Gravity and Beyond by Nigel Benham

Author:Nigel Benham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Brown Dog Books

PART II

HOLISTIC MODEL OF THE UNIVERSE

“Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful, that when we grasp it – in a decade, a century, or a millennium – we will say to each other, how could it have been otherwise? How could we have been so stupid?”

John Archibald Wheeler (1911-2008, American theoretical physicist)

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IN SEARCH OF ONENESS

“Our first naive impression of nature and matter is that of continuity. Be it a piece of metal or a volume of liquid, we invariably conceive it as divisible into infinity, and ever so small a part of it appears to us to possess the same properties as the whole.”

David Hilbert (1862-1943, German mathematician)

The scientific world view

Western science has become increasingly dependent upon mathematics when it comes to describing the universe, but can mathematics alone provide an accurate depiction of our universe? How reliable are scientific methodologies in the way they are used for investigating a phenomenon, and do they overlook viable alternative ways of investigation? Perhaps the question that should be asked is this: has Western science now become complacent in its mode of scientific investigation because it appears to work?

There is much written about the parallels between Western science and Eastern philosophies, perhaps one of the best-known books to have drawn people’s attention to these parallels is Fritjof Capra’s bestseller, The Tao of Physics. There may be parallels, but there is also one striking difference in the way they both relate to the universe. Eastern philosophies are certainly more holistic and far less analytical in their approach to understanding the universe than Western science. For instance, Eastern philosophy considers our universe to be a unified oneness that is in a constant state of change, whereas Western science is divided into theories that are focused on explaining the parts and not the whole. The analytical approach of Western science was criticised by the theoretical physicist David Bohm. According to Bohm, Western science is limited because it is focused on analysis which tends to lead to fragmentation, and if you falsely break something into fragments the tendency is to treat those fragments as if they were separate when they are not, which in turn leads to confusion if a fragment is then regarded as an independent whole. Using the analogy of a mechanical watch, it would be difficult to argue that a mechanical watch is anything other than a collection of moving parts which together compose the mechanism. However, break the watch up into fragments and we may fail to see how the entire mechanism works as a whole if you simply focus on one or two of its cogs. This is precisely what Western medicine, and physics to a lesser degree, does through scientific analysis, an approach that appears to be successful; but if, for example, you were to analyse only one of the cogs belonging to the watch, there is a risk that you could build a theory that may adequately explain the cog but not the mechanism within which it operates.

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