Knowldge based on intelligence
Dr Surendra Singh Pokharna
The most attractive aspect of scientific knowledge is its mathematical basis. We generally feel that this mathematical representation of various scientific facts make our knowledge more precise and accurate. However, from the following theorems which have been put forward by the great mathematician Kurtz Gödel, we find that any mathematical representation of any physical reality limits our knowledge of that reality. Not only this but the theorem also imply that none of the languages or representation can express the reality of nature with perfection. Complete knowledge must necessarily have its foundation in an unexpressed, unmanifest field of intelligence. There are two incomplete theorems put forward by Gödel. The first theorem says that the truth of a formalism (which describes any phenomenon) cannot be proved. Thus no finite expression of mathematical knowledge can ever provide a basis for comprehensive knowledge even of the elementary properties of the counting numbers. As per second theorem, a formal language (mathematical or any other) if consistent cannot define its own truth i.e. the definition of truth for a theory must be of a higher order than the theory itself. Thus to establish the validity of any single mathematical system one must necessarily utilise a more comprehensive system, to validate the latter system one has to investigate an even more comprehensive system so on and so forth. Hence the idea of consciousness automatically comes into the picture.
Limitations of scientific methodology and peculiar assumptions
Late Prof Edwards Goldsmith, a British ecologist was the strongest critique of the methods of modern science to study biological systems, human systems, environment and the way several assumptions are made and results are interpreted. According to him the concept of compartmentalisation and reductionism in which the world is divided into parts and then different parts are studied is not correct, because it takes away collective properties and interdependence of the sub units of the world. Empiricism that is philosophy that all knowledge is primarily obtained by random observations is not at all correct because many phenomenas are very well organised and are just not a collection of random observations, like a new born child has lot of knowledge about his mother and the environment, etc.
(To be concluded)
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