“Your mother is a Gold medallist with a Ph.D in Biochemistry and you can’t even get a pass grade in 9th class chemistry!!” – the words of the teacher haunted the young girl’s mind. She vowed to herself never to study Science. Oh Oh! Science looked on bewildered. How to change the girl’s mind?
Science: Father! That child is intelligent. There is no reason for her to forsake me! And yet the insensitive words of her teacher are pushing her away from me. How can I help?
God: What makes you say she is intelligent? Getting a pass grade is not all that difficult and yet she didn’t achieve it!
Science: O Lord! She still hasn’t got into the groove of Chemistry. That is all.
God: What do you mean?
Science: Let me take a simple example. It was beautifully portrayed in a movie called Black. A teacher tries his level best to make his blind and deaf protégé understand the concept of language. The child however, doesn’t even realise that it is possible to identify and name the objects and people in her life. Everything that the master does hardly has any impact on the child for she doesn’t understand him. As a last resort, when he is being forced to leave, the teacher puts her forcibly under the water fountain and suddenly the child understands ‘water’! It dawns on her that everything that she experiences has a language to communicate in, that she belongs to a species where she can interact, that the world is not arbitrary but is certainly governed by logic and reason. That one insight of understanding ‘water’; experientially relating that cold lively beautiful liquid drenching her and at times quenching her thirst, as a definable object awakens her into a new dimension. Without that moment of self realisation that kid could never have become a part of the cognitive world.
God: You are trying to say the girl needs to experience Chemistry before she can understand it!
Science: Yes! Without becoming familiar with the basics how can anyone appreciate the nuances? A singer first needs to learn to appreciate music even before attempting to sing. Similarly before learning scientific discoveries, the student needs to tune in to the significance of it. Let me tell you another example. The Fibonacci series is famous among humans and not just Mathematicians. Do you know why?
God: (Smiling) I am about to find out…
Science: (Returning the Lord’s smile) Lord! The Fibonacci sequence, named after Leonardo of Pisa, is a sequence found in ancient Indian mathematics and is ascribed to Panini. The first two Fibonacci numbers are 0 and 1, and each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two. So the sequence goes thus – 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21…But the beauty of this sequence is not merely in the numbers but in humanity identifying its presence in nature.
God: The Golden ratio…
Science: Yes! And the divine proportion. The distribution of seeds in sunflower is spiral in both clockwise and counter clockwise directions from the centre of the flower. The number of clockwise and counter clockwise spirals are two consecutive numbers in the Fibonacci sequence…
God: The shells of the snails, Pine cones, leaves of poplar, cherry, apple, plum, oak and linden trees – all follow the Fibonacci sequence… Yes! I know!
Science: Also the human body, Father! In the human body, the ratio of the length of forearm to the length of the hand; the length and width of face; the distance between the lips and where the eyebrows meet to the length of nose; the length of mouth to the width of nose; the distance between the shoulder line and the top of the head to the head length; the distance between the navel and knee to the distance between the knee and the end of the foot; the distance between the finger tip and the elbow to the distance between the wrist and the elbow – all of these are according to the divine proportion.
God: Ok. So?
Science: I mean to say, only when they could identify the sequence, could they find its examples in nature. Without understanding the underlying principles, all the examples given above will only look like random readings. Because the Golden ratio is understood, these entities become an example for it.
God: Yes! It’s like understanding the rhythm pattern in the music before being able to dance to it. If the pattern is not discernible, the dancer is surely incapable of performing.
Science: Exactly! Similarly, when the basic concept of Chemistry, of what it actually deals with, is not understood, how can that child hope to understand the periodic table?
God: In fact, the periodic table is a good example of understanding the importance of tuning in to the basic rhythm. Initially all the Chemists placed the discovered elements in orders they perceived. It was Dmitri Mendeleev who chanced upon the right rhythm. Mendeleev’s periodic table came from two decisions he made: The first was to leave gaps in the table when it seemed that the corresponding element had not yet been discovered. By using the trends of existing elements in his periodic table, he predicted the properties of missing elements, which has been proved right today. Secondly, he occasionally ignored the order suggested by the atomic weights and switched adjacent elements to better classify them into chemical families.
Science: Exactly! Perhaps it was not acceptable at that time, but with the development of theories of atomic structure, it became apparent that Mendeleev had inadvertently listed the elements in order of increasing atomic number. He had indeed hit upon the right rhythm…
God: Does humanity actually realize that everything in life is about the right rhythm?
Science: Everything my Lord?
God: Yes! Actually everything… What is it that man sees? Light – which is nothing but a specific frequency, a rhythm. What does man hear? Yet another frequency, a rhythm. In fact his perception of life itself is within one particular bandwidth of perception. Now see, he understood the Fibonacci series and so was able to find so many examples in nature of where all this proportion appears. He still hasn’t understood the frequency that will help him see the similarity between a Hindu and a Muslim, an Indian and a Pakistani, a Tamil speaker and a Hindi one… Man all the time is operating just within his bandwidth of perception.
Science remained silent.
God: You don’t look convinced yet?
Science: Actually Lord, I was just wondering… if visible light is only a small fraction of the entire spectrum of electromagnetic radiation, and sound once again being 20Hz to 20000 Hz for humans, actually everything that mankind perceives is through a very small keyhole.
God: Yes indeed. Like an FM radio receiver is capable of receiving only the frequency modulations for which it is tuned, so too man perceives only that which he is tuned to. The radio station at 72.3 FM is broadcasting a cookery show; while perhaps there is a sports commentary on another channel, with a news bulletin in yet another. The same receiver can tune in to receive any of these frequencies, alternating the entertainment periodically. If you are not receiving the signal, it is not because the radio frequencies are not there, but because you have not tuned in to that station.
Science: I get it! Every scientific breakthrough was because someone thought outside the box. Refusing to limit his thinking to the predefined, he was willing to think new… expand his bandwidth of perception.
God: Exactly! An FM radio box cannot receive a televised statement from the President. Just because you are not able to see the interview, you cannot deny that those frequencies are right this moment very much in the air around you. Just tune in with a television receiver you can see and hear.
Science: Yes Father! That is exactly what I am going to tell that child too. By the sheer repetitiveness of man’s life, he always thinks in the same pattern. Break away, expand your bandwidth, think outside the box. When you tune into that station you can easily receive. Then, why just chemistry, everything will be discerning to you!
Written by Gita Krishna Raj | Published in infinithoughts in July 2010
When Science met God… | Segment Seven: Formula to Life | Chapter Five: 72.3 FM
