අපි පරණ විධියට අලුතෙන් හිතමු

       සිංහල ලිත් ඉලක්කම් 

අපි පරණ විධියට අලුතෙන් හිතමු 

අපට හිතන්න කාලයක් ඇවිල්ල. මෙහි අප කියන්නෙ ලෝකයට ම. ඒත් මට ඒක එක්සත් ජාතීන්ගෙ සංවිධානයෙ හරි වෙනත් තැනක හරි  ගිහින් කියන්න බැහැ. කිව්වත් ගණන් ගන්නෙ නැහැ. මිනිසුන් නිකම් ම හිතන්නෙ නැහැ. ප්‍රශ්නයක් ආව ම තමයි හිතන්නෙ. අද ලොකු ම ලොකු ප්‍රශ්නයක් ඇවිල්ල. අපට හිතන්න වෙලා. මා හිතන්නෙ සාමාන්‍යයෙන් හිතන විධියට නොවෙයි. ඒකටත් හේතුවක් තියෙනවා. හැමෝට ම ඒ හේතුව දැනී නැහැ. 

On so called scientific knowledge – XII

Feyerabend has shown in his “Against method” that there is no scientific method as such and that in fact anything goes as a so called method in western science. There is no method adopted by the paradigm shifters described in the previous instalment and very often they carry on without any experimental evidence as such. In Theoretical Physics there is no way to verify experimentally some of the predictions and it exemplifies how western science has progressed in the last four centuries after Galileo. The research methodologies taught to students in the Universities are good for those who have no insight or intuition and nothing more than lessons in cookery. The selection procedures, sampling techniques, so called testing, analysis statistical or otherwise do not create any new ideas as such and the teachers as well as the students just go on repeating statements without understanding what they talk about. The discussion among academics in the pages of this paper on the Z score at the GCE (A/L) examination provides ample testimony to this sad state of affairs. There are scholars who think that pooling is not for different populations, and if it is the case what is the use of pooling, and where would it be useful. On the other hand a formula has been introduced to pool different populations apparently without understanding the basic idea behind pooling. One would say that it is not an example that can be used against the existence of a scientific method, but I cannot see any of the scholars in Sri Lanka following a so called scientific method as such with respect to solving the Z score problem. Finally the problem would be “solved” in a court of law where very often a judge who is not familiar with science or “scientific method” would give the final word after listening to some so called expert opinions. In fact Feyerabend points out the example of judges without any formal training in science deciding on so called scientific matters only after listening to “expert opinions”, when the experts have different opinions. It is a funny situation where the experts differ, a non expert or a layman whether he/she is a judge or not, deciding which of the opinions should be applied in a particular case. If the experts in science can differ then there is no reason why the experts in law should agree on something and the “blindfolded” lady with the scales in her hand would not know even if the scales have been tilted one way or the other, or to make it worse whether the scales are bottomless or not.

It is well known that people had experimented before Galileo and from the day we are born in this world each and every one of us has experimented in many a field. As we have said Galileo did not “discover” anything new at Pisa but only demonstrated what he had been thinking on what are called freely falling objects. On the other hand it is wrong to say that Aristotle or whoever responsible had said that the massive particle falls to the ground before the light particle without doing any experiment. It is not merely speculation but is based on day to day experience or what may be called observations. It is well known that if a feather and a stone are dropped (released from rest in the jargon of Western Physics) from the same height at the same time then the stone falls to the ground before the feather. There may be feathers heavier than some stones but I am referring to what may be called standard feathers and stones. Of course one would say it is due to air resistance that the feather does not fall to the ground as quickly as the stone but Galileo (or his friend) did not carry out the experiment in a vacuum in Pisa. Neither did he experiment with feathers and stones, but with balls though of different masses, and it is clear that he did his experiments in order to demonstrate that objects dropped from the same height at the same time fall to the ground simultaneously. Had he dropped feathers and stones he would not have been able to demonstrate that his “theory” was correct. At least Aristotle or whoever it was responsible had been honest and had accepted what had been “demonstrated” by nature. People had been observing and experimenting from time immemorial and what Galileo had done was to add an element of cheating to this process.

People had been “theorizing” before Newton and even in the western world Aristotle (most probably like Euclid Aristotle put down in writing what he had known at that time) had so many theories to his credit. The Athma theory is a theory that had been accepted both in the west and the east before it was denied in Buddhism. However Buddhism has not been successful in dispelling the Athma theory even after two thousand six hundred years most probably due to the fact it offers no alternative theory as such. Denying an existing theory without replacing it by a new theory is very difficult in a culture that is used to some kind of theories. There are no theories as such in Buddhism, and one of the reasons that Buddhism has taken roots in the Sinhala society is that Sinhala culture is somewhat immune to general theories. The Sinhalas are fond of concrete “theories” applicable to individual cases but not of abstract concrete theories.

If the people had been observing, experimenting and even theorizing somewhat abstractly as in the case of Vedic culture culminating with Advaitha Vedantha of Sankaracharaya the question may be asked as to how western science differs from other systems of knowledge. There is a school of thought that is of the opinion that western science originated by copying or borrowing knowledge from the others especially in the east whether it is from Bharath, the Arab world, China, Western Asia and North Africa. It is true that the west since the days of Copernicus and Galileo had absorbed knowledge from the other parts of the world, but that does not mean that the western science is merely a continuation of the other systems of knowledge. When the west absorbed knowledge from other parts of the world it was not a case of imitating those systems. They assimilated the knowledge of the others into their culture and constructed a new system which is identified as western science today. We on the other hand having contributed to the initiation of western science merely imitate the west when we want to use their knowledge. We do not absorb western science or any western knowledge for that matter into our culture but are satisfied with mere imitation. One of the reasons why western science remains outside the Asian and African cultures is our inability to absorb that knowledge into our cultures. Even India which had produced some abstract theories in the past has not been able to absorb abstract thinking in western science into their cultures. Though India boasts of the third largest community of western scientists, they have not produced a single paradigm shifter, and have come up with only a handful of Nobel Prize winners. Vedic Mathematics is more concrete than abstract and though they knew the result of the Pythagoras Theorem, and had methods of calculating the length of the hypotenuse in suthras they could not generalize those results into an abstract theorem as such. Even our carpenters are masons (basunnehes) know how to construct right angles though they have no idea of the Pythagoras Theorem. The essence of the work of Galileo and Newton which paved the way for western science was neither an experimental method nor scientific method but abstract thinking that was borrowed from the ancient Greeks and the Jews into a new Chinthanaya that had revolutionized Europe with the beginning of the sixteenth century. Michelangelo, Martin Luther, Galileo, Newton, Shakespeare had been pioneers of this Chinthanaya which I call the Greek Judaic Christian Chinthanaya and it is this Chinthanaya much broader than a paradigm that created not only western science but non Roman Catholic Christianity (Reformation), so called enlightenment and Capitalism. In that sense Michelangelo, Luther, Galileo, Newton, and Shakespeare may be called Chinthana shifters.

Copyright Prof. Nalin De Silva

On so called scientific knowledge – IX

Is there a method which is unique to western science? There have been philosophers of science who had claimed that the so called experimental method is used in western science, and according to the old scientific method the scientists investigated with an open mind and then observed or experimented (the so called controlled experiments were a later addition) as the case may be and then came up with a hypotheses to understand the experimental data. Having formulated a hypothesis the scientists were supposed to deduce results from it and then carry out more experiments (observations) in order to ascertain that the deduced results were in conformity with the observed. The theorists of the experimental method claimed that if the observed were in agreement with the deductions then the hypotheses was promoted to the status of a theory or discarded if there was no agreement between the deductions and the observations.

The essence of the so called scientific method was testing hypotheses with observations or experiments. It was said that Galileo introduced the experimental method and showed that objects fall with the same acceleration to the ground. Before Galileo, Aristotle reigned supreme and the latter’s theory was that the heavier objects fell to the ground quicker than the lighter objects. Apparently it was the negation of this theory (hypothesis) that Galileo had tested in Pisa where he is supposed to have dropped simultaneously two objects with unequal masses from the same height and showed that the objects reached the ground at the same time. According to Aristotle the heavier mass would have fallen to the ground before the lighter object.

It is very often assumed that Aristotle had come to the conclusion that the heavier object reached the ground before the lighter object without making any observations. It is as if Aristotle had just theorised or even speculated without appealing to any observations and his theory had no so called scientific or experimental basis. However, I am of the opinion that Aristotle would have arrived at his theory only after observing at least a few cases where the heavier body reached the ground before the lighter body. If one were to drop a feather and a stone from the same height one would observe that the stone come down to earth before the feather. Aristotle would have arrived at his theory after observing this phenomenon though he most probably did not carry out any experiment to establish the theory. What Aristotle did not mention was that the “heavier” objects fell to the ground quicker than the “lighter” objects in air while Galileo said that bodies dropped at the same height at the same time came down to earth simultaneously in a vacuum. They were referring to two different situations and it is unfair by Aristotle to claim that he only speculated without resorting to observations.

In any event during the time of Budun Vahanse the Brahmins had carried out an experiment in order to determine whether there was an Athma. They had killed a person, most probably a Shudra, to find out whether “something” escaped from the body at the time of death. Though an abhorred experiment it had the ingredients of the experiments supposed to have been carried out by Galileo except for the fact that the Brahmins would not have accepted the results of the experiment as it would have demonstrated that there was no Athma. However the Brahmins could have attributed the no Athma result to experimental errors not deviating very much from the modern western scientists. It should be pointed out that Galileo wanted to show that bodies came down with the same acceleration in a vacuum and not in air. Had he dropped a feather and a stone simultaneously from the leaning tower of Pisa he could not have shown what he wanted to demonstrate and it is clear that he had selected his objects very carefully. Neither did he create a vacuum around the leaning tower, and he left it to the “observers” to imagine that the experiment was carried out in a vacuum. In essence Galileo had come to the conclusion before the experiment was carried out and he designed his “experiment” in such a way to demonstrate what he had already concluded.

The experiments are not carried out with a so called open mind and western scientists are not persons who have perfected “upeksha” or if the readers insist equanimity though it does not give the same meaning. The philosophers and others who invented the so called scientific method could see that there was no testing of hypothesis in western science, as a few lecturers in the universities know, but some investigation based on preconceived ideas. In fact there are some “researchers” in Sri Lanka who find it difficult to come out with the so called hypothesis they are testing and they just cook up hypotheses when they have to write research proposals etc. No investigation can be carried out with an open mind and the word “gaveshanya” meaning search of the (lost) cows (gavayas) tells us that the “gaveshakaya” (investigator) would not have gone in search of the cows in any arbitrary direction but in certain specific directions dictated to him by his experience. The experiments are designed based on experience in particular and on culture in general. It has to be emphasised that a living thinking person cannot have an open mind on any matter as he or she cannot erase his or hers memories, experience, culture in general, in the manner of switching off a light. All that one can do is to attempt to improve “upeksha” whatever the outcome of experience may be.

The old scientific method had to be given up but the western philosophers, especially those of science, were not prepared to accept that western science was not unique among other systems of knowledge, and they had to invent something that was supposed to be present in western science that the other systems did not posses. Thus Karl Popper probably the well known Philosopher of Science in the last century (I wonder how many erudite lecturers who teach science in our universities have heard of him, though he is supposed to be well known among the western scientists), came out with his theory of falsification. In essence what he said was that scientific theories should be formulated in such a way that they could be falsified. He claimed that Astrology and Marxism cannot be falsified and hence they were not science meaning of course western science. Ironically in Sri Lanka we have Marxists who claim to be scientists and followers of Popper! We wish them luck but why do the westerners want to insist that western science is unique? The answer to that question is that western knowledge in general and western science in particular are upheld in high esteem and are supposed to reach Truth, Reality or whatever which the other systems of knowledge are not capable. The westerners clearly use their knowledge to suppress the others claiming directly or indirectly that the systems of others are myths. Western Science and western knowledge are the weapons more than anything else that are being used to maintain the western Christian colonialism. However, unfortunately for the westerners Popper was not successful and later in the sixties Thomas Kuhn came out with his scheme to uphold the supremacy of western science with his “The Structure of Scientific Revolution which would be discussed briefly in the next instalment. (To be continued)

Copyright Prof. Nalin De Silva

On so called scientific knowledge – V

Marxists who consider themselves to be scientists in spite of Popper who said that Marxism is not a science as it cannot be falsified, are very fond of quoting Marx who had said that "all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided." The outward appearance is “grasped” through the five sense organs, with of course the mind playing a significant role though the scientists often emphasise the importance of the five senses, and what this statement means is that what is grasped through the five sense organs is not the essence. Many if not all empiricists would begin with the assumption that there is an external world for us to grasp and acquiring knowledge begins with sense experience. However, they would not concede that perceptions of the outside world cannot be experienced without conceptions. The empiricists would assume with Russell that there is something called “bluishness” that exists independent of any observers. However, this is a hollow statement like that on existence of the Newtonian absolute space. Newton may not have formulated the term absolute space but he had some notion of it.

The absolute space in a Newtonian sense is a space devoid of any matter or radiation and that includes observers. Thus there is nothing in a Newtonian absolute space and without observers how would one know that there is an absolute space, through direct experience? The absolute space very often considered to be the first inertial frame of reference (the other inertial frames of reference are considered to be moving with uniform velocities with respect to one another as well as with respect to the absolute space) in which Newton’s laws of motion are valid cannot be observed. The moment an observer “enters” the absolute space, it ceases to be an absolute space as there is matter (and of course mind whether one minds it or not) and Newton has given a concept that cannot be observed. Absolute space and inertial frames of reference are only abstract concepts and all that can be said is that an inertial frame of reference is a frame of reference in which Newton’s Laws are valid! This is in contrast to the usual instructions given at schools and universities where it is said that Newton’s Laws are valid only in inertial frames of reference.

There cannot be any bluishness without an observer with a mind who has constructed the concept of bluishness. There is no perception without conception and those who try to separate perception from conception and assume that there is perception without conception will come across many difficulties. Can there be a perception of bluishness without the concept of bluishness? If there is an external world independent of the observers then could anybody establish this “fact” without resorting to the concept of an external world? The external world itself is a conception and nothing “exists” independent of the conceptions created by the human beings and others with minds. It should be pointed out that concepts do not have to be expressed in terms of words and children and non human animals who cannot speak have concepts expressed in mental pictures.

Now let us go back to Marx. According to him there is the sensory perceptible world but that is not the essence. The essence cannot be grasped through the five sense organs and one has to contemplate with abstract concepts in grasping the essence of “things”. Now how are we to know that what we have grasped with abstract concepts is the essence of “things”. There is only one way according to empiricists and that is to compare deductions of the abstract concepts or “science” with the empirical world which is only an outward appearance! Newton formulated the theory of gravitation which was assumed to be the essence of “things” at least as far as falling of coconuts and apples, and which could not be felt with our sense organs in spite of a Cambridge education. Gravitation can be “felt” only with the mind without any sensory perceptions in the western sense and the essence of gravity had to be checked with comparing its deductions with sensory perceptible appearances such as the motion of the planets around the sun and advance of the perihelion (the perihelion also moves without itself remaining static) of Mercury. Now the question is whether advance of the perihelion is only an outward appearance. According to Marxian science, one assumes that what one observes is only an outward appearance, then goes “deep” into formulate a “theory” to understand the essence of things and comes back to outward appearances to check the theory or the essence of the “things”. The scientists “including Marxists” are very fond of telling the world that the results of experiments based on deductions from theories have to be checked with the “outside world” without realising that outward appearances become the ultimate judge in their scheme, which they had first rejected as non science being just outward appearances. How does one formulate science without appealing to so called non science?

This is a contradiction very often ignored by the western scientists. The so called outward appearances are not science and the essence or the science is expressed in theories and concepts which may or may not be abstract but the “science” has to be tested in order to know that it is the “essence” or truth or whatever, using the so called outward appearances. There could be very few concrete theories as any general theory has to be abstract and abstract theories can be grasped only with the mind without appealing to observations using the (five) sense organs. Unless somebody comes out with a way of checking abstract theories without appealing to observations western science cannot get rid of this contradiction. Bhavana and Yogic exercises may be one way of testing as well as formulating abstract theories and we should not scorn these methods as means of “acquiring” or creating knowledge.

As an example of the process of abstract thinking consider the generalisation from mangoes to objects. A mango is a very concrete concept and mangos can be observed. A mango can be seen, touched, tasted and sniffed if one wants to. Now consider the concept of a fruit, which is an abstract concept though many people would not realize it. One cannot see, touch, taste or smell a fruit in general, as there is no fruit as such that “exists” in a concrete form. A fruit can be a mango, an apple, a banana, ( amba, damba, narang, kesel or any such thing) and one cannot visualize a fruit as such. A fruit is an abstract concept but an abstract concept that many people can grasp. It has to be mentioned that a fruit cannot be visualised, and it is only a mental concept that we have formed by abstracting or generalizing amba, damba, narang, kesel etc. Now humans who are capable of abstracting have not stopped at the concept of a fruit. They have come out with the more abstract concept of an object. An object could not only be a fruit, but a flower, a table, a chair etc. Is there anybody who could visualize an object? In Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics we throw objects out of windows or project them without even thinking whether it is a mango or a coconut. When Galileo or his friend dropped two iron balls or whatever, from the leaning tower of Pisa two objects were dropped and not mere balls.

Galileo’s observation was a generalized observation in the sense that whether one drops balls, coconuts or apples they come down with the same acceleration, near the surface of the earth. It was true even for feathers provided they were dropped in a vacuum. Of course Galileo did not create a vacuum in Pisa but left to the imagination of those present to create a vacuum in their minds. Thus Galileo’s experiment though considered to be very simple and concrete involving balls and towers, it was not so. From balls and towers he generalized and declared in an abstract way that OBJECTS (no balls) dropped from a HEIGHT (no towers) ANYWHERE (not Pisa) close to the surface of the earth would fall with the same acceleration.

Copyright Prof. Nalin De Silva

Galileo and method

Western science is believed to have begun with Galileo when he or his friend dropped two objects of unequal masses from the leaning tower of Pisa in Italy. It is said that in this so called experiment with which Galileo is credited with giving birth to the experimental method, it was shown to the world, at least to those who were present in Pisa on that fateful (or faithful?) day, that bodies of unequal masses dropped from the same height at the same time fall to the ground simultaneously. However, Galileo or his friend did not drop those objects in a vacuum, and he could not create a vacuum around the leaning tower. If a feather and a ball made of iron were dropped from the leaning tower it is quite clear that the ball would have beaten the feather by several minutes. A pundit would say that it is due to the air resistance that the feather takes a long time to reach the ground and if the experiment was done in a vacuum the ball and the feather would have reached the ground simultaneously.

However, what we have to remember is that no vacuum was created around the leaning tower and Galileo left it to the imagination of those who were present to assume that there was a vacuum surrounding the tower. Galileo did not use a feather and a ball as described above in his experiment since if he did so he would not have been able to convince the others. He “constructed” an “apparatus” to demonstrate what he wanted to show and that was the beginning of the experimental method as described by the western scientists and philosophers of western science. What the western scientists would not say is that the people in Pisa on the day of the “experiment” did not see objects falling in a vacuum though they were made to believe that there was a vacuum that has been created by Galileo or somebody else. What Galileo performed in Pisa could be described as a thought experiment as it happened in the imagination of the people.

Of course, the concept of force had not been formulated in the days of Galileo and very few would have imagined air resistance as some sort of a force acting on bodies such as feathers whose densities are low. In any event it cannot be said that the Aristotelian view that was the dominant “theory” before Galileo on falling bodies was mere speculation. The “theory” that if dropped at the same time from the same height, the heavier body falls to the ground before the lighter body is based on observations. It is known that bodies such as iron objects fall to the ground faster than bodies such as feathers. This feature had been observed from time immemorial and no one would have objected to it, and would have been taken as a matter of fact based on observation. In that sense observations had been there prior to Galileo even in Europe. The rest of the world, especially China and South Asia were much ahead of Europe at that time (even today) and in Bharath an experiment had been carried out to determine whether an Athma (soul) escaped from the body after the death of a person. The experiment was very cruel as the Brahmins had killed a person, probably a shudra, to find out whether there was an Athma. Naturally they could not come to any conclusion as they did not observe anything going out of the body after the person was dead.

If Galileo was to conduct this “experiment” he would have concluded that something escaped from the body and that there is an “Athma”. He could have argued that we only observe what can be observed and that there are things that cannot be observed and since Athma is something that cannot be observed we could not observe anything escaping from the body of the dead person. If one finds this “argument” ridiculous then one does not know that Galileo showed that the Earth was moving using a similar argument. The essence of the argument is that one observes what can be observed and even if one does not observe something it could be present or is present as it is something that cannot be observed.

The “knowledge” that the Earth moved around the Sun was in Bharath long before Copernicus “discovered” this fact. They would have obtained (constructed) this knowledge through Bhavana and Yoga exercises closing the five sense organs (pancendriya). However as far as people in Bharath was concerned it was only a relative knowledge and not an absolute knowledge as in Astrology they continued to use the Earth centered frames of reference, if I may use a phrase introduced in Newtonian Mechanics. It should be stated that even today there are people in Sri Lanka who gain knowledge through Bhavana and I am of the view that it is the method that had been used by the Sinhala Buddhists to “acquire” knowledge though acquiring as such is not going to help one to attain Nibbana. When the knowledge that had been there in Bharath went to Eastern Europe Copernicus was convinced of it and took that knowledge to Italy when he went there to be trained as a Catholic priest.

Galileo took over from there and began to teach the so called Solar centered theory in Italy. The Pope naturally objected to it as nobody observed that the Earth went round the Sun. All that the people observed was the rising of the Sun and its setting and one could have said that to assume that the Earth moved round the Sun was against the experimental (observational) method. The Pope asked Galileo not to teach this nonsense of the Earth moving round the Sun unless he could prove it to the others. The Pope objected only to teaching but he allowed Galileo to believe it if it was his wish. I think the Pope had been very reasonable compared to some of our so called scientists in Sri Lanka, who are basically sample collectors following set procedures and technicians testing for various substances using known methods. None of these scientists have ever come out with a new theory or a concept but may have published hundreds of papers in so called internationally renowned prestigious journals having done the work of sample collectors and technicians. However these people whose experimental method is confined to mere observations hanging on to what are known as controlled experiments especially in the Biological Sciences object vehemently to knowledge gained through Bhavana. Most of these experimentalists would not have heard of the thought experiments of Galileo and especially of Einstein.

When Galileo was asked to prove his theory (it’s neither his theory nor that of Copernicus but Bharath Theory) he did not engage in either Bhavana or Yoga exercises (respectively Buddhist and Hindu methods of gaining knowledge) and had to resort to abstract thinking. Probably both Galileo and Copernicus and some others in Eastern and Southern Europe at that time had an intuitive feeling that the Earth went round the Sun rather than the other way around and had no difficulty in believing the new theory. However, for the rest of the people who depended on their pancendriya, like the good Pope, there was no reason why they should believe that the earth went round the sun. Besides, they had strong evidence to show that the earth did not move. Their argument was very simple. An object dropped from a certain height takes a non zero time to reach the ground. If the earth moved, during this time the point on the earth just below vertically the point from which the body was dropped would have moved away resulting the body dropped to fall at a distant point. For example a coconut would fall to the ground at a point away from the coconut tree probably in the neighbour’s garden if not on the roof of his home.

Now Galileo had a problem. He had to explain why the bodies fell vertically. After all the balls he or his friend dropped from the leaning tower fell vertically defying the theory that the earth moved. Galileo came with an ingenious argument. He introduced the so called concept of relative motion. According to him the dropped objects moved horizontally (parallel to the earth) with the earth, as they also had the same horizontal velocities being connected to the earth through the person who dropped them. Thus the horizontal velocities of the objects relative to the earth were zero. Galileo said we observe only non zero velocities relative to us. The only non zero relative velocities of the objects that were dropped were their vertical velocities and hence we observed only their vertical motion. We do not observe their horizontal relative velocities but that only means that they move with the same velocities as the earth. Therefore the earth moves or at least nobody could say that the earth does not move.(2011/06/01)

Copyright Prof. Nalin De Silva