Nobel laureate wins Templeton Prize

[stonehearted]

Charles H. Townes, inventor of, among other things, the laser and the maser, and winner of the 1964 Nobel Prize in physics, was awarded the Templeton Prize for progress toward research or discoveries about spiritual realities.

 

Townes: "Religion is an attempt to understand the purpose and meaing of our universe. Science . . . is an attempt to understand how our universe works. Well, if there's a purpose and meaning, that must have something to do with how it works, so those two must be related."

 

For the Templeton Foundation announcement, see

http://www.templetonprize.org/townes_pressrelease.html

 

For a brief profile of Townes, see

http://www.templeton.org/milestones/milestones_2004-06.asp

 

To listen to an NPR interview with Townes, go to

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4529310

[krsna]

 

 

How can we use his work in preaching about Krsna?

 

Doe he help people to come around to the idea of God? /images/graemlins/confused.gif

[stonehearted]

He's an old physicist! How cool could he be? But it looks as though he has some interesting ideas. I haven't read much of his writing yet. It looks as though his approach may be closer to Bhaktivinoda Thakura and Bhaktisvarupa Damodar Maharaja's than Drutakarma or Sadaputa's. How can we use it? Check it out and figure out whether you can use it yourself, and how. We should all become "indpendently thoughtful," according to my spritual master.

[krsna]

"The Krsna consciousness movement is for training men to be independently thoughtful and competent in all types and departments of knowledge and action, not for making bureaucracy...There must always be individual striving and work and responsibility and competitive spirit, not that one shall dominate and distribute benefits to others and they do nothing but beg from you and you provide."

 

(SPL 72-07 pg 992)

 

****************************************

 

I must be a brainwashed zombie who has sold too many stickers or something, but I can't make heads or tails of his philosophy or practice. /images/graemlins/confused.gifI guess I should go back to 'following my authorities' as I'm getting 'too mental'. /images/graemlins/blush.gif

[gHari]

So much money to a guy who is searching for the IT God. One only laughs when considering why disciples of Swami Bhaktivedanta, for example, are overlooked for such prestigious awards. The dogs will award a dog, being unable to comprehend cool cats.

 

[krsna]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yo ! Me completetely dumb ,blind and ill-advised. Know nothing at all. Yikes!? How can the physist man be compared with the Paramhamsas?

 

/images/graemlins/confused.gif

[stonehearted]

krsna:

I must be a brainwashed zombie who has sold too many stickers or something, but I can't make heads or tails of his philosophy or practice.

 

 

He's a scientist who doesn't think that the insights of "science" and those of "religion" are mutually exclusive. Each, he says, is a different kind of inquiry. If you want to know more than that, I guess you'd have to read more of what he has written on the topic, just as I would. If you're not interested enough, or too busy, to do that, or if Townes' work doesn't have anything to do with your life, please feel free to let it go.

[stonehearted]

Well, I'm not sure what God he's searching for, and he doesn't seem to have a clear idea, either. But at least he seems actually open to something more than the completely materialistic understanding of life than those Drutakrama pits himself against. He seems, from the little I'v read and heard, not to be a sold-out acolyte of scientism, which is a more accurate term for what most folks take for science. I hear the question coming, so here's an answer: Unlike the use of the scientific method as only one mode of reaching knowledge, scientism claims that science alone can render truth about the world and reality. Scientism's single-minded adherence to only the empirical, or testable, makes it a strictly scientifc worldview, in much the same way that a Protestant fundamentalism that rejects science can be seen as a strictly religious worldview. Scientism sees it necessary to do away with most, if not all, metaphysical, philosophical, and religious claims, as the truths they proclaim cannot be apprehended by the scientific method. In essence, scientism sees science as the absolute and only justifiable access to the truth.

 

I posted this because I found it interesting, not because I've decided to become the guy's disciple.

 

Why no money to Drutakarma and Sadaputa? Maybe Townes has more "acceptable" credentials; maybe our guys (at least from the "war party" side of BI) have an image of using the language of science to advance their church's anti-science agenda, rather than to open inquiry. Sounds like a good question for the Templeton Foundation folks.

[stonehearted]

I'm not sure where anyone compared Townes to any paramahansas. I simply suggested that his approach to science and spirit may more closely resemble theirs than that of Sadaputa and Drutakarma. Whereas the latter are more interested in "defeating" science, the former apparently found less reason to throw out any empirical observation just because it doesn't perfectly match, for example, what we read in the 5th Canto of Srimad-Bhagavatam. I said nothing at all beyond that. I found something in what I heard that I found interesting, that's all. Is some deeper agenda necessary to post here?

 

Look--if this disturbs your faith, just let it go. I'm much more interested in understanding the essence of Srimad-Bhagavatam and Chaitanya-charitamrita myself, but I also hear things that catch my attention. If anyone else has anything to say about Townes, maybe they should find out more about him than I've had time for, then share their shastra-informed analysis. I'd find that much more interesting and productive than just putting the guy down because he's not one of "us." If some devotee scholars have interest and the qualifications to inject our voice into larger discussions about the possibilities of finding ways to synthesize the insights of science and religion, they may find Townes an interesting person to correspond with. For the rest of us, we may either find it interesting or not. I try really hard not to spend a lot of mental or emotional energy when others post things here that I find not particularly useful in my spiritual life.

[theist]

It seems to me that at some point material scientific inquiry can become a form of sankya yoga. Is this correct? And what point would that be?

 

Thanks

[mahak]

When they find that the big bang came from the glock in Ksirodakasayi Visnus hand.

[stonehearted]

theist:

It seems to me that at some point material scientific inquiry can become a form of sankya yoga. Is this correct? And what point would that be?

 

 

My top-of-the-head understanding is that sankhya philosphy has its basis in analytical approach to understanding how the elements work together. I suppose it scientific inquiry would become sankhya yoga when it reaches a proper understanding of the relationship between prakriti and Purusha. My memory is that the sankhyites see the world as being animated by purusha (generic) but not created by any entity beyond it. But if, under the guidance of those with a real understanding that Purusha is personal, and that he is both the generating and animating force that makes prokriti appear alive, then their inquiry would be a form of yoga.

 

I'm sure someone else has a better, clearer answer that's the best I can do from my office, in an attempt to escape the stacks of essays screaming to be graded.

[theist]

I have to acknowledge that a scientist who somehow arrives at the conclusion that behind the scene of this world their is a Designer at work is some form of yogi.

 

Now he may not be clear as to the nature of God as being personal ultimately or not but the fact that he has gotten to that stage I take as his sincere search being rewarded by Supersoul.

 

Still an unnecessarily long and complicated route but if that is someone's nature then what could repression accomplish. It's the atheism mixed with scientific jargon that has proven to be the poison.

 

mahak, I heard He packs a Sig Sauer .45. Well, "God moves in mysterious ways". Someday we will know.

[Guest guest]

the Sig Sauer .45 would account for the big bang, indeed. The glock has too much plastic, and maha visnu doesnt worry about airline security, he rides Garuda. I stand corrected, brah, hare krsna, ys, mahak

[theist]

What a picture. But His chakra is really much cooler and time is the most subtle. But I bet somewhere on the universal form we could find one incarnation that was strapped. What a fearsome sight that would be.

 

Be well mahak