15/10/2023
Tagore and Einstein: Philosophy Vs Science??
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Tagore and Einstein, the two intellectual behemoths, met several times. But among those meetings, the one on 14th July, 1930 at Einstein's residence in Caputh is of special significance. That day, the two giants discussed the nature of Reality, of Music and even atoms. To me, this whole discussion represents the eternal debate in metaphysics — Idealism Vs Realism. Tagore represents Idealism where consciousness is ontologically prior to matter. In Tagore's view, consciousness is the only 'Is', and everything else is 'in' this consciousness. His idea of a Superpersonal Being is reminiscent of Berkeley's "Esse est percipi", where objects materialize in God's mind. Of course, Tagore's God is not the same as Berkeley's. To the former, 'Man', the Whole, is the fulfillment of 'man', the component — as molecules constitute the flower, so do individuals unify in their "surplus" to constitute Humanity. On the other hand, Einstein is a realist since he sees objects as existing in themselves independent of any 'Necessary Being'. When Einstein raises the question of whether or not the Divine is isolated from the World, he reflects not on the Advaita or Dvaita concepts of the Upanishads but on the pantheistic metaphysics of Spinoza, by whom he was influenced greatly. Spinoza's 'deus siva natura' is a Stoical approach to the mind-body problem so emphatically dealt with by Rene Descartes in the centuries preceding Spinoza. Tagore's idealism is irrefutable as nothing can be conceived without being a conscious agent and therefore nothing can exist if not observed. The evolution of the universe is an evolution only because it is apprehended by man, else it reduces into an inconceivable obscurity. Consciousness is inextricably twined with Truth. Again, the individual man is inseparable from the 'Superpersonal Man', and has the capacity to reach it. When the Knower and the Known merge, man realizes the Man, and finds that the locus the Truth is none but himself. But this cannot be a scientific approach because without the separation of the subject and object, science is impossible. For Tagore, there is no Truth (or God) exclusive of man. For Einstein, Truth is independent of man. That's why he jests — " Then I'm more religious than you are". I think these two giants are discussing two theories that are mutually exclusive and at an unassailable distance from each other.
Coming back to Tagore, it is worth mentioning that his philosophy is quite critical of Shankaracharya's rendition of the transcendental monism in which the Transcendent is accessible only in a state of 'samadhi', and is far removed from the comprehensible Being rooted in the reality of man. This aspect of Tagore was well noted by Dr. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan in his book, 'The philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore'. Tagore's philosophy was much nearer to Vishistadvaita of Ramanuja than the traditional school of Advaita. For Tagore, the Transcendental or The Great Beyond can have no real significance in religion. His view is similar to the philosophy of the Bauls as understood from his great book, 'The Religion of Man', which is a compilation of his Hibbert Lectures delivered at the Oxford University in 1930.
As noted above, Einstein and Tagore are speaking of ideas that are irreconcilable. According to the Classical concept, beauty is the symmetry or harmony of parts among themselves and to the whole. Tagore confers the locus of this harmony to the Whole entirely, since it is only from the perspective of the Whole that a "perfect" harmony can be envisaged. Since in this case the Whole is synonymous with the Universal Mind, this is Idealism to the core.
But however sublime this concept might be, it has nothing to do with science. The concept of a Universal Mind is a beautifully logical assumption or at the most a subjective "revelation" of a seer — such as a vision or even 'aparokshanubhuti' — both of which are in absolute disagreement with science. A careful study of the history of Philosophy shows that this concept of Universal Being owes its roots to the macranthropical cosmogony of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt that influenced middle-Vedic Indian thoughts and pre-Socratic Greek thoughts as well. This was at a time when mythology was maturing into philosophy and leading ultimately to the concept of panpsychism via the idea of the Cosmic Person. Science, on the other hand, is neither revelational nor oracular. It is not just a negation of non-truths, as thought of by Tagore, but is also a positive affirmation of well worked-out proofs which are objectively verifiable and falsifiable. Science, in essence, is opposed to faith and subjectivism or solipsism.
Einstein's religion, on the other hand, is the feeling of wonder or awe towards the mysterious harmony or order in Nature. While this comes tantalizingly close to Tagore's "harmony in the Universal Being" enunciation, Einstein's religion never subsumed all objectivity under the aegis of a Superpersonal Universal Entity. Curiously though, Einstein did not bring his idea of "cosmic religion" into this discussion, which provokes me to conjecture that they might not have understood each other well, owing obviously to the barrier of language.
The treatment of their conversation may be considered in this light.
Some people opine that in this discussion Tagore was actually nearer to Quantum Physics and that Quantum and Advaita share a related worldview. While the surface similarities may encourage people to find analogies, but, to me, Advaita and Quantum Physics do not have much in common. The uncertainty ascribed to the visible world in Advaita represents a paradox better known in Philosophy as the "Problem of The One and the Many" — how can something transcendent also be immanent at the same time? Advaita was one solution to this problem. Philosophers around the world have strived in their own idiosyncratic ways to provide a solution to this paradox, throughout history.
Quantum, on the other hand, is fundamentally different from this problem of "One and the Many." It is not just a speculation or revelation but a specific branch of science with all the attributes of science as such. The wave-particle duality does not point to immanence and transcendence of any Super Mind nor does it indicate about the metaphysical concepts of Reality and Appearance. Therefore, to think that Tagore was inadvertently representing Quantum Physics in this discussion with Einstein, will be an error. This is of course, in my opinion. Counterviews may also be correct.
Sources:
1) The shape of Ancient Thought — Thomas Mcevily
2) Albert Einstein (A Biography) — Calaprice and Lipscombe
3) The philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore: Dr. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan
4) The Religion of Man: Rabindranath Tagore
5) Internet
------ Arindam
You can get more information on the Tagore-Einstein discussion from the internet. I am giving below a link to one such website which carries excerpts of
this discussion.
https://www.wondersofphysics.com/2019/09/the-meeting-of-tagore-and-einstein.html?m=1
