Number of words: 316 In atomic physics, many of the paradoxical situations are connected with the dual nature of light or – more generally of electromagnetic radiation. On the one hand, it is clear that this radiation must consist of waves because it produces the well-known interference phenomena associated with waves: when there are two … Read more
Number of words: 296 Studying a limited group of phenomena can also mean studying their physical properties only over a limited range, which may be another reason for the theory to be approximate. This aspect of the approximation is quite subtle because we never know beforehand where the limitations of a theory lie. Only experience … Read more
Number of words: 130 Shikan-taza is a heightened state of concentrated awareness wherein one is neither tense nor hurried, and certainly never slack. It is the mind of somebody facing death. Let us imagine that you are engaged in a duel of swordsmanship of the kind that used to take piace in ancient Japan. As … Read more
Number of words: 84 Another well known example of spontaneous intuitive insights are jokes. In the split second where you understand a joke you experience a moment of ‘enlightenment’. It is well known that this moment must come spontaneously, that it cannot be achieved by ‘explaining’ the joke, i.e. by intellectual analysis. Only with a … Read more
Number of words: 120 Anybody who wants to repeat an experiment in modern subatomic physics has to undergo many years of training. Only then will he or she be able to ask nature a specific question through the experiment and to understand the answer. Similarly, a deep mystical experience requires, generally, many years of training … Read more
Number of words: 151 This way of basing all theories firmly on experiment is known as the scientific method and we shall see that it has its counterpart in Eastern philosophy. Greek philosophy, on the other hand, was fundamentally different in that respect. Although Greek philosophers had extremely ingenious ideas about nature which often come … Read more
Number of words: 655 Throughout history, it has been recognized that the human mind is capable of two kinds of knowledge, or two modes of consciousness, which have often been termed the rational and the intuitive, and have traditionally been associated with science and religion, respectively. In the West, the intuitive, religious type of knowledge … Read more
Number of words: 688 The birth of modern science was preceded and accompanied by a development of philosophical thought which led to an extreme formulation of the spirit/matter dualism. This formulation appeared in the seventeenth century in the philosophy of Rene Descartes who based his view of nature on a fundamental division into two separate … Read more
Number of words: 102 The roots of physics, as of all Western science, are to be found in the first period of Greek philosophy in the sixth century B.C., in a culture where science, philosophy and religion were not separated. The sages of the Milesian school in lonia were not concerned with such distinctions. Their … Read more
Number of words: 98 Any path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you . . . Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it . as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and … Read more
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