Science interprets nature through reason and experimentation. Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita that he is the reason in knowledge. Could we then say that science is one form of divine manifestation?
When science finds application through technology, we enjoy the benefits. However, fundamental scientific ideas can be correlated with spirituality or philosophy or even social science; it would not be unusual to find that sometimes, some of these correlations work out to be quite meaningful.
We learn from the study of disorder in solids that it leads to localisation. The motion of an electron is more transparent in an ordered solid than in a disordered one. This has a similarity in everyday life. In the absence of traffic rules there would be no order on the roads resulting in unsafe situations and traffic jams, and consequently there could be chaos. This suggests that progress is linked to order. On a spiritual platform, an unorganised mind is not conducive to progress.
Sometimes we notice that what is real is not apparent and what is apparent is not real. In an electronic device, there are two types of charge carriers: electrons and holes. Electrons are negatively charged and the holes, which are a kind of fictitious particles, are assumed to be positively charged. In an applied force, both these particles behave as if these have different masses. The masses carry the effects of the environment and are thus called effective masses.
On a similar footing we can interpret that the dynamism and the smartness of a man depends on the environment and the burdens he carries. A flexible environment and an undemanding burden can make a person more free in his work. The laziness of a person, thus, does not pertain to his physical appearance alone but to the extent of burden the mind carries.
Physicists know that light has a discrete nature (the quantum theory of light). This idea is strengthened by what Satyendra Nath Bose developed that might not be so apparent to a lay person. Let us imagine that a person standing at a railway level crossing wants to count the number of carriages in a train. If the train moves at a moderate speed, he can accurately count the number. However, if the train speeds past, he would not be able to accurately count the number of carriages. If the train increases its speed many times over, the entire train would appear as a single entity but not as consisting of carriages.
The same is true for a light beam, which appears to be continuous because the constituent light particles, photons, travel at high speed. Indeed there is nothing in the universe, which travels faster than light. Thus the apparent is not the real.
Magnetic frustration and real-life analogies constitute another example of science made easy. In disordered magnets an electron spin is frustrated when it is in a conflicting state of being in the field of two opposite spins. We experience frustration when confronted with conflicting situations, when there is no correlation between thought and action, and when there is a gap between achievement and expectation.
During the Mahabharata war, Arjuna's frustration was dispelled by Krishna in the course of the conversation they had, encapsulated in the Bhagavad Gita, the divine song. The essence of the Gita is that one could find solutions to problems by keeping the faith in a source which spans infinite space, time and knowledge and by action without attachment to fruits. One could interpret science as conveying a similar message.
The writer teaches physics and materials science at Berhampur University.