Friday, October 14, 2011

PHILOSOPHY IS DEAD

LONG LIVE SCIENTIFIC METHOD!!

Out standing scientist Stephen Hawking along with Leonard Mlodinow declared positively that philosophy is dead.
Alarming to philosophy lovers, of course.
During 1940s M.N.Roy, humanist philosopher  warned that unless philosophy takes into consideration the philosophical consequences of modern science, it cannot survive.
That is exactly the reason why Stephen Hawking emphatically said that philosophy is dead.
The Grand Design is the latest book in which the authors proposed M-theory as unified development which Einstein dreamed of.
The philosophy has to answer the questions faced by modern world but fail to do so. What are they?
“Why is there something rather than nothing?
Why do we exist?
Why this particular set of laws and not some others?”

Hitherto people thought that everything was created by god. They did this out of ignorance. For every natural event like thunder, lightning, rain, fire, oceans, earth, planets, stars ancient people imagined gods behind them .Hence they worshiped them to get favors and to escape calamities. So many gods were created and several religions emerged out of peoples ignorance.
For the first time Ionian Greek thinkers put systematic rational thinking which changed the minds of people.
Thales, Miletus, Pythagoras, Anaximander, Empidocles,  Democritus  and few others are in the list. Their thought influenced generations but again religions camouflaged their causation.
Ptolemy ( 85-165 AD) through his 13 volume treatise convinced the world that earth is the center of the universe and also earth is flat. Christians accepted that theory.It continued until Galileo ,and Copernucus, Kepler radically changed our concepts and thinking. Sun is the center of the universe and earth goes round the sun. The rational thinkers suffered in the hands of fanatic Christian authorities. They regretted much later and accepted their mistakes.
As scientific thinking, innovation, discoveries progress , different theories emerged and some of them look diametrically opposed to each other.
Now it is established that four forces are certain namely:
Electro magnetic, Gravitation, weak nuclear force, and strong nuclear force.
Einstein came out with theory of relativity which radicalized the world concepts. At micro and macro levels there are particle, light, wave theories and also different concepts of universe. There are several dimensions. New Quantum theory again totally changed the thinking process.
Big Bang theory ( originally named by Fred Hoyle), Expanding theory, steady state theory and others also came out.
If so may realities and conflicts are there, which one is true and which one is not?
Are there many universes and if so each universe must be having its own laws too.
These are mind boggling theories.
Stephen Hawking came out with his M-theory where in synthesis and reconcialation  is possible. Positive energy of matter can be balanced by negative gravitational energy according to Stephen. The universe creates itself due to gravity. This spontaneous creation is the sufficient reason for the existence of universe, says Stephen and Leonard.
Thus M-theory is not only miracle, mystery but real too.
THERE IS NO NEED TO INVOKE GOD FOR SUCH DESIGN. Wonderful , excellent conclusion of Stephen Hawking.
What about intelligent design, then? It is only cunning way of introducing blind faith of religion in round about way.
      Is this end of all?
No. There is no end in Science. Scientific method  is ever growing and continuous process. All theories are tentative. If some thing better and provable theory emerges, people  support it. One great virtue in scientific method is: Self correction .It is not there in holy books, religions and blind faiths. This self correction only leads humans ever progressive and forward looking.

( please see : The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking, Leonard Mlodinow: Bantam books, New York pp 200;
Also Science and philosophy by M.N Roy)
INNAIAH NARISETTI

2 comments:

Ron Krumpos said...

In "The Grand Design" Stephen Hawking postulates that the M-theory may be the Holy Grail of physics...the Grand Unified Theory which Einstein had tried to formulate but never completed. It expands on quantum mechanics and string theories.

In my free ebook on comparative mysticism, "the greatest achievement in life," is a quote by Albert Einstein: “…most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and most radiant beauty – which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive form – this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of all religion.”

E=mc², Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, is probably the best known scientific equation. I revised it to help better understand the relationship between divine Essence (Love, Grace, Spirit), matter (mass/energy: visible/dark) and consciousness (f(x) raised to its greatest power). Unlike the speed of light, which is a constant, there are no exact measurements for consciousness. In this hypothetical formula, basic consciousness may be of insects, to the second power of animals and to the third power the rational mind of humans. The fourth power is suprarational consciousness of mystics, when they intuit the divine essence in perceived matter. This was a convenient analogy, but there cannot be a divine formula.

http://www.peacenext.org/profile/RonKrumpos

lucette said...

See
"http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/science/sc0022.html"
for the father of the "Big Bang" theory: Lemaitre, a Belgian priest. Fred Hoyle used the word "Big Bang" to make fun of Lemaitre's theory.