Is There Consciousness Within Science?
An Interview with Ravi Gomatam by Thomas Beaudry."As science went further and further into the external world, they ended up inside the atom where to their surprise they saw consciousness staring them in the face!"
The ongoing interface between Western science and Eastern
mysticism is perhaps the strongest statement in modern times as to the relevance
of India's ancient spiritual wisdom. That the Upanishads are influencing the
reigning paradigm of modern science is good reason to look more deeply within
their pages for insight in today's world.
A conference sponsered by the Bhaktivedanta Institute in
San Francisco centered on the study of of consciousness within science. The
Institutes international secretary, Ravi Gomatam, shared with us what he calls
the third wave of the ongoing interface between science and mysticism.
Can you tell me
something about the Bhaktivedanta Institute?
Our
in-house research is based on specific paradigms for consciousness that are
available within the Bhagavat tradition of Vedanta, or theistic Vedanta. We also
offer research fellowships through which academic people can interact with us,
and we hold broad-based conferences and workshops.
When we do
conferences we recognize that the topic of consciousness is a very difficult one
to deal with. Consciousness has occupied the attention of mankind for thousands
of years. As conscious beings we have wondered about our essential nature, our
place and our relationship to the universe in which we find ourselves, our
rights, and even what are our duties—especially as we see today so many problems
caused directly and indirectly by the application of science. No one can claim
at this point that he has a final answer to these questions. Consequently our
conferences are very broad-based. We bring together a wide variety of thoughts
from different disciplines of science, and we provide a forum for discussion so
that some kind of a scientific consensual understanding of consciousness can
emerge on its own. Although we have our roots in India's spirituality, our work
itself is very contemporary and highly objective.
How do you view the
evolution of the ongoing interface between modern science and Eastern
mysticism?
Capra on
one hand should definitely be credited for putting the subject into the center
of the stage. His work was the first wave. His essential point was that the
scientific tradition and the mystical traditions are two different approaches to
understanding the same reality. He managed to draw some parallels between the
emerging concerns of science and existing world views of Eastern mysticism.
Despite the importance of his work that started this trend, his drawing of
parallels was very superficial. For example, his conjecture that the tracks that
sub-atomic particles leave on a photographic plate are the dance of Shiva is really
pseudo-science. He had a fair understanding of physics and, for those times, a
reasonable introduction to Eastern mysticism. His ideas were commercially
successful, revealing that there was a large audience for this topic, and they
pointed the direction in which further exploration could be made.
The second wave, the work of Ken Wilber and others,
recognized the shortcomings of Capra, Zukav, and the like. They showed that the
issues of spirituality, whether Christian mysticism, Sufism, or the Vedic
tradition, are dealing with a different ontology than that of modern science.
Thus Ken Wilber strongly argued that we should not think that science is going
to lead directly to the same understanding of reality as that afforded by
mysticism. At best science could point towards the need for cultivating
mysticism, for which we would then have to shift gears. This was the second
wave.But the problem with this approach, although true in the ultimate sense, is
that it does not chart specific pathways by which science can come closer to
consciousness. Indeed, it even precludes the possiblity of an expanded science
that can on day legitimately study consciousness directly. In cleaving the two
in this way, in a sense, Wilber reintroduced a kind of Cartesian dualism.
Instead of the mind/body problem, it became the spirituality versus science
problem. This dilemma then formed the motivation for our recent conference—the
third wave.
This third
wave, as I see it, will begin due to the willingness on the part of scientists
themselves to expand the domain of science in very new ways. The motivation for
this is already coming from results in established fields, such as artificial
intelligence, molecular biology, theoretical physics, as well as new emerging
fields like engineering anomolies. Through these fields the causal role of
consciousness in the physical world at deeper levels of matter is becoming
established. What is required is to sustain this investigation so that a logical
framework for discussion of consciousness results naturally within science. In
the process science will doubtless discover a new middle ground between what it
now thinks of as matter and what the mystics describe as consciousness. It will
involve discovering levels of subtle matter presently unknown to science. This
new science will become the empiric evidence for, and system by which we can
better explain the causal role of consciousness. No doubt, this will require new
tools of theory and experiment. Our own contribution is to facilitate this
process of discovery.
That's quite a challenge
for science.
Well if we
survey the history of modern science we will see that major advancements came
when scientists succeeded in integrating seemingly disparate phenomen. Newton,
Maxwell, and Einstein are good examples.
Newton's success was that he integrated stellar motions
with movements of ordinary bodies on Earth. It was a grand synthesis that
launched Newtonian physics. Newtonian physics had an ontology, or mode of
existence of things. In it the fabric of the universe was particles: small
particles that constantly acted, reacted, and collided with one another
according to very precise laws. The first synthesis was that of motions, small
motions and big motions. That was considered a big success. Imagine the euphoria
they experienced when they realized that an object falling from the Leaning
Tower of Pisa followed the same laws that the sun follows! It was soon shown
that these laws of motion could be used to understand not only the behavior of
solids, but also liquids, and then gases. In this way the behavior of the entire
macrocosm and microcosm was thought to be within our grasp. The second major
synthesis came when Maxwell unified the concepts of electromagnetic phenomena
and light.
People may
be surprised to know that toward the end of the 19th century scientists thought
there were no more fundamental laws to be discovered; just do more and more
mathematics and everything would be explained. It was the famous physicist Lord
Kelvin who said that there were only two small clouds on the horizon: "black
body radiation" and "ether drift." But these turned out to be bigger than
scientists thought.
In this
century the two great leaps science has taken concern these two phenomena. One
was Einstein's integration of space and time into one space-time continuum,
which explained the absence of ether drift. The second great leap was quantum
mechanics. It brought us a connection between two seemingly separate
realms—physical measuring devices and human observers. The point I am making is
that science has made great steps when apparently disparate phenomena were
brought together under one roof. Now the time is ripe to bring together yet
another pair—mind and matter. But this too requires a new conceptualization.
This is now what we are attempting—to bring together science and consciousness,
and take another giant step. With the development of quantum mechanics it became
clear that the theory had a fundamental problem. The quantum theory has no
ontology. It does not concern itself with what the world is made up of. It
doesn't start with an assumption about the world's makeup and then build a
theory. Rather, it talks about probabilistic connections between successive
observations not the events themselves.
As Heisenberg
pointed out, "Quantum theory no longer speaks of the state of the universe, but
our knowledge
of the state of the universe." For the first time scientists had a theory that
ultimately had no objective foundation. That this may be because quantum theory
does not satisfactorily account for consciousness has been pointed out by the
founding fathers of quantum theory, Eugen Wigner and John von Neumann, but this
line of reasoning has not been adequately pursued.
There are
also other areas within science besides quantum mechanics where consideration of
consciousness has become central. Artificial intelligence is an example, where
the initial mood was very similar to Newtonian hubris. Newtonian physicists
thought everything in the world could be explained in terms of laws governing
basic motions. Similarly, artificial intelligence researchers thought that all
aspects of human cognition could be explained simply in terms of rules governing
our behavior. But soon AI researchers found that even the simplest aspects of
human cognition could not be reproduced. Now they understand that to suceed in
AI we need a basic understanding of human consciousness. In psychology too,
behaviorism has proven to be insufficient, and what was called introspective
psychology is coming back into fashion.
So our
institute is promoting the examination of overtly consciousness-based approaches
to these problems within science today. Consciousness has been talked about
within science in the past, but always with a view to explain it away rather
than explain it. Accepting that consciousness has a causal role in the world is
a very bitter medicine for scientists to swallow, but they are beginning to do
it. And metaphysicists are also beginning to see that while there is undeniable
reality to the subjective dimension, any system claiming to explain it must bear
relevance to the objective concerns of empiric science. This is the challenge:
to answer the pressing questions arising in science that call for consideration
of consciousness with genuine consciousness-based paradigms.
How did you choose your
speakers for the panel?
The first
thing I did was contact Sir John Eccles. Eccles is very much known for his open
stand that mind is different from the brain. Eccles was described by Libet as
one of the five top neuroscientists of the century. When he says that brain is
different from the mind, in the very least you cannot tell him that he does not
know about the brain. He was the first to accept, which he did immediately. Once
he agreed, everything else fell into place. We had to choose both theorists and
experimenters. Data in this field is very, very rare. We chose two people to
present data that were from opposite camps. Benjamin Libet from UCSF had data
which seems to show that in some cases our apparent actions of free will, such
as when our hand moves spontaneously to set the clock, may well be merely action
triggered by the brain a full half second before we desired to lift our hand.
According to this data, our free will may well be an after thought! There are
other ways to interpret his data, and Libet is the first to admit that his data
deals at best with local intentionalities, not global free will. Robert Jahn and
Brenda Dunn presented data that shows the opposite, that consciousness has
intentionality. These were the experimenters. Although Pribram and Eccles might
consider themselves experimenters as well, they presented no data. The rest of
the panel consisted of theorists of different fields: neuroscience, psychology,
physics, artificial intelligence, mathematics, and philosophy.
You mentioned that there
is not much data in this field to draw from. What about the data in
neurscience?
Yes. This
point was also raised during the panel discussion. It was Pribram who complained
that not enough of the existing data was sufficiently discussed at the
conference. But John Searle came up with the best rejoinder when he said that
the problem of discussing data collected thus far is that all this data was
gathered specifically to demonstrate that consciousness does not exist.
Therefore how can we speak of consciousness and use this data? First we need to
do new research.
The
difficulty is that science always goes by an operational definition. In order to
make any concept scientific, you must have an operational definition, because
then it becomes falsifiable and hence becomes scientific. An operational
definition is in itself an interesting concept. What it really means is that you
can propose any phenomena, like Newton proposed gravitation, but it must be
eventually corelated to some adhoc physical measurements. Consciousness,
however, is by definition the one that measures, the one that does the
observation. So how are you going to give an operational definition of
it?
I think
the answer lies in seeing that the interaction between consciousness and gross
matter involves subtle levels or realms of matter where other kinds of
measurement than the ones that we are presently aware of can be made. The work
of Robert Jahn and others are the kind of experiments in which more precise
operational definitions of phenomena that are closer to consciousness than gross
matter, namely mind, can be talked about. If we learn to see other orders of
existence between consciousness and gross matter, such as mind and intelligence,
then scientists might be better able to conceptualize the ultimate phenomena.
Why have scientists been
so reluctant to discuss consciousness in the past?
Did you
know that before Rutherford split the atom in 1911 scientists considered the
question of what an atom is a religious question?! For them it was enough that
the hypothesis of the atom was useful to explain certain physical processes.
Kekule, who discovered the structure of benzene said, "The question of whether
or not atoms exist has little signifigance from a chemical point of view; its
discussion belongs rather to metaphysics." But today the study of what's inside
the atom is
physics!
Similarly,
scientists in this century have regarded the issue of what consciousness is as a
religious or metaphysical question. After all, Western science started out as a
protest against religion. Since religion went inward, science saw its own task
as going outward. But as science went further and further into the external
world, they ended up inside the atom where to their surprise they saw
consciousness once again staring them in the face!
Even then
scientists thought a hypothesis about consciousness was all that was needed.
However, just as the study of the atom has become what we call physics today,
the study of what consciousness is, I feel, may very soon become
the science.
William James said
"When science comes to eventually understand consciousness it will be an achievement in the face of which every other achievement of science will pale into insignifigance."
Many scientists equate mind and consciousness. Yet in your personal presentation at the conference you described mind as subtle matter, different from consciousness. What is your conception of mind, matter, and consciousness?
In my talk, I approached the issue of consciousness from the perspective of AI. The first step here is to show the need for a new paradigm. That artificial intelligence needs a new paradigm has become apparent from the variety of intractable problems in cognition we face in areas such as perception, natural language processing, knowledge representation, and automatic reasoning. We have no general theory of computation yet that can produce human cognition in machines. A task that comes naturally to a one year old child—recognising the face of his or her mother—is hopelessly beyond the capacity of supercomputers. What's required is not just some new hardware/software schemes, but a fundamentally new technology.
To understand what I mean let's compare electronic computers with mechanical calculators. Both are symbol processing systems. In principle, a mechanical system of gears and levers can be constructed to reproduce the workings of any electronic computer. In practice, however, this will not be possible. A mechanical system equivilent to even the simple desktop computer would be so enormous as to fill the entire planet and consume power that all the coal mines on earth cannot supply! This advantage of speed, power, and size is present in electronic computers because IC chips involve operation of matter at a much subtler level, obeying laws of a different kind from mechanical systems. You cant hope to make smaller and smaller mechanical parts and reach IC technology.
Similarly, AI researchers today think that by making IC chips smaller and smaller we will eventually come to mind. But I argue that you can't do that. You have to go to another level to talk about mind. I am postulating different levels of matter. I am suggesting that we have to think of mind as a subtler level of matter that operates much faster and under different laws than IC chips. You cannot reach that level through nanotechnology.
Professor
Bremmerman at UC Berkeley has shown that there are absolute limits to
infromation processing in physical systems regardless of the details of their
internal construction. For example, given a computer of total mass m, the
maximum information it can ever process is mc2/h bits/second, where h is the
plank's constant. He has gone on to show that even if we consider a computer
that has been in operation for the duration of the entire universe, assuming
that it has been in operation for the duration of the present age of the
universe, its total information capacity will not be enough to solve a
travelling salesman's problem involving no more than 100 cities! The conclusion
is that the human brain, being a physical device, is subject to the same
absolute limitations, irrespective of its internal construction. If the brain
alone was involved in human cognition, we should not be able to carry out the
kind of complicated cognitive operations that we do! Therefore, I have argued
that what is involved in human cognition is information processing involving
levels much faster and hence subtler than the brain.
If you
accept this idea, that there is more to human cognition than the brain function,
then there is already a model of consciousness, intelligence, mind, and brain in
the Vedantic texts that closely follows these requirements. This Vedantic model
describes mind as a level of matter subtler than the brain. According to this
model, thought is to mind what motionis to objects, or beavior is to the body.
That is, thoughts have no intrinsic semantic content. An example of this is when
a driver drives a car. The idea of the journey is not intrinsic to the car's
motion, but a superimposition on the part of the driver. Similarly, meaning is
not intrinsic top thoughts of the material mind, but is a superimposition of
subjective consciousness.
This idea,
that thought is a mechanical output of matter at the subtle level of mind
without intrinsic meaning is a novel idea within Western tradition. If this idea
can be shown to be of practical relevance to AI, then I feel we can go one step
nearer to the paradigm of consciousness, otherwise, to ask current science to
jump directly to consciousness is too much. This is a necessary step in what I
have mentioned about the third wave—finding the middle ground between
consciousness and matter, and thus expanding the domain of current science.
What is the difference
between Cartesian dualism and the Vedantic dualism you are
discussing?
Descartes
said, "I am that, that thinks, the soul, or the reason, or the understanding."
He used all of these terms equivalantly. Thinking, reasoning, and soul were all
the same for him. This is the problem with Cartesian dualism—that it lumped into
one concept called mind all hierarchic cognitive traits. That is why Cartesian
dualism has no relevance for science, whereas the Vedantic pluralism—in terms of
consciousness, mind, and body—seems to give ideas about the presence of various
levels of hierarchy in matter.
If you see
a car moving on the street and you want to know why it's turning left or right,
one might say, "All you need to do is study the mechanics of the car. The car is
a complete system; there is nothing inside." But I come and say no, there is a
driver in there. Now that is correct, but it's not sufficient. Still you have to
accept that there are several levels of mechanisms within the car, and there is
a specific point at which the driver is coming in contact with the car, the
steering wheel and control panel. Descartes was correct in thinking that there
is an irreducible subjective residio that is essentially the self. That is
exactly the same as the Vedic idea tat tvam asi, thou art that. But Descartes was
not able to distinguish that there is a subtle material substance called mind
that is the point at which consciousness meets matter. There is a hand and there
is a glove. The glove is exactly like the hand but it is a cover. So the mind is
very close to consciousness but it is matter.
The Vedanta also has a
monistic interpretation, monistic idealism if you will. In Shankara's view there
is no objective reality to matter. It is all illusion. You hold a very different
viewpoint on Vedanta.
Yes. There
is a very established tradition of Vedantic thought, monism, that is close to
idealism. We are proposing something different,a multidimensional, pluralistic
approach to the whole issue of reality. We are talking about individual
consciousness and a supreme consciousness or God. We are also talking about
matter as an objective reality, the shadow of consciousness, rather than an
illusion or something that really does not exist. This is theistic
Vedanta.
The
question is which Vedantic paradigm can import concepts that can be shown to be
empirically and analytically accountable. I do not think that monism can explain
any of the problems of consciousness in science in a way relevant to science
simply because, according to the monistic viewpoint, in the ultimate analysis
matter doesn't exist. Therefore the highesr realizations of monisim by
definition can not have any bearing on modern science, which studies the domain
of matter.
It seems that in
attempting to bring consciousness into science, rather than keep the two
separate, you are attempting to bring value into a somewhat valueless
technological world view.
I
certainly hope so. Today science is totaly without a framework for values. Any
highschool boy or girl knows how to calculate the force with which a stone he or
she throws will hit someone in the face, but nothing in those equations they use
will tell them whether or not to throw it. Given the fact that science is
perturbing our universe in greater and greater proportions, it is essential that
we address the absence of values within science. We must note that the changes
wrought by science and technology to our environment are always irreversible.
That is to say we cannot go on polluting our environment for years and then one
day suddenly say "Oops, that was a mistake, let's take it back." It is easy to
destroy something, but much more difficult to put it back together
again.
To solve
the problem of values we must know what is valuable. Consciousness is the most
valuable commodity. Without consciousness our own bodies as dear as they are to
us, are suddenly without value. This of course is a philosophical argument, but
nonetheless an pragmatic one. If we accept it, then, to bring values into
science,we need to connect science with what is
valuable—consciousness.
Cairns Smith is well
known for his work in the field of chemical evolution. I was quite surprised to
hear some of his remarks about consciousness. What is the Vedic view on
evolution?
Darwinian
evolution is biological. It talks about the needs of the biological system by
which evolution proceeds. But it is inadequate to explain the appearance of the
first biological system. Therefore we have theories of chemical evolution which
precede biological evolution. Cairns Smith, as a chemical evolutionist, was
pointing out that consciousness is fundamentally different from all other
physical phenomena because it acts back on the system that creates it.
Consciousness has a two-way interplay that Smith called interactionism. His
realization was that this interactionism must be present at the most fundamental
level of matter. It cannot evolve suddenly in matter.
He went to
the extent of assreting that "To say that consciousness evolved from matter is
to say that a TV evolved from a refrigerator. Such things do not happen." He
therefore postulated what he calls protoconscious units, which are not
themselves conscious, but have the potential for consciousness that molecules
and atoms don't have. However, in doing so he himself is dodging the issue. If
protoconscious units are not conscious, then they have the same defect as matter
in that they can't give rise to consciousness. If they are conscious, then why
not call them consciousness rather than protoconsciousness? This is the same
thing that Minsky tried to do in his book Society of Minds. He tried to show that there are
certain things called minds that are not really minds, but when they all get
together, then you get mind. This degenerates ultimately into philosophical
emergence, where something comes out at the top of a structure that is not at
the bottom of the structure. So you can see that even materialists invoke some
fundamental conscious-like units different from known matter in an attempt o
explain consciousness.
We can
congratulate Cairns Smith for boldly recognizing the conceptual limitations of
chemical evolution, but he has not yet taken the next step, which is to
postulate consciousness as a separate ontological category coexisting along with
matter. This is what I feel scientists in every field should do to solve the
problem of consciousness in there respective fields. It won't suffice for
scientists to assume that once we posit something as non-material that we cannot
study it. We simply have to develop new scientific tools.
As far as
the Vedic viewpoint on the different levels of consciousness within different
species, I once explained this to Wigner. According to the Vedas, just as matter
has fundamental particles called atoms, so consciousness is full of fundamental
particles called cit kana. While every material
atom is unconscious and therefore devoid of individuality, every spiritual
particle is conscious, and therefore it has to be individual. Individuality is a
fundamental axiomatic property of consciousness. Material atoms are governed by
the laws of physics, and spiritual atoms are governed by love because they are
units of free will.
I explained to
Wigner that each unit of consciousness interacts with matter, and we see its
capabilities manifest in accordance with whichever material machine or body it
interacts with. If you drive a motorcycle and I drive a bicycle, you may go
faster than me only because of the vehicle. It has nothing to do with you or I
but the vehicles we are using. He asked me if I thought an amoeba had
consciousness. I told him that the Vedas do not say that an amoeba has
consciousness, but rather that consciousness has an amoeba body! Just as in each
vehicle you see on the road there is a different driver, similarly in each body
there is an individual conscious entity. According to the Vedas, all species
exist at all times. Material bodies do not evolve. But each individual conscious
entity evolves, thus acquiring different bodies which correspond with the
individual's particular state of conscious evolution..
This
paradigm is not contra-intuitive, and different Western schools of thought can
be accomodated within it. Take for example reductionism, which claims that our
behavior is essentially controlled by the physical laws operating on our bodies.
The Vedantic viewpoint accepts that even though I am a conscious individual
transcendent to the body, because I am using this particular body, I am
constrained by its operation according to material laws. Thus reductionism can
be accomodated within this framework.
You can
talk also of emergence. The more sophisticated my physical structure is, the
more I can show my skills. Higher order structures will show higher order
properties, not intrinsically but extrinsically because consciousness can
manifest more of its qualities. Dualism is also accommodated because the Vedic
paradigm admits that consciousness and matter are different. Phenomenology,
which says that beingness is an essential aspect of every structure that has
consciousness, can be accommodated.
In short
this Vedic model is the proverbial elephant of which different portions are
being touched by so many blind men. One blind man says that it is rationalistic,
another dualistic, another idealistic monism, another realism, but no one is
seeing the entire elephant of this Vedic paradigm. The elephant is that there
are two ontological categories, consciousness and matter, and the two interact
to form our world.
Can't you also say that
matter is a vitiated form of consciousness, that everything is ultimately
consciousness?
This
involves a higher philosophical discussion. I can see that at some level of God
consciousness we can think of consciouness and matter in these terms—as you put
it, seeing matter as a vitiated form of consciousness. But presently that
vitiated form of consciousness acts differently as matter, and therefore it can
be considered as a separate ontological category.
As the discussion of
the conscious self enters the scientific arena it seems that we are at a
critical juncture. What is the future of science?
I don't
think that I can do better than to quote scientists who are greater than myself,
who at the ends of their careers have given some reflections. I have some
favorite quotes. W. Penfield, one of the top neuroscientists of the century,
said in an article called Science, the Ox, and the Spirit:
"The physical basis of the mind is the brain action in each individual. It accompanies the activity of the spirit, but the spirit is free. It is capable of some degree of initiative. The spirit is the man one knows. He must have continuity through periods of coma and sleep. I assume then that the spirit must live on somehow after death. I cannot doubt that many make contact with God and have guidance from a greater spirit. If he had only a brain and not a mind, this difficult decision would not be his."
The
tendency to see the human mind in terms of the latest technology of the times is
an old one. In earlier times mind was thought of as a steam engine, as a clock,
and before that as a catapult. Today the attempt is to equate mind with the
brain. But here is something from Ludwig Wittgenstein from his Last Writings
on the Philosophy of Psychology: "Nothing seems more possible to
me than that people some day will come to the definite opinion that there is no
copy in the nervous system which corresponds to a particular thought or to a
particular idea of memory."
Szent-Giorgi, the Nobel laureate
biologist, said,
"I went
through my entire scientific career searching for life, but now I see that life
has somehow slipped through my fingers and all I have is electrons, protons, and
particles, which have no life at all. So in my old age I am forced to retrace my
steps."
So I think the great advantage of discussing the notion of the conscious self within our scientific paradigms is that we can actually enlarge our framework. In order to do that we need help, and I don't think that anyone can deny that the Vedic literatures are the single most vast body of literature that seriously deals with this topic. From page one to the end it is conscious all the way.
So I think the great advantage of discussing the notion of the conscious self within our scientific paradigms is that we can actually enlarge our framework. In order to do that we need help, and I don't think that anyone can deny that the Vedic literatures are the single most vast body of literature that seriously deals with this topic. From page one to the end it is conscious all the way.
Science,
as long as it remains bound to emperical reductionism, can say nothing about the
conscious self. Many in the contemporary world have tried to define perception
such that it fits into their existing paradigms, but this has only made our
problems more accute. Time has come to redefine scientific procedures such that
they explain the conscious self. We need as many new ideas as we can get. If we
are so foolhardy as to reject the entire wisdom preceeding us, such as the Vedic
paradigm I have presented, then what assurance do we have that our present-day
knowledge will not similarly be rejected by future generations?
Science is
rooted in observations, and our conscious self is the very tool by which we
observe. Even the strongest giant can not lift the platform on which he stands.
As great as scientific knowledge is, it cannot explain the conscious self within
its present observational framework. To experience it is to observe it.
[Reprinted from Clarion Call
Magazine]
Darwin's
Theory of Evolution, as presented in his book "Origin of Species" has been
widely accepted as fact, although it is based on Darwin's fallible speculations.
His critics write, "If the theory of natural selection of Darwin is correct, why
can't we see the intermediate forms of species, the connecting links?" Darwin
did not have the answer nor the archeological evidence to back it up. Although
there is ample evidence for many species, fossil records provide almost no
evidence for the intermediate connecting links.
We suggest that a body of knowledge does exist which
provides sufficient explanation of the nature and origin of the universe and the
living organisms that inhabit it. We refer to the ancient sanskrit Vedic
literatures of India, an internally and externally verifiable and consistent
presentation of information. Herein we find profuse descriptions of an
intelligent creator god and his creation.
Perhaps the
most well known of these literatures, The Bhagavad-gita explains the
nature of the conscious soul as an indweller in the bodies of various species
and it's journey to other bodies after the death of it's present body according
to the laws of karma. The living entity has free choice to act properly or
improperly and receives the resultant good and bad reactions in terms of success
and failure, happiness and distress. 
But this dichotomy, which has
served as a premise underlying much work in the areas of linguistics and
artificial intelligence, is a false one. There is at least one language,
Sanskrit, which for the duration of almost 1,000 years was a living spoken
language with a considerable literature of its own. Besides works of literary
value, there was a long philosophical and grammatical tradition that has
continued to exist with undiminished vigor until the present century. Among the
accomplishments of the grammarians can be reckoned a method for paraphrasing
Sanskrit in a manner that is identical not only in essence but in form with
current work in Artificial Intelligence. This article demonstrates that a
natural language can serve as an artificial language also, and that much work in
AI has been reinventing a wheel millenia old.
The
hierarchical structure of the above net and the explicit descriptions of
set-relations are essential to really capture the meaning of the sentence and to
facilitate inference. It is believed by most in the AI and general linguistic
community that natural languages do not make such seemingly trivial hierarchies
explicit. Below is a description of a natural language, Shastric Sanskrit, where
for the past millenia successful attempts have been made to encode such
information.
