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<b>
<FONT size="4">The Observer and the Observed</FONT></b></p>
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<span style="font-size:16pt;"><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>SCIENCE means objectivity, that is to say, elimination
of the personal element-truth as pure fact without being distorted or
coloured by the feelings and impressions and notions of the observer.
It is the very opposite of the philosopher's standpoint who says that
a thing exists because (and so long as) it is perceived. The
scientist swears that a thing exists whether you perceive it or not,
perception is possible because it exists, not the other way. And yet
Descartes is considered not only as the father of modern philosophy,
but also as the founder o( modern mathematical science. But more of
that anon. The scientific observer observes as a witness impartial
and aloof: he is nothing more than a recording machine, a sort of
passive mirror reflecting accurately and faithfully what is presented
to it. This is indeed the great revolution brought about by Science
in the world of human inquiry and in human consciousness, <I>viz.,
</I>the isolation of the observer from the observed.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>In the old world, before Science was born, sufficient
distinction or discrimination was not made between the observer and
the observed. The observer mixed himself up or identified himself
with what he observed and the result was not a scientific statement
but a poetic description. Personal feelings, ideas, judgments entered
into the presentation of facts and the whole mass passed as truth,
the process often being given the high-sounding name of Intuition,
Vision or Revelation but whose real name is fancy. And if there
happened to be truth off act somewhere, it was almost by chance. Once
we thought of the eclipse being due to the greed of a demon, and
pestilence due to the evil eye of a wicked goddess. The universe was
born out of an egg, the cosmos consisted of concentric circles of
worlds that were meant to reward the virtuous and punish the</FONT><BR>
			</P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>321</FONT><BR>
			</P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>sinner in graded degrees. These are some of the very
well-known instances of pathetic fallacy, that is to say, introducing
the element of personal sentiment in our appreciation of events and
objects. Even today Nazi race history and Soviet Genetics carry that
unscientific prescientific tradition.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Science was born the day when the observer cut himself
aloof from the observed. Not only so, not only he is to stand aside,
outside the field of observation and be a bare recorder, but that he
must let the observed record itself, that is, be its own observer.
Modern Science means not so much the observer narrating the story of
the observed but the observed telling its own story. The first step
is well exemplified in the story of Galileo. When hot discussion was
going on and people insisted on saying-as Aristotle decided and
common sense declared – that heavier bodies most naturally fall
quicker from a height, it was this prince of experimenters who
straightaway took two differen.t weights, went up the tower of Pisa
and let them drop and astounded the people by showing that both
travel with equal speed and fall to the ground at the same time.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Science also declared that it is not the observation of
one person, however qualified, that determines the truth or otherwise
of a fact, but the observation of many persons and the possibility of
observations of all persons converging, coinciding, corroborating. It<B>
</B>is only when observation has thus been tested and checked that
one can be sure that the personal element has been eliminated. Indeed
the ideal condition would be if the observer, the scientist himself,
could act as part of the machine for observation: at the mos he
should be a mere assembler of the parts of the machine that would
record itself, impersonatly, automatically. The rocket instruments
that are sent high up in the sky to record the temperature, pressure
or other weather condition in the stratosphere or the deep-sea
recording machines are ingenious inventions in that line. The wizard
Jagadish Chandra Bose showed his genius precisely in the way he made
the plant itself declare its life-story: it is not what the scientist
thinks or feels about the plant, but what the plant has to say of its
own accord, as it were – its own tale of growth and decay, of
suffering, spasm, swoon, suffocation or death under given conditions.
This is the second step that Science took in the direction of
impersonal and objective inquiry.</FONT><BR>
			</P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 322</FONT><BR>
			</P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>It was thought for long a very easy matter – at least
not extraordinarily difficult – to eliminate the observer and keep
only to the observed. It was always known how the view of the
observer that is to say, his observation changed in respect of the
observed fact with his change of position. The sun rises and sets to
the observer on earth: to an observer on Mars, for example, the sun
would rise and set, no doubt, but earth too along with, in the same
way as Mars and sun appear to us now, while to an observer on the
sun, the sun would seem fixed while the planets would be seen moving
round. Again, we all know the observer in a moving train sees things
outside the train moving past and himself at stand-still; the same
observer would see another train moving alongside in the same
direction and with the same speed as stuck to it and at stand-still,
but as moving with double the speed if going in a contrary direction:
and so on.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>The method proposed for eliminating the observer was
observation, more and more observation, and experiment, testing the
observation under given conditions. I observe and record a series of
facts and when I have found a sufficient ,number of them I see I am
able to put them all together under a general title, a law of the
occurrence or pattern of the objects observed. Further it is not I
alone who can do it in any peculiar way personal to me, but that,
everybody else can do the same thing and arrive at the same series of
facts leading to the same conclusion. I note, for example, the sun's
path from day to day in the sky; soon we find that the curves
described by the sun are shifted along the curve of an ellipse (that
is to say, their locus is an ellipse). The ecliptic is thus found to
be an ellipse which means that the earth moves round the sun in an
ellipse.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>But in the end a difficulty arose in the operation of
observation. It proved to be not a simple process. The scientific
observer requires for his observation the yard-stick and the
time-piece. Now, we have been pushed to admit a queer phenomenon
(partly by observation and partly by a compelling deduction) that
these. two measuring units are not constant; they change with the
change of system, that is to say, according to the velocity of the
system. In other words, each observer has his own unit of space and
time measure. So the elimination of</FONT><BR>
			</P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 323</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=3>the personal element of the observer has become a
complicated mathematical problem, even if one is sure of it finally.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>There is still something more. The matter of calculating
and measuring objectively was comparatively easy when the object in
view was of medium size, neither too big nor too small. But in the
field of the infinite and the infinitesimal, when from the domain of
mechanical forces we enter into the region of electric and radiant
energy, we find our normal measuring apparatus almost breaks down.
Here accurate observation cannot be made because of the very presence
of the observer, because of the very fact of observation. The
ultimates that are observed are trails of light particles: now when
the observer directs his eye (or the beam oflight replacing the eye)
upon the light particle, its direction and velocity are interfered
with: the photon is such a tiny infinitesimal that a ray from the
observer's eye is sufficient to deflect and modify its movement. And
there is no way of determining or eliminating this element of
deflection or interference. The old Science knew certainly that a
thermometer dipped in the water whose temperature it is to measure
itself changes the initial temperature. But that was something
calculable and objective. Here the position of the observer is
something like a &quot;possession&quot;, imbedded, ingrained,
involved in the observed itself.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>The crux of the difficulty is this. We say the observing
eye or whatever mechanism is made to function for it, disturbs the
process of observation. Now to calculate that degree or measure of
disturbance one has to fall back upon another observing eye, and this
again has to depend upon yet another behind. Thus there is an
infinite regress and no final solution. So, it has been declared, in
the ultimate analysis, scientific calculation gives us only the
average result, and it is only average calculations that are
possible.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Now we come to the sanctum, the Shekinah, of the
problem. For there is a still deeper mystery. And pre-eminently it is
an Einsteinian discovery. It is not merely the measuring ray of
light, not merely the beam in the eye of the observer that is the
cause of interference: the very mind behind the eye is involved in a
strange manner. The mind is not a <I>tabula rasa, </I>it comes into
the field with certain presuppositions-axioms and postulates, as it
calls them-due to its angle of vision and perhaps </FONT>
<BR>
</P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 324</FONT><BR>
			</P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>to the influence upon it of immediate sense perception.
It takes for granted, for example, that light travels in a straight
line, that parallels do not meet, indeed all the theorems and
deductions of Euclidean geometry. There is a strong inclination in
the mind to view things as arranged according to that pattern.
Einstein has suggested that the spherical scheme can serve as well or
even better our observations. Riemann's non-Euclidean geometry has
assumed momentous importance in contemporary scientific enquiry. It
is through that scheme that Einstein proposes to find the equation
that will subsume the largest number of actual and possible or
potential facts and bring about the reconciliation of such irrecon
ilables as wave and particle, gravitation and electricity.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>In any case, at the end of all our peregrinations we
seem to circle back to our original Cartesian-cum-Berkeleyean
position; we discover that it is not easy to extricate the observed
from the observer: the observer is so deep set in the observed, part
and parcel of it that there are scientists who consider their whole
scientific scheme of the world as only a mental set-up, we may
replace it very soon by another scheme equally cogent, subjective all
the same. The subject has entered into all objects and any definition
of the object must necessarily depend upon the particular poise of
the subject. That is the cosmic immanence of the Purusha spoken of in
the Upanishads – the one Purusha become many and installed in the
heart of each and, every object. There is indeed a status of the
Subject in which the subject and the object are gathered into or form
one reality. The observer and the observed are the two ends, the
polarisation of a single entity: and all are reals at that level. But
the scientific observer is only the mental purusha and in his
observation the absolute objectivisation is not possible. The
Einsteinian equations that purport to rule out all local view-points
can hardly be said to have transcended the co-ordinates of the
subject. That is possible only to the consciousness of the cosmic
Purusha.</FONT></P>
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<BR>
</P>
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<b>
<FONT SIZE=3>2</FONT></b></P>
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<BR>
</P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Is it then to say that science is no longer science, it
has now been converted into philosophy, even into idealistic
philosophy?</FONT><BR>
			</P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 325</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>In spite of Russell and Eddington who may be considered
in this respect as counsellors of despair, the objective reality of
the scientific field stands, it is asserted, although somewhat
changed.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Now, there are four positions possible with regard to
the world and reality, depending on the relation between the observer
and the observed, the subject and the object. They are: (I)
subjective, (2) objective, (3) subjective objective and</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>(4) objective subjective. The first two are extreme
positions, one holding the subject as the sole or absolute reality,
the object being a pure fabrication of its will and idea, an
illusion, and the other considering the object as the true reality,
the subject being an outcome, an epiphenomenon of the object itself,
an illusion after all. The first leads to radical or as it is called
monistic spirituality the type of which is Mayavada: the second is
the highway of materialism, the various avataras of which are
Marxism, Pragmatism, Behaviourism etc. In between lie the other two
intermediate positions according to the stress or value given to
either of the two extremes. The first of the intermediates is the
position held generally by the idealists, by many schools of
spirituality: it is a major Vedantic position. It says that the
outside world, the object, is not an illusion, a mere fabrication of
the mind or consciousness of the subject, but that it exists and is
as real as the subject: it is dovetailed into the subject which is a
kind of linchpin, holding together and even energising the object.
The object can further be considered as an expression or embodiment
of the subject. Both the subject and the object are made of the same
stuff of consciousness – the ultimate reality b ing consciousness.
The subject is the consciousness turned on itself and the object is
consciousness turned outside or going abroad. This is pre-eminently
the Upanishadic position. In Europe, Kant holds a key position in
this line: and on the whole, idealists from Plato to Bradley and
Bosanquet can be said more or less to belong to this category. The
second intermediate position views the subject as imbedded into the
object, not the object into the subject as in the first one: the
subject itself is part of the object something like its
self-regarding or self-recording function. In Europe apart possibly
from some of the early Greek thinkers (Anaxagoras or Democritus, for
example), coming to more </FONT>
<BR>
</P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 326</FONT><BR>
			</P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>recent times, we can say that line runs fairly
well-represented from Leibnitz to Bergson. In India the Sankhyas and
the Vaisheshikas move towards and approach the position; the Tantriks
make a still more near approach.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Once again, to repeat in other terms the distinction
which may sometimes appear to carry no difference. First, the
subjective objective in which the subject assumes the preponderant
position, not denying or minimising the reality of the object. The
external world, in this view, is a movement in and of the
consciousness of a universal subject. It is subjective in the sense
that it is essentially a function of the subject and does not exist
apart from it or outside it; it is objective in the sense that it
exists really and is not a figment or imaginative construction of any
individual consciousness, although it exists in ahd through the
individual consciousness in so far as that consciousness is
universa,lised, is one with the universal consciousness (or the
transcendental, the two can be taken together in the present
connection). Instead of the Kantian transcendental idealism we can
name it transcendental realism.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>In the other case the world exists here below in its own
reality, outside all apprehending subject; even the universal subject
is in a sense part of it, immanent in it – it embraces the subject
in its comprehending consciousness and posits it as part of itself or
a function of its apprehension. The many Purushas (conscious beings
or subjects) are imbedded in the universal Nature, say the Sankhyas.
Kali, Divine Nature, is the manifest Omnipresent, omniscient,
omnipotent reality holding within her the transcendent divine Purusha
who supports, sanctions and inspires secretly, yet is dependent on
the Mahashakti and without her is nothing, <I><FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">ś</FONT>unyam.
</I>That is how the Tantriks put it. We may mention here, among
European philosophers, the rather interesting conclusion of Leibnitz
(to which Russell draws our attention): space is subjective to the
view of each monad (subject unit) separately, it is objective when it
consists of the assemblage of the view-points of all the monads.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>The scientific outlook was a protest against the extreme
subjective view: it started with the extreme objective standpoint and
that remained the fundamental note till the other day, till the
fissure of the nucleus opened new horizons to our</FONT><BR>
			</P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 327</FONT><BR>
			</P>
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s<FONT SIZE=3>omewhat bewildered mentality. We seem to have entered
into a region where we still hold to the objective, no doubt, but not
absolutely free from an insistent presence of the subjective. It is
the second of the intermediate positions we have tried to describe.
Science has yet to decide the implications of that position; whether
it will try to entrench itself as much as possible on this side of
the subjective or whether it can yield further and go over to or link
itself with the deeper subjective position.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>The distinction between the two may after all be found
to be a matter of stress only, involving no fundamental difference,
especially as there are sure to be g adations from the one to the
other. The most important landmark, however, the most revolutionary
step in modern science would be the discovery of the eternal observer
or some sign or image of his seated within the observed phenomena of
moving things – <I>purusah</I> <I>prakritistho hi, </I>as the Gita
says.</FONT><BR>
			</P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Page – 328</FONT></P>
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