A necessary prelude to unveiling this challenge is the reality that humans have only 5 senses of information, with their processor, the brain, obviously of a limited potential. As said by many people of competence, there could be many matters of relevance to human existence (such as mathematics waiting in cloudland to be discovered, or the evidently existing ephemeral realm, including the spiritual) which are beyond our comprehension.
Scientist David Bohm has introduced the concept of ‘implicate’ and ‘explicate’ orders, where the latter order represents the reality that we perceive as having been unfolded from an un-manifested state in the former order. But he has apparently not demonstrated the necessary causal or transactional link between them.
There is also an undeniable need to explain the reality of consciousness, and possibly other realities of existential significance, such as the manifestation on Earth of a spirit from the Afterlife. Such a spirit displayed to me (and a clairvoyant) his Earth memory, knowledge of events in my life after his death, and the ability to hear me while communicating psychically with the clairvoyant.
My reality is thus three-fold: physical, mental and spiritual. I accept that the study of the spiritual realm is beyond the capacity of the scientific method, which I studied during my training as a research psychologist. This method, quite correctly, requires repeatability. This is not available in the study of psychic phenomena, memories of past lives by young children of up to age 6, my own exposure to the spirit realm through clairvoyants of great reliability, and so on.
Yet, we have to rely upon the scientific method to investigate and tell us about our physical realm. Has it done that adequately? Is the mechanistic material paradigm underpinning this method adequate to this task?
While the structures, facets, and components of the physical realm are being investigated rigorously, subject to unavoidable human error, and some probable bias, there seems to be a reliance on speculative, unverifiable, theories to offer explanations. Such theories in science seem to evolve, or are modified, as more understanding of their limitations are discovered. Apparently, it is not possible to prove by experimentation some essential theories, or to express these on a sound mathematical basis. What then?
Could unverifiable speculative theories (tentative explanations), which are built upon one another, be relied upon to explain the more relevant realities of human existence? We need theories of creation and evolution which are more credible than the Big Bang Theory of Cosmology and Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. See Parts 2 and 3 of my post.
As well, how many theories of potential value have been rejected because they do not fit the prevailing paradigm? Of the hypotheses rationally available following a finding of a relationship or conclusion, what criteria might be applied to select one to be pursued? Since a theory has to explain, as well as to predict, would not the selection be crucial?
Moving on, why not adopt speculative, unprovable theorising in researching the non-material, the ephemeral – especially Consciousness? Or the aether, analogous to the ‘Ocean’ of Consciousness of mainstream Hinduism? Opening the minds of researchers to probabilities in matters of human existence may be of greater value than seeking proof through the scientific method or mathematics.
An understanding of reality may be available only through glimpses of what now appears ephemeral, such glimpses being of a probabilistic nature.
RAJA ARASA RATNAM 