During my youth, when I remained curious about what human life is all about, the scientists offered us a stable and durable universe. It was good to know that. Life for an immigrant family in a British colony was somewhat hazardous. Psychological stability can be a relatively scarce commodity.
Then, however, came the Big Bang Theory – effectively something from nothing! There went all that stability and durability. This was followed by the possibility of a Big Crunch, as well as mini-Bangs and mini-Crunches. To me, this is a ghost-like version of the Hindu cosmology, except that we now have complex maths backing up some scientific observations and deep speculations, whereas the more complex Hindu version cannot be tested. It talks about cycles of 8.64 billion years, and even a bigger cycle of 3.11 trillion years. I am left in wonderment.
One can surely ask how some ancient peoples came up with such complex thoughts, as well as measures of the cosmic world which have reportedly varied little from recent scientific observations. See chapter 10 in ‘Musings at Death’s Door’ (On the Cosmos).
Modern science is, to me, so full of speculative and tentative conclusions. How useful is it in telling us about all that which encompasses us? Surely we have a long way to go, in the reported light that only about 4% of all matter in the Heavens is visible. Dark matter and dark energy are postulated as representing the rest. If matter is convertible to energy and vice versa, what is this 96% doing?
Then there is the Hubble Telescope. There is much reliance on what it shows us. But, what if what it shows is equivalent to the size of my thumb nail against the totality of all the surfaces on Earth? (Yeah, yeah, I do realise that infinity cannot be so circumscribed.)
So, can we really claim a place, or a role, in the universe we cannot even describe?
RAJA ARASA RATNAM 