Science-IV : Pujya Gurudev

Pujya Gurudev Pt. ShriRam Sharma Acharya’s Kripa

The Incompleteness of Science

(Akhand Jyoti July-Aug.2010)

The theory of universe : In the year 200 BC, Hipparchus, a Greek astronomer of Nicaea, Bithynia stated that the earth is the centre of universe, and other planets and satellites move around it in eccentric and epicycle orbits. Polemics (short name Ptolemy), the famous scientist of Greece by accepting this very principle, explored the solar system in detail and positioned 1028 planets and stars starting from Earth in such a way that Earth became the centre, Moon revolved in the second orbit, Mercury in the third, Venus in the fourth, Sun in fifth, Mars in sixth, Jupiter in seventh, Saturn in eighth, conglomerate of shiny bodies and stars in ninth, and finally primum- mavens in the tenth orbit. On this basis the famous treatise of astronomy – 
Almagest was prepared. 

For 1400 years this principle was regarded as the absolute truth. Not only this, most of the forecasts based on this principle would turn out to be true. People worshipped Almagest and regarded it as a well-established scientific treatise. In this very book Ptolemy on dividing a circle in 360 graduations fixed 3.1428 as the value of p (pie, a Roman letter which denotes the ratio of circumference to radius of a circle). The present value of pie is 3.1415926… Though the difference of 0.0012 between the two numbers seems almost negligible, when this difference is applied to distances in millions of miles, then the predicted position of an object that is 1000 million miles away could be incorrect by millions of miles! 

                 At that time also if people believed in science with the same confidence as they would do today then they must be questioned why did their science turn out to be untrue? Though forecasts of bodies in orbits close to the earth turned out to be correct, but the overall principles in many cases turned out to be incorrect. These are the limitations of science. Whatever we had regarded as the absolute truth till yesterday turned out to be false today. Who will call such a science to be complete? How can we claim that science is true and not religion? Science is nothing but limited conclusions derived from limited knowledge of man; regarding them as absolute truth cannot be beneficial to man. 

Thanks GOD, Thanks Sadguru,

Shiv Sharma