Newton and God
In modern people’s mind, science like fundament physics and spirituality (or mysticism) like the Bible are contradictory to each other. From my experience of interacting with my physicist friends and colleagues here in Japan, I think this perception is correct. At least, most physicists aren’t interested in spirituality.
However, there is a very crucial exception. When studying Newtonian physics in high school, I was not satisfied with learning just from the textbook and went on browsing through Newton’s Principia. I was shocked when reading an essay, known as General Scholium, attached to respond some of the criticism to the first edition. There is a whole paragraph saying that one of the purpose of Principia is understanding Lord God:
The idea is simple here. If we cannot see God, we can try understanding God from one of God’s creations—the physical world—using mathematics, which is the task of physics. I’ve never seen this in my high school physics textbook. And I guess not very many physicists are aware of this nowadays. To me, this seems like a very deeply-rooted motivation for doing fundamental physics.
A physicist as a human being (not just as a vocation)
The job, or vocation, as a physicist is just one of my aspects. Within this aspect, my highest possible dream is someone like Galileo or Newton. But, here is a more unexpected but much deeper question. Just as a human being, what should be my highest possible goal? Who do I want to be? This shift of thinking mode is inspired by Youlan Fung when I read his book, A Short History of Chinese Philosophy, in 2021:
Are there any concrete examples of a man achieving such a goal as a man? Immediately, the following names may come to your mind: Jesus, Gautama Siddhartha (the Buddha) and Lao Tzu. I believe most people, like me, have been known for these names since childhood, but know nothing more about why on the earth they are so great. They just seem so mysterious and impossible to understand. Scripts like the Bible, Dao Te Ching, or sutras in Buddhism are nothing like contemporary texts. These ancient texts are full of metaphors and stories, but almost never have clear-cut messages. However, I don’t think we should discard or ignore them so easily, since I have never forgotten two things:
- They probably try discussing some very deep and fundamental aspects of human life, or otherwise, they couldn’t survive for thousands of years. Empires come and go, but something in them (like truth, whatever this word means…) persists till now.
- I understand nothing about them, and I must keep attacking them.
The PhD project in theoretical physics here in Japan has trained me well on reading and understanding very complicated, intricate, and subtle ideas. I had some feelings in 2023 that I could try one more time, penetrating their ideas. I think I have made some progress this time. In the following sections, I will summarize what I have learned and why do I like them.
Start learning the Bible
My first encounter of the Bible was in a philosophy course about existentialism in my freshman year around 2013. We focused on Martin Heidegger‘s Being and Time. I got to know many other related philosophers like Camus, Sartre, Kierkegaard, and Saint Augustine in that course. Kierkegaard and Augustine both have Christianity background, so I read some famous excerpts in the Bible. I didn’t understand most of the discussion, but this course certainly planted the seed of the Bible in my heart. The seed starts sprouting recently:
- After studying Peterson’s psychology course called Personality and its transformation, I watched his The Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories: Genesis around 2021 and 2022. This interpretation of Genesis is much more approachable than philosophical or theological discussions. And I remember I was completely into this series for almost half a year and couldn’t resist watching them. I was so thrilled to hear Peterson interpreting the story of Abraham sacrificing his son Issac, a story confusing me for almost 10 years. See the painting above by Caravaggio about this story.
- In early 2023, after visiting a museum full of paintings about The Passion of Christ, I decided to learn more about Jesus and watched a TV drama series call The Chosen. The show completely convinced me that Jesus is a magnificent human being.
- Again, in early 2023, when considering the question, how should a human being act in the world, I read Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life, which I guess is heavily influenced by Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount (read Mathew 5-7 and watch this episode in the TV show). This excerpt of Jesus’s teaching is a great inspiration for my to answer the question I pose myself.
- For a deep understanding of the story of Abraham sacrificing his son, I read Kiekegaard’s Fear and Trembling. Professor Ellie Anderson has a great 10-miniute summary of Kierkegaard’s understanding of faith, which ignited my interested in this book. I was amazed my Kierkegaard’s almost poetic style in this book, trying to explain something which is probably unexplainable in principle. The key idea is called “the knight of infinite resignation”, the act of giving up through nobody except the one who give up can understand why one would do this. You can see many “baby version” of such actions in people aiming at spirituality. One common example would be fasting. Jesus fasted for 40 days. A more contemporary one is Mahatma Gandhi (but his fasting did have a concrete and understandable reason).
Dostoevsky's novels and New Testament
Before reading Dostoevsky’s novels, I didn’t know that they are such a great source for understanding the New Testament. I started by his most famous The Brothers Karamazov during my summer holiday 2023 and The Idiot in the end of 2023. These two novels use stories as a fictional tool to act out faith and the truth in Christianity. When reading the original text of the Bible, I always have like ten questions in a single section, but nobody around me can answer my questions, nor they are interested in this old book. In this novel, many of my questions are posed by characters in the story and get seriously analyzed. The fundamental conflict between rationalism and faith deeply hidden in modern people’s psyche are revealed and made explicit in the two novels. If you have been confused by this magic book and never loose respect to it, Dostoevsky can teach you many about it in his novels. I’m deeply touched by the following quote from New Testament, which is inscribed on his tombstone,
A corn of wheat has been planted in me by Dostoevsky. But, wait… Is there a paradox here? If the corn of wheat does not die, it remains alone. If it dies, it brings much fruit? Does he mean the opposite? Again, another unanswered question for me. I failed to find an answer in his book; maybe I missed some subtle hints. However, I found an explicit explanation from another unexpected place: an Indian yogi, or a guru.
Yogic culture
To be honest, I had never heard of the word Yoga until I entered the university in 2013. A female fellow students told me that she was learning Yoga, as an aerobic exercise to maintain a slim shape. Since then, Yoga in my mind means a girl’s exercise. In fact, if you try finding a yoga class in Japan, or find YouTube videos, most of the time, the style gives you a feeling that yoga is female-oriented.
This understanding changed completely when I tried learning a guided meditation from an organization called isha. A holistic view is adopted, and many interconnected things are put together. I realize that yoga, mediation, the Buddha, etc. are all closed related. Meditation, or more technically called Dhyana, is nothing but one of the many yogic techniques. It is well documented in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.
What’s more, this holistic view is probably linked with the original meaning of yoga, which is union. It tries to provide a set of tools to help one achieve the union between oneself and the whole universe! At this point, it hasn’t come to me that yoga can have anything to do with Christianity.
The situation changes when I read the book, Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy in September 2023. It is written by the same yogi whose death book I read during my 2023 summer holiday. I’m not expecting any interpretations about bible. What attracts me is the yogi’s crystal clear insights I saw in his death book. I was stunned when seeing a clear answer from a yogi to my question about the seed metaphor:
What a clear interpretation of the seed metaphor in the Bible! After reading these two books, I’m fully convinced that I can get inspirations and transform myself from this all-inclusive yogic culture. Many answer to my questions probably lie there. What’s more, yogis might have found ways to harmonize the two fundamental conflicting forces in a human being: the animal tendency of survival and the divine aspect of ultimate freedom.
After reading this book, I have learned two yogic practices. One is more about inner experience and the other is more about strengthening the physicality as a steady platform for more possibilities to dwell on. I think it has changed my trajectory of life.
