The Essence
Wanted to post this for a very long time now. Indeed wrote this piece a year back :).
The clock ticks 12 50 am and good music is soothing my ears. This is the best part of the day in which ideas just spark, in which the stars shine bright. This is the time in which Venus looks so bright and beautiful.
Physics is the subject which many people think easy to understand but hard to comprehend. Alas! everything in our world revolves around this. The way in which we understand and comprehend nature in one way or other depends on the way we look at physics.Physics I guess is more than mere science. It is the underlying philosophy around which the whole world revolves.Many concepts are beyond our visualization like time being the fourth dimension in space and everything in this space can be visualized in four dimensions. Physics is beyond words, it is the form of purest expression. It is important that we dwelve into it and visualize it. For Physics, Words are the lowest form of human expression.The transition from the Newtonian classical Cartesian model to the modern quantum model is indeed very interesting. Seventeenth century was the turning point to mankind and to the science in which Descartes, the greatest physicist and philosopher firmly believed that ‘All science is certain, evident knowledge’. There was no room for probability at that time. There was no room for inferences. Descartes in his work questioned everything around him. He doubts everything he managed to doubt. He even questioned the existence of his own body until he reaches one thing he cannot doubt, the existence of himself as a thinker. Thus he arrived at his famous statement ‘I think therefore I exist’.The entire universe was viewed as a complex component which was built of many small building blocks. In other ways our universe was viewed as integrated wholesome of the basic building blocks of matter. In the same century came revelation works from Isaac Newton related to equation of motion of bodies and gravitation. He invented a new methodology to explain his concepts of bodies in motion which was the starting point for calculus. The Cartesian model was given a boost by Newton works according to which mass always remain constant.Since Newton’s model was widely accepted by every one, the Cartesian model and the concept of breaking complex things into small parts also spread into different fields such as psychology, medicine, sociology. The Cartesian model and Newton’s mechanistic model was highly successful during eighteenth and early parts of nineteenth century until Einstein came up with the Dual nature of light. According to this concept, light behaves as waves in certain instances whereas it behaves as particles or quanta(photons) in certain other instances. The whole new concepts of probability of existence of quanta and the energy of the quanta emerged. All of a sudden things started to behave differently in micro level whereas at the macro level it wasn’t the aggregation of things as stated by the Cartesian model. It was a bit of surprise to all physicist and scientist as it was totally against the belief they carried for two centuries but that’s where it is. This is when the connection between the physics and philosophy was reiterated. It is indeed fascinating to relate the concepts of Quanta to Bhagavad Gita , the concept of Maya to statistics & probablility.
All these events reiterate the fact that ‘Change is the only factor that will be constant forever’.
Inspired by writings from Fritjof Capra and I just luv his below article from the link:
http://www.fritjofcapra.net/articles120102.html
More to follow :) ................
Wanted to post this for a very long time now. Indeed wrote this piece a year back :).
The clock ticks 12 50 am and good music is soothing my ears. This is the best part of the day in which ideas just spark, in which the stars shine bright. This is the time in which Venus looks so bright and beautiful.
Physics is the subject which many people think easy to understand but hard to comprehend. Alas! everything in our world revolves around this. The way in which we understand and comprehend nature in one way or other depends on the way we look at physics.Physics I guess is more than mere science. It is the underlying philosophy around which the whole world revolves.Many concepts are beyond our visualization like time being the fourth dimension in space and everything in this space can be visualized in four dimensions. Physics is beyond words, it is the form of purest expression. It is important that we dwelve into it and visualize it. For Physics, Words are the lowest form of human expression.The transition from the Newtonian classical Cartesian model to the modern quantum model is indeed very interesting. Seventeenth century was the turning point to mankind and to the science in which Descartes, the greatest physicist and philosopher firmly believed that ‘All science is certain, evident knowledge’. There was no room for probability at that time. There was no room for inferences. Descartes in his work questioned everything around him. He doubts everything he managed to doubt. He even questioned the existence of his own body until he reaches one thing he cannot doubt, the existence of himself as a thinker. Thus he arrived at his famous statement ‘I think therefore I exist’.The entire universe was viewed as a complex component which was built of many small building blocks. In other ways our universe was viewed as integrated wholesome of the basic building blocks of matter. In the same century came revelation works from Isaac Newton related to equation of motion of bodies and gravitation. He invented a new methodology to explain his concepts of bodies in motion which was the starting point for calculus. The Cartesian model was given a boost by Newton works according to which mass always remain constant.Since Newton’s model was widely accepted by every one, the Cartesian model and the concept of breaking complex things into small parts also spread into different fields such as psychology, medicine, sociology. The Cartesian model and Newton’s mechanistic model was highly successful during eighteenth and early parts of nineteenth century until Einstein came up with the Dual nature of light. According to this concept, light behaves as waves in certain instances whereas it behaves as particles or quanta(photons) in certain other instances. The whole new concepts of probability of existence of quanta and the energy of the quanta emerged. All of a sudden things started to behave differently in micro level whereas at the macro level it wasn’t the aggregation of things as stated by the Cartesian model. It was a bit of surprise to all physicist and scientist as it was totally against the belief they carried for two centuries but that’s where it is. This is when the connection between the physics and philosophy was reiterated. It is indeed fascinating to relate the concepts of Quanta to Bhagavad Gita , the concept of Maya to statistics & probablility.
All these events reiterate the fact that ‘Change is the only factor that will be constant forever’.
Inspired by writings from Fritjof Capra and I just luv his below article from the link:
http://www.fritjofcapra.net/articles120102.html
More to follow :) ................
Labels: physics
posted by hari at 12:08 AM
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