From Science to Realityby

Nalaka Gamage www.nalakainfo.com

What I thought at primary school

• I do not know much on how things work.• My science teacher knows everything.• Learning science will solve all my mysteries.

• Atom is indivisible unit of all matter• Electrons travel in well defined orbital

What I was taught at secondary school (O/L)

• How electricity works.• How NaCl (salt) is formed.• How does steel corrode.

What I learnt at secondary school (O/L)

What I was programmed to think at secondary school (O/L)

• Science is truth.• Science is definite and precise.• Concrete, Stable, Permanence.

• Electrons at different levels travel on different shaped orbits.

What I learnt at high school (A/L)

“ People understood how to make petrol and alcohol”

What I was programmed to think at secondary school (A/L)

• Science is complex.• Science is bit of mystery.• I may be not as good as great scientist who know it best.

What I learned at university

• Physical laws should be the same in every inertial frame of reference, but that they may vary across non-inertial ones

Special principle of relativity (Einstein) :

What I learned at university

• The measurement of position necessarily disturbs a particle's momentum, and vice versa• Orbiting electrons around a nucleus could not be fully described as particles, but needed to be explained by the wave-particle duality

Heisenberg uncertainty principle :

What I learned at university

• You can't know with certainty both where an electron is and where it's going next• An electron can be found anywhere (with varying probability) around the nucleus

The reality (at last):

What we found at the university

• Science is not the truth.• Science is mere looking at nature at different levels so that we can understand few things. • Science itself has found it’s limit now.

What the Buddha taught 2500 years back?

"Whatever is subject to origination (samudaya) is subject to cessation (nirodha)" - MN 56

"All is impermanent. And what is the all that is impermanent?" - SN 35.43/vol.iv, 28

Evolution of knowledge

Hopeful

Exciting

Confused

Enlightenment ? - What the Buddha taught 2500 years back.

Primary School

SecondarySchool

HighSchool

University

Same phenomena different destinations

West Vs East :

• Materialistic Western scientists develop nuclear bomb to dominate over humanism • Eastern philosophy emphasized importance of live in harmony with each other and nature in one’s impermanent and short life

Conclusion

“ Where the western science ends, the eastern philosophy of Buddhism starts"

References

- http://www.chemguide.co.uk/atoms/properties/atomorbs.html- http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/uncer.html- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein

Compiled By

Nalaka Gamage ©

www.nalakainfo.com