FALLACIES IN SCIENCE

Ramakrishnan R. (TE - Elecs - VJTI)

As a human being born in this era of world history, one ought to have a feeling of accomplishment and a thirst for more excellence due to the progressive outlook provided to us by modern technology. Today, we are making the globe a better place to be in. The marvel of the microchip and the magic of telecommunications have shrunk the world. Speed is the order of the day. Today, man has harnessed the forces of nature to suit his own needs. We are living in the nuclear age - a time in mankind's history -which makes one shudder, at the same time, which proudly proclaims the manifold uses of the nuclear power. This inexorable progress in hi-tech development today is as much due to the relentless pursuit of man for the Truth as it is to make his life comfortable and easy.

The search for the Truth has prompted many physicists to explore the unfathomable universe and devise new theories to explain the various observed phenomena in the universe. The great physicist Sir Isaac Newton had to invent a whole new analytical science-branch called 'calculus' to explain the different principles in astrophysics and other physical phenomena. From then on, physics has come a long way with the development of the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. But inspite of such progress in modern physics, there seems to be a particular unavoidable limit to the areas science can explore, a limit imposed on science due to man's limitation of intellect, which is restricted to perception using only five senses. The various profound modern theories in physics only expound as to how the universe behaves and not as to why it behaves so. Science has always been left clueless as regards the primeval cause of the universe. Even today, physicists have only kept modifying and redefining their own theories, so that it somehow comprehensively explains most of the phenomena in the universe. Same is the case with the atom. No one has ever peeped into an atom and seen the nucleus with electrons around it. So several atomic models were proposed and we were ultimately satisfied with the Bohr model, simply because it seemed to explain all observed properties of matter.

Quite similarly, astrophysicists explain all phenomena after the Big bang, but are still surmising as to what happened before the Big bang or why the Big bang took place. After all, the Big bang too is only a theory! The most questionable fact about astrophysics is that it assumes the universe as that which is composed of matter. Why? Can the universe not be empty space? No wonder, today we are having concepts like the expansion of the universe, thanks to this rather parochial outlook. Also astrophysics boasts of possibly knowing the exact time of creation of the universe based on the assumption that all universal particles were originally shrunk to a point having infinite density. But for matter to be made infinitesimal starting from now, logically it would require infinite time backwards. So at any particular time instant we can have infinite time stretching into the past. The concept of time arose at the instant of the Big bang, and the Big bang is only a well-concocted explanation for today's creation. So time itself is relative and has no absolute existence. Again theories like space-time being curved only serve to indicate the heights to which human imagination can rise to explain the cosmic puzzles. A tool like mathematics, manmade as it is, can only quantify finite objects perceived by the five senses. Anything infinite like the universe or beyond the perception of humans cannot be absolutely quantified by mathematics. Yet many so-called laws about the universe have their foundations in mathematics. The end result: a distorted minuscule of the actual infinite.

While some of the scientific and modern technological advancements have been extremely beneficial to mankind, there is still much to be done. Foremost of all, the human mind must be explored. The origin of the mind must be traced. After all, impressions, ideas, perceptions and imaginations are byproducts of the mind. We can then possess the key to the Ultimate Truth. The universe is as such in the mind of the perceiver. Change the perceiver and the universe changes. We must search for the unchanging absolute. We do this and we possess infinite knowledge - the knowledge of the Absolute.