A logic beyond science?

It’s time science and spirituality ended their eternal war.
GAUTAM CHIKERMANE

It couldn’t be without logic—this intricately balanced nature, its geography, its life forms, its civilisations, their interdependence. The laws of nature that physics is discovering existed long before man discovered science. Or defined it. But simply because science today defines itself in one way —it describes a large class of observations and makes definite predictions about future observations—doesn’t mean there’s no logic beyond this definition. Just like the movement, in science, to understanding that it wasn’t the earth but the sun around which planets revolved took two millennia and six scientists to be discovered, from Aristotle in 340 BC to Newton in 1687, maybe there’s some new logic waiting to be unearthed by science that stands beyond its reach today.

We’re on a planet that’s not only rotating on its axis and revolving around the sun, but one that’s constantly evolving, with the rest of us trying to keep pace even as we influence this evolution. Discovering ourselves, our physical and psychological drivers, our arts, sciences and everything in between. In the process, going beyond what we know, to what we don’t: mind and its multi-layered depths, soul and its vastness, consciousness and its timelessness, the all-encompassing spirit and its spacelessness. Concepts science can’t recognise as logical as they stand outside the logic of reason and within the logic of, say, intuition.

Education is partly to blame. We find that we have been trained to look only at the surface. Hence, the focus on one aspect of a much wider possibility. Ignoring the education of the body, for instance, by which death could be conquered. The education of the vital, through which we can understand that perhaps fear and courage are two halves of one whole. The education of the psychic, by which we touch the That lying within us. All of which have their own logics, that don’t necessarily conform to scientific definition. Silence as a stairway to reach these depths, for instance.

Not for a moment am I questioning scientific logic, just wondering whether those conforming to it have their minds open enough to accept the possibility of other paradigms, other logics. The existence of, say, a spiritual logic. Could it be that the scientific temper has seen merely religious seeking through irrational beliefs, and hence is discounting it—and along with it, its deeper, spiritual aspects? Could it also be that it concerns itself only with change and not the Source, the stuff from where it all began? The Indian Express Monday, November 14, 2005 Read comment[s]