Other Natural Religions

[Husky]

This is perhaps a bit less directly related to Other Natural Religions than the previous post, and a bit more on... more indirect - but still related - stuff.





Oh look, it's the cosmic egg. No, I don't mean the Hiranyagarbha in this case. (And certainly not any "shared IE mythos" drivel). I mean the egg located a bit more to the right on the map: the *Chinese* Cosmic Egg. The following is as relayed by a Nipponese:

In Chinese mythology, for example, in the beginning there was the cosmic egg. The infant god P’an Ku resided for almost an eternity inside the egg, which floated on a formless sea of Chaos.



When it finally hatched, P’an Ku grew enormously, over ten feet per day, so the top half of the eggshell became the sky and the bottom half the earth. After 18,000 years, he died to give birth to our world: his blood became the rivers, his eyes the sun and moon, and his voice the thunder.

While it's possible some may think science does not belong in the Natural Religions thread, I'd disagree. After all, christians screeched "sorcery! witchcraft!" at the Hellenistic mathematicians (and then killed them). Besides, science is sort of the breath of life for most heathens. Even in our free time, as is the case with all fellow sci-fi fans. E.g. if asked what I "believe" in, I'd say: I believe in the distinct possibility and likelihood of time travel (and alternative timelines, naturally), parallel universes (~"parallel dimensions") and the eventual ability to travel between them, FTL (duh) not just wormhole travel, and of course, must toss in the culmination of AI: ancestor simulation theory. That I "believe" in the very real possibility of the existence of numerous intelligent, technologically-advanced alien species simply goes without saying - as Sagan explained, even this our known universe is *way* too huge to have only spawned us as its sole sample (and aren't we a rather boring, slow and disappointing one at that) - but I guess I have to admit it's possible our species may extinct before meeting any others, especially considering the rate at which we're doing anything in space.

Those are all - and the only - things I "believe" in. They are all plausible, possible, theorised (as distinctly possible and even as our future - by bigwigs in fields from Physics to AI*), but not all fully proven (yet), hence requiring a degree of what others may call "belief" on my part. It's not real belief actually: I'm just waiting for the evidence to roll in to seal the deal...



(I basically just described everyone I know/am friends with - we're all clones of each other.)

* Half the science books that appeal to me read like sci-fi. I think of them as "sci-fi minus the bad romance subplots" <img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' /> (note that if it were a good romance subplot, I'd not complain).



Anyway, the next excerpt from the book where I stole the previous quoteblock from - the book's dated somewhere in the last decade I think - sticks out as perhaps relevant to India-forum. (Maybe not, but Pretend.)

M-THEORY AND THE ELEVENTH DIMENSION

The very idea of parallel universes was once viewed with suspicion by scientists as being the province of mystics, charlatans, and cranks. Any scientist daring to work on parallel universes was subject to ridicule and was jeopardizing his or her career, since even today there is no experimental evidence proving their existence.

But recently, the tide has turned dramatically, with the finest minds on the planet working furiously on the subject. The reason for this sudden change is the arrival of a new theory, string theory, and its latest version, M-theory, which promise not only to unravel the nature of the multiverse but also to allow us to “read the Mind of God,” as Einstein once eloquently put it. If proved correct, it would represent the crowning achievement of the last two thousand years of research in physics, ever since the Greeks first began the search for a single coherent and comprehensive theory of the universe.

The number of papers published in string theory and M-theory is staggering, amounting to tens of thousands. Hundreds of international conferences have been held on the subject. Every single major university in the world either has a group working on string theory or is desperately trying to learn it. Although the theory is not testable with our feeble present-day instruments, it has sparked enormous interest among physicists, mathematicians, and even ex-perimentalists who hope to test the periphery of the theory in the future with powerful gravity wave detectors in outer space and huge atom smashers.

Ultimately, this theory may answer the question that has dogged cosmologists ever since the big bang theory was first proposed: what happened before the big bang?

This requires us to bring to bear the full force of our physical knowledge, of every physical discovery accumulated over the centuries. In other words, we need a “theory of everything,” a theory of every physical force that drives the universe. Einstein spent the last thirty years of his life chasing after this theory, but he ultimately failed.

At present, the leading (and only) theory that can explain the diversity of forces we see guiding the universe is string theory or, in its latest incarnation, M-theory. (M stands for “membrane” but can also mean “mystery,” “magic,” even “mother.” Although string theory and M-theory are essentially identical, M-theory is a more mysterious and more sophisticated framework which unifies various string theories.)

Ever since the Greeks, philosophers have speculated that the ultimate building blocks of matter might be made of tiny particles called atoms. Today, with our powerful atom smashers and particle accelerators, we can break apart the atom itself into electrons and nuclei, which in turn can be broken into even smaller subatomic particles. But instead of finding an elegant and simple framework, it was distressing to find that there were hundreds of subatomic particles streaming from our accelerators, with strange names like neutrinos, quarks, mesons, leptons, hadrons, gluons, W-bosons, and so forth. It is hard to believe that nature, at its most fundamental level, could create a confusing jungle of bizarre subatomic particles.

String theory and M-theory are based on the simple and elegant idea that the bewildering variety of subatomic particles making up the universe are similar to the notes that one can play on a violin string, or on a membrane such as a drum head. (These are no ordinary strings and membranes; they exist in ten- and eleven-dimensional hyperspace.)

Traditionally, physicists viewed electrons as being point particles, which were infinitesimally small. This meant physicists had to introduce a different point particle for each of the hundreds of subatomic particles they found, which was very confusing. But according to string theory, if we had a supermicroscope that could peer into the heart of an electron, we would see that it was not a point particle at all but a tiny vibrating string. It only appeared to be a point particle because our instruments were too crude.



This tiny string, in turn, vibrates at different frequencies and resonances. If we were to pluck this vibrating string, it would change mode and become another subatomic particle, such as a quark. Pluck it again, and it turns into a neutrino. In this way, we can explain the blizzard of subatomic particles as nothing but different musical notes of the string. We can now replace the hundreds of subatomic particles seen in the laboratory with a single object, the string.

In this new vocabulary, the laws of physics, carefully constructed after thousands of years of experimentation, are nothing but the laws of harmony one can write down for strings and membranes.

The laws of chemistry are the melodies that one can play on these strings. The universe is a symphony of strings. And the “Mind of God,” which Einstein wrote eloquently about, is cosmic music resonating throughout hyperspace. (Which raises another question: If the universe is a symphony of strings, then is there a composer? I address this question in chapter 12.)



MUSICAL ANALOGY

STRING COUNTERPART

Musical notation

Mathematics

Violin strings

Superstrings

Notes

Subatomic particles

Laws of harmony

Physics

Melodies

Chemistry

Universe

Symphony of strings

“Mind of God”

Music resonating through

hyperspace

Composer

?



THE END OF THE UNIVERSE

[...]

(Insert: heathens - Hellenistic, Hindu etc - regard music as the culmination of Maths. E.g. Julian famously vocalised this old Hellenistic view in his usual formidable way.)



In my reading of the above quoteblock: at surface level at least, it's a bit reminiscent of the decades-old explanations by Hindoos* for how the sounds of the Veda mantras are related to the nature of the Kosmos.

* To pick a popular, written example: unless I'm misremembering, the previous head Shankaracharya at KAnchi MaTham also explained the Veda mantras and their nature and relationship to the Kosmos (or "creation", to use the phrase of the Japanese author of the above quoteblock) - of their all-permeating presence - in this manner. But I'll have to leave the accuracy of my memory as to the similarity of analogies used for others to verify. Though *I think* the Shankaracharya's explanation, as that of several other Hindoos, were older than String theory. Then again, it could just be me taking similarities in analogies to imply similarities in the underlying phenomena described therewith. Still, the likenesses in choice of description/conceptualising/visualising remain interesting to note, even if the nature of things explicated were to turn out to not be the same.



The book taken as a whole is sort of like a Physics (particularly cosmology) for Dummies - quite suited to my low-brow level of understanding of ... anything really. ("Awwww, poor mathematically-inept husky" ympathy-bowl: <- Hey, if I play my cards right, I could work this into my repertoire better than showing off a plastered papercut... <img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />)



Anyway. Oddly enough, in the course of his trying to explain the state of cosmology in the sciences with reference to what theologies contend on the origin of the world around us, the author only knows 2 paradigms - the Buddhist and the Judaic one - to compare it all to, having only the merest snatches of info concerning Chinese (Daoist) and Hindu cosmological theories to draw parallels with the nature of the universe as revealed by science.



But personally, I was seeing a *lot* of echoes of Daoist cosmology in the revelation of the universe provided by the physics as summarised/simplified in this book. (And having a bit of familiarity of Hindu cosmology - definitely more than the author appears to - I also noticed direct parallels with this.) The author appears to require a unification of both Judaic and Buddhist cosmologies in order to find a 'completer' match with what Physics has shown of the universe, and even that is a bit stretched (especially as Genesis is particularly limited to the solar system at most and earth in particular). But I find that just Daoism on its own OR just Hinduism on its own (i.e. either one of the two) suffices: the eternally-recreated multiverse, that has a beginning, middle and end, and which is regenerated, again and again, and which is made up of dark matter and dark energy etc, all aligns rather well. Well enough to draw more cogent parallels IMO than the kind the author was able to make with his chosen sample religions. Especially if you start using the Hindoo theory of tatvas in the makeup/evolution of the universe to explicate.



But such similarities ought not to be surprising I suppose, as Daoism - even in its most fundamental building blocks - is a religion very much concerned with space (both outer and inner space, and the relationship between the two. Quite like Hindus' religion in that respect too.)