Frank Goad
Well-Known Member
Why are physicists interested in studying eastern religions?
Please move this post.If it is in the wrong place.
Please move this post.If it is in the wrong place.
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Why are physicists interested in studying eastern religions?
- Thread starter Frank Goad
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A Vestigial Mote
Well-Known Member
Once they actually find anything of use to the world at large, let me know, will you? Should be interesting.Why are physicists interested in studying eastern religions?
Secret Chief
nirvana is samsara
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Secret Chief
nirvana is samsara
I feel this may indeed be the wrong placeWhy are physicists interested in studying eastern religions?
exchemist
Veteran Member
What evidence do you have that physicists are interested in studying them? It does not seem to be something that is widely recognised.Why are physicists interested in studying eastern religions?
exchemist
Veteran Member
That would be physicians rather than physicists, though.
Unless there are a lot depressed physicists out there, I suppose......
exchemist
Veteran Member
Interesting. Did physicists write these books? And what is the background to the statue?
Secret Chief
nirvana is samsara
Well there could be! I suppose I was responding to @A Vestigial Mote 's asking about use to the world at large, I agree I know nothing about physicist's areas of interest.
Orbit
I'm a planet
The author of The Tao of Physics, Fritjof Capra, Ph.D., is a physicist and systems theorist.
The Shiva statue was a “gift from India to celebrate its association with Cern”, according to the institution’s website.
“This deity was chosen by the Indian government because of a metaphor that was drawn between the cosmic dance of the Nataraj and the modern study of the ‘cosmic dance’ of subatomic particles,” the organisation says on a website “India is one of CERN’s observer states, along with the USA, Russia and Japan.
Secret Chief
nirvana is samsara
Very interesting! It's not that new though, I read a book quite a few years ago concerning the overlap. Unhelpfully, I've no longer got the book and cannot remember either the name of the author or title of the book. I wish I did, I'd get it again. The cover was blue, if that helps.
A bloody useless post then really.
Edit: I suspect the book concerned the Madhyamaka school.
Madhyamaka (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
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exchemist
Veteran Member
OK thanks, so we can forget about the statue, as it is just evidence of India trying to associate its majority religion with physics.
I looked up Capra's book. It is interesting that Heisenberg and Bohr found some parallels between the then new ways of thinking about reality in QM and various Eastern philosophies (rather than religions per se). But these guys were working about a century ago now.
What I remain a bit sceptical of, in the absence of evidence, is that physicists today are showing any significant interest in " studying Eastern religions", which is the claim made in this thread.
Why are physicists interested in studying eastern religions?
Are they?
The article does not explore why but who:
What Erwin Schrödinger Said About the Upanishads - The Wire Science
Schrödinger was moved by the Upanishads. He discussed it with everyone he met and made determined efforts to incorporate it in his life. The epitaph on his tombstone reads, “… So all Being is an one and only Being; And that it continues to be when someone dies; [this] tells you, that he did not cease to be.”
And he wasn’t alone. Niels Bohr had famously said, “I go to the Upanishad to ask questions.” In The Tao of Physics (1975), Fritjof Capra wrote of the time Heisenberg met Rabindranath Tagore, and that the “introduction to Indian thought brought Heisenberg great comfort.”
J. Robert Oppenheimer, who led the Manhattan Project to develop the world’s first nuclear weapons, learned Sanskrit so he could read the Bhagavad Gita in its original form. When he witnessed the first atom bomb explode, he famously recalled a verse from the Gita, where Krishna shows Arjuna his true form. He translated the verse into English thus: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”
What Erwin Schrödinger Said About the Upanishads - The Wire Science
Schrödinger was moved by the Upanishads. He discussed it with everyone he met and made determined efforts to incorporate it in his life. The epitaph on his tombstone reads, “… So all Being is an one and only Being; And that it continues to be when someone dies; [this] tells you, that he did not cease to be.”
And he wasn’t alone. Niels Bohr had famously said, “I go to the Upanishad to ask questions.” In The Tao of Physics (1975), Fritjof Capra wrote of the time Heisenberg met Rabindranath Tagore, and that the “introduction to Indian thought brought Heisenberg great comfort.”
J. Robert Oppenheimer, who led the Manhattan Project to develop the world’s first nuclear weapons, learned Sanskrit so he could read the Bhagavad Gita in its original form. When he witnessed the first atom bomb explode, he famously recalled a verse from the Gita, where Krishna shows Arjuna his true form. He translated the verse into English thus: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”
One might ask why astronomers name celestial objects after mythological characters. Physics speaks in the language of mathematics. Perhaps some scientists of physics are looking for a different language to convey the basic concepts of physics to those who don't understand the language of mathematics?
Are they interested in Eastern religions?Why are physicists interested in studying eastern religions?
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
I'm not sure what eastern religions have to do with physics.
Levitation maybe?
Levitation maybe?
India, and Hindus have long been leaders in theoretical physics.
Category:Indian theoretical physicists - Wikipedia
Category:Indian theoretical physicists - Wikipedia
Yerda
Veteran Member
As far as I know physicists in general aren't particularly interested in eastern religion but some of the big dogs from the early years of the quantum revolution were apparently partial to a bit of Hinduism.
Schrodinger in particular seems to have had some delightfully wacky ideas about the world (I personally love wacky ideas - some of the stuff Schrodnger wrote would get you laughed out of Deepak Chopra talk) but Heisenberg, Bohr and Oppenheimer appear to have expressed some interest in aspects of Hindu philosophy.
On the topic, I think there might be something to the idea that thinking about the universe deeply can lead a person to find some ideas expressed in religious philosophy kinda beautiful, even if it isn't something that is factually correct. The idea of the universe as a unified field and every event as updates on the state of a single universal system certainly don't sound a million miles from some of the things I've read from mystics of many tradition. Physical mysticism might well be a thing.