. It is here that the distinction between the two types of knowledge - rational and transcendental (para and apara as defined in Vedanta) comes into play. The purpose of this article is to discuss briefly the current state of scientific work going on in this field and then to suggest how the ideas from Vedanta could throw some light on this 'darkness' even if in philosophical terms.

Dark Matter

It has been now known for a century that mass and energy are interrelated. Still we tend to think of mass as a tangible entity represented by the term matter - something that can be seen directly or indirectly. Mass interacts with two fundamental forces - electromagnetic and gravitational. Any matter that we know of emits or reflects electromagnetic radiation. The mass of the source of light can be calculated using the simple mass - luminosity equation. So counting all the stars, gas, and dust in a galaxy it is possible to determine the total mass in the galaxy. Mass can be determined also on the basis of gravitational interaction. Newton's law relates the orbital speed of a celestial body to the mass of the body it is orbiting. Measuring the orbital speed of these bodies and totaling them one can determine the total mass in the galaxy. When the results obtained by the two methods are compared one would expect them to match. But they not only do not match but differ by a large factor, which leads one to infer that there is a large amount of mass in the galaxy than what can be directly seen. And just because it cannot be seen it is called dark matter. There are more sophisticated methods of measuring mass in the universe like rotational curves of galaxies, velocity dispersion of galaxies, gravitational lensing etc. but it is not possible (or even necessary) to go into those details here.

There is also the problem of defining the total mass in the universe. We cannot be certain that we know all the galaxies in the universe but we can get the data from all the known galaxies and talk about the mass of dark matter in terms of percentage averaged over all observations.

Dark Energy

The discovery of dark energy is relatively recent (1998) and it came about from the observation of the rate of acceleration of the expansion of the universe. It had been known for almost seventy years that the universe was expanding but it was generally believed that the expansion would be decelerating. Now the observations showed the opposite - the expansion was accelerating. For this to happen there must be some force exerted from within the universe and the dark energy is supposed to do that. It is called dark energy because it is different from all the forms of energy known so far. The evidence for the existence of dark energy comes mainly from the observations of supernovae and the cosmic microwave background, too technical to get into in a general article like this. It is sufficient to state that this energy is uniformly distributed in the otherwise empty space. It also must have a negative pressure in order to exert the accelerating force. No body knows what dark energy is although it is generally believed that it may be something akin to the vacuum energy of quantum physics and Einstein's cosmological constant. Whatever be its nature it is currently believed that the distribution of mass/energy in the universe is 74% dark energy, 22% dark matter, and 4% visible matter. In our own galaxy (Milky Way) there is ten times more dark matter than the visible.

Vedanta

Vedanta has a different view of the origin of the universe: it is a manifestation and not a creation. The primordial source of the universe is the Universal Consciousness that is indefinable and indescribable. Still it has to have a name if one wants to talk about it. The word used is Brahm and it is stated unequivocally that Brahm is consciousness ( Pragyanam Brahm - Aitareya Upanishad - III-3). Consciousness may be regarded as a form of energy perhaps different from any energy known in the physical sciences. Before the universe came into existence there was just this primordial energy. Everything that makes up the universe was contained in this energy in a latent form in the same way as a huge banyan tree is latent in the tiny seed. The space and time did not exist then. For some reason part of this energy began to coalesce and using its own resources it formed all the myriad forms of matter, energy, and life contained in the universe. This transformation of energy into matter occurs through an interaction between five essential properties called panchatattva and three essential qualities called triguna. Everything in the universe is a composite of these two entities in different proportions. Space and time get embedded in the universe; it evolves, matures, and finally gets dissolved.

At present the generally accepted theory for the origin of the universe according to science is the Big Bang theory. Before the formation of the universe all the energy and space, time were concentrated at a point. Then for some reason it exploded with a bang and began to spread out at first very rapidly and then gradually slowing down. The energy started to coalesce into blobs and got transformed into matter. Elementary particles like quarks and electrons emerged first; then came neutrons and protons, which combining with electrons in different configurations formed all sorts of matter. How the energy coalesced to form the elementary particles is a matter not yet completely settled although there are many string theories around trying to explain it. Even after billions of years the universe is still expanding but eventually it may reverse the process and again contract into a point. Matter, space, time and everything else will again vanish into one concentrated energy source.

We do not know what triggered the Big Bang explosion just as we do not know what caused the (consciousness) energy to begin coalescing in Vedanta's view, although it is stated that consciousness (Brahm) desired self-expression (manifestation).

Getting back to dark matter and dark energy we have already stated that science does not know as yet what they are. All we have is just conjectures. Philosophy by its very nature puts forth only conjectures and they cannot be verified. Still based on the ideas about the formation of matter from energy we can have some conjectures as to what the unknown matter and energy could be. Consciousness as the ultimate energy source is everywhere and in everything. This is not new in science; there are even elementary particles that can go through any matter. The interaction between panchatattvas and trigunas leads to the formation of matter. It is a process that goes through different stages and the specific matter does not appear until all the stages have been gone through. It is quite possible that in many cases the process is never completed and in that case we have matter that is not fully formed. It is also not in pure energy form and can perhaps be called pseudo-matter. Consequently it would not behave like ordinary matter and cannot be detected at least by currently available methods of science.

Dark energy is the energy (consciousness) that does not coalesce into matter. It is uniformly distributed throughout the universe not only in empty space but in everything. A tiny part of it gets temporarily isolated and localized (like a drop from ocean) in living organisms and is essential for sustaining life. In the case of human beings (and perhaps in all living beings) it functions at two levels - soul and mind, which are certainly not material. Their presence can be detected but we will never really know what they are because they are not 'things'. Here we reach the limit of rational knowledge; to know more we have to cross over into the realm of transcendental.

In conclusion it may be pertinent to quote here the words of Max Planck who is regarded as the father of quantum theory. More than hundred years ago he wrote:

"Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the ultimate analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and, therefore, part of the mystery that we are trying to solve."

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Fiction and Reality

Fiction is an integral part of human life. Man has an inherent need for diversion to get away, even if for a few moments, from the humdrum of life. Story telling has been one of the earliest ways of accomplishing that and over the ages it has grown into the diverse forms of entertainment we have in the present day world. Entertainment is basically of two types - active and passive. The active involves physical participation in one way or other, while the passive does not. Fiction is essentially a passive entertainment even though the mind plays an important role in it. Fiction always involves visualization whether it is covert or overt. The earliest form of overt visualization was the enacting of dramas as the civilizations developed. The development of technology brought in its modern forms - cinema and television. The covert form is inherent to story telling and reading. It is an inherent characteristic of the human (or perhaps any) mind that a thought is always accompanied by an image. So as soon as one hears or reads a story the mind visualizes the scene and the characters; this process continues throughout the story and often even after it has ended.

Fiction by its very definition is unreal. When we read a novel we know that the story and the characters in it are merely a product of imagination of the author. When we see a movie we know that the characters are just acting their parts essentially pretending to be someone other than themselves. Still we are emotionally affected by the twists and turns in the story. We laugh with them, weep with them, and even feel indignant towards the bad guys. The lovable hero or heroine may be despicable in real life and the villain may be a perfect gentleman but we identify them with the characters they are portraying. In essence for that brief period we ourselves get transported into the imaginary world of the author. Strangely enough this happens also with the author at least to some of them. He or she goes through the same emotions while writing and perhaps later as well.

"Knowledge is limited, imagination is not." Albert Einstein said that although the wording of the second part might have been different. Einstein like any other human being was not infallible. Some of his views that he held right till the end turned out to be wrong even in the field of physics. In this particular statement also he seems to have it backwards. Knowledge may be limited in the case of an individual but in general it is unlimited even if we consider just rational knowledge leaving aside transcendental. Science in particular has demonstrated this at every step in the course of its development. Imagination pertains to an individual mind and is constrained by several factors depending on the circumstances of the individual. A mind can imagine only what relates in some way to things already stored in it. A person who has never been outside a remote place in wilderness and has had no contact with the world outside cannot imagine what metropolitan cities are like.

Getting back to fiction the imagination of the author also has to be based on his direct or indirect experiences. In this sense fiction is based on reality and to that extent it represents just another dimension of reality. Here of course we run into the philosophical problem of the precise meaning of reality. There are two diametrically opposite views - materialistic and spiritualistic. According to the former only things that can be perceived through our senses are real, everything else is unreal. The latter maintains that there is just one ultimate reality from which all that we perceive comes out and everything that is perceived is simply an illusion. We again consider a statement by Einstein: "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one." He was obviously referring to the reality of the phenomenal world. The word illusion can have different connotations but in general it means perceiving something as different from what it is. So the existence of the thing is a prerequisite for illusion, it is not a mental construction. Imagination is purely a mental phenomenon and has nothing to do with anything actually existent. Therefore the relationship between fiction and reality is entirely different from that between illusion and reality.

In a philosophical sense the phenomenal world itself may be regarded as fiction. This is what Shakespeare perhaps meant when he wrote: "All the world's a stage, and all men and women merely players". We may as well think of everything in the universe (space, time, matter) as players because everything has its entry and exit. We of course run into the problem of stating what the stage is and who wrote the script. Shakespeare most probably believed in God, strict determinism, and in the reality of the world, so he did not have this problem. Now it is generally believed that the universe also has a beginning and will have an end. If the universe is also a player, are there multiple universes or does it come alone on the stage and then introduces other players? But what is the stage in this case? Quantum physics points to one possibility. At extremely small scales of space and time there is a quantum void that is not really empty but filled with energy which is constantly transforming itself into virtual particles and back. What remains after the end of the universe may be an infinite version of this quantum void filled with energy into which all the matter has converted itself. This universal energy is the source of and background for everything.

It is not merely a philosophical point either. We spend a considerable part of our life in the imagined or fictional world. We muse about the things in future and also dwell over the past imagining what could have been. The imagination about the future is based on our hopes and aspirations and to some extent it is a positive in the sense that we are in a position to mold our future if we sincerely try. But musing over the past is a futile exercise because we know for a fact that 'what could have been' is mere fantasy that never happened. Still it serves the same purpose as fiction from the point of view of entertainment. We entertain ourselves by imagining how life would have been, knowing fully well that it has no reality whatsoever. In a metaphorical sense past, at least the remote past, is fiction. In a certain sense history itself is fiction since it invariably contains the subjective bias of the author. What we know of Buddha and Jesus now is more fiction than facts.

We all may be players on the world stage, still the question remains why we show the emotional responses to the happenings depicted in the fiction, whether in print or visual presentation, just as in real life? Just like dreams our imaginations get presented to us on the mental screen as if we were watching television or movies. And just as in dreams the real world gets supplanted by the imagined virtual world even though we are fully awake. That world still has perfect resemblance to the real one and everything happening in it seems real due to something changing in our cognition faculty. But the mechanism that triggers our emotional responses remains unchanged and therefore we react to the fiction in the same way as in real life.

Here we have some similarity with the virtual reality of the modern computer technology, which is an artificial environment created by software. It is presented to the viewer in such a way that the person temporarily suspends own belief pattern and accepts it as a real environment. In a way it is not different from the phenomenon of being transported to the imagined world of fiction, except that the computer doing the job is in the mind and we have no clue as to what is the software and who is the programmer.

That brings us to the cause of emotional response itself. In regard to fiction the most common emotions are likes and dislikes that may turn into their stronger forms of love and hate. In real life we love or hate a person because of some attachment through kinship, friendship, or even through indirect knowledge of the person. One cannot love or hate a person one does not know at all. Attachment can also be to other living beings, material things, and even to imaginary things. We love or hate a story or even an idea. For an ordinary person it is impossible to live unattached to things in the world. If one is able to get rid of attachment, one joins the rank of enlightened souls who are indeed rare. We carry our capacity and desire for attachment even into the imaginary world of fiction. We see the characters that we come to know as the story progresses, form our likes and dislikes, and react in the same way as in real life except that we cannot interact with them physically. But we do interact with them in our minds and hearts from where the emotions come.

The fact is that in a certain sense life itself is fiction. Like a story it has a beginning, an end, and lot of things in between. We do not know who writes this fiction nor will ever know. Thus we have an innate affinity with fiction and cannot completely detach ourselves from it. And perhaps that is why, while reading or viewing fiction we get lost subconsciously in the wonderland of imagination, but for that brief period we function exactly in the same way as we would in the real world of our perception. In that sense fiction is just invented reality.

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Articles from Past Issues

The articles from the previous issues have been collected in a booklet in PDF format. It can be read online or downloaded using the link Nature, Science, and Spirituality. Some of the articles have appeared on Metamorphosis and also on Ezine Articles . The articles included here are listed in the Table of Contents.

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Site updated February 20, 2010