How Indian Philosophies Influenced Western Academia: The Dharma of Intellectualism

Words by Lavanya Magon

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In the 1920s, travel posters, made for steamship lines and airlines, became extremely popular. The style changed notably in the 1920s, to focus attention on the product being advertised. The images became simpler, precise, more linear, more dynamic, and were often placed against a single color background. They conveyed a sense of power and safety – basically, what travellers were supposed to feel boarding liners and trains and visiting new destinations. (Available as print)

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How Indian Philosophies Influenced Western Academia: The Dharma of Intellectualism

In the early 20^th century, the world of physics was shaken up by the introduction of quantum mechanics. Scientists, who were at the forefront of developing this discipline, were vexed by the confounding implications it could have on the understanding of the nature of physical reality. As the development of quantum mechanics opened up new avenues in the world of science, it also created certain philosophical and logical dilemmas, which, in order to be answered, needed something more than just scientific ingenuity. When Western ideas proved inadequate to give a strong philosophical basis to these scientific discoveries, scientists began looking towards the East to find their answers.

What Is Quantum Mechanics and why is it so perplexing?

Quantum Mechanics is the study of nature on an atomic and subatomic level.  What makes it confusing and somewhat implausible is the wave-particle duality phenomenon, to explain briefly, the wave-particle duality concept explains the dual nature of quantum entities, showing how they act as particles while also having wave-like properties. This phenomenon was noticed by scientists in the double- slit light experiments, where they discerned that photons (particles representing a quantum of light) upon observation acted like particles, but when they were not observed they acted like waves.

In other words, the introduction of an observer tool to inspect the nature of light, collapsed the wave function of light and made it display particle-like properties. This discovery had radical consequences in the world of physics, when researched further, quantum entities like electrons, photons and neutrons, were shown to exist at multiple places and multiple states at once (known as quantum superposition), and display extremely random behaviour, taking a definite state only upon observation/measurement. This conclusion, later known as the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum physics put forth puzzling questions in front of scientists- “What happens on observing that the nature of quantum particles changes and how could observation alone change its nature?”  As they struggled to find the answers to these conundrums, they were also curious to understand the consequences this experiment’s results could have for the practical world.

The Solvay Conference, probably the most intelligent picture ever taken, 1927

Albert Einstein with Rabindranath Tagore - 1930

Werner Heisenberg, who later won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1932 “for the creation of quantum mechanics,” believed that the findings of quantum mechanics extended beyond the scientific world and could be applied to the physical world. He believed that quantum mechanics indicated that the objective reality did not exist and it was only the perception of the outside world by the conscious observer, which leads to the creation of  the subjective reality.

However, can we really say that the world out there is, in essence, a construction of our own imagination? Einstein didn’t believe this and was highly sceptical about making such illogical and irrational inferences. Dwelling on the idiosyncrasies of the interpretations of quantum physics, he once sarcastically asked his friend “Do you really believe that the moon is not there when you are not looking at it”?

This criticism Einstein had for quantum physics was not exclusive, several other scholars had the same view. Most of them believed the quantum units to have certain indiscernible properties that were the cause of their erratic nature.  

Indian Philosophy to the rescue

For the proponents of quantum mechanics, their deduction about the universe being non-deterministic and random, looked ill-founded and untenable. Up until now, classical physics had always ascertained that the universe was deterministic, Western theology and belief had seconded this view, but quantum physics indicated the opposite. In such tumultuous times, the pioneers of quantum physics, unknowingly, found some solace in the corpus of Indian philosophical thought.