Raja Ram Mohan Roy, together with Dwarkanath Tagore- the grandfather of the great poet- created a new Religious Sect known as the Brahmo Samaj. Roy was greatly impressed by the English empirical tradition as pushed forward by Roger and Francis Bacon. Thus, though the Brahmo creed is metaphysically monist, it remained empiricist and rather modest in its own soteriological claims. There is a universal 'Saakshi' or witness who preserves the barrier between Mind stuff and Matter stuff. This encourages scepticism regarding claims that minds can change reality any which way.
In 1927, Bohn was the victor in his debate with Einstein at the 5th Solvay Conference. Each day, Einstein would come up with a gedanken purporting to show the Heisenberg principle was inconsistent- the presence or absence of an observer couldn't possibly affect matter- and each night Bohr would work out a way to shoot Einstein down by appealing to his own theory of Relativity.
Einstein had previously promoted the work of the polymath Satyendranath Bose who 'stood at the transition point between the 'old quantum theory' of Planck, Bohr and Einstein and the new quantum mechanics of Schrödinger, Heisenberg, Born, Dirac etc.' It was the development of Matrix Mechanics which forced Bohr to give up on the old theory and side with the newer theory. Briefly, unless two matrices share eigenvectors, there will be non-commutivity under the multiplication operator and this gives rise to the observer effect. However, if there are hidden variables known to a universal observer, there must be some way of extending any given pair of matrices such that they share eigen vectors.It is in this context that we should read the dialogue between Tagore and Einstein which occurred in 1930.
TAGORE: You have been busy, hunting down with mathematics, the two ancient entities, time and space, while I have been lecturing in this country on the eternal world of man, the universe of reality.
Einstein expected Tagore, as the hereditary leader of a sect committed to the notion of a universal 'sakshi' to take Einstein's side in the debate. However, this would mean that there was a privileged perspective- contradicting Einstein's own theory of relativity. But this was a matter of methodology, not metaphysics. Perhaps, the poet's 'intuition' could bridge that hiatus valde deflendum. Thus, the Scientist asks a leading question-
EINSTEIN: Do you believe in the divine isolated from the world?
Tagore should say 'Man participates in the Divine'. Thus, 'at the end of time' (mathematical time, which is an illusion) indeterminism is determinism. Some statement of that sort is good enough for Einstein's purposes.
TAGORE: Not isolated. The infinite personality of man comprehends the universe.
So, there is no 'end of time' when all Matrices are properly extended and share eigen vectors.
There cannot be anything that cannot be subsumed by the human personality, and this proves that the truth of the universe is human truth.
This does not help Einstein. 'Uncertainty' could be a superior human truth. God may not play dice, but a species of God-Men might have no other way to interact save to randomize Space Time.
EINSTEIN: There are two different conceptions about the nature of the universe — the world as a unity dependent on humanity,
in which case it is stochastic because there is only a random, not a 'natural' or non-arbitrary, way to get them to share eigenvectors.
and the world as reality independent of the human factor.
Listen, Tagore, dude, just say you are on my side coz your universal Sakshi pervades the Universe and so Heisenberg & Co are wrong. Q.M is inconsistent or incomplete.
TAGORE: When our universe is in harmony with man, the eternal, we know it as truth, we feel it as beauty.
I suppose Tagore means that when Prakriti- Nature- is in harmony with Purusha (which actually means God, not Man) then, Sat-Chit-Ananda obtains. Being and Consciousness are one and the same and taste of Bliss.
EINSTEIN: This is a purely human conception of the universe.
Tagore should have explained that Purusha in Veda means God not Man. What Einstein was hearing suggested that understood Tagore believed Man could gain supernatural powers over and above anything in the physical Universe. But that didn't help Einstein in his fight with Bohr.
TAGORE: The world is a human world
No. Human societies are a human world for humans. But some humans may be astronomers. They are trying to figure out how the wholly non human world of the stars and Galaxies function. Einstein had shown gravity actually bends light- or rather that Space-Time has curvature.
— the scientific view of it is also that of the scientific man.
But Physicists aren't concerned with biological or social processes. We can easily imagine a non-human entity- a 'robot' or 'computer'- doing physics.
Therefore, the world apart from us does not exist;
Which is not the Brahmo view. The world may not exist independent of Purusha but Purusha in a Vedic or Upanishadic context means God not some nice Bengali dude.
it is a relative world, depending for its reality upon our consciousness.
So this is a sort of collective Berkleyanism. Consciousness creates Reality at every scale. This is worse that QMT where observation creates reality only at the level of the very very small
There is some standard of reason and enjoyment which gives it truth, the standard of the eternal man whose experiences are made possible through our experiences.
Tagore should clarify that 'eternal man' means Purusha as God, not some nice Bengali dude. Is he deliberately torturing Einstein? His pal Bose might have put him up to it.
EINSTEIN: This is a realization of the human entity.
Not for Brahmos for whom it comes from 'Shruti'- Revealed Scripture. No doubt, some Rishis (Tagore's Dad was a self-declared Maharishi) or 'Seers' could gain direct knowledge of that sort of thing, but we are still speaking of God stuff not the kind of thing nice Bengali gentlemen arrive at in between collecting rents or penning prose-poems.
TAGORE: Yes, one eternal entity.
Humans aint eternal entities. Tagore might have noticed that Daddy was dead. He hadn't gone off on a long holiday.
We have to realize it through our emotions and activities.
But we have emotions and activities whether or not we have any fucking realization.
We realize the supreme man,
Purusha that is God. No doubt, some such 'God Realization' gets you to set up as a Maha-Rishi or Swamy or something of that sort. But scientists gain nothing by doing so.
who has no individual limitations, through our limitations.
Only in the sense that we achieve the realization of being as wealthy as fuck through the limitation of not having a pot to piss in.
Science is concerned with that which is not confined to individuals;
This is also true of Grammar or the Law or Music or any of the other stuff you can study at Uni. Tagore's genius was to avoid going to Collidge.
it is the impersonal human world of truths. Religion realizes these truths and links them up with our deeper needs. Our individual consciousness of truth gains universal significance. Religion applies values to truth, and we know truth as good through own harmony with it.
We know truth as good because our lives are better if people who sell us stuff aren't lying, cheating, bastards. Harmony does not matter in the least.
EINSTEIN: Truth, then, or beauty, is not independent of man?
Completely independent of man save in so far as the Purusha- God- pervades the 'atma' of the man. Some suggest that women- even white women!- might have some such thing.
TAGORE: No, I do not say so.
Dude, the Religious sect your Daddy put you in charge of does indeed say so!
EINSTEIN: If there were no human beings any more, the Apollo Belvedere no longer would be beautiful?
God would consider it beautiful- if that is what it is. What about aliens from another planet? Maybe, because of symmetry properties, provided our anatomy doesn't freak them out too much.
TAGORE: No!
Yes. That's why when humans sent a spacecraft out of the Solar System they put in artistic works of surpassing excellence. The idea is that some alien species might appreciate the beauty some humans created billions of years before our Sun went super-nova.
EINSTEIN: I agree with this conception of beauty, but not with regard to truth.
Aliens mightn't like our art. But they would appreciate that we had made some mathematical and technological progress. Aesthetics may be subjective. Math isn't.
TAGORE: Why not? Truth is realized through men.
So what? Men realize that the Sun is shining in the sky. That doesn't mean they created the Sun or caused it to shine.
EINSTEIN: I cannot prove my conception is right, but that is my religion.
So Einstein has a 'divine axiom' making his system consistent. Sadly, you can be consistently wrong.
TAGORE: Beauty is in the ideal of perfect harmony,
But such an ideal is independent of there being any human to witness it. Tagore has just contradicted himself. Einstein can't pick up on this because he regards Beauty to be subjective.
which is in the universal being;
Purusha as Satyam/Shivam/Sundaram.
truth is the perfect comprehension of the universal mind.
Sat-Chit-Ananda. Again, one can say this is subjective.
We individuals approach it through our own mistakes and blunders, through our accumulated experience, through our illumined consciousness. How otherwise can we know truth?
Verification. A truth may be very difficult to calculate or even conceptualize but it may be very easy to verify it.
EINSTEIN: I cannot prove, but I believe in the Pythagorean argument,
i.e. the notion that numeric symmetric harmonies exist independent of the mind of the inquirer. This can be discovered in rules throughout nature.
that the truth is independent of human beings. It is the problem of the logic of continuity.
Leibniz's law of continuity states that infinite objects, for some purposes, can be treated like finite objects. But orthodox Advaita says there is reciprocity between them. That's a little too 'bhakti' for the Brahmos. Einstein is saying that there must be an observer independent mathematical theory of everything. But that theory must include mathematical physicists because they too exist. Still, Tagore could speak of higher dimensions or hidden variables. Sadly, he refuses to do so.
TAGORE : Truth, which is one with the universal being, must be essentially human;
because Purusha, that is God, pervades the atman or soul of the human.
otherwise, whatever we individuals realize as true, never can be called truth.
That may be true of 'Realization' but 'Verification' is a separate matter. A self-proclaimed Maharishi may or may not be God realized or a perfected Yogi. However, there are 'siddhas' or super-natural powers which such a person can exhibit which verify he is what he claims. If Maharisi Mahesh Yogi really was levitating, there could be no doubt he had gained some superior type of 'realization'.
At least, the truth which is described as scientific and which only can be reached through the process of logic—in other words, by an organ of thought which is human.
If was empirical observations made by astronomers which verified the truth of Einstein's theory.
According to the Indian philosophy there is Brahman, the absolute truth, which cannot be conceived by the isolation of the individual mind or described by words, but can be realized only by merging the individual in its infinity.
But one way of being sure you are actually ascending that spiritual ladder is by sporting 'siddhas'- i.e. supernatural powers. Being a rich dude who likes growing out his beard and poncing around in robes doesn't actually make you a 'God Realized' Maharishi.
But such a truth cannot belong to science.
Unless there are scientifically verifiable 'siddhas'. At the very least you should be able to slow down your heart or extrude your intestines and wash them in the river. Sleeping peacefully on a bed of nails, too, is cool and wows the tourists.
The nature of truth which we are discussing is an appearance; that is to say, what appears to be true to the human mind, and therefore is human, and may be called maya, or illusion.
That is a feature of 'matam'- doctrine- but not of 'vigyan'- praxis or science. An Ayurvedic 'Baidya' or Doctor would soon lose his practice if he said 'the fact that the patient is dead is just 'maya'. It is an illusion. Please keep paying me for pouring noxious potions down the throat of that decomposing corpse.'
EINSTEIN: It is no illusion of the individual, but of the species.
Einstein is trying to pivot to Kantian or Husserlian 'phenomenology'. Maybe, then, the Eastern Sage would say something supportive of Einstein's position vis a vis Heisenberg. After all, as a species we have to survive in the physical world. Our minds must be attuned to what a physical reality not itself created by those minds.
TAGORE: The species also belongs to a unity, to humanity. Therefore the entire human mind realizes truth; the Indian and the European mind meet in a common realization.
That realization was that India was ruled by a European King-Emperor.
EINSTEIN: The word species is used in German for all human beings; as a matter of fact, even the apes and the frogs would belong to it.
The same is true in English. Species is just a fancy way of saying 'creatures'. There is a Creator and there are his creations or creatures. This is the difference between 'Pashupati' and 'Pashu'.
The problem is whether truth is independent of our consciousness.
Verification is. Hindus would say 'one can see a rope as a snake and react accordingly. But once there is verification, there is no illusory snake'. Similarly, we can have a delusion about 'Matam' or doctrine precisely because doctrine is not subject to verification. But 'Vigyan' is. Either you did Yoga properly and gained the siddhi of levitation or you didn't. What about the feeling of having gained 'samadhi' or 'satori'? Well, if you actually did, fuck would you care one way of the other? You is liberated, dude. Enjoy.
TAGORE: What we call truth lies in the rational harmony between the subjective and objective aspects of reality, both of which belong to the superpersonal man.
Who is the 'superpersonal man'? It is Purusha- God. 'Jara-Prakriti' may or may not be differentiable. That is a matter of 'matam' or doctrine.
EINSTEIN: We do things with our mind, even in our everyday life, for which we are not responsible.
i.e. we aren't actually creating our own sensorium at every moment. Christian Science may say that your mind created the cancer that is killing you. Why not change your mind so the thing disappears? But that's a crazy doctrine.
The mind acknowledges realities outside of it, independent of it. For instance, nobody may be in this house, yet that table remains where it is.
And the Brahmo's have a universal Sakshi or witness to observe that table. This is also why, when a tree falls in the forest when nobody is around, it still obeys the law of gravity.
TAGORE: Yes, it remains outside the individual mind, but not the universal mind. The table is that which is perceptible by some kind of consciousness we possess.
Is Einstein going to be able to drag the affirmation he wants out of the Eastern Sage? He is half-way there.
EINSTEIN: If nobody were in the house the table would exist all the same, but this is already illegitimate from your point of view, because we cannot explain what it means, that the table is there, independently of us.
Brahmos can. They believe in the universal Sakshi. Einstein was a smart dude. He'd done his research. He wants to be able to say 'even the Indians, who have weird beliefs, aren't as crazy as that guy Schrodinger who likes the Upanishads but who has now gone over to the enemy'.
Our natural point of view in regard to the existence of truth apart from humanity cannot be explained or proved, but it is a belief which nobody can lack—not even primitive beings. We attribute to truth a superhuman objectivity. It is indispensable for us—this reality which is independent of our existence and our experience and our mind—though we cannot say what it means.
This was a little after the following poem in Punch had appeared-
What with Gertrude, Ep and Ein,When I hear the name of Stein,
I go creepy down the spine.
Ein has caught the ether bending,
Gert has sentences unending,
Ep is really most art-rending.
Ein’s made straight lines parabolic,
Eppie’s “Night” is alcoholic,
Gertie’s grammar has the colic.
TAGORE: In any case, if there be any truth absolutely unrelated to humanity, then for us it is absolutely non-existing.
No. Things which are unrelated to us do exist. We just don't give a shit about them. The fact is, there is plenty of stuff which aint in our 'Minskowskian light cone' but we don't say that stuff does not exist. Similarly, there may be realms outside our circuit of transmigration. We are not interested enough in them to get into an argument about whether they exist.
EINSTEIN: Then I am more religious than you are!
Dude, you are the head of a religious sect! Why can't you just say 'God sees all. No human observer can alter reality'. Would that really be so difficult?
TAGORE: My religion is in the reconciliation of the superpersonal man, the universal spirit, in my own individual being
Fair enough. Tagore was a poet- a good one. His religious sect wasn't swindling people or sexually abusing them. He genuinely had nothing to say about Physics which is 'Vigyan' and not 'Matam'. This is perfectly in line with Raja Ram Mohan Roy's empiricism. It was Einstein who was turning his back on Mach's positivism. Still, we can now understand why the Brahmo Samaj declined. In the 2001 census, only 177 people described themselves as belonging to that sect. There are probably about 8 million Arya Samajis.
I wonder how a debate between Schrodinger and Tagore would have gone. Consider the following-
IN his “Mind and Matter”, Schrödinger ... declares that the basic doctrine of the Upanishads, namely what he calls the doctrine of Identity, or the thesis that allegedly separated minds are identical with one another, and that our mind is identical with the absolute basis of the world as a whole, is the only credible solution to the apparent conflict between the experienced unity of consciousness and the belief that it is dispersed in many living bodies.
This is not Vedanta. The fact is, the Brahmanas and Upanishads refer to specific Vedic texts which represent uncreated Revelation of a type which Brahmin lineages- like that of Tagore's had a duty to preserve and transmit. Vedanta is wholly concerned with 'matam' not 'vigyan'. It says 'anybody at all, not just guys who have studied some arcane stuff, has just as much of a chance of getting things right. This is like Einstein showing there are no 'privileged frames of Reference' That's cool coz no 'Doctrine' should cause you to fuck up your life , or be a fucking elitist cunt, or, worst of all, a stupid and worthless socioproctologist.
Unfortunately, he then notices, we cannot just adopt the doctrine of the Upanishads and leave aside the method of science.
The opposite is the case. Matam (doctrine) is imperative not alethic. Vigyan (Science) is empirical. See if you can get 'verification' through a 'crucial experiment'. Otherwise try to do something useful. Ram Mohan Roy and Dwarkanath were early converts to Benthamite utilitarianism.
Even though excess of objectivity “(...) is precisely the point where our present way of thinking does need to be amended, perhaps by a bit of blood transfusion from eastern thought” (...) yet, we must be aware of the fact that “That will not be easy, we must beware of blunders - Blood transfusions always need great precaution to prevent clotting. We do not wish to lose the logical precision that our scientific thought has reached, and that is unparalleled anywhere at any epoch” .
Schrodinger died a few years before Bell's theorem was published. Within 40 years there was strong empirical evidence that Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen were wrong. No 'blood transfusions' had been needed for either side in the debate. The spirit of Raja Ram Mohan Roy had been vindicated. Tagore had kept the faith. We might find him a bit of a bore, but- after all- he was the hereditary leader of a particularly high-minded sect which was perfectly sane and abjured sexy shenanigans.
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