Reason Leads to where the Religious Sense Begins

Reason hs its basis on intuition or instinctive faith.

Logic nd science r based on the principles of Induction and Causation.

But induction can’t be validated by experience or reason as an inductive generalization covers within its sweep not only the immediate present but also the past and the future which lie beyond the field of direct observation.

Likewise, reason can’t be invoked to establish the validity of induction as the very process of such reasoning wud be based on induction. Such is the case with the laws of science like Causation, Uniformity of Nature, which r in reality based on intuitive faith. Intuition is similarly the basis of creative thinking.

As hs been said by Dr. H. H. Huntley in his Faith of the Physicist', the inner experience of the individual scientists and confessions of men of genius concerning the mental mechanism of discovery indicate tat the framework of generalizations, principles and laws which constitute science r built up in mental levels below the levels of consciousness.

Albert Einstein hs observed in his Principles of Research "The principal task of the physicist is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which the cosmos cn be built up by pure deduction. There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition resting on sympathetic understanding of experience cn reach them." Intuition is the basis of reason and also of knowledge.

Let’s attempt a brief analysis of our knowledge of the external world. Is any knowledge of the world possible at all?

Let us take the table as our guineapig and Bertrand Russell as a dependable guide in this respect. When we r confronted with a table, common sense dogmatically asserts tat we know a very real object and does’t occur to anybody outside a philosophical lecture room to doubt the reality of the table. But from the philosophical view point there is valid ground to doubt the validity of the testimony of common sense. Suppose, we r confronted with a brown rectangular table which appears to be smooth to touch and produces a sound when rapped with fingers. Now as regards color, it may, and indeed it does, appear different at least in intensity to different persons according to the distance from the table and angle of vision. Even from the same point of view the color will seem different to different people according as one sees in normal light or artificial light, with naked eyes or through coloured glasses.

Again, to a color-blind man there ll be no color of the table which will continue to hv other qualities of smoothness, rectangularity and so on if one's other senses are alright. The color is not; therefore, something inherent in the table, but something depending upon the table, the spectator and the way the light falls on the table. When we ordinarily speak of the colour of the table we mean the sort of colour tat will appear to the normal mind from an ordinary point of view under usual conditions. But all other sorts of colour appearing to other persons depending on their points of view and the way of the falling of the light and the quality of their vision also hv an equal title to reality and, therefore to avoid confusion we r led to the conclusion tat it hs 110 particular colour at all. The appearance of colour is the product of light falling on it and the reaction produced by it on the spectator. Similar is the case with texture. The table which appears smooth and even to the naked eye ll prove rough and uneven under the microscope. Shape is no exception to tis.

We really construct the shape mentally although we think tat we find the shape in the table. The rectangular table, for example, ll look from almost all points of view as if it has two acute angles and two obtuse angles- Its parallel sides ll appear to converge to a point away from the spectator and, besides, they ll always appear to vary in length, the nearer side appearing longer tat the farther side.

From all these it is evident tat the real table, if there is any, is not the same as we cn immediately see. Wot we immediately experience is sense-data and the so-called physical objects r the result of an inference from wot is immediately known or a logical construction from it, as Russell puts it. Nw two question arise:

(I) Is there any such thing as a physical object: and

(II) If so, wot is its nature?

As to the first question, objection may be raised by subjective idealists tat we can’t say anything about it at all, as we know nothing but ideas produced by sensations. The argument tat the existence of real physical objects is proved by their appearance in a more or less similar form to all normal persons pre-supposes the existence of other human beings, besides one's own self. But the existence of other persons like tat of other things may be questioned on idealistic premises. Just as other external things r the creation of our own ideas similarly also other persons may be the product of our own ideas having no independent existence.

Therefore, the objective reality of other things can’t be proved by the witness of other persons who r themselves our own creations. On such idealistic premises, the whole of life and our supposed knowledge of things may be as illusory as a dream and tis can’t be logically disproved, as Bertrand Russell admits. But for purposes of simplicity and intelligibility we assume the objective existence of the physical world upon instinctive beliefs.

And even idealists like Berkeley and Leibnitz hv assumed the independent existence of external objects, which r according to Berkeley ideas in the mind of God and according to Leibnitz, a colony of souls or monads.

Nw I am coming to the question of the real nature of the external objects which exist independently of us, we encounter almost insurmountable difficulties, presented not only by colours and sounds but also by space and time. The only properties which science assigns to objects r position in space and time and the power of motion according to laws of motion.

Science explains away sounds and colours by reducing them to mere wave motions and deny tat the external world which is independent of us hv any such qualities, which r the product of our reactions to the stimuli cuzed by the objects. Without explaining why the objects shud produce such reactions as they do, science simply writes off these qualities as forming no part of the objects.

Similarly every physical object must be in space. But notions of space differ from person to person, which means our sense-data r different in our different private spaces. Nw assuming tat physical objects r not quite like the sense-data, but are the causes of the sensations, these physical objects and our brains and nerves and sense-organs must be in some ''physical space" as opposed to our private space. Nw if there is one public and objective physical space, the relative positions of objects in "physical space" must more or less correspond to the relative position of sense-data in our private space, as is presumed from our experience about distance.

Nw assuming tat there is physical space and a correspondence between it and our private space, we cn know nothing beyond wot is required to secure the correspondence, In other words, we cn know nothing of wot it is like in itself, but we cn know the sort of arrangement of physical objects which results from their spatial relations. We cn know, for example, tat the earth and moon and sun r in one straight line during an eclipse, though we can’t know wot a physical straight line is in itself, as we know the look of a straight line in our visual space. Thus we come to know much more about the relations of distances in physical space than about the distances themselves.

We may know tat one distance is greater than another, or tat it is along the same straight line as the other, but we can’t hv tat immediate acquaintance with physical distances tat we hv with distances in our private spaces, or with colours or sounds or other sense data. We cn know all those things about physical space which a man born blind might know through other people about the space of sight, but the kind of things which a man born blind cud never know about the space of sight we also can’t know about physical space. We cn know the properties of the relations required preserving the correspondence with sense-data, but we can’t know the nature of the terms between which the relations hold." (The Problems of Philosophy: Bertrand Russell).

The same applies to the problem of time with the added difficulty tat the various states of physical objects can’t be supposed to hv the same temporal order as the sense data constituting the perception of those objects. Considered as physical objects, lightning and thunder r simultaneous; but the sense data of hearing the thunder comes after the sense-data of seeing lightning, the difference in time depending on the time taken by the sound to reach our ear from the place where disturbance in the air is caused by lightning. Similarly, the sun's light takes about eight minutes to reach the earth.

So when we think we see the sun, wot we actually see in the sun as it ws eight minutes ago, and we wud hv the same vision of the sun even if the sun had ceased to exist by this time. This underscores all the more the distinction between sense data and physical objects. Wot we hv found as regards space is much the same as wot we find in relation to the correspondence of the sense-data with their physical counterparts. If one object looks blue and another red, we may reasonably presume tat there is some corresponding difference between the physical objects; if both of two objects look blue, we may presume a corresponding similarity.

But we can’t hope to be acquainted directly with the quality in the physical object which makes it look blue or red. Science tells us tat this quality is a certain sort of wave-motion, and this sounds familiar, bcuz we think of wave-motion in the space we see. But the wave-motions must really be in physical space, with which we hv no direct acquaintance; thus the real wave-motions hv not that familiarity which we might hv supposed them to hv. And wot holds for colours is closely similar to wot holds for other sense-data. Thus we find tat although the relations of physical objects hv all sorts of knowable properties, derived from their correspondence with the relations of sense-data, the physical objects themselves remain unknown in their intrinsic nature, so far at least as cn be discovered by means of the senses" (The Problems of Philosophy : Bertrand Russell).

Thus it is clear from the above tat from the point of view of liberal empiricism or scientific empiricism, the real nature of reality is unknown to us and the existence of an objective physical world is largely based on faith.

Moreover, things appear different to different scales of observation.

Viewed analytically, the lotus and coal r the same. Viewed synthetically they are a world apart. A thing which appears as a solid substance to common sense is a combination of atoms and molecules with vast empty spaces in between on the atomic scale and merely a collection of electric charges moving with a terrific motion on the sub-atomic scale.

As Charles Eugene Guye, the famous Swedish physicist, hs observed, "it is the scale of observation which creates a phenomenon. Different scales do not exist in Nature. There is one immense harmonious phenomenon on a scale which in general escapes man because of the structure of his brain, a structure that divides things into arbitrary compartments cutting them into their antithetical parts." Such a view has been corroborated by many other great thinkers like Carl Jung and Bergson.

Due to these obvious limitations of reason and sense experience, both scientific and philosophical knowledge miss the mark, so far as ultimate nature of reality is concerned. The history of philosophy is an eloquent testimony to the limitations of human reason. The very fact tat theistic philosophers hv differed widely in their conception of God and His relations to creation, going around the endless mazes of monism, pluralism, dualism, deism, theism, pantheism and pantheism and wot not, proves the limitations of reason in relation to God and religion.

When reason outgoes its own bounds it lands in ludicrous futility.

Reason cn at best take note of a vague intimation of the mysterious infinite; but for it to attempt to gauge the magnitude of tat infinite and to spell out its shape and size wud be a fruitless adventure. Attempts to grasp the mysterious infinite fully with the help of reason is by the nature of the thing bound to be futile and analysis of religious language according to rules of the language of ordinary experience is bound to be wide off the mark.

The remarks of a contemporary scientist, Hoimar Von Ditfurth, appearing in a UNESCO FEATURE are very relevant in this context. He says, "Since Einstein we have to live with the truth that we will never be able to understand completely the universe because the innate structure of our brain is inadequate to do so.

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We have learned that we are both short-lived witnesses of and participants in an evolutionary process embracing all Nature that has been going on over billions of years. The systems produced in this way of ever-increasing complexity and beauty are also irrevocably passing, beyond our capacity for rational understanding. This brings us to where a religious sense begins" (Science Popularization: Getting To the Heart of Matter -UNESCO FEATURES).

Hw literally does it echo the Quranic verses "Do you find in the creation of the Beneficent any fault? Look again. Do you find any discord? Turn your eyes again and again. They will return to you humbled and fatigued" (Al Quran 67: 3-4) and “Eyes cannot reach Him but He reaches the eyes. And He is the Incomprehensible, the All-Aware” (6:104). .................................................................