A talk on Joy of Science at IIAE&IT, Pune

Yesterday I had been to Indian Institute of Aeronautical Engineering & Information Technology for a talk on "Joy of Science". This talk was all about the beauty, the awe and the wonders that we feel when we come across various simple as well as complex manifestation of creation in the nature. Involving a debate on "Evolution" and "Intelligent Design", it controversially took the turn towards existence of God, and posed a big and recurring question from audience side - whether God exists or not? This question has no simple answer, and yet, form the perspective of debate on "Evolution" and Intelligent Design" an explanation is needed.

God, as we normally contemplate or talk of, is a matter of Religion. And Religion is a matter of faith. Thus, God is all about a matter of faith. Domain of Science and that of Religion are two separate domains and these must be kept separated. Moreover, Religion, and hence faith, is an individual affair. So, whether God exits or not is like questioning the faith of an individual. It is said that the definition of truth is different for different people. Likewise, meaning of God is different for different people. We must not question any body's faith. After all it is the faith that makes the individual strive for something in his or her life. The theory of "Intelligent Design" is not a scientific theory. For, it has so far failed to present a successful model. In the absence of any such model, no testing and/or verification can be done, neither any prediction can be made. Theory of "Intelligent Design" is therefore not scientifically falsifiable theory. All the creations which we seen in the universe owe its existence to Natural Selection (Evolution) and Laws of Physics. Hope this explanation puts the issues in proper perspective.


Another point that came up during the talk was whether "thoughts have mass". At this, in the lighter vain, it was remarked - if thoughts were having some mass, then we kept on loosing our brain every time we think of something! Well, mass energy equivalence relation have been well established in Physics - famously written as E= m C^2. So, One can very conveniently associate mass with energy, and energy with mass, based on above relation. And it is an issue of technological advancement whether all the mass could be successfully converted into energy or whether all the energy can always be converted into mass. So, far there is no such technology. Example of psychokinesis does exist. It evidently make it clear that there is some energy associated with our thoughts originating in the mind. And based on mass-energy-equivalence principle one can also associate some mass with this energy. At this point, it will be appropriate to emphasise that while applying Laws of Physics to biological objects, one should be cautious that these are applied to various constituent parts, and interaction of constituent parts in the whole object should also be taken into consideration. For, a ball thrown in the air goes over a parabolic trajectory, but a bird (live) will never as it will use its wings and muscles to fly off!