Sāńkhya divides matter into manas (mind), prāna (life force), and vāk. In the previous post, we discussed the nature of vāk and manas as the relation between word and meaning, or between matter and mind. This post elaborates on the third aspect of matter called prāna. The post discusses the role prāna plays in the motion of material objects, in the...
This post discusses the relevance of the idea of “gross” and “subtle” matter in Sāńkhya to the problems of prediction in quantum theory, highlighting the solution using everyday examples. I also discuss how the attempts to divorce “gross” and “subtle” matter, or reduce “subtle” matter to “gross” matter, lead to the widespread proliferation of alternate “spiritualities”, which are thriving on the...
Many people currently believe that the things that science is currently discovering were known to Vedic philosophers and sages in the past. This notion is false because the concepts of matter in Vedic philosophy are radically different from those in modern science. This post discusses the issue from the standpoint of just one idea—that of space. A number of other differences...
If the universe was not determined in some sense, then we could not make any scientific predictions. If, however, we did not have free will to choose among alternatives, there could be no moral judgments. This contentious issue confuses many of us, as we tend to either capitulate to free will and lose scientific predictions (which is often what religions do)...
While going down in an elevator, it recently occurred to me that the elevator doesn’t move unless we indicate the floor it has to go to, quite different from an escalator that keeps moving regardless of whether anyone has anywhere to go to. This difference is a useful way to understand how quantum “motion” is different from classical motion. This post...
If you have had a difficult life―like some people around us―you might have asked yourself: Why does it happen to me and not to others? If you are a good person but have still suffered at the hands of others, you might ask yourself: Do I really control my life? There is a profound problem here, which is not just moral...
I’m always looking to formulate new ways of describing a problem and its solution; this not only helps us understand what is missing but why the solution is necessary. This article presents a different way of understanding my Semantic Interpretation of Quantum Theory previously described at length in the book Quantum Meaning.
This post discusses the widespread notion that the mind is some kind of computer; that the computer is able to represent knowledge, and this knowledge can be about the world. As we shall see, this notion is quite silly, although people—who are either not physicists, mathematicians, or computer engineers, or just happen to have an academic title without an understanding of these subjects—tend...
In the previous post, I described how modern science employs two contradictory ideas—possibility and choice—although in practice only one of them can be used, resulting in incompleteness. An example of that incompleteness is that quantum theory describes the world as a possibility that needs to be completed by a choice, although that choice cannot be reduced to that possibility. The predictions...
Darwinian evolution or evolutionary theory predates the development of modern physics—e.g. quantum theory. At the time at which the theory was developed, the best-known theory of matter was classical physics, in which matter always exists in definite states. Ideas such as random mutation and natural selection in evolution were incompatible with classical physics because randomness was injected into evolution. In quantum...
Last year, I wrote a post on the Twin Paradox in relativistic theory, followed by another post on the nature of Dark Energy and Dark Matter, which I never published. The reason I never published the latter post is that I felt that this could be developed into a full-fledged work on Vedic cosmology. I have spent the last few months...
It is commonly assumed that science describes objective facts about the world, which are discovered through measurements of physical properties. The problems in this measurement are generally not understood, and this post describes them, highlighting two key issues of circularity and recursion in the definition of measurement. How these problems are addressed in Indian philosophy is also discussed.
