In2-MeC

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IBSA (ISKCON Bhaktivedanta Sadhana Asrama), Govardhana, India
11 February 2004

Welcome, dear visitors, to my e-journal on the Wednesday of the second week of February. The end of my long stay here in the holy land of Vraja is in sight. I am planning to leave for Delhi on the 16th--only 5 days from now!--and there, on the 19th, board a train bound for Calcutta.

In the last two days here at In2-MeC I've been publishing articles I found on the Internet that are critiques of the beliefs imposed upon society by mainstream science. I will continue publishing such articles. But today I'll pause to make a comment.

None of the articles are written by members, doctrinal believers or sympathizers of the International Society for Krsna Consciousness (ISKCON) or another Gaudiya Vaisnava institution. So why am I publishing articles written by nondevotees? Well, it's because a significant number of members, doctrinal believers and sympathizers of ISKCON are of the opinion that the movement has important lessons to learn from the nondevotees. To that I say: fine! Dovetail away, dear Prabhus and Sadhvis!

There's a bit more I have to say as well. You who are walking a path of "nondevotee" knowledge hope to pluck the useful fruits you see growing along the length of that path. You hope to use such fruits in Krsna's service. I ask you to please be intelligent enough to look ahead to the conclusion that awaits you at the end of the path.

Does the path bring you to the conclusion that you should accept the eternal individual soul? Or does it conclude that you should accept the readily-perceivable, ever-changing material world? Does it conclude that you should accept one ultimate impersonal principle? Does it conclude that you should accept a mysterious combination of two principles, matter and spirit?

Now, if you are expecting me to conclude, "If this path of knowledge you're on ends in a material conclusion, or an impersonal conclusion, then it is bad--and you should reject it if you are any kind of devotee at all!", no, that's not my conclusion. My conclusion is that there is a greatly valuable lesson in spiritual life to be learned at the ends of all paths of knowledge. Narada Muni explains that lesson to Maharaja Yudisthira.

yan manyase dhruvam lokam
adhruvam va na cobhayam
sarvatha na hi socyas te
snehad anyatra mohajat

O King, in all circumstances, whether you consider the soul to be an eternal principle, or the material body to be perishable, or everything to exist in the impersonal Absolute Truth, or everything to be an inexplicable combination of matter and spirit, feelings of separation are due only to illusory affection and nothing more. [Bhag. 1. 13. 44]

Narada is saying here that no matter the end conclusion of the path of knowledge you are on, the valuable lesson you'll gain at the end is detachment. Detachment arises from the perception that nothing in this material world lasts, and nothing in this material world satisfies. All knowledge, even material knowledge, comes to this end.

For example, here's some favorite lines from a poem I came to know years before I had any involvement with Krsna consciousness.

. . . for the world which seems
To lie before us, like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
(from "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold, 1822-1888)

Matthew Arnold was not a devotee. His poem does not conclude, "Surrender to Krsna!" But from Mr. Arnold I gained valuable knowledge. I never saw this world the same again after my mind was impregnated by the stark, melancholy beauty of that phrase, "And we are here as on a darkling plain. . . "

So, dear visitors, this is why I am publishing these articles by nondevotees here: to help you see that thoughtful people who are not Krsna-bhaktas have arrived at the conclusion that the world is not as we see it, or as we are told to see it; and that much of what passes as proven scientific fact is a load of propaganda. We ought to detach ourselves from "this world" which the majority blindly accepts as real.

But are the members, doctrinal believers and sympathizers of ISKCON interested in that valuable lesson? Most of them are. But not all. Here's what a self-proclaimed devotee of Krsna has to say on the Internet about the lesson he's learned from the path of modern science.

Welcome to the God of Science web page. This web page is devoted to showing that we can be Hare Krishna devotees even if we believe modern scientific theories, including evolution. I also hope to show people who believe modern scientific theories that God can exist. I depend on better preachers than myself to show that God does exist.

Devotees are often told that in order to be devotees, they need to believe that the moon is farther away from the earth than the sun is, the earth is flat, we did not evolve from apes, and that there was a Vedic civilization with atom bombs and airplanes, etc.

My problem is that I want to be a devotee, but I have a science education, and know that evolution is a fact. I have come to the conclusion that one can believe in modern science and still be a Hare Krishna devotee.

I get so mixed up and confused. I know that the theory of evolution is true, and at the Temple they often say its not true, but I also know I need to go to the Temple and try to be a devotee. Its like what Woody Allen said about relationships at the end of his movie "Annie Hall": There's a guy who complains: "My friend thinks he's a chicken" Someone asks: "Why don't you have him committed?" The guy says: "I need the eggs. "

We all need the eggs. I hope this web page will help. People need to learn that they can believe in Krishna and our tradition, even when they know the truth of evolution. The Catholic Church is now pro-evolution, so why not us? This can have a major positive impact on preaching.

My surprise at reading this was not altogether unpleasant. Krsna is all-attractive, and that is proven by the fact that He draws to Himself even persons who remain persistently attached to positivism, like our scientific friend quoted above. The Lord is so kind to attract the bewildered minds of the conditioned souls and thus give them His shelter!

I wrote above that our scientific friend is attached to positivism. What is that? From the dictionary:

a. A doctrine contending that sense perceptions are the only admissible basis of human knowledge and precise thought. b. The application of this doctrine in logic, epistemology, and ethics. c. The system of Auguste Comte designed to supersede theology and metaphysics and depending on a hierarchy of the sciences, beginning with mathematics and culminating in sociology. d. Any of several doctrines or viewpoints, often similar to Comte's, that stress attention to actual practice over consideration of what is ideal.

Positivism is indeed our scientific friend's philosophy. On his website's feedback page he answers a letter by arguing that God exists, but He exists in the realm of the impossible. Science establishes what is possible. By allowing the reality of both realms--the possible and the impossible--he shows he is not an all-out atheist. But he divides them in a way that reminds me of Kant (see In2-MeC for 25 and 26 December). His conclusion is that in the realm of the possible, everybody, including devotees, must accept science.

As we have seen, even the dictionary classifies positivism as a doctrine and a viewpoint. Which means it is a method of interpretation of sense data. In turn, this means that sense data needs explaining to bring us to knowledge. Sense data does not stand alone as knowledge of anything. Words must be applied to make sense data understandable. A six-months-old baby sees, touches and even tastes the wristwatch worn by Mother as she holds the child in her arms. But that watch as "an instrument that tells time" remains unknown to the child. That knowledge can come only as the child acquires language.

It is unavoidable: sense data must be interpreted. Under whose authority do we do that? I learned from Srila Prabhupada to accept the authority of Srimad-Bhagavatam and the authorized Vedic scriptures. But did I arrive at the point of accepting that authority by blind faith? Not at all. In my high school and college years, before I knew about Krsna consciousness, I was very interested in science and philosophy. But the lesson I learned from these disciplines is the one Narada suggests to be the really valuable lesson of life: detachment from the everchanging material nature.

As soon as detachment is accepted as the desirable lesson of knowledge, one takes distance from the doctrines and viewpoints that encourage attachment to matter. I am still interested in philosophy and science today, but my interest gravitates toward whatever lessons of detachment are to be gained from them.

Now, our scientific friend adheres to Darwinian evolution. That's the drum he beats on his website. But that doctrine, that viewpoint, is constructed from the logic that a living entity is the material body and nothing more. It is constructed from the logic that the shape and purpose of the body is sense gratification and nothing more. I think that makes for a very stupid conclusion. There's no valuable lesson there. I think like that not because I was brainwashed by a cult. I already thought like that years before I became a devotee. My thoughts began to move in that direction by my readings into "mundane thinkers" like Matthew Arnold and so many others. Since no positivist can hand-wave away the fact that material life ends in death for everybody who is born, I concluded that detachment is the much more worthy and valuable lesson to be gained from science and philosophy than attachment is.

Tomorrow I'll have more to say about Darwinian evolution as "attachment science. "

Today I'll remind my visitors that in the In2-MeC entries of 10 and 11 December '03 I offered a few key reasons why I cannot intellectually accept Darwinian evolution and the whole "scientific" story that the Earth and Moon flew out of the sun as gigantic blobs of molten matter. I'll not repeat those reasons here. But I will add another key reason.

On his website our scientific friend cites Galilei (see In2-MeC 28 December '03) as saying that one should not reject the God-given evidence of the senses. Fine; pratyaksa (sense perception) is also a pramana (evidence) acceptable to Gaudiya Vaisnavas. But its acceptability is subordinate to sabda-pramana (the evidence of spiritual sound vibration, or sastra-sadhu-guru). Pratyaksa-pramana is limited (the example of the frog in the well) and defective (bhrama-pramada-karanapatava-vipralipsa).

Now here's a next key point, to be added to the points I made in 10 and 11 December, why I dismiss "scientific" talk about what it's like in outer space or what it was like in prehistoric times. The limited, defective nature of the senses is evident in that they are constituted to function within a very narrow spectrum of conditions--only on this planet, for example, and only in the present age of Kali-yuga.


Here on Earth our senses reveal a world full of life, variety and activity. On the Moon they present us with a deadly wasteland. Since, undeniably, our senses are given by nature to operate on the Earth and not on other planets, how can we be sure that there is not more on the Moon than our senses permit us to see?
 

What would happen if a human being were to be instantly teleported, with no preparation at all, to the Moon? He would never know he was on the Moon because he would die as immediately as he arrived. Of course, scientists claim that mankind has walked on the surface of the Moon. . . but then again, they admit the astronauts had to be fully protected from lunar conditions by bulky space suits. Which means human senses are not meant by nature to gather data nor to perform work on the Moon.

Oh, scientists will exult, "But still, we broke that limitation of nature and did it anyway!" Oh, yeah? Well, to rephrase an argument Srila Prabhupada made, when we are on Earth our senses inform our minds about a world full of variety and activity. On "the Moon," the mind is told by the senses only about an empty, sterile wasteland. My conclusion, drawn from sastra-sadhu-guru, is that there is a full world of variety and activity on the Moon--but human senses cannot operate there as they do on Earth. Thus we do not perceive the moon as Ding-an-Sicht: "the thing in itself. " We perceive only what we can perceive, which is precious little.

Our scientist friend will likely retort, "We perceive what we perceive there because that's all that there is on the Moon!"

My friend, that's your doctrine, your viewpoint, your interpretation of sense data.

"But Galilei said God gave us our senses, so why should we disbelieve them?"

My answer is, He didn't give us senses suitable for living on the Moon. So how can you trust them to show you all that is there on that or any other planet?

Here's an example that may make my point clearer. Suppose I have a very nice high-quality camera that takes beautiful photographs of the world around me. But I hope to use it under extremely adverse conditions--at the bottom of the Marianas Trench in the Pacific Ocean some five miles below the waves. My camera is simply not made to work in water, especially not so deep underwater that the pressure crushes it in an instant. So I am obliged to take all sorts of expensive measures to insure that the camera can survive and function. I go down in a deepsea bathyscape mounted with powerful electric lamps. Through the thick protective glass of the submarine's porthole, I take some snaps of whatever is visible outside in the limited halo of the lamplight. Will my photographs reveal the undersea "world" of the Marianas Trench as it is known to the creatures who are down there all the time, who move freely here and there in bodies suitable for life in total darkness at the bottom of five miles of ocean water? Of course not. My photos will show only what a human being is able to see under very artificial conditions. My photos will show only rocks. Dust (well, mud actually, at the ocean bottom). Emptiness.

Our senses and bodies are not only conditioned by their physical environment, they are conditioned by time itself. We were born as denizens of Kali-yuga. That means we aren't able to perceive this Earth as people did in Dvapara-yuga, 5000 years ago, when the Vedas were compiled. Yes, modern man tries to see the past from the present by scientific means. But as he approaches 3000 BC, where does he find himself? Deeper and deeper in the midst of his own mental speculations. It's quite like looking at "the Moon" up close (supposedly). On the surface of "the Moon," what do the senses offer the mind to grab onto? Rocks. Dust. Emptiness. At Stonehenge in England or at Tiahuanaco in Boliva, two relics of ancient societies thousands of years old, what do the senses offer the mind to grab onto? Rocks. Dust. Emptiness. Both on the Moon and at prehistoric sites, scientists try to fill the gaps of human knowledge with their doctrines and viewpoints. But the plain fact is, we know very little about the people who built Stonehenge, Tiahuanaco and the other sites of great antiquity.

Anyway, never mind other worlds and other times. Even scientists themselves raise fundamental questions about what science tries to say about this world (Earth), right now. For example, Albert Einstein, in Out of My Late Years (1936), had this to say about the scientific method:

Out of the multitude of our sense experiences we take, mentally and arbitrarily, certain repeatedly occuring complexes of sense impression . . . and we attribute to them a meaning--the meaning of bodily objects.

Einstein admitted that this method cannot even prove the existence of the world around us right now. So how can we be sure that the bodily objects scientists study are even real in the most elementary way? Aren't such objects just mental interpretations of a jumble of sense data that, with another kind of mind--superhuman, subhuman, or even a human mind culturally different than ours at present--could be interpreted in very different ways? Wouldn't a different interpretation of sense data reveal a very different world? Of many such possible interpretations, which is the right one? And one last vexing question: by the method Einstein described, how could we know whether something most important--like God--exists outside the range of our human sense experiences?

A philosopher, Thomas Nagel, writing in What Does it All Mean (1987), describes the circular logic inherent in relying upon sense data for proof of even the most elementary facts.

If you try to argue that there must be an external physical world, because you wouldn't see buildings, people, or stars unless there were things out there that reflected or shed light into your eyes and caused your visual experiences, the reply is obvious: How do you know that? It's just another claim about the external world and your relation to it, and it has to be based upon the evidence of your senses. But you can rely on that specific evidence about how visual experiences are caused only if you can already rely in general on the contents of your mind to tell you about the external world. And that is exactly what has been called into question. If you try to prove the reliability of your impressions by appealing to your impressions, you're arguing in a circle and won't get anywhere.

I would recommend to our scientific friend that he try to understand the difference between the positivist-scientific approach and the philosophical approach to knowledge. It isn't very remarkable that a scientifically-minded person will have a problem with the Krsna conscious viewpoint on issues of evolution and so on. The Krsna conscious viewpoint has, in my opinion, rather more in common with the philosophical approach than with the positivist-scientific approach.

What is the difference between the two? Scientific positivism inquires how mankind's physical life may be improved and does not bother about how mankind might become self-realized, or transcendental to the illusion of material existence, or a better moral and spiritual entity. Self-realization, transcendence, morality and spirituality cannot be seen in microscopes and telescopes. Hardcore positivists jump to the conclusion, "Therefore such things don't exist at all!" Classical philosophy endeavors to improve our understanding in four areas: epistemology, logic, metaphysics and ethics or morality. This endeavor entails at least considering the human being to be a non-material, moral, and spiritual entity. Of course, some philosophers are materialists and empiricists. They defend the same conclusion as the scientific positivists. But at least they think rigorously about the possibility of mankind, in essence, being a soul beyond the body. And many philosophers, even today, are transcendentalists (at least in their thinking). The essential difference between the scientific positivist and the philosopher is that the latter is willing to systematically employ the intellect to probe beyond sense data. The former is also obliged to probe beyond sense data--since sense data cannot stand alone and has to be explained, whether by science, philosophy or Vedic knowledge--but as we shall see shortly, scientists themselves admit that they are not trained in the rigorous philosophical method. They are not interested in philosophy. Thus scientific explanations of sense data are often pretty strange. They are neither philosophical, nor even common-sensical.

Scientists should try to understand the philosophical approach because science began in philosophy. However, it cut its ties to the parent as it accelerated down the narrow path of the study of bodily objects.

Professor Lewis Wolpert, erudite biologist at London's University College, writes that most scientists today are ignorant of philosophical issues. Though at the beginning of the twentieth century a professional scientist normally had a background in philosophy,

Today things are quite different, and the 'stars' of modern science are more likely to have been brought up on science fiction . . . the physicist who is a quantum mechanic has no more knowledge of philosophy than the average car mechanic. "1

Wolpert admits that the fundamental assumptions of science may not be acceptable as philosophy, but speaking as a scientist, he finds that irrelevant. And that would be okay, I suppose, if scientists, as ignorant as they may admit they are of philosophy and theology (which is simply philosophy with God at the center), would not strive as they do to take the place of philosophers and theologians. A noted journalist in the field of cybertechnology writes:

Science, as we have already discovered, is outrageously demanding. It demands that it is not simply a way of explaining certain bits of the world, or even the local quarter of the universe within telescopic range. It demands that it explains absolutely everything. . . 2

Yes, today's scientists are not shy about tackling philosophical questions--yet they are not trained in philosophy and, as Wolpert admits, they follow "a rule that all scientific ideas are contrary to common sense. "3 Here's an example. Wolpert puts forward the oft-heard argument that a scientific theory ultimately counts for nothing if it does not measure up to what can be observed in nature. 4 Yet he approvingly quotes Albert Einstein as saying that a theory is significant not to the degree it is confirmed by facts observed in nature, but to the degree it is simple and logical; and he quotes Arthur Eddington as saying that observations are not to be given much confidence unless they are confirmed by theory. 5

Common sense tells us there's a contradiction here. Wolpert admits it: "Scientists have to face at least two problems that drive them in opposite directions. "6 The first problem is that science postulates causal mechanisms to explain why the world appears as it does to us. The second is that since a fundamental cause is always before its visible effect in the form of the bodily objects of this world, the cause cannot be perceived as a bodily object can be. In other words, the "objectivity" of a scientist is restricted by his material body. Thus from his embodied standpoint, he has a difficult task proving that his postulated fundamental cause is real. But prove it he will try, starting with what Einstein termed "free fantasy. "7

Thus fundamental causes (or to be precise, postulations about fundamental causes) such as mechanical forces, electromagnetic and other fields, wave functions, ultimate particles like the Higgs boson, and Darwinian natural selection, acquire by free fantasy the same "real" status as bodily objects. And by the same free fantasy, the everyday bodily objects around us like people, animals, plants, houses, tables and chairs become unstable, hazy theoretical concepts. In the meantime, where did common sense go? "I would contend," writes Wolpert, "that if something fits in with common sense it almost certainly isn't science. "8 LSD prophet Timothy Leary may have best put his finger on it when he wrote that in science, "realities are determined by whoever determines them. "9

Here's a likely retort from someone like our scientific friend. "Scientists are reasonable people. We can trust them because we know who they are and how they arrived at their determinations of what is real and what isn't. But there is no such background for mythology. The Vedic myths are just a body of old stories handed down blindly from olden times. Who really wrote those stories, and why, and when, we don't know--not like we know about the persons who wrote the body of knowledge that is science. "

That's not a statement of fact. That's doctrine and viewpoint. For one thing, when Vedic narratives are received from guru-parampara, we get a full account of how, when and why these narratives were composed, and how they are to be rightly understood. For another, the body of knowledge that is science has a lot in common with what was described in the previous paragraph as mythology. See what Wolpert has to say:

no one is interested that [calculus] was discovered independently by Leibniz and by Newton . . . and no one would now read their almost impenetrable papers. As ideas become incorporated into the body of knowledge, the discoverers, the creators (of whom there may be many), simply disappear. Likewise, no one reads Watson and Crick's original paper if they want to know about DNA, or Darwin if they wish to understand evolution . . . 10

Dramatic storytelling is essential to mythology, and through popular science books and magazines, myth is reborn today as Wolpert's "body of knowledge. " It is the science writer's myth, not the science researcher/theorist's grind, that captures the public's imagination, seizing for science popular credibility. Even if the myth insults common sense, that only adds to the mystique scientists enjoy in society. 11 Swedish physicist Hannes Alfven explains this in his 1978 paper entitled How Should We Approach Cosmology?

The people were told that the true nature of the physical world could not be understood except by Einstein and a few other geniuses who were able to think in four dimensions. Science was something to believe in, not something which should be understood. Soon the best-sellers among the popular science books became those that presented scientific results as insults to common sense. One of the consequences was that the limit between science and pseudo-science began to be erased. To most people it was increasingly difficult to find any difference between science and science fiction.

If one is really persistent in searching out the roots of the body of knowledge that is science, one finally comes to philosophers (Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz and Kant) and theologians. Today, scientists are often heard to dismiss the speculations of these great thinkers of old as unreliable. But what of the speculations of scientists themselves? As we see from the quotations I've offered in this article, behind the facade of objectivity, science is rent by deep philosophical controversies. I described these controversies a bit in In2-MeC of 10 December.

But Wolpert, as if to demonstrate to his readers how avidly he sticks to his belief that science flies in the face of common sense, dismisses philosophical speculation as if it doesn't exist within the borders of science. This is really interesting. After all, philosophy tries to explain information--to probe beneath the surface data that makes up the world of bodily objects. So doing, philosophy grapples with the why of the world. Professor Wolpert argues that all this is irrelevant to today's scientists. What he means to say, I think, is that science avoids getting tied up in the metaphysics of trying to explain information. It just goes on discovering and teaching information.


Behind the so-called empirical, measurable facts of science are metaphysical theories. Metaphysics belongs to philosophy, yet scientists admit that they don't much care for philosophy. They even admit that science doesn't conform with common sense either.
 

Here's where philosophers point out that science plays a dishonest game with words--because science, like philosophy, is full of metaphysical theories! (The word metaphysics comes from the Greek ta meta ta physika, which means "those past the physics. " In other words, metaphysics points to a realm of higher truth that is less "proven" by experience and more "known" by some sort of inner intuition or realization. )

Philosopher Claude Alvares, writing on page 76 of Science, Hegemony and Violence (1988), explains that science ". . . seems to start from scratch, from empirical fact, and its postulates seem to deny all metaphysics. Nevertheless, its postulates function as a front for a new metaphysics, and because they, like all other kinds of postulates, are assumed, they distort reality and define it selectively. "

But scientists who don't care to understand philosophy seem to think their own metaphysical theories are in a different league from those of philosophers. Darwinian evolution is nothing else than a metaphysical theory, but people like our scientific friend write on the Internet that they just "know" it to be true. Wow.

For people who buy into science, a theory is more than a systematic assumption. It is information, a cash-value commodity. Information is marketed so as to shape the way the human race sees the world, just as designer wear is marketed to shape the way we dress. Scientists take credit that today's world is perhaps better informed than it ever has been. But the foundation of all this information is uncertain, because scientists by their own admission are not very good at philosophy, at coming to grips with the "why" behind all the "hows" and the "whats. " The result is information chaos.

To the question "What problem does the information solve?" the answer is usually "How to generate, store, and distribute more information, more conveniently, at greater speeds than ever before. " . . . For what purpose or with what limitations, it is not for us to ask; and we are not accustomed to asking, since the problem is unprecedented. 12

The Krsna conscious viewpoint, as I said, has many things in common with the philosophical approach. But the attempt to explain sense data by mental speculation--even deeply reasoned speculation like that done by great philosophers--is a lower method of knowledge. The failure of Western philosophy is that it never rose above this level, which is sorely affected by factors of time, space, the defects of human sense organs and the distortion and unclarity inherent in mundane vocabulary and grammar. That's why scientists don't trust philosophers.

The Vedic method of knowledge is darsana, a systematic revelation of deep reality. It does not fish in muddy depths for meaning; rather, it purifies the depths so that the self-evident truth emerges.

The Vedas are spiritual sound, and therefore there is no need of material interpretation for the sound incarnation of the Vedic literature . . . In the ultimate issue there is nothing material because everything has its origin in the spiritual world. The material manifestation is therefore sometimes called illusion in the proper sense of the term. For those who are realized souls there is nothing but spirit. 13

Krsna consciousness and modern science approach knowledge differently--but they share themata (background principles) such as:

1) within nature there are regularities;
2) knowing the regularities, one can predict certain events in nature;
3) thus a reliable body of knowledge about nature is useful;
4) such knowledge is taught in a language of numerical measurement.

As Wolpert writes, "these presuppositions are universal. "14 It is wrong to style devotees of Krsna as anti-scientific simpletons or fanatics. They certainly do respect these themata. But Western science attempts to demonstrate the universality of its account of themata from human powers of observation and theory. This is like trying to hold an elephant on a dish. The universe is a display of the unlimited power of the Supreme. Human power is limited. Freely admitting this, Vedic science follows the universal standard of regularity, prediction, reliability and numerical measurement given by the Supreme.

I'll have more to say tomorrow, specifically about the Darwinian theory of evolution.

1. Lewis Wolpert, The Unnatural Nature of Science, 1992, p. 108.
2. Benjamin Wooley, Virtual Worlds, 1992, p. 100.
3. Wolpert, p. 5.
4. Wolpert, p. 118.
5. Wolpert, pp. 99-100.
6. Wolpert, p. 145.
7. As cited by Valentin Turchin in The Meaning of Metaphysics, 1994, Einstein stated: "Physics is a developing logical system of thinking whose foundations cannot be obtained by extraction from past experience according to some inductive methods, but come only by free fantasy. "
8. Wolpert, p. 11.
9. Timothy Leary, "Quark of the Decade?", Mondo 2000 No. 7, Autumn 1989, p. 54.
10. Wolpert, pp. 85-86.
11. Benjamin Wooley writes, "even the scientific establishment is prepared to admit the laws it currently assumes to be correct are in all probability incorrect. " Virtual Worlds, 1992, p. 100.
12. Neil Postman, Techopoly, 1992, p. 61.
13. Srila Prabhupada, Srimad-Bhagavatam 3. 12. 47, purport.
14. Wolpert, p. 107

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