SCIENCE, ATOMISM, AND A SINGULAR REALITY
Field Marshall Jan Christiaan Smuts (1870-1950) wrote in his book Holism and Evolution (1926) that “In its analytical pursuit of the parts, science has missed the whole, and thus tended to reduce the world to dead aggregations rather than to the real living wholes which make up nature”.
Smuts was of the opinion that “The acceptance of Evolution as a fact, the origin of life-structures from the inorganic, must mean a complete revolution in our idea of matter. If matter holds the promise and potency of life and mind it is no longer the old matter of the physical materialists.
“We have accepted Evolution, but have failed to make the fundamental readjustment in our views which that acceptance involves. The old mechanical viewpoints persist, and Natural Selection itself has come to be looked upon as a mere mechanical factor.
“But this is wrong: Sexual Selection is admittedly a physical factor, and even Natural Selection has merely the appearance of a mechanical process, because it is viewed as a statistical average, from which the real character of struggle among the living has been eliminated.”
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Atomism is the belief that everything is made up of imperceptibly small, indivisible particles, as was anticipated in India by Jainism (based on the teachings of the much older Samkhayan philosophy) some time after 800 BCE.
Atomism is in essence an analytical doctrine. It regards observable forms in nature not as intrinsic wholes but as aggregates. In contrast to holistic theories, which explain the parts in terms of qualities displayed by the whole, atomism explains the observable properties of the whole by those of its components and of their configurations.
Atomism is usually associated with a ‘realistic’ and ‘mechanistic’ view of the world. It is realistic in that atoms are not considered as subjective constructs of the mind employed for the sake of getting a better grip upon the phenomena to be explained; instead, atoms exist in actual reality.
Similarly, the mechanistic view of things, which holds that all observable changes can be reduced to changes of configuration, is not merely a matter of employing a useful explanatory model; the mechanistic thesis holds, instead, that all observable changes are caused by motions of the atoms. Finally, as an analytic doctrine atomism is opposed to organismic/holistic doctrines, which teach that the nature of a whole cannot be discovered by dividing it into its component parts, and then studying each part separately.
The Samkhaya (or Sankhaya) system (‘correct enumeration’ or ‘perfect classification’) is one of the oldest forms of philosophical conceptions known in India. While it is customary to ascribe to Kapila (flourished 550 BCE) the credit of having originated this system of thought, still Sanskrit scholars maintain that fundamental portions of Kapila’s teachings is based on much older writings. Traces of the teachings can be found as far back as 2000 BCE and it probably goes back even further.
The basic proposition of the Samkhaya system is that there exist two active principles in the universe, the interaction of which produces the activities of the universe, including those of life.
These two principles are known as, (1) Prakriti, or the primordial substance or energy from which all material forms and energies evolve; and (2) Purusha, the Spirit Principle, which ‘ensouls’ or seeks embodiment in Prakriti. This thus gives rise to all the various forms of differentiation, from atoms to man; and which is not conceived by the Samkhayans as forming one Universal Soul, but which is held to be composed of countless ‘spirit atoms’, monads, or individual spirits.
Both Purusha and Prakriti are held to be ‘emanations’ from or ‘appearances’ of Brahman (the Absolute) – each having equal substance and degree of reality, but both being finite and destined to pass away in time, i.e. to be withdrawn into their common cause.
Purusha and Prakriti are seen to be but the primal forms of the two great principles of phenomenal activity, ‘Spirit and body’, software and hardware, which are apparent in all phenomenal things, from atom to man, and beyond man.
Purusha, according to Kapila, is not to be thought of as one great World Spirit, or World Principle of Spirit, in the sense of an undivided Unity, but rather in the of a countless number of individual spirits, or spirit atoms, bound together with filaments of attraction and harmony (modern string theory?). There is no universal Purusha – no Ishwara (personal God) – in Kapila’s philosophy.
New theories for the origin of the universe (M-theory, the ekpyrotic scenario, and Brane cosmology) are intriguing astronomers with the idea that a ‘Big Splat’ preceded the Big Bang. It proposes that there may be an unseen parallel universe to ours. The idea, which is still at the development stage, may provide hints about what happened before our universe exploded into existence some 15 billion (15 x 10-9) years ago.
M-theory does not do away with the Big Bang. The evidence that everything emerged from a ‘fireball’ with a temperature of 10 billion (10 x 10-9) degrees centigrade, expanding on a timescale of one second, is the latest scientific fad.
M-theory looks at ‘events before the Big Bang’, proposing that the universe has 11 dimensions, six of them rolled up into microscopic filaments [The ‘filaments of attraction and harmony’ as was proposed by the Samkhayans?] that can for all intents, and purposes, be ignored. All physical actions of the universe takes place in five-dimensional space. ‘Before the Big Bang occurred’, the universe consisted of two perfectly flat four-dimensional surfaces.
Kapila taught the doctrine of evolution, beginning with the atoms or ultimate ensouled particles, which combining due to love or hate, formed more complex forms, from which in turn evolved combinations that are more complex. Kapila rejected any idea of purely material evolution – he saw Spirit as the active cause of evolution.
Kapila’s philosophy exerted a marked effect upon the thought of the Grecian philosophers. Plato (428/427-348/347 BCE) was full of Samkhayan thought, worked out by him, but taken from Pythagoras (580-500 BCE). Platonism and Christian Gnosticism owe much to Samkhaya philosophy.
Western atomism originated in ancient Greece with Leucippus (flourished 5th century BCE) and Democritus (circa 460-370 BCE), as a mediating position between the views of Heraclitus (circa 540-480 BCE), who maintained that everything is changing, and Parmenides (born circa 515 BCE), who held that change, is impossible.
In the early modern world, Galileo (1564-1642) and others revived atomism. Ordinarily, atomism is associated with materialism, but both science and philosophy have shown that the atomistic nature of reality need not be of a material nature, at least as matter usually is conceived. By the end of the 19th century, science had found that there are smaller units than the atom.
The first of these to be discovered, by JJ Thomson (1856-1940) in 1897, was the electron. Energy is recognised as coming in discrete, natural units (quanta), bursts, or packets, discovered in 1900 by Max Planck (1858-1947).
Modern physics today postulates that protons and electrons were formed from other subatomic particles in the first few seconds after the Big Bang (some 13.7 billion years ago). Some protons and electrons combined to form neutrons that then merged with other protons and electrons to form hydrogen and helium.
After the initial flash of the Big Bang, the universe darkened and remained dark for millions of years.
Light was only emitted once matter had locally concentrated to sufficiently high densities under gravitation within nebulae to heat up and trigger nuclear fusion reactions in the first generation stars about 200 million years after the Big Bang. These reactions also synthesised heavier chemical elements by the nuclear fusion of lighter elements.
These early stars evolved and died, many in stunning explosions known as supernovae and in the process spreading their newly formed mixture of even heavier elements into the existing nebulae.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was the first scientist to discovered the equivalence of matter and energy (E = m.c2). In science, energy usually is considered essentially lifeless, and life is seen as a curious accident in the midst of the gigantic accident (Big Bang) that the universe commonly is thought to be.
In Vedantic terms, the world is called, Chit-Shakti-Vilas, ‘the play of Conscious-Energy’ (i.e. inergy = ‘intelligent energy’). This concept Chit-Shakti is a fascinating one, in that it stands for the one Reality, and yet it is made up of two words: ‘Consciousness’ and ‘Energy’. These are the two aspects of Reality, which are familiar as Shiva-Shakti, Brahman-Maya, Purusha-Prakriti, Theos-Logos, or even ova and sperm, etc.
Chit, or consciousness, is in other contexts called Shiva, the absolute and formless aspect, the transcendent Godhead; and Shakti, or Energy, is the creative aspect of that one Consciousness which manifests as the multi-formed universe. They are one, but they appear to be two. The two are but complementary aspects of the same one indivisible Reality.
Earlier scientific belief in the discreteness of things is starting to be replaced by the recognition of things as interrelated aspects of fields of force. This scientific view still is essentially materialistic, where materialism has been defined as “the denial that the most pervasive processes of nature involve any such psychical functions as sensing, feeling, remembering, desiring, or thinking” (Charles Hartshorne [1897-2000], Insights and Oversights of Great Thinkers [1983:17]).
Perhaps the greatest single step in modern times recognising atoms as psychical, rather than physical, was taken by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716). Leibniz held that it would not be contradictory to posit that this world is a well-related dream (Maya in Sanskrit – an illusion).
Leibniz shares the honour with Isaac Newton (1643-1727) of perfecting the principle and mechanism of the differential calculus, though he came to it quite independently. However, he is perhaps better appreciated (outside of mathematical circles) for his daring penetration beyond the sense-world of matter in search of a super-physical reality, which he intuitively felt was concealed there. His researches led him to the formulation of his famous theory of the monad.
Leibniz had nothing but the very incomplete scientific equipment of the 17th century, but his marvellous insight pierced so far beneath superficial appearances that it is only within our own century that science has begun to catch up with his magnificent intuitions. There is a strong resemblance between his ideas and the philosophies of ancient India.
Two main aspects are of special interest today in view of recent scientific discoveries: (1) the illusory nature of physical matter, and (2) the fact that every particle of which the universe is composed is a living, growing entity or being. Leibniz was a true evolutionist. He decided that ‘matter’ is not dead, but is the semblance or outward and visible appearance of an invisible (to us) super-physical reality composed of metaphysical or, we might say, spiritual points which he called monads.
Each monad is a distinct individual possessing its own kind or degree of consciousness and existence. Life is everywhere, rising in grades of intelligence from the most primitive monad to the ineffable glory of the ‘monad of monads’, the incomprehensible Divine Unity, or One – the word monad being derived from the Greek Monas or one.
Leibniz thus believed like the ancient Hindu philosophy of Vedanta (and specifically Advaita Vedanta) that everything is One, and that the sense of the plurality of reality is only but an illusion (Maya). As the Vedanta maintains, Brahman (or the Absolute) is the only reality and only existence.
In Vedanta, Brahman is both the material (upādāna) and the instrumental (nimitta) cause of the world; and that the self (atman) is the agent of its own acts (karma) and therefore the recipient of the fruits, or consequences, of action (phala). All the Vedanta schools unanimously reject both the heterodox (nāstika) philosophies of Buddhism and Jainism and the conclusions of the other orthodox (āstika) schools (Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, Samkhaya, Yoga, and, to some extent, the Pūrva-Mīmāṃsā).
The Vedantic conception of Brahman is held to be beyond qualities or attributes; beyond subject and object; the source of all Being; Intelligence; and Bliss. Brahman is then the efficient cause of the universe in its spiritual, mental, and physical appearances; creator and creation; doer and deed; cause and effect; the underlying truth amidst the Universe of Unreality; One; self-existent; all-there-is; all-that-has-ever-been; all-that-ever-can-be; One-and-Only; Alone, with Nothing within Itself; and Nothing outside Itself; Unique; without a Second.
Therefore, modern science, Samkhaya (Atomism), and Vedanta (non-dualism) is again on the same track after a gap of perhaps 15 thousand years or more!
Willie Maartens
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