The Mind of God

Yesterday we remember well but that is not the case with tomorrow. Quite strangely and disappointingly the theories that govern our life are valid regardless of past or future and yet they do not allow us to know what is going to happen tomorrow.  If we could travel across time, probably this will be likely, but is time travel really possible? 

Who can forget the imaginative and yet depressing novel of H G Wells, the Time Machine, which takes the Time Traveler to 802701 AD. Physics and Mathematics are not silent on this topic. The most beautiful and illuminating essay comes from the greatest living physicist Stephen Hawking, titled Arrow of Time. The universe is moving from Order to Disorder, from Past to Future and is continuously expanding. These three movements and their direction are represented by Thermodynamic Arrow, Psychological Arrow and Cosmological Arrow respectively. 

A jigsaw puzzle has only one ordered state but several states of disorder. The tendency is always to be in a state with greater disorder and a special effort is needed to arrive at the complete picture, which is only one. A broken cup on the floor has greater disorder than a tea-cup on the table. This is thermodynamic arrow according to which with time, we will see greater disorder. It is difficult to say much about human memory as it relates to brain and we know precious little about it. However we do know about the functioning of a computer which can safely be assumed to be like a human brain. When data is ordered in the computer or any application is processed, a certain energy is required which in turn is dissipated in the form of heat and sound in some cases. This further increases the disorder in the universe and also implies that thermodynamic and psychological arrows are one and the same. 

The universe would have started with sudden and explosive expansion which we call Big Bang and the fragments of cosmos are scattered across the space thus forming galaxies and stars and beings like us, also increasing the disorder from the ordered state of one cosmic egg.  That disorder increases with expanding universe is not difficult to answer, given our understanding of thermodynamic arrow. The expanding universe also provides sufficient conditions for intelligent life to exist. A contracting universe is like being in a black hole where before you try to remember your past or future, you will turn in to spaghetti. 

Stephen Hawking was born in Oxford on 8^th January 1942, 300 years after the death of Galileo and is today considered to be the greatest scientific thinker since Newton and Einstein. He studied physics at Oxford University and pursued graduate and doctoral studies at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He did not do very well in his early education at Oxford and at a point of time had to undergo an oral examination. His physics tutor Robert Berman remarked about the examination “And of course the examiners then were intelligent enough to realize they were talking to someone far more clever than most of themselves”. 

Stephen Hawking was unlucky to get ALS or Motor Neuron Disease. He is now almost completely paralyzed and communicates through a speech generating device. He frequently posed questions to himself, what do we know about the universe and how do we know it? Where did it come from and where is it going? Did it have a beginning and what happened before then? What is the nature of time, will it ever come to an end? These questions bewildered him and he wanted to make sense of what he saw around him. He is currently working towards creating a Grand Unified Theory that explains everything. He believes that if he is able to find it, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason and then, we would know the mind of God.

A Victorious Submission

"If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined”, said Pyrrhus in 280 BC after their war against the Romans. A victory that brings enormous losses of life and limb and property and leaves little to cheer about is called Pyrrhic victory.  One such victory happened long time ago, when one of India’s greatest Kings, Ashoka, waged a war against the kalinga. This victory was to create a new ideal for Kings to live up to and today, more than two thousand years later, there are only handfuls in the world history who can claim to be treated at par. 

Victory makes us rejoice and defeat, pensive. With King Ashoka, it was just the opposite. As he went through the battle ground and the cities, he saw only corpses and burnt houses and uttered the famous monologue:

What have I done? If this is a victory, what's a defeat then? Is this a victory or a defeat? Is this justice or injustice? Is it gallantry or a rout? Is it valor to kill innocent children and women? Do I do it to widen the empire and for prosperity or to destroy the other's kingdom and splendor? One has lost her husband, someone else a father, someone a child, someone an unborn infant.... What's this debris of the corpses? Are these marks of victory or defeat? Are these vultures, crows, eagles the messengers of death or evil?

And something changed in him, and with him changed the course of India. He abandoned warfare in the full tide of victory. He embraced the tenets of Buddhism and devoted himself to the spread of Buddha’s teachings. His messengers went far off places like Syria, Egypt, Macedonia, Cyrene, Epirus and also to Burma, Siam and Ceylon. Everywhere an appeal was made to mind and the heart and yet it was only an appeal and there was no compulsion. He showed respect and consideration for all other faiths and proclaimed in an edict ‘All sects deserve reverence for one reason or another. By thus acting a man exalts his own sect and at the same time does service to the sects of other people’. We hear a similar voice again almost one thousand years later in India, the voice of Akbar. Indeed it was the voice of India. 

Ashoka the Great was born in 304 BC to King Bindusara in Pataliputra, now Patna. He was grandson of Chandragupta Maurya. He became King in 274 BC and his reign lasted till 232 BC. His empire stretched from Afghanistan to Assam, Myanmar and Bangladesh, from Central Asia to Tamil Nadu. This has been the largest spread of Indian empire ever. Neither the Mughal Empire nor the British Empire was as big in administrative influence. And nothing of it changed, when he took to the path of love and renounced war. Ashoka died in 232 BC after ruling strenuously for forty one years. Of him H G Wells says in his Outline of History:

Amidst the tens of thousands of names of monarchs that crowd the columns of history, their majesties and graciousness and serenities and royal highness and the like, the name of Ashoka shines, and shines almost alone, a star. From the Volga to Japan his name is still honored. China, Tibet and even India, though it has left his doctrine, preserve the tradition of his greatness. More living men cherish his memory today than have ever heard the names of Constantine or Charlemagne.