Continue reading »]]> Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all      
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
– John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

The notion that there might be a relationship between truth and beauty is not a new one – there is however much that is debated about whether and how these two concepts are related to each other. There is certainly an intrinsic longing to accept the existence of a correlation between the two, and even many notable scientists such as Paul Dirac and Albert Einstein have argued for using aesthetic judgments as a test for how close a scientific theory is to the truth (Paul Dirac, for example, once famously asserted that “it is more important to have beauty in one’s equations than to have them fit experiment”) – but a purely rational and scientific justification for this claim seems elusive. Is beauty really a valid criterion for truth? Is there even an objective measure of beauty, or is it purely in the eye of the beholder? What, fundamentally, relates beauty and truth? And if there is such a relation, can we use the notion of beauty to guide us, in some way, towards the truth?

One could probably spend many a page exploring this theme, so I will confine myself to a few brief comments – not so much in hopes of definitively answering these questions, but rather just as some initial thoughts to hopefully spark more discussion.  I shall first approach these questions from the angle of scientific truth claims and theories, and then present some perspectives from the spiritual side that will hopefully help bring these seemingly immiscible ideas together.

The scientific notion of beauty

Science concerns itself with understanding the physical world, and therefore making truth claims about its nature – in other words, developing scientific theories that explain our experience of the world. Truth, in this context, is therefore evaluated either through corroboration with physical data (through experimentation), or through logical deduction and proof based on established truths. Now how does a nebulous and ill-defined quality like beauty fit into this clean, linear framework? How is it that theories such as Einstein’s theory of general relativity and Darwin’s theory of natural selection are almost unanimously regarded as “beautiful” theories?

By its very nature it seems like beauty cannot be quantified scientifically – nevertheless scientists and philosophers through the ages have persisted in making aesthetic judgments of scientific theories. “Pulchritudo splendor veritatis,” goes the ancient Latin motto (or “Beauty is the splendor of truth”) – and much has been attempted in the quest to quantify this splendor. Through this process, certain qualities have been identified, generally speaking, as being characteristic of a “beautiful” theory. Simplicity is one such characteristic. Prior to the 20^th century, it was commonly believed that nature itself was simple, and that therefore simpler hypotheses about nature were more likely to be true. Thomas Aquinas wrote in the 13^th century, “If a thing can be done adequately by means of one, it is superfluous to do it by means of several; for we observe that nature does not employ two instruments [if] one suffices.” This firmly entrenched belief was formalized in the widely known heuristic of Occam’s razor that has helped guide scientists in developing theoretical models of the world. Though simplicity is not a strict requirement for a model or theory to be a true representation of the world, it has certainly come to be valued as something to strive for in scientific endeavors, and has engendered such concepts as the elegance of a mathematical proof.

It should be noted that simplicity alone is not what is valued – rather, what is prized is the exposition of extremely profound concepts in simple ways, often unusually or startlingly so.  Philosopher and novelist George Santayana wrote that a beautiful theory should have “patterns and appearances that offer sufficient novelty to arouse curiosity, but not so much that their complexity is beyond understanding” – and so there is an inherent balance to strive for, between the complexity of the concepts being described and the simplicity with which they are described. A perfect example, in my mind, of a “beautiful” concept that fits this above definition is the Mandelbrot set – the set of all points c in the complex plane for which z_n+1 = z_n² + c (with z₀ = 0) is bounded, however large n is. It has always been a source of great amazement to me that such a simple equation could lead to the infinitely complex and captivating fractal represented by the Mandelbrot set.

Yet another component of beauty in science is logical completeness – a theory or model must be consistent and completely describe what it sets out to describe, with nothing lacking and nothing extraneous. As Einstein said of general relativity, “to modify it without destroying the whole structure seems to be impossible”.

A third quality of beauty that often comes up is that of symmetry, which closely relates to one’s sense of harmony and balance. It is easy to see why symmetry and balance are considered intrinsic to beauty (whether in snowflakes, human faces, art or architecture) – order is pleasing while disorder is unnerving. Symmetry plays an essential role in science – not only in crystallography and quantum theory, where its role has long been explicitly recognized, but also in other fields of physics, chemistry and biology. In the context of scientific theories, symmetry corresponds to invariance with respect to a particular transformation (say, coordinate transformations).

Many mathematicians also view mathematics as being fundamentally beautiful, and describe it as an art form. Bertrand Russell, for example, said:

“Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.”

Beauty – an attribute of God

The above discussion seems to indicate that there might be at least some aspects of beauty that go beyond our own subjective perceptions, that have a certain universality to them. And this view is further bolstered when we consider beauty from a spiritual standpoint. For one, most religious traditions talk about the concept of a “beautiful” God. Beauty, therefore, is considered one of the essential attributes of God, which is then reflected, like all His other attributes, in the created world. Many of the Baha’i writings, for example, refer to this quality of God’s and exhort us to recognize and be attracted to this beauty.

O Fleeting Shadow!
Pass beyond the baser stages of doubt and rise to the exalted heights of certainty. Open the eye of truth, that thou mayest behold the veilless Beauty and exclaim: Hallowed be the Lord, the most excellent of all creators!
– Bahá’u'lláh

Real love is impossible unless one turn his face towards God and be attracted to His Beauty.
– ‘Abdu’l-Bahá

…unto the essence of the fragrance of Thy beauty, which Thou wilt manifest, cause me to return, O Thou Who art my God.
– Bahá’u'lláh

From this perspective, beauty assumes an existence that is essentially independent of our perception, and becomes an intrinsic component of the very fabric of reality. Of course, beauty in this context refers not to physical beauty – though in some of the older traditions such as Hinduism, this is often how this beauty is manifested (see, for example, the descriptions of Krishna) – but rather to a deep spiritual beauty of which all the beauty of the natural world around us is but an imperfect reflection. A good way to think about this is in the Platonic sense – what we see are just shadows in a cave, while the reality outside the cave that projects these shadows and the sun that enables those shadows to be projected is far more glorious, bright and beautiful than we can ever imagine.

All religious traditions also talk about the intrinsic human attraction to beauty – whether it is to laud our attraction to God or chastise our attraction to material beauty. This intrinsic longing for beauty relates closely to it being an attribute of God’s – as spiritual beings, we reflect the qualities of God and instinctively seek them in the world around us. Given the way we are brought up in society, this innate attraction to beauty largely gets directed towards the material – be it towards a beautiful painting, or an attractive man/woman, or a melodious piece of music. But it is important to realize that this attraction to physical/natural objects is a reflection of that deeper longing for a less ephemeral spiritual beauty. In the words of Bahá’u'lláh, “…every man hath been, and will continue to be, able of himself to appreciate the Beauty of God, the Glorified.” This statement tells us two important things – first, that there is a glorious Beauty to God, and second, that each of us has the capacity to appreciate this beauty on our own.

It is of course true that there are many aesthetic judgments that are quite subjective – I might like a painting that someone else thinks is horrendous. But I do think there are certain elements to aesthetics – such as simplicity/elegance and symmetry – that hold more objective weight. Recent work that led to the development of the processing fluency theory of aesthetic pleasure (a theory of how people experience beauty) helps us understand the interactions between universal and subjective tastes of beauty. For example, all infants prefer consonant melodies. According to fluency theory, this is because infants share perceptual equipment that make them process consonance in music more easily than dissonance. As they grow up and get exposed to music from their culture, they develop culture-specific musical fluency, which is expressed in diverse perceptions of beautiful music.

As an aside, I think the notion of simplicity as a component of scientific beauty is an aesthetic value that also carries over to spiritual thought. Therefore, when it comes to trying to explain the nature of life and the world around us, I believe that the ultimate truth would have a great measure of simplicity and elegance to it. And we already see a glimpse of this in the teachings of the Prophets that have come down to us over time, and present extremely profound concepts about the world in language that is often simple but layered – be it in the Gita, or the Bible or the Quran.

The relationship between Truth and Beauty

All this seems to lead inexorably to the conclusion that there is indeed a fundamental relationship between truth and beauty – however elusive it might be. In 1930, Einstein welcomed Rabindranath Tagore, one of India’s finest poets and philosophers, into his home. During the course of their conversation on science, religion and philosophy, Tagore made this remarkably insightful statement about truth and beauty:

“When our universe is in harmony with Man, the eternal, we know it as Truth, we feel it as Beauty.”

This, to me, sums up in a most profound way this relationship between Truth and Beauty. Truth fundamentally relates to knowledge, while Beauty relates to our emotive experience. They are both, however, aspects of a vast, multi-dimensional reality – and when we are truly in harmony with the universe (or in other words, aligned with God’s will), we experience, simultaneously, the knowledge of Truth and the emotion of Beauty. True Beauty, when we are able to recognize it by transcending our own subjective notions of beauty, is a reflection of the Absolute Reality, just as knowledge is. Ultimately, then, we have to approach the process of understanding the world with both these lenses – the pursuit of objective, scientific truth as well as the pursuit of harmony and beauty. One of course has to be guarded in this approach, since one’s perception of beauty, as we said above, is a combination of both objective and subjective elements. However as we continue to hone our sense of beauty and over time align it more with the Absolute Beauty, I believe that it will help us understand and realize Truths about the world we live in that might be inaccessible through purely material science – in particular, spiritual Truths that inevitably contribute to greater harmony for us as individuals and as a society.

Continue reading »]]> “By faith is meant, first, conscious knowledge,and second, the practice of good deeds.”
– ‘Abdu’l Baha

This was one of the quotes which, as a friend put it, “rocked my world” when I first heard it. Too often do we talk about faith as something opposed to knowledge and science, as involving blind trust in something one can never prove, and as a pursuit both illogical and impractical. This quote, on the other hand, presents a very different concept of faith, my understanding of which I will try and elaborate on here.

Faith and conscious knowledge – a scientific process of discovery

The way I have over time come to understand faith is as a very scientific process of discovery. This, I think is what the first part of the quote alludes to when it talks about conscious knowledge. As we go through life, we acquire knowledge of all kinds. Faith relates to that part of the sum total of our knowledge that we are conscious or aware of.

Now how do we go about acquiring this knowledge? I believe that it has to be through a process based on the scientific method of experimentation and hypothesis testing. This applies to both matters that relate to the physical world and the spiritual. Knowledge of the physical world is developed through what we conventionally call science – and as our scientific hypotheses about the physical world are confirmed by our experiences, we develop faith in our understanding of physical reality.

Developing faith in our understanding of spiritual reality, I would argue, should follow a very similar process to what is followed in conventional science. Abdu’l Baha calls this the “divine science”; praising science as the discoverer of realities, he says,

“Scientific knowledge is the highest attainment upon the human plane, for science is the discoverer of realities. It is of two kinds: material and spiritual. Material science is the investigation of natural phenomena; divine science is the discovery and realization of spiritual verities. The world of humanity must acquire both. A bird has two wings; it cannot fly with one. Material and spiritual science are the two wings of human uplift and attainment.“

He then goes on to define what specifically he means by “divine science”:

“By the divine we mean the discovery of the mysteries of God, the comprehension of spiritual realities, the wisdom of God, inner significances of the heavenly religions and foundation of the law.“

Science, therefore, is the process of discovery – and the discovery of spiritual realities progresses in a similar vein to the discovery of material realities. There is one key difference though – all of (material) science today is based on studying some object external to the experimentalist, using certain physical instruments. Even psychologists who study the human brain or surgeons who study the human body study some human being other than themselves, or some part of themselves that is treated as an object other than their self. Therefore there is always a separation between the subject and the object of experimentation, however subtle. In addition, the instruments of experimentation are usually physical, tangible objects that produce physical, tangible signals/measurements/results (fields of study like psychoanalysis or anthropological research are somewhat of an exception to this norm, with instruments of experimentation that are often more intangible; for an interesting analysis of psychology as a science and limitations to a rigidly scientific approach, look here). Both the objectification of that which is being studied, and the physical nature of instruments mean that all these experiments that we conduct on the world have what we like to call objective results – results that do not depend on our opinions/beliefs, but rather can be reproduced by anyone who has access to the same object and the same instruments. This notion of verifiability is a key requirement today for any theory to be considered legitimate science.

A scientific approach to metaphysical questions, on the other hand, is intrinsically different in that it breaks both of the above norms – the object of study is not something extrinsic to us (or even some part of us that we can study as something extrinsic to our “self“), but rather our own soul – or whatever it is in us that we refer to when we say the word “I“. In addition, the instruments of experimentation are not physical objects, but rather, our actions and reflections on the results of those actions. We make a hypothesis about the spiritual nature of the world/ourself, act on the basis of that hypothesis, and then make measurements by looking at the consequences of those actions. If the consequences align with the original hypothesis, one attains a certain measure of faith in it. This process of course does not stop with one such instance – one constantly keeps up this process of experimentation and validation, and over time, one builds up a reasonable level of faith in one’s hypothesis.

Lets take a concrete example of this. Let us suppose that someone suggests that I pray everyday, for that has spiritual influence on the world and my soul. If I accepted him at face value and just did what he suggested, that would surely be blind faith. But instead, let’s say I take what he claims about the influence of prayer as a working hypothesis. Then I act on the basis of that, sincerely, and with an open mind, not being attached to my own views on the matter. So I pray with full dedication everyday for a while, and then observe the effect this has on my soul, my state of mind, my actions in the world, and the effects of those actions on the people around me. If I find that there is a distinct positive change in all these over time, I will, through this scientific process, end up concluding that prayer does indeed have some spiritual effect. Of course, I don’t immediately stop at this point and then blindly accept this as a truth proven beyond question. I have greater faith in it, and so act with increased vigor – but still keep my mind open to being proven wrong if there is enough compelling evidence to show that I was mistaken the first time around. As the evidence in favor of the hypothesis mounts, however, so does my faith in its truth-value. This is an asymptotic process.

Cleansing the instrument of our soul

Note that all this depends on one being completely open-minded, without prejudice, and without preconceived notions of the results of the experiment – in other words, we need to cleanse the instrument of our soul so we can have confidence in the final consequences being the result of the action itself and not our own failings/biases. The following two quotes from Abdu’l Baha emphasize exactly this point.

“The perfect love needs an unselfish instrument, absolutely freed from fetters of every kind.“

“The most important thing is to polish the mirrors of hearts in order that they may become illumined and receptive of the divine light. One heart may possess the capacity of the polished mirror; another be covered and obscured by the dust and dross of this world. Although the same Sun is shining upon both, in the mirror which is polished, pure and sanctified you may behold the Sun in all its fullness, glory and power revealing its majesty and effulgence, but in the mirror which is rusted and obscured there is no capacity for reflection although so far as the Sun itself is concerned it is shining thereon and is neither lessened nor deprived.“

Faith and the practice of good deeds

Therefore the building up of faith in a spiritual reality should ideally come about as a result of this development of conscious knowledge that is based on this process of scientific experimentation on the soul. And the experimental process involves our deeds, the actions we use to test our hypotheses about the spiritual world – and this brings in the second part of the quote, the practice of good deeds. Faith, therefore, is knowledge that one is aware of, and which is built up through the exercise of one’s free will in the commission of good deeds.

Another (and I believe equally valid) interpretation of the second part of the quote is also that faith cannot exist in thought alone – one can only be said to have true faith when one acts and performs good deeds on the basis of that faith. It is not enough for me to say that I believe in God and the spiritual nature of the human soul – I need to act on the basis of that belief, serve humanity, do good deeds – and only then can I be said to have faith. Therefore conscious knowledge and action on the basis of that knowledge together comprise true faith.

The subjective nature of spiritual learning

One most striking aspect of this process, of course, is its subjective nature. If I say that prayer has spiritual effect on my soul, is there any way to objectively verify this? This inherent subjectivity is often used as a reason to rubbish any kind of spiritual statement as being scientifically unsound due to its non-verifiability from a completely objective standpoint. But is this really true? Or does this arise from the fundamental impossibility of recreating the exact conditions of experimentation to verify these statements? All scientific experimentalists will agree that objective verifiability only makes sense when the conditions of experimentation are exactly the same – so if someone claims that he conducted an experiment where he measured the boiling point of water to be 100 degrees Celsius, I would need to recreate the same conditions (for example, ensuring that I use pure water, that the atmospheric pressure is maintained at the same level, etc) to get the same result. If I boiled water with salt in it instead of pure water and determined that the boiling point was 105 degrees, I would be remiss in concluding that the first claim was wrong. If we now apply this same analogy to scientific experimentation on the self, one immediately realizes that one can never recreate the same conditions of the soul in another human being, for each person is a complex combination of myriad thoughts, experiences and circumstances. And so one should in fact expect that a scientific experiment conducted by one person on his soul would not be exactly reproducible by another. This is no way means that the original experiment and conclusions are wrong.

Does this then lead to unbridled relativism, a complete lack of objectivity? In a static sense it might seem so, but dynamically I don’t think so. Though initially it might seem like our experimental process is doomed to failure because there is no way to distinguish between true consequences of any action, and consequences that come about due to our lack of understanding/sincerity/openness, over time as our understanding develops, so will our ability to discern truth. Additionally, this process of discovery does not occur in a vacuum – rather, we engage in discourse with those around us, share and learn from each other’s experiences, and together arrive at a more comprehensive understanding of reality than any individual alone could arrive at. Such a dynamic and collective view of knowledge acquisition is also paralleled by notions of scientific progress presented by philosophers such as Thomas Kuhn that have revolutionized conventional views of science (look out for more on Kuhn’s theory of paradigm shifts in science and its parallels in religion in a later post).

Therefore with time, as we hone the instrument of our soul, polish our mirrors within, and collaboratively seek to learn and grow, we will be able to better reflect the light of knowledge that shines on us all. And this will eventually lead us, asymptotically, towards understanding (objectively) the true nature of reality and all that underlies it – and from that shall arise true faith and certitude.