Quantum Physics and Indian Philosophy

Prof. Dr BM Hegde

Future science of medicine should be holistic and not reductionist

The science of yoga does not fit into the Western paradigm of reductionist
science. However, the recent quantum physics of holism can, and does, fit
into it eminently. In fact, quantum physics has come very close to the ancient
Indian philosophy of the Sankhya school. German physicist, Hans-Peter Durr,
who enunciated the a-duality principle in quantum physics, feels that he is
just playing the second fiddle to the ancient Indian sages who have
recognised a-duality in the form of advaita (non-duality or unity in duality).

“Many scientists do not seek to find the relationships between parts. Instead, they
dissect things into smaller and smaller units. This way of perceiving the world has
been called ‘Newtonianism’ or ‘reductionism’. All things exist in relationship to other
things. Many scientists attempt to disconnect from these relationships and prefer to
observe the world from a mechanistic viewpoint instead,” writes Jon Burras in his
classic paper, The Myths of Science.

Reductionism, a core of Western science, loses sight of the wood while counting the
trees. Bits need not make the whole; that apart, bits do not understand, or make the
researcher understand, the inter-connectedness of the whole which is the real thing.
Like what Dr Durr says, one can comprehend much more than what one could grasp
with the five senses and reductionism.

Yoga research must be ‘outcomes research’ only, and not reductionist—studying

surrogate end-points like blood pressure (BP), heart rate, blood sugar estimations, etc.
It should aim at research in long-term holistic outcomes. Yes, such research does not
get funds easily and getting it published is very difficult. That does not mean that we
repeat the same bad Western science research to claim that yoga is scientific. Science
is just there to understand nature and not there to teach nature a lesson or two. Today,
the whole of Western science is trying to alter the natural world as it is concentrated
only on making money.

The human body is not built with organs put together. We are derived from one single
nucleated cell generously donated to us by our ancestors, the germs, who ruled this
world for the first two billion years. That single cell, the zygote, which is a fusion of
ovum and spermatozoa, simply divides to make the 120 trillion colonies of
interdependent cells that make up the human body. Of course, we also have 10 times
that number of germ cells incorporated into that colony. They are mainly responsible
for our immune system functioning at its best!

Consciousness, that energy which flows as waves and is not seen or felt as particles,
has not been comprehended by many scientists even today. The father of quantum
physics, Max Planck, however, had realised that “consciousness is fundamental; even
matter gets derived from consciousness.” Visualising and trying to correct and
deviation from the normal is thus possible. This takes us closer to spirituality (not
religion), where the essence is sharing and caring for oneself and others.

Future science of medicine should be holistic, and not reductionist, as the human
body works like a closed system in systems biology. It is a self-correcting system and
does not need intervention for every minor deviation from the normal. Such
interventions in modern medicine result in misery for the hapless patient. We must
learn to intervene only in the unlikely event of the body’s immune system failing to
correct the problem in a reasonable time span to lessen our burden on humanity.
Recently, and I keep on repeating it, when interventional cardiologists were away in
conferences, mortality in their intensive care units (ICUs) fell significantly, showing
thereby that, given enough leeway, many deviations might self-correct. Long live
mankind on this planet!

(Professor Dr BM Hegde, a Padma Bhushan awardee in 2010, is an MD, PhD, FRCP

(London, Edinburgh, Glasgow & Dublin), FACC and FAMS.)