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Hare Krsna to all devotees, PAMHO, AGTSP.

After the publication of paper ‘Life and consciousness – The Vedāntic view’ in a hardcore Biology JournalCommunicative & Integrative Biology (Volume 8, Issue 5 – Publisher: Taylor and Francis) it has stimulated a lot of interesting discussions among prominent scientists worldwide. This important service by Srila Prabhupada’s Scientific Sankirtan party must be very pleasing to Srila Prabhupada. I am receiving regularly these interesting ongoing ‘Science Religion’ dialogue and I want to share a few of them with you all for the pleasure of Srila Prabhupada.

Professor Stephen Mann:

Colleagues

The history of science exemplifies how many apparently unexplainable phenomenon become explicable with the progression of new materialistic knowledge. Just because science cannot currently explain many aspects of life and consciousness, it does not necessarily follow that scientific theory should be abandoned in favour of a non-materialistic theory. The latter may bring a sense of solace, but is inherently devoid of predictability, cannot be tested, cannot be proven wrong, cannot be challenged. It tends to close the human mind to new knowledge because it proposes to give a Final (Absolute) Answer.

It may be argued that studies on the origin of life are non-scientific because of the apparent impossibility of verification of any of the proposed models. (If we discover life outside the Earth, then this impasse could radically change). But not-knowing is a condition that most scientists find themselves in every day. It is a core part of the enterprise, and it needs courage to accept this fact, and to then proceed with ingenuity. Living with this “negative capability” (as Keats called it), seems to me to greatly honour the human condition, whilst satisfying the irritation of not-knowing through the invocation of non-materialistc grand narratives ultimately leads to a diminution in our creative potential.

Best wishes

Prof S. Mann

******************************
Professor Stephen Mann FRS,
Centre for Protolife Research
Centre for Organized Matter Chemistry
School of Chemistry
University of Bristol
Bristol BS8 1TS, UK

Bhakti Niskama Shanta, Ph.D.:

Dear Friends

I sincerely thank you all for your interesting views on my paper ‘Life and consciousness – The Vedāntic view’: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/ 19420889.2015.1085138

Prof. S. Mann wrote “Just because science cannot currently explain many aspects of life and consciousness, it does not necessarily follow that scientific theory should be abandoned in favour of a non-materialistic theory.”

Scientific method itself is not applicable only to the metaphysics of materialism. It must be kept in mind that science is not meant to favour materialism or non-materialism. The goal of real science is to follow the evidence wherever it may lead. Even though the proponents of a natural origin of life expressed much optimism for providing their theories, presently there is a detailed compilation of information seriously questioning this doctrine. This reductionistic ideology has always failed to answer two simple questions: (1) What is the minimum number of parts that are essential for a living organism to survive? (2) By what mechanism do these parts get assembled together?

In western tradition there are historical conflicts between science and religion. That is the reason behind the irrational unsympathetic atmosphere being witnessed by the sincere scientists who made the attempt to support a non-material view of reality. A clear evidence of this can be sensed from the history of non-welcoming attitude towards the experimental discovery on concept of transposition by Barbara McClintock. McClintock said “They thought I was crazy, absolutely mad”. She was very much discouraged by such irrational negative reaction and as a result she in due course stopped publishing any work on that subject. Later the mounting evidence forced scientists to recognize the sincere works of McClintock and in 1983 she became the first woman to be the sole winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Therefore, we must think carefully, whether it is appropriate to have such a harsh attitude towards the scientists who are forced by the evidence to support a non-materialistic view.

Despite several convincing evidence, a dominant materialistic outlook of reality in science denies the living organism of its veracity as an immortal soul. Peter Carruthers (Carruthers, P. (1989). Brute experience. The Journal of Philosophy, 86(5), 258–269) stated that nonhuman animals (even dogs) do not have consciousness and we are morally obligated to wipe out our kind feelings toward those creatures. On the other hand, what to talk about animals, McClintock had sympathetic feelings towards even insignificant simple living entities like grass. She stated “Every time I walk on grass, I feel sorry because I know the grass is screaming at me.” (Quoted in Evelyn Fox Keller, A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock (1984), 200) Despite experiencing several oppositions in scientific community, the works of sincere plant biologists (Frantisek Baluska, Anthony Trewavas, Stefano Mancuso and many others) also establish the plant cognition. Eshel Ben-Jacob’s works thoroughly establish the bacterial cognition and despite experiencing several unusual criticisms, James A. Shapiro also did a significant work towards establishing the Cell Cognition. All these developments are certainly leading towards a restructuring of the conceptual science of ‘animated systems’ – a non-materialistic spiritual biology.

Prof. S. Mann further wrote “It may be argued that studies on the origin of life are non-scientific because of the apparent impossibility of verification of any of the proposed models… But not-knowing is a condition that most scientists find themselves in every day. It is a core part of the enterprise, and it needs courage to accept this fact, and to then proceed with ingenuity. Living with this “negative capability” (as Keats called it), seems to me to greatly honour the human condition, whilst satisfying the irritation of not-knowing through the invocation of non-materialistc grand narratives ultimately leads to a diminution in our creative potential.”

It is empirically observable that ‘Every day Sun rises in the East’ and hence it is logical to conclude that the ‘First Sun rise was in the East’. There is no problem, if someone wants to dedicate his whole life to do a rigorous scientific research to prove the opposite ‘First Sun rise was in the West’. The problem arises when keeping such illogical views in mind someone wants to attack those who have the conviction on the obvious ‘First Sun rise was in the East’. In the paper ‘Life and consciousness – The Vedāntic view’ it is clearly stated:

“This Vedāntic explanation that unitary Supreme Cognizant Being is the source of everything is founded on 2 scientifically verifiable axiomatic facts: (1) Life comes from Life, and (2) Matter comes from Life. Consciousness arises from consciousness, or life comes from life. Where there is life there is consciousness. Consciousness does not originate from that which is unconscious or impersonal, and life is not a product of insentient matter. The conception that life comes from life (biogenesis) is the only scientific idea that has ever been verified by experiment and observation. The second axiomatic fact ‘Matter comes from Life’ is apparently observable in nature. Every species produces their own chemicals necessary within their bodies. ‘Life comes from Life’, and ‘Matter comes from Life’ are 2 scientifically observable deductions from Vedānta. On the other hand, materialism (life originates from matter) is an unverified ideological presupposition that has no scientific or observation-based evidence to support it.”

Using reason and experience, any scientist can easily verify the above. In eastern tradition and especially in Vedāntic philosophy there are no conflicts between science and religion. Any scientist can learn Vedāntic wisdom and verify it in their scientific research in order to establish the Vedānta and Bhagavatam as the authentic knowledge by which humanity can make real progress in understanding the true nature of material nature and the spiritual self.

Sincerely,

B.N. Shanta

Terence P. Kee, Ph.D.:

Fascinating as I find this series of discussions, I do feel that there is more concord than discord in the views expressed. In my eyes, science is fundamentally about proposing and examining testable hypotheses, with concepts of rightness and wrongness being less a scientific issue than a humanist layer superimposed upon the interpretations of those hypotheses. I find it difficult to see the religion in McClintock’s transposition for example. Transposition or transposons as McClintock discovered are clearly materialistic elements of biology. Moreover, science is a distinctly humanist endeavour; humans are I believe the only form of life we know that practise science. Therefore, human characteristics including lack of acknowledgment, sympathy etc…are as deeply embedded in science as they are in other humanist activities. Those characteristics do not define science, but ourselves.

The following statement is an interesting one indeed: This reductionistic ideology has always failed to answer two simple questions: (1) What is the minimum number of parts that are essential for a living organism to survive? (2) By what mechanism do these parts get assembled together?

Whilst the questions themselves may be simple, why should not the answers be complex? The fact that science has not yet been able to answer these questions in no way means that it never will. It may indicate that we do not yet know enough about the cooperatively of the components of living entities; the blueprint if you like, of how things fit together to form a functioning whole. Why should not this blueprint be materialistic. Where is the evidence that the blueprint for life cannot be materialistic?

Concerning the statement: (1) Life comes from Life, and (2) Matter comes from Life; as a scientist, I have no problem with these statements. Again, with the statement: Where there is life there is consciousness, I have no fundamental issue with this as I interpret consciousness with response to environment. “I am conscious of my hand getting hot, so I take it off the radiator”. At its basic level, I equate consciousness with response to stimulus. If also, sentience is considered an ability to feel (respond to environment), then even the simplest(on a molecular complexity level)  bacterium has consciousness by the response-to-stimulus criterion.  There is no scientific discord.

However, when one considers the final statement: On the other hand, materialism (life originates from matter) is an unverified ideological presupposition that has no scientific or observation-based evidence to support it.”, there is a clear problem of logic in my eyes. Just because the statement is true at this time, does not mean the inference (that life cannot come from inanimate matter) is also true. It is one of myriad such statements, such as:  “On the other hand, panspermia (life on earth originated from elsewhere in the universe) is an unverified ideological presupposition that has no scientific or observation-based evidence to support it.” which is true NOW, but such evidence of support may be provided in the future. Such statements do not argue against scientific enquiry, but serve as stimuli for such enquiry.

Best,

T. P. Kee

Dr Terence P. Kee

President, Astrobiology Society of Britain

School of Chemistry,

University of Leeds

Woodhouse Lane

Leeds LS2 9JT

Professor Gary L. Francione:

Dear All:

I have never understood how consciousness can evolve from non-conscious matter. I still do not.

I do not understand how anyone can say that a robot or any machine can be conscious and understand consciousness in the way that I do.

I do not understand how humans, who claim to recognize that animals matter morally and who claim to reject violence, can continue to kill 60 billion land animals and an estimated trillion sea animals every year where the only justification for such violence is palate pleasure.

But I am a law professor and not a scientist. There is a great deal I don’t understand.

Gary Francione

Gary L. Francione

Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of Law

& Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Scholar of Law and Philosophy

Rutgers University School of Law

123 Washington Street

Newark, New Jersey  07102

Prof. Stanley Klein:

Terence, That was wonderfully said.

I suspect most of us expect that in another 20 years there will be intelligent robots doing a good job of driving our cars. The BIG mystery is whether humans will ever get robots to have subjective feelings (qualia). But neuroscience doesn’t yet have the tools to figure out the simpler question of what are the neural correlates of our qualia. That is a topic that should be able to be studied by human science, but it could take another 100 years before adequate technology is available for those experiments. There are just too many neurons all interconnected to make sense of all the dynamics.

Stan

Bhakti Niskama Shanta, Ph.D.:

Dear Dr Terence P. Kee

Thank you for your nice reply. Instead of adjudicating different aprioristic claims, the development of an authentic theory of biology needs an unbiased approach towards both materialism and non-materialism. Truth cannot be established by presumption or consensus; we have to follow the evidence wherever it may lead.

You wrote “I find it difficult to see the religion in McClintock’s transposition for example.”

In an artifact like a computer, coded or prearranged information controls the processes leading it toward a goal desired by the designer. To provide a strict deterministic explanation to the teleological processes in living organisms, biologists have also followed the mindset of physicalists and invoked the concept of code. This borrowing of the anthropomorphic term code from informatics is the reason behind the metaphorical postulation that the organism is an information processing machine. Crick’s Cartesian dualistic view of molecular information transfer (Central Dogma of Molecular Biology) presumed that nucleic acids contained the coded information, and proteins executed the encoded instructions. Darwinists insist that all genetic alteration happens accidentally and randomly. They believed that the organism has no control over the alteration process, and that the genome mechanically decides organism characteristics. This claim of Darwinists about randomness and accident became dogmatic with the intent to reject all possible revival of the role of God as the causative factor for the diversity of living organisms. McClintock’s work challenged this dogma and she was the first person to report genome repair by living cells. It is also mentioned in the paper ‘Life and consciousness – The Vedāntic view’:

 “In biology, the predominant ontological view of the organism is that of a complex machine programmed by its genetic software and decomposable into its component mechanisms. However, through her work on transposons, Nobel laureate Barbara McClintock has established that genes are not the foundational concept of life.58”

You also wrote “science is a distinctly humanist endeavour; humans are I believe the only form of life we know that practise science. Therefore, human characteristics including lack of acknowledgment, sympathy etc…are as deeply embedded in science as they are in other humanist activities. Those characteristics do not define science, but ourselves.”

It is mentioned in the paper ‘Life and consciousness – The Vedāntic view’:

“Our attitude is shaped by the way our education has conditioned us to think about the world. To teach that Man is simply an enclosed membrane of chemicals affects how people think about themselves as spiritual beings, and thus it influences the way they think about such concerns as abortion, euthanasia, bioethics in research and medicine, cloning, genetic modification of food, animal rights, and so on.”

You further wrote “Whilst the questions themselves may be simple, why should not the answers be complex? The fact that science has not yet been able to answer these questions in no way means that it never will. It may indicate that we do not yet know enough about the cooperatively of the components of living entities; the blueprint if you like, of how things fit together to form a functioning whole. Why should not this blueprint be materialistic. Where is the evidence that the blueprint for life cannot be materialistic?”

Again it is mentioned in the paper ‘Life and consciousness – The Vedāntic view’:

“Empirical evidence shows that every living cell comes from a living cell and there is no single evidence that shows a case where a living cell appears from the external assembly/accumulation of biomolecules.”

Furthermore, the introduction of the paper states:

“Traditionally, in both eastern and western philosophy, life is understood as a cognitive or sentient principle. Sentience cannot be manufactured artificially by any noble mechanical and chemical arrangement of dead atoms and molecules. In the ancient eastern philosophy based on the Vedāntic or Bhagavat paradigm, for example, the invocation of Śrī Īśopanisad provides the concept of ‘Organic Wholism’:5 “oḿ pūrnam adah pūrnam idaḿ pūrnāt pūrnam udacyate pūrnasya pūrnam ādāya pūrnam evāvaśisyate – The ‘Organic Whole’ produces ‘organic wholes’. An ‘organic whole’ cannot arise from parts that have to be assembled. That process can only produce inorganic, mechanical or chemical processes, not living organisms.” A similar conclusion was made by Rudolph Virchow in 1858, “omnis cellula e cellula” (“every cell comes from a cell”).6”

Your wrote “Just because the statement is true at this time, does not mean the inference (that life cannot come from inanimate matter) is also true.”

In science we do not accept “future” as an evidence for our claims. If you think future is the evidence then in that framework anything can be claimed. I am sure no scientist will accept the postdated cheque: in future liquid will flow from downwards to upwards, following the law of gravity; heat will flow from a body of lower temperature to a body of higher temperature, following the law of thermodynamics. Hence following a scientific framework we have only one option to accept: “materialism (life originates from matter) is an unverified ideological presupposition that has no scientific or observation-based evidence to support it.”

Simply changing the location of ‘origin of life’ will not solve the problem of materialism. Panspermia (life on earth originated from elsewhere in the universe) still needs to answer those two simple questions: (1) What is the minimum number of parts that are essential for a living organism to survive? (2) By what mechanism do these parts get assembled together?

Sincerely,

Bhakti Niskama Shanta, Ph.D.:

Dear Dr Stanley A. Klein

Thank you for your honest acknowledgements. The continued usage of physicalist science to comprehend biological systems is the biggest hurdle in the path of understanding life. Biology as the study of life, seems to involve much more complex subjects like mind, sentience, consciousness, and subjective experiences like love, affection, anger, happiness, motherhood and so on. Therefore, the laws that deal with matter can never address the basics of biology, which are based on concepts. Some sophisticated robots can drive our cars, but it is highly questionable to think that they will acquire subjective feelings (qualia) at anytime in future. It is not that difficult to realize the uniqueness of certain basic principles of biology that differentiate biological systems from the inanimate world. Material science cannot explain how an artifact/machine can regenerate its lost parts or how it can replicate itself. However, many living organisms effortlessly perform such tasks. The fusion of two gametes (two individual living entities) produces a zygote (a new individual living entity), and symbiogenesis explains that different living entities and their environments are related to each other as an organic whole. Apart from their complexity, even simple biological systems (say, bacteria) have splendid capabilities like sentience, cognition, reproduction, metabolism, replication, regulation, adaptability, growth, hierarchical organization and so on. We do not observe such features in the inanimate world. Can materialistic science ever succeed in making machines imitate many such basic features of life?

There is nothing in the conceptual repertory of Cartesian science that would allow scientists to distinguish between the external goal-directed processes of the inanimate world and the internal goal-directed processes in living organisms. Most biologists are also reductionists and naturally presume that they can explain a biological system in principle as soon as the system is reduced to its smallest components. However, leaving aside biological systems, reductionism is even unable to explain the nature and teleological function of artifacts. For example, to understand the nature and function of a robot, reductionists may apply appropriate natural laws and also determine what kind of material the robot is made from, then they can study the structure of that material under the microscope, and carry on downward through chemistry to the basic molecules, atoms, and elementary particles of which the material is composed. Such an approach cannot contribute anything towards understanding the properties of a robot as a robot. A sentient subject may use the same robot for many different purposes and thus the purpose of the robot has an external teleological dependence (subject is outside the system) on the sentient subject. Different robots may be made of many different substances like composites, plastic, metals and so on, and yet, they can be used for the same function (say, driving our cars) by the sentient subject. Therefore, a mindless application of reductionism cannot comprehend the external teleological function of the robot, which is dependent on the sentient subject. Similarly, in a sentient living organism a single chemical structure of a biomolecule can execute many different functions and also one function can be produced by several different chemical structures (A. C. R. Martin, et al., ‘Protein Folds and Functions’, Structure 6 (1998), 875–884). In the paper ‘Life and consciousness – The Vedāntic view’ it is stated:

“In a living cell proteins can distinctively catalyze a chemical reaction or identify an antigen not only because their amino acids are arranged in a particular manner, but also because their 3-dimensional structure and function are controlled by sentient living cell. Cell functioning cannot be explained by reducing it to any single molecule like, DNA, RNA or Protein. The reductionistic view in biology finds its limits and biology should shift its lens from the parts to the whole.”

Without the existence of sentience, as in the case of a dead cell, the same proteins may be present, but they cannot do all those functions that are observed in a sentient cell. The complex functions of the body of a living organism have an internal teleological (subject is inside the system) dependence on the sentient living entity within the body. Being more complex than external teleology, it is impossible for reductionism to grasp the internal teleological functions of a sentient living organism.

Sincerely,

B. N. Shanta

Prof. Pramod Kumar Yadava:

Esteemed learned colleagues:

Please do not insist that laws of Science can never deal with life. It is true that manifestations of life may be an outcome of a large number of unitary functions and one may not account for each one of such manifestations in terms of unitary events or reactions. That is where the new phase in biological research is trying to take a systems view of biological processes and one is learning a lot of new things. There should be no pretension either by the scientists or by the spiritualist of having learned every  thing that could probably be learned. In fact there should be no divide between science and spiritualism. Those harnessing privileges of traditional systems are often seen ridiculing science while offering no tangible alternative. 

 असतो माँ सद्गमय , तमसो माँ ज्योतिर्गमय, मित्वो माम् अमृतम्गमय। ॐ शांति, शांति, शांतिः। 

— 

Pramod Yadava, Professor & Former Dean, School of Life Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi 110067, INDIA

—

Bhakti Niskama Shanta, Ph.D.:

Dear Prof. Pramod Yadava

In the embryological development “time” and “space” are so crucial – as if the chemicals within a fertilized egg know when and where different organs should be developed for a particular species. The chemical processes outside the living organism do not care for “time” and “space”. Scientists can explain the physics of motion of inanimate objects by laws of physics. However, a living organism has a ‘conscious self’, which is endowed with ‘free will’ or ‘self-determination’. It is very easy to understand the distinction between living (animate) objects and non-living (inanimate) objects through a simple observation of their movements. The trajectory of motion of an inanimate object like a satellite can be predicted in terms of laws of mechanics. However, the motion of an animate object like a bird cannot be understood with the same principle. This is because, an animate object is self guided. Newton’s first law of motion is applicable to a marble (inanimate object), but it cannot be applied to a tortoise (animate object). The motion of inanimate objects is determined by an external force. We need an external force to move a marble at rest. On the other hand, animate objects display a self driven spontaneous movement, which is non-deterministic for natural laws. A tortoise at rest can decide when it wants to move and no law in physics can determine that decision.

When someone says “inanimate objects fall from upwards to downwards, following the law of gravity”, would you call it an insistence? This is a conclusion based on scientific evidence. Similarly the statement “the laws that deal with matter can never address the basics of biology” is also an observational fact and not insistence. From a scientific point of view , any claim without actual evidence (like, natural laws can explain living reality) should be seen as insistence.

Regarding the “systems biology” you can read an interesting paper “Fundamental issues in systems biology” (O’Malley, M. A. and Dupré J. (2005) Fundamental issues in systems biology, Bioessays, 27(12):1270-1276), where the abstract states:

“In the context of scientists’ reflections on genomics, we examine some fundamental issues in the emerging postgenomic discipline of systems biology. Systems biology is best understood as consisting of two streams. One, which we shall call ‘pragmatic systems biology’, emphasises large-scale molecular interactions; the other, which we shall refer to as ‘systems-theoretic biology’, emphasises system principles. Both are committed to mathematical modelling, and both lack a clear account of what biological systems are. We discuss the underlying issues in identifying systems and how causality operates at different levels of organisation. We suggest that resolving such basic problems is a key task for successful systems biology, and that philosophers could contribute to its realisation. We conclude with an argument for more sociologically informed collaboration between scientists and philosophers.”

Following the spirit of the paper, to understand the ontological distinction between mechanical, chemical and biological systems we need a healthy exchange of views between scientists and philosophers. However, as I have mentioned in my earlier reply, the biggest obstacle to this healthy exchange is the aggressive mindset in the academic/scientific community to defend “presumed materialism”, which has been developed from the historical conflicts between science and religion within western tradition. With the beginning of 21st century the scenario is slowly changing and an increasing number of scientists are now openly acknowledging the truth that they have observed from their actual scientific experience. The topic (Do Life and Living Forms present a problem for materialism?) of 2015 Philosophy Essay Prize from The Royal Institute of Philosophy and Cambridge University Press is a good example towards this change. The thethirdwayofevolution also provides an excellent example, where a good number of prominent scientists and scholars started questioning neo-Darwinism and the natural selection’s credibility to explain evolution processes.

In eastern tradition and especially in Vedāntic philosophy there are no conflicts between science and religion. Therefore in a move towards a lasting harmony between science and religion Vedānta can play a significant role. If the scientists can learn the Vedāntic wisdom from an authentic source then they can verify it in their scientific research in order to establish the Vedānta and Bhagavatam as the authentic knowledge by which humanity can make real progress in understanding life, its origin and its real purpose.

Sincerely,

Terence P. Kee, Ph.D.:

I just wanted to pick up on the final statement of this previous post:

Without the existence of sentience, as in the case of a dead cell, the same proteins may be present, but they cannot do all those functions that are observed in a sentient cell. The complex functions of the body of a living organism have an internal teleological (subject is inside the system) dependence on the sentient living entity within the body. Being more complex than external teleology, it is impossible for reductionism to grasp the internal teleological functions of a sentient living organism.

I agree with previous posters that science and spiritualism can and should co-exist to fertilize discussions. Much of what we are reading here really gets me to think differently to before. However, occasionally we come up against a brick wall in discussions and here we have a great big one! Who says that it is impossible for a reductionist approach to enlighten us on the internal teleological functions of a sentient living organism. Where is the evidence of that impossibility?

Best,

T

Dr Terence P. Kee

President, Astrobiology Society of Britain

School of Chemistry,

University of Leeds

Woodhouse Lane

Leeds LS2 9JT