Science and Religion: the Indian Achievement

	Book review on Science and the Indian Tradition: When Einstein Met Tagore by David L Gosling Reviewed by Ronald Russell, 2009 published in Network Review No 100
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Dr David Gosling is Principal of Edwardes College in the University of Peshawar. His may not be the safest job in the world but, as he says, ‘as a university college in a troubled part of Pakistan we try to be a sign of hope (in St John’s sense) by doing what we are best at as best we can.’  In this spirit he has written two remarkable books: Religion and Ecology in India and South-East Asia (2000?), and the present title, now available in the USA, India and the UK.

Gosling was trained as a physicist and lectured in that subject for seven years at St Stephen’s College, Delhi.  He was ordained in the Church of England and at one time was the Director of Church and Society of the World Council of Churches.  This book demonstrates something more, revealing him to be a master of interdisciplinary studies with the ability to finds his way through and clarify the varieties and complications of Indian beliefs and traditions and demonstrate their compatibility with the revelations of Western science.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries there was a remarkable intellectual renaissance in India, intensified by the introduction of the English language into higher education. Gosling outlines the outstanding contributions of Ram Mohan Roy, Swami Vivekananda, Aurobindo Ghose and the Muslim scholars Syed Ahmad Khan and Muhammad Iqbal to both scientific and religious thought, all of whom had no question that the two were not closely interrelated.

Of  these influential personalities it was Vivekenanda who was best known in the West. A follower of Ramakrishna, he adopted his guru’s message that ‘each person is potentially divine and should work to release the latent inner power of divinity.’ Although he died at the age of 39 his Complete Works consist of no fewer than ten volumes. He developed an interpretation of yoga, known as raja yoga, which became widely adopted in the West, and he saw no conflict between science and his understanding of reincarnation. Gosling describes his appearance at the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 when he was welcomed with a standing ovation and his declaration ‘You are not sinners, you are children of the living God’ was greeted with tumultuous applause.

It is Rabindranath Tagore, however, himself a major poet and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, who stands as the most influential Indian philosopher of his time. Tagore suffered much sadness with his wife, three daughters, a son and grandson all dying relatively young, but the strength of his philosophy enabled him   to understand death as the bearer of life, life flowing forward in death’s current with no conflict nor opposition between them. Tagore travelled widely in Europe, America and the Far East.  Gosling comments that ‘Tagore’s universal humanism carried forward the best features of Brahmoism – ‘the pervasiveness of rational religion in all our life activities’ – into a world increasingly fraught by national egotism.’ His classic conversation with Einstein on the Nature of Reality is reprinted as an Appendix.
Gosling now moves back in time to devote a chapter to the earlier development of science in India and its encounter with western thought following the introduction of higher education in English.  Although Indian science lacked an organised base and a methodology it was in many areas very advanced.  Some Indian scientists saw certain Western developments as illustrating a fundamental Indian insight – the unity and interrelatedness of all things.  However the introduction into India of Western education, philosophies and technology had a momentous effect on the seculariation of the traditional Indian approach.  Universities were established in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras, P.C. Roy was universally recognised as one of the leading chemists of his time and C.V Raman was the first Asian to be awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on light. Raman, like the botanist and physiologist  J.C. Bose, strongly believed that the work of the scientists was a religious quest ‘whereby we are drawn naturally to search for the wonder that is at the heart of all existence.’

Other eminent scientists of the period include the mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, who collaborated with G.H. Hardy in Cambridge and whose theoretical work Gosling describes as of ‘enormous practical value.’  Another Nobel laureate was Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, physicist and astronomer, researcher of ‘white dwarf’ stars and black holes, who modestly described himself as ‘a lonely wanderer in the byways of science.’ The physicist Satyendra Nath Bose collaborated with Einstein in the search of a unified field theory and gave his name to the particle known as the boson. Like some other noted researchers he would not accept a degree from a foreign university lest it affected the reputation of his own alma mater.

 Gosling comments that with the exception of the astrophysicist Meghnad Saha, who rebelled against his treatment in his youth by caste-conscious brahmins, these and other great scientists of the past two centuries, ‘interpreted their work as the expression of their religious and philosophical beliefs.’  While there can be no ‘Indian’ or ‘Hindu’ science, as Gosling points out, ‘there have been, and continue to be, a significant number of top-rank scientists in all the major fields of science belonging to a variety of religious communities – Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and others – who maintain that their scientific work reflects their religious beliefs. Their contributions as scientists and as religious believers need to be taken more seriously in order to achieve a deeper and more comprehensive understanding between science and religion.’ 

In recent years research and development in the neurosciences have accelerated to the extent that many believe we are now enjoying ‘the decade of the brain’. Explorations into human consciousness appear to bring religion and science into closer partnership than ever before.  In recognising this, Gosling comments that while all religions have important things to say about what it means to be human, they need to dialogue more effectively with the scientists whose new discoveries are forcing the pace of change. And within that dialogue representatives of the non-Western world must be invited to play a major role.

Ronald Russell’s biography of Robert Monroe is reviewed in the last issue – see Books in Brief.

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