The Philosophy of Science

If you’ve ever felt that the reason for your existence is much more than just the chemistry and biology governing natural organisms, you have at some point pondered about the purpose of life (most probably in the shower). And this must have got you a little excited and in that tiny moment, epiphany strikes and you have got yourself the ultimate life goal. It fills one with energy and one starts to question everything one does. Everything, every activity, has to push one towards that goal. One can already see oneself as the leader of the masses (or a cult), changing the world and making it a better place. But that excitement and energy vanishes with the moment (or lasts for as long as one is in the shower). But history can’t stop boasting of stories in which this excitement and enthusiasm lasted for much longer periods of time, long enough to change the world.

Not all eureka moments have to do something with great discoveries and award winning inventions. The greatest invention on Earth is life and the greatest discovery for any living organism would be to find its purpose. To quote Buddha, ‘The trouble is, you think you have time’ when the fact is that time is passing by every second. A second doesn’t seem like a lot of time when we think that we have hours, days, months and years to live. But it becomes dangerously significant if we think about what can happen in a second. A sperm cell may take a day or so to find the egg, but it takes about a second to fertilise it, thus creating life. When the baby comes out of the womb, it takes a second to cut the umbilical cord, detaching the baby from the mother and welcoming a new creature in this world. The baby can spend years trying to learn to talk, but it is in that one second that the first word is uttered and one of the most powerful tools, speech, takes birth. Same goes with walking and other chores in life. It’s in a second that rings are exchanged and two people become a couple and it’s also in a second that life finally leaves the body. People (including me) waste a lot of time. The amount of time people spend on doing something they love are like moments compared to amount of time spent on doing something they’re not passionate about, or worse, even hate. A passionate musician might have to work as an accountant to support himself but should it be considered a waste of time if he/she spends a minute dreaming about him/her playing an instrument that is moving and touching people around him/her? I’d say working as an accountant is actually a waste of time. Because that way, the musician will never be inspired to use all his/her energy to spend life doing what he/she truly loves.

It is sad to see people thinking that life is about birth, education, job/business, supporting family, dying. Every human being has the responsibility to live a passionate life. And science has sort of started to believe it too. According to quantum mechanics, the state of an electron (particle or wave) depends on the act of measurement or observation. During the double split experiment (please google it, details of this are beyond the scope of this article), the dual nature of electrons was discovered. But what was also discovered was that the electron happened to change its nature depending on whether it was being observed or not. Another surprising discovery was that, whenever and wherever the scientists tried to find the electron, it appeared there and when they didn’t try to find it, it was nowhere. It was as if, the electron existed everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. This means life presents itself the way we want to see it, as a wave or as a particle. Life is everything we believe it to be and is nothing else whatsoever including all the joys and pains. Now, if you apply this principle to your life, you will always find what you really look for and when you’re not looking, there’s nothing to be found. So if you feel that there’s no way that you could follow your passions, look again at yourself. Why can’t you live passionately? Look for that metaphorical electron called will in yourself and you will find why you can and you should.

Now, following one’s dreams seems like a big risk due to fear of failure. What if I don’t make it is the one question that has destroyed more lives than wars. But there’s science here too. According to another concept called entanglement in quantum mechanics, there’s a pair of electrons which are entangled to each other. If separated, even by the distance equal to the width of the universe, the entanglement is strong as ever. This was found to be true in an experiment in which the electrons were separated by a distance of 143 kilometres and were subjected to different physical instances like rotation, movement, stress, etc. The effects on one electron had an effect on the other as well. No matter the distance, the result was the same. One of the reasons behind this could be that before the Big Bang happened, everything in the universe was condensed at one single point. Everything was actually one. The explosion caused the condensed mass to disintegrate and spread away. It’s like a single cake was cut into different pieces. But that doesn’t mean that the pieces are different types of cakes. They are all one. Similarly, everything in the universe is connected, entangled. Every little action we take has an effect. So be afraid, but not of failure. Every action taken towards one’s dream, towards living a life full of passion, will have an effect. Doesn’t matter whether you see the results immediately or not, but the only result that matters is the satisfaction you will receive and the peace that you will experience. You will live a life that you love and love is all that the world needs.