The constitution of the Universe may be put in first place
among all natural things that can be known
That, of course, is the problem of the physicist, to see if he can figure out the constitution of the
Universe. And with the help of the Vedantins, and their old
I think we can. If we can throw in their old notion that the first cause of our physics, namely, seeing in time and space
that which is not in time and
space, is apparitional, Vivarta,
and that the subsequent causation of our physics is transformational, Parinama; and if we can throw in their old notion that
must be an existence underlying what we see in time and space,
which must be changeless, must be infinite, must be undivided, and must show through, we can
sum it up fairly briefly.
Hydrogen is made out of energy. The Universe is made out of hydrogen. And hydrogen is the changeless,
the infinite, the undivided showing through in
time and space.
The changeless shows through as inertia. The infinite and the undivided show through as the electrical and gravitational energies
position in space). The hydrogen is primordial. It arises
by apparitional causation (Vivarta). Everything else arises from the hydrogen by transformational causation
(Parinama). And the details are in the paper on "Synthesis of the Elements in
Stars" by Burbidge, Burbidge, Fowler and Hoyle.
But a problem still remains: Why does the apparition take the form of hydrogen and
not something else?
Keeping in mind the position of those old Indian physicists, we may ask: If the undivided were to be seen as two,
what would prevent the undividedness
from showing through and bringing
the two together? And if the undivided were to be seen as many, what would prevent the undividedness from showing
through and bringing the many together? Those old physicists might then have replied
that if the undivided were to be seen as a duality within a plurality (such
as we see in hydrogen), then the plurality could prevent the demise of the duality, and the duality could prevent
the demise of the plurality. But isn't that exactly
what we do see in
hydrogen we see an electrical duality (the electron and the proton in the hydrogen atom) against a gravitational plurality
(the hydrogen atoms dispersed in
space). And they keep each other
from collapsing. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle does not prevent the demise of the electrical duality of
the electron and
the positron because they are not gravitationally dissimilar.
But it does prevent the demise of the electrical duality of the electron and the proton, in spite of the
enormous electrical attraction between them, because they are gravitationally dissimilar.
The rest energy of the proton is related to its separation, in the
field, from all the rest of the matter in the observable Universe. And, through Pauli's exclusion principle, the spin-duality
prevents the collapse of the
neutron stars. It prevents the collapse
of the plurality.
John L. Dobson, February, 2002 4135 Judah St. San Francisco, CA, 94122