Science vs. Spirituality: Deepak Chopra And Leonard Mlodinow Discuss 'War Of The Worldviews'

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The debate between science and spirituality is framed as a knock down fight for truth with winner take all. But does it have to be that way? Deepak Chopra is a physician and one of the most highly regarded spiritual teachers in the world; and Leonard Mlodinow teaches at Cal Tech and co-authored, along with Stephen Hawking, "The Grand Design." Chopra and Mlodinow wrote "War of the Worldviews: Science vs. Spirituality" to help start an intelligent and civil conversation about this very hot subject.

In this hour long video, Deepak Chopra and Leonard Mlodinow debate science and spirituality moderated by Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, Senior Religion Editor for The Huffington Post. This conversation was streamed live on Oct. 4, 2011 on the date of the publication of "War of the Worldviews: Science vs. Spirituality" by Deepak Chopra and Leonard Mlodinow.

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Lee Smolin: "Here is a metaphor due to Eric Weinstein that I would have put in the book had I heard it before. Let us take a different twist on the landscape of theories and consider the landscape of possible ideas about post standard model or quantum gravity physics that have been proposed. Height is proportional to the number of things the theory gets right. Since we don’t have a convincing case for the right theory yet, that is a high peak somewhere off in the distance. The existing approaches are hills of various heights that may or may not be connected, across some ridges and high valleys to the real peak. We assume the landscape is covered by fog so we can’t see where the real peak is, we can only feel around and detect slopes and local maxima.

See:

• The Mind Field

• The Perfect Sphere

Purpose of the Compton Lecture Series

April 8The 63rd Compton Lecture Series, 2006 through June 3, 2006, 11:00 a.m.

Sean at cosmic variance point to this series of lectures that are being presented each year and in this series the entitled is called, "String Theory: With a View Towards Reality" which will be presented by Nicholas Halmagyi, McCormick Fellow, Enrico Fermi Institute.

Dear Friends of the Enrico Fermi Institute:

We cordially invite you to join us for the next series of the Arthur H. Compton Lectures. The Lectures are intended for the general public, friends of the Enrico Fermi Institute, members of the University community, and interested citizens of the Chicago area. They provide a descriptive account of some of the frontiers of present-day science. We don’t expect you to have a formal background in mathematics or science, but hope to appeal to your curiosity and to share with you some of the excitement of modern scientific research.

String Theory is an attempt to describe all particles by multi-dimensional objects, such as strings and membranes. These objects propagate in a ten dimensional universe of which four dimensions are visible to us. This rather outlandish conjecture has led a large community of theoretical physicists to hope for a unification of particle physics and Einstein's general relativity.

The rather serious caveat is the difficulty in providing predictions which can be experimentally verified since the physical manifestation of the string hypothesis will be most obvious only at energy scales which far exceed our current experiments.

In these lectures Dr. Nicholas Halmagyi will explain the humble beginnings of String Theory and will detail the staircase of energy scales which climb up to quantum gravity and string theory. No scientific background is required.

Just bring your curiosity. We hope you can join us for the first lecture on Saturday, April 8, 2006 at 11:00 AM in Room 106 of the Kersten Physics Teaching Center, 5720 South Ellis Avenue. Enter through the door at the southeast corner. The series will run from April 8, 2006 through June 3, 2006.

There will be NO lecture on Saturday, May 27th and the Compton Lecture Luncheon will be held on June 3rd.

Sincerely,

James E. Pilcher Director

There is a list of Present and Recent Abstracts, some mentioned in the article presented by Sean Carroll, and many others on the Compton lecture presentation itself.

For me it will be a interesting set of lectures, as I have watched this development for the last couple of years trying to piece togehter the essence of this perspective, about the way in whch one could now percieve a model used to help grow towards a dimensional expression of particle physics in high energy areas.

I would not like one to think that I am without purpose in my attachments to Cosmic varaince, and to those there in cosmic variance without understanding that some in their respective trades, are just as green(e) when it comes to applying their tools of the trade with string theory, while working their specific areas.



Feynman's Rainbow, by Leonard Mlodinow Warner Books 2003

Euclid's Window: The Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to Hyperspace by Leonard Mlodinow FreePress 2001

Also too, having watched a previous writer like Leonard Mlodinow, the quest to pursue science as well as develop the "path with a heart," to me exemplfies the struggle of some science people to find this part of themself. Meanings, to continue in the directions they do. While it might have been a aimless struggle( the recorded history) that apparent at one time as the story unfolds, were the glimpses into other times of people, as the greater teachers of science, like Feynman or Gellman, these insights into their lives present some of the essesnce of what has to be found as motivations needed to develope awareness not only for themself, but in the struggle to move society along with them.

Roots, and the Rings of History

The jump from conventional field theories of point-like objects to a theory of one-dimensional objects has striking implications. The vibration spectrum of the string contains a massless spin-2 particle: the graviton. Its long wavelength interactions are described by Einstein's theory of General Relativity. Thus General Relativity may be viewed as a prediction of string theory!

Author Unknown

How on earth, did such geometries take us into the abstract realms that it did?

Euclid postulate found embedded and manifested in Reimann's developing perspective and the fruitation, General Relativity? IN some imaginative space, I see Einstein gleefully sitting, eating his apple?:)It must be "a tree" kind of thing.

On Wassily Kandinsky Musical Score

The term "Composition" can imply a metaphor with music. Kandinsky was fascinated by music's emotional power. Because music expresses itself through sound and time, it allows the listener a freedom of imagination, interpretation, and emotional response that is not based on the literal or the descriptive, but rather on the abstract quality that painting, still dependent on representing the visible world, could not provide.

Well okay not this old, but the idea is, that learning through history had gone through much revision. That no matter the idea, that no physics was discovered then, it is the way that a result, manifested today. One may refer to Democritius, and know that the relevance, had started back then? Platonic solids, or some Pythagorean notion of numbers underlying nature?

A cross section of a Rocky Mountain juniper (Juniperus scopulorum) snag found in El Malpais National Monument near Grants, New Mexico (it's about 3 feet across) (photo © H.D. Grissino-Mayer and R.K. Adams). This tree had a pith date of 256 BC and an outer ring of about AD 1320, making this tree nearly 1,600 years old when it died!

But we do not want to talk about the impurities of philosophy, while we deal with "abstract and concrete" things do we?:) That the very subject, had been adopted and shunned by our greater teacher(Feynman), is good to know this is apart and separate from ourselves? That because a teacher did it, that we shall too? Or ,was it, that the appreciation for science at it's deepest level, didn't make room for such speculation, or some defining nature of a crackpottery(without history), who had supposedly calculated the proton's mass? Yes, the crackpot might of jumped on this notion. :) Scream about the aether and said, "strings is no different."

In May 1996, Chris Baisan and I found this tree, a Rocky Mountain juniper (Juniperus scopulorum), at El Malpais National Monument (photo © H.D. Grissino-Mayer), and currently it is the reigning oldest wood yet discovered in New Mexico - 256 B.C.!

SidneyFest and the Parents/Teachers Before Us

Richard Feynman's history, was entangled with Murray's and seeing what was there then in Caltech 25 years ago, and what exists today at Harvard, is a reminder of what began under Murray's Gellman's umbrella. As to how John Schwartz career was preserved. The seed bed of Murray's Gellman understanding arose from the 1950's, to Susskind and Nambu in the 70's, to where in Harvard it is today.

Some have wide sweeping claims to this history. The illegitimacy and rights to something, being theoretical dogma? As some false God set before us? While the religiousness of institution, is to bring forth those who work the equative understanding before them. Tried and tested. Who would in their right mind, is going to denounce the fathers/teachers before them?

Lubos Motl:

Just one or two comments. Murray also talked about the representation theory for the hadrons. Sidney played a rather important role in these developments, too. Murray mentioned that they sometimes incorporated the same particles into different representations - one of them was wrong and I forgot who was it. During his talk, Murray's cell phone started to ring twice. Murray Gell-Mann '69 interrupted his talk and studied who was calling him. "One call missed," was the answer after one minute of research. Gell-Mann, who is a Yale graduate, admitted that Harvard had been pretty good. Also, Harvard had created a string theory group only 25 years after Gell-Mann and his friends did the same thing at Caltech, which is not bad.

So what new fruit have to you to bear, given the "disassociated state of existance," that one would never acknowledge. As never really needing to acknowldege, "standing on the shoulder of giants"?

INSIDE ON CAMPUSBy ROBERT D. MECKEL

“Since Buddha was enlightened under a bodhi tree, it has become a symbol of enlightenment,” said Mahajan. “The tree is more than religion, it is a symbol of peace, meditation, oneness with yourself, finding harmony with the world. Whenever there is chaos going on, people can use this to find themselves, and a oneness with themselves and the world we live in.”

Reference:

Feynman's Rainbow, by Leonard MlodinowWarner Books 2003
Euclid's Window: The Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to Hyerspaceby Leonard MlodinowFreePress 2001